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Starting notes:
The second part of the guide will show many issues which come from overpopulation and how to deal with them.

My game for this guide is setup up on a medium map size and low mountain count in the survival mode with other options unchanged.
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Video version of this guide:

As soon as your game starts you need to pause it using the spacebar and take in your surroundings. Use the radiation overlay to check what areas are radioactive right now, but do remember this changes with weather and seasons.

From the water build menu, choose a jetty and palace it on the shore of the closest lake, you can rotate it using the R key.


Add a cistern for the settlers to stockpile water in it. Place a fishing hut here as well as this is a simple and fast food source.


Next, use the professions menu and add builders. It is important to leave some settlers without a profession so that they will do the tasks of cutting down trees, collecting scrap and food from the forest.


You can use the tasks from the build menu to pick up food but you have to choose a place with 0 radiation so your food will be radiation free, and pick the place closest to the bus. You should cut down the trees closest to your starting bus-base as well using the gather wood task. Same with the gather scrap task.


Unpause the game using the space bar and even speed it up using the first three number keys (1,2,3) so the buildings can get to work. The problem with the radiation being so close to our starting position on this map is that the settlers will wear out their protective clothing really fast. This is why it is a good idea to use the task to remove radiation and clean a path from the bus to the fishing hut and cistern.

Add 2 fishermen to the constructed fishing hut and the cistern requires a water carrier or even two as it needs to be filled up and that takes a while. You can add another fishermen if you reduce the number of builders.

You can use the flag icon to set up new fields of work for tasks (wood, food and scrap collection) when they clear an area. If you need more settlers for those tasks take them away from other tasks which have the highest number of settlers.


Now you need cabins for the population to live and have children in. Try to place them as close to the workplaces as possible so the travel time is reduced and less time is wasted. Green radiation is low, and it will be removed by the builders before building the cabins.


Gathering food from the forests is a fast and easy way to add more food variety for your settlers and they will enjoy this. Use the plants collection task on a forest with no radiation and make sure some settlers are free from professions.

More cabins are a must as you will need more population and more workers soon for all the production buildings. In the space between cabins you can add decorations. These give a bonus to the attractiveness of that location. This increases the cabins attractiveness and boosts the happiness of settlers living in them.


The total happiness, which you can see in this UI bar is influenced by many factors, and the higher it is the more bonuses settlers receive. I will explain this mechanic in depth in a future guide. But you should know that more food verity, homes with higher attractiveness, tools and protective clothing at hand and low radiation all boost settlers Confidence.

High confidence than boosts settlers in several ways.

In the bottom part of the UI you can see the seasons and their weather, a drought is coming with season 8 and this means you will have no water supply during that season. More on this later.


Now you need to build a scrapyard in the part of the map with the most scrap available. These can be buildings, scrap piles, old vehicles and a bunch of other stuff. Only workers of this building will be able to scrap those kinds of objects.


Wells are necessary as well, because once again you want to cut down on the travel time of your settlers so build them a water supply next to homes and workplaces. A wellkeeper will do the work here.


When you click on a building use this option to put it on the top of the construction que.


Now add a scrap collector in the professions menu, remove the scrap collection tasks as you don’t need it anymore. Use the flag icon to set the field of work of the scrapyard.


Clear the space around the bus so you can add more buildings there.You can remove even more irradiated soil around your cabins and workplaces with the remove radiation task.

Now add a recycler building next to the scrapyard.


In this building a settler will turn scrap into cloth metal and other specific resources. To store all these different resources and to keep the settlers efficient add a temporary storeroom right next to these two buildings.


Add a refiner for the recycler building and construct a foresters lodge where settlers will cut down trees, plant new ones and keep a forest alive and well tended. Make sure to have a lot of open and free space around it and keep it a bit away from the scrapyard but not too far.


Because the drought will make fishing impossible, max out the fishing hut workers to get as much food as possible before that. Add a forester to work in the forester lodge and make sure to uncheck everything but raw materials, tools and radiation protection in the now finished temporary storeroom.


You do this so only materials you use and produce in this area are stockpiled here. The bus will keep your food and other stuff safe.

Once you have recycled 12 cloth you can construct a tailor shop in your small manufacturing area.


This building will produce new radiation protection gear. Neck scarfs offer minimal protection but are made from scrap. To make more advanced gear you need coal. And to get coal you need to construct a charcoal kiln, which is best done next to the foresters lodge as the kiln uses up wood.


This UI icon shows the lack of protection gear.


As children grow up they take gear from storage while grown ups use up theirs as they work. This spends in quite fast and that is why we urgently need to make more. The game will offer side tasks like this one, where it will reward you if you provide the required buildings and items. Make sure to finish them successfully.


If you lack wood, scrap or food using the tasks and free settlers to directly collect them from the environment is always a good and simple option.

Add a tailor to the tailor shop as soon as it’s finished to start the production of protective gear.

When the drought starts, the lake dries up so it’s pointless to have fishermen or water carriers.


Change their professions to builders and use this time to add new structure to your growing city.

A hunter’s lodge can get you food even during a drought and it also has a purpose in supplying pastures with animals. More on this later.


Another way to get food is by having orchards and cultivated fields. Builds these close to food storage buildings like a bus or a temporary storeroom. Go with 7x13 or 13x7 to have a small but efficient orchard or two.


Choose the only seed you have and add workers. You can discover more seeds during expeditions which I will cover in another guide. These won’t grow during a drought but planting now is totally doable.


Add another forester to speed up wood production and planning of new trees. Don’t worry about the drought, it lasts for only one season and if you have more than 2000 water and around 1000 food for about 30 settlers you will be totally fine.


Also add another tailor to speed up the production of protective clothing, and a hunter to start hunting and gathering meat.

This UI icon shows the lack of living space...


... so add more cabins and construct them close, but not too close to the scrapyard. If you place them too close they will be negatively affected by the smells and sounds of production and industry. That is the attractiveness mechanic.

As the drought passes put the fishing hut and cister back in action to collect fish and water.

As you will start to run low on tools, you need to make more. The first step is to add another recycler and choose metal to be produced from scrap. Dont forget to add a worker there.


On top of that add yet another recycler, but this one for cloth as you need to speed up the production of protective clothing.

And now that we have made some coal we can upgrade to activated carbon mask production as this is also the requirement for finishing the side task.


To have enough scrap and coal make sure to increase the number of workers in the scrapyard and charcoal kiln. With the task completed and reward received we have enough protective clothing... for now.


Tools on the other hand are gone and that is why we add a workshop. Keep adding the cabins as you need a lot more workers for all these new production buildings. The side task for tools should come up now...


...and when you accept it you need to produce metal tools after building and staffing the workshop.
These spend both scrap and metal so add more workers in the scrapyard.

Keep adding wells to every place where you have lots of cabins or workplace so settlers don’t waste time going far way to drink and you also need more stockpiles of water for the next drought as you now have a much higher population.


Completing the task for tools will give you a nice boost, but these tools won’t last long.


This is why you have to think ahead and add more recyclers for both cloth and metal and soon more tailors and workshops. As in the future more advanced buildings, like the irrigation plan...


...will require plastics, set one recycler to work on plastics.


From here on end, increase food and water production and capacity every season and keep adding newly grown adults to those workplaces. The population starts to boom here and adding more and more cabins becomes dangerous.

During the next drought, use the free settlers to construct a school, as you need to start teaching children about conservation of resources and gear.


Next community building is the cemetery as your population is older now and soon first deaths will occur. You need a mortician to deal with the dead and a place to bury them or risk lowering your population's happiness.


In the school add teachers and teach children to take better care of protective clothing or tools, whichever you have fewer off.


To make more and diverse food build a pasture now, and use the hunters to capture wild animals. This will take some time.


To keep the population expanding you need a shelter where the old and non reproducing settlers will move to and leave the cabins for the young ones to have children in.


Make sure to add a new cistern as you need higher limits on the water stockpiles.

As you are probably past 50,60 or even 70 settlers at this point you need to start cultivating files for more food and more food types. Keep using the 13x7 size and add one or more settlers to work in these fields. Use the new settlers as recyclers to get more cloth and metal and also coal in a second charcoal kiln to keep making resources for new gear.


Once the settlers capture an animal they will take it to the pasture and there you will finally have an available option to start keeping and exploiting these animals for food.


With 2 or more they will reproduce and when at maximum limit one will be slaughtered for meat. Make sure to have a water source close to the pasture.


As you near 100 settlers things will start to really heat up. You will even get a task to create large stockpiles so that your population can survive oncoming droughts but also much worse weather and catastrophes which awaits you in this game.


This is where the population boom starts to create problems as your population will go through their tools and protective clothing faster than you can make them. Add more schools to educated children better and keep increasing your capacity for wood and scrap collection and production of cloth and metal to keep the tailor’s shops and workshops churning out tools and protective clothing by the dozens.

This game has a lot more depth to it. There are the happiness and attractiveness mechanics which I already mentioned, exploration with scouting and expeditions, research, forum and leadership, settler badges, trade and barter and even enemies.

If you want me to make guides about all these subjects please tell me in the comments below and add your own advice for future players. I want to thank you for reading and wish you successful surviving!