Hello everyone I'm J-Kitty and this is my walkthrough for Dream Engines: Nomad Cities. This guide will help you establish a strong economy while providing tips and tricks in order to beat the difficulty curve on the higher difficulty levels in the game. This guide is already going to assume that you played through the tutorial for the game and understand the basic mechanics. So if you haven't done so I recommend doing that before proceeding.

Note: This guide is slightly outdated as it doesn't take into account the new "mini raid" system and will be updated within the coming weeks. As of now temporary advice is to wall in your city via natural choke points and to build raid defenses closer to the city as they are now not as vulnerable to assault.

First things first you need to choose a tribe at first only Junk Lords is available so that's what this guide will be using but the current tribes are:

Junk Lords have a -25% cost towards city expansion, get 50% more loot from debris/and ruins and have a 15% demolish refund bonus (so 65% of the resources are refunded instead of only 50%).

Dream Weavers have a +30% flux production, +500 flux capacity, and +2 Max Materializers. The disadvantage is that they have a -15% threat increase gauge (so enemies will get stronger faster) and have a +20% increase in the number of enemies per raid.

Teslacrats get +25% Produced Resources, A unique research option (Resource Duplication), and start with 200 power capactity. The disadvantage is they cannot store power and that regular power generation is set at 20% speed so you need to use convertion recipes instead.

Beavers have a -30% cost towards city expansion, -15% upgrade cost a Carry Weight of +25% and +3 city expansion. However the production buildings must be built in the city and they will get no resources back from the deconstruciton of any of their buildings.

Remenant Seekers get a free re-roll when changing maps, 35% increased speed for expeditions, +2 expedition options, -25% fuel costs a +.5 movement speed for Tiny and a free Expedition Center. However, their defenses do 25% less damage, are 25% weeker and 20% slower to attack while their research produces 25% less resources per cycle.

Zones:
There are 4 different regions each with their own benefits and detriments and in some cases resources. The latter three will also occasionally have vision obscuring storms (Sand, Dream, Ash) which can make it difficult to explore and defeat dreamplague enemies.

Blightlands: Increased Startar production by 50% Raw Featherstone Production - 20%
Desert: Decreased Purptato production by 33% Increased Stone worker production by 25%
Dreamtouched Fields: Increased Glueberry production by 50% Debris/Ruin Loot +25% Star-Stuck Tar - 30% O
Ashfall Range: Materializer +25%, Harvesting +10%, Build cost +10%, Upgrade cost +10%, Raid Enemy Numbers +15%

Global Infestation Level:
The Global Infestation Level is the "difficulty" of the maps that you land on. 1 Skull= 0 Threat to start with. 2 Skull = 4 Threat and after that it's +5 to Threat for every Skull Beyond. The higher the threat the more ruthless the raids. In a standard game this level increases over time but can be forcibly increased by choosing a map that is of a higher infestation level than the current level you are on.

Infrastructure Levels:

When getting upgrade materials you will eventually "level up" and get an infrastructure point. These points basically improve the way your city operates or provide some buffs for your avatar "Tiny". There are 4 different branches for infrastructure.

Offense: Increases Tiny's attack while giving perks related to damage and Drep Loot
Survival: Increases Tiny's HP while giving perks related to tower defense, Tiny's Speed and Healing Kits.
Gathering: Increases refining and gathering speed while giving perks related to Farming, Renewable Resources and the Rail System.
Administration: Increases Flux and Power generation speed while giving perks related to Upgrade Materials, Research Generation and Population Growth.

Research:
Once you get to 30 in population you get access to the research tree. Each research tech either provides a permanent bonus, a new building or a new crafted item. In general you will want to always start research in a similar fashion. First by getting Starwood, Workshop and Starwood to Bloodwood. Then by getting the Expedition center and Light Starwood Armor then finally going to glueberry parts and the Materializer. After that research should be done while thinking about the next maps you're going to go to. For example, you should already have the Acidwood, Acidstone and Resource Drop techs learned before you land in a region with Acid as a resource. The faster you research your techs the sooner you can take advantage of them. Your current research project is shown in the top right hand corner of the screen next to the milestone goals.

Cycles, Threat Level, Take-Off and Population:
Every 40 seconds is one Cycle in Dream Engines. After a certain number of cycles your threat level on that map will increase. As the threat level increases the time between increases will become faster and faster (IE: It's slower to go from Threat Level 1 to threat level 2 than it is to go from threat level 11 to threat level 12). Threat level is reset between maps but will not go under the threat level related to the Infestation level of the map. The current Cycle can be seen from the game map as well as the current threat level for that map. Next to that is the "Take-Off" Feature which is what you use to transfer maps. It also shows you the current and max weight limit of your City as well as your current fuel and the required amount of fuel to launch. Next to that is the Population gauge which shows you your current and max population and the amount of population you need to hit the next population milestone.

Milestones:
Milestones are in game "achievements" that net you a bit of Old World Machinery to be able to use ruins while helping you progress the game. You can also get Old World Machinery from breaking destructible objects on the current map.

When starting out the first thing you should do is pause the game and then check the current map by clicking the population gauge. The resources of the starting map will always be the same 2 wood and 1 stone but, the ruins may vary. For a reliable playthrough an "Industry Ruin" would be ideal. It's not 100% vital to have but, in terms of quick starting it's better to have the Industry Ruin on the first map so you can get access to "refined tar" and "craft Starwood using refined tar" blueprints which is far superior than just crafting Starwood all on it's own.

Once you've checked that out set up 4 houses and quickly look around your surroundings for wood nodes. You can build a single tesla tower and move it around the edge of the map to get some quick exploration in so you can find a node. You should also open your dream archive with H. As this will help you complete some milestones giving you precious old world materials which you'll need to use the ruins around the maps or for the occasional expedition. Remove the 10 healing kits from your base and equip them then head out with Tiny to clear out the nearby wood node while punching the little nodes to get extra resources. Place down a harvester then build three wood warpers and use as little flux as possible to make them deliver the wood to your base then find a stone node and build 2 stone workers then upgrade them both. Depending on how quick you find each node you may not have enough people to run them all at once so turn off one until you do. In the beginning you should always be trying to make sure your population is growing and not capped out so build additional houses when you're within 5 however keep your max population at 145 to prevent pushing your city into "Haven" status (the city core upgrade gives +10 population). If you find a second nearby node for wood once again build 2 additional wood warpers and start sending them back to the City core. Keep an eye on your flux because you'll always want at least 350 or more in your reserve for if you find a ruin or the occasional raid. When you hit 21 population you'll be able to make Electric Generators and Flux Vats. Make enough generators to keep a positive electrical balance and then build flux vats to boost your flux generation to 70 or above. Once you get to that point start conserving your wood as you'll need 60 in order to build farms to fully power a food plant. Once you get beyond 60 you can start adding more houses/flux vats/electric generators.

After getting to 125 featherstone and 350 flux you'll be able to upgrade your city core which will increase the core's production by 50%, add 10 workers to your max population, raise respective caps on the city resources and increase rail speed by 20% however it will increase the fuel cost for the city by 30% nevertheless the benefits far outpace the deficits from doing so. At this point you are probably beginning to run out of food so you'll want to set up 6 purptato farms and one Food Plant. you may not be able to do it all at once as it will cost 280 flux, 60 wood and 15 stone. But start with setting up the purptato farms and turn them off until you get the Food Plant up. When you hit a population of 60 you'll get a city expansion so set this up near the residential area so you can extend it out, you'll also get an upgrade point.

By this time you'll probably get a raid alert. You should not be the one to defend against the raid until you've completely cleared a map. If it's in a spot you've cleared use Tesla Towers to extend out where the raid is then set up towers and walls then continue on with clearing the map with Tiny. If not you may have to try an extrapolate an "intercept point" based on the position of the raid spawn or rush over to where the raid is going to be while clearing out mobs. In the beginning you will not need much in terms of defense with only 2-3 towers and a set of walls being enough to keep the Dream Plague away. At higher stages you'll want multiple rows of turrets with two,three or even four rows of walls protecting them. The raids will come in two waves every time with the first wave being significantly stronger than the second. Make sure to repair/replace between waves to take advantage of the lull.

Next you'll want 260 flux, 55 stone and 68 wood so you can make two labs and a star tar extractor. Also you may need to make another set of Purptato farms and another Food Plant. At this point your first wood harvester facilities should be approaching depletion (if they haven't already) for the main facility (the one with 3 wood warpers attached) connect another resource node to the previous one. For the other you can destroy one of the wood warper facilities and upgrade the other one when you have enough wood to safely do so. At this point you should also try to convert the primary wood processing facility to creating star wood through the refined tar recipe if you have it otherwise use the standard tar recipe. Pause any buildings in a production line *until* you are ready to have the production line fully operational as to prevent resource drain.

Once you build a third food plant it will be enough to support a population of 155 while generating excess food for later. Expand the wood warpers to level 2 once you have the resources to do so and adjust the resource balance accordingly. Use your additional flux to start attaching more resources to the wood/stone production lines to prevent any risk of losing time when the other harvesters have been depleted. The one exception should be the stray wood warper that is working by it's lonesome. It should actually be attached to three workshops so you can produce upgrade materials instead. If you can you can also connect it back to the city core so the remainder of the resources go back into it.

At this point you should dedicate yourself to researching and refining while maintaining a positive flux balance to reach the flux cap as soon as possible. You can turn off depleted resource nodes as needed to replace them with stocked resource nodes if you don't have enough people. Once they are almost all depleted you can start turning them back on as long as you have enough workers to support them in order to prevent a situation where you aren't refining due to running out of resources. Once you get to around cycle 110-118 the infestation will probably raise to level 2. Furthermore you'll probably have gotten the most out of all the resources in this area so you should initiate take off procedures when you have your flux capped off and your electricity about the same (unless you picked teslacrats then it doesn't matter when you take off in regards to electricity). You should only take the most expensive buildings with you such as two labs. You may even want to take the tar extractor with you so the labs can continue to work while you're setting up the next map. Depending on which faction you are it may be prudent to delete all the buildings outside your city limits to regain half their resource cost (minus flux).

Since the infestation level is probably at level 2 you can choose a map 1 level above (which will force the level increase globally) or 1 level below or the same level as the infestation. Higher infestation means more varied resources but stronger enemies. Right now however you want to focus on finding a desert region that has crystals and is one skull. The crystals will be needed for Feathercrystal while the Industrial Ruin may allow you access to Glueberry detoxifying which will make it so you can cook Glueberries for food at a rate higher than purptatos with a lot less space taken especially in Desert and Dreamtouched areas.

When you land you'll want to pause the game and set up your industries to start producing again. As the desert has a severe negative towards purptato's you'll have to use a lot more or much higher level farms in order to keep your 3 food plants operating. The first step is to balance out your electrical growth and then after that you'll want to level up the tar extractor as level 1 won't be enough to power two labs while on maps without star tar production increases you may even want to modify the set up for the labs so that way any excess tar is funneled back into your city core for later consumption. After that should be to start getting your purptato farms to the point where you can mitigate the amount of food you are losing right away. If you get the Glueberry detox recipe from the Industry Ruins then you can switch out the farms when you have the ability to upgrade the food plants otherwise increase the purptato farms level accordingly to make all of the plants work. Finally you should start building a large number of flux vats from the start so you generate a massive passive flux income.

Your first objective after landing is to find crystals and stone so you can start making feather stones. Build two stone workers and upgrade them to level two once you find the materials to start production. At 25 you can build an expedition center which will help you get added materials, blueprints and modules but, only a limited number of times on the map. A good rule of thumb is once the expeditions are all done it's time to leave the map again. When you find another crystal node build two more stone workers and upgrade them as well. You should have at least one workshop to produce "glueberry parts" funnel starwood from your city core to the workshop and build a glueberry farm to transfer glueberries in. You should also set up another two wood warpers to make more starwood to continuously have a positive balance for it. Keep your Population balance at around the 200-250 level to try and mitigate the effect it has on your global threat level.

As the crystal generators start to get into a depleted state you can swap the stoneworkers over to generating featherstone instead of feather crystal. You should always try to refine as much of the rarer resources as possible before leaving a map as that will help you later in the end game.

By the third map you'll want to head back to the Blightlands to get acid for acidwood and acid stone. Prioritize finding acid wood components first so you can build a resource depot on the outskirts of your base limits so that all further resources gained can be funneled into it without having to use rails. As far as population goes you'll want to keep a balance between population and map difficulty to around (X * 100) where x is the level of global infestation. If you have enough carbonite from expeditions you can build a materializer to start making copper which can be converted into copper bars otherwise that will have to wait for the fourth map.

As your population increases though you can start using "bulky but cheap" buildings if you clear out a lot of space in the beginning at least until you get into advanced levels of administration or have access to "Featherstone-Flux" recipe. When choosing a new map always be looking for resources that you don't have a lot of or can't produce. For example, if you get access to the Advanced Drep Processing (which will help you manually make carbonite) you can bypass desert maps with Cabtus in favor for maps that have Acid, Honey or Copper. You should also keep an eye on what added features a map does as it can provide heavy production advantages. A Dreamtouched Field map with a fertility bonus means that your glueberry production will be practically two and a half times more effective in that region.

In order to beat the game you must create and power up a Nullifier Shield. This item takes a ton of T4 Materials and furthermore takes around 60 cycles worth of time to charge the barrier. Due to it's weight (125) odds are good that the second you place it down you're going to be overweight and unable to leave the map. So it's best to only build it at the beginning of a map as to keep the raids from overwhelming your defenses. Once the barrier is enabled the game ends. You can choose to continue playing on that save file or you can be taken to the main menu to try out one of the other factions.

Always try to build nonessential buildings off of the foundation of the city. This way you'll have an accurate measure of how much weight you still have available to carry off production buildings later.

Population has more of an impact on the global threat level than the infrastructure level does but, both gradually speed up the global threat level.

Research on the other hand doesn't seem to increase global threat level. This means it's best to focus heavily on research as stronger technologies can help you outpace the enemies.

Each building has it's own respective weight. As such certain buildings are more useful to take with you in the early game than in the later stages as you gain resources. The rarer the resources the more likely than not you'll want to take the building with you when you transfer maps. (Beavers faction are an exception since you are pretty much forced to take as much with you as possible at all times.)

When getting upgrade points you should focus on the Gathering Branch and it's respective techs before moving to survival to get the improved turret damage and optionally the movement buffs for tiny. The more resources you are able to get sooner the faster you can build up defenses. And the improvement to your turrets will help you endure harder waves without resorting to upgrading towers.

You should always try to build your defenses close to the raid zone so that way you can quickly build several fall back points in the event the raid wave overcomes your primary defenses. But not so close that you are right on top of it as to give your turrets time to get a few quick hits off before they encounter the walls.

On the subject of Defending from Raids. Always pick a point that gives you a wide enough to set down plenty of turrets. Building in natural choke points seems like a good idea at first but as the enemies get stronger it becomes smarter to force the AI to spread out to allow all of your turrets to be firing at the same time while distributing damage against the entire wall.

After a raid make sure to turn the towers off so that way they aren't taking energy or flux to maintain. You can always turn them back on later if a raid happens to spawn near that location again.

Industry Ruins generally have blueprints to shortcut methods of production or methods of production that are economically superior to the original recipe as well as having methods to produce alternate materials from basic resources. As such they should always be prioritized when choosing a map until you get most of the blueprints. Notable blueprints to get are "Refined Tar", "Glueberry Detoxing", "Featherstone-Flux", Advanced drep processing and, "Featherstone to crystal". These all give qualitative boosts to your production of needed materials.

Tech Ruins and chemical ruins can occasionally allow you to craft a delinker that will lower the Plague Infestation rate by 1 when used. It's not a 100% chance to find them but, it's a good idea to keep an eye out when the global threat starts getting too high.

On the first map you should stick to just basic generation items (flux vats and power generators) and just build as needed. The other methods of production generate more but require more workers as a premium and only become vastly superior at higher Administration levels where the overall multiplier is more advantageous to the advanced recipes. The teslacrats are an exception to this rule as their basic power generation is crap and must be at least advanced to "tar conversion" to be useful.

Due to the requirements between Stoneworkers and Wood Warpers it's more effective to upgrade the prior then the latter at the start of the game since Wood is needed in far greater amounts when starting out. After the first map however then you can usually upgrade as long as you have a steady income of the resource required.

The "pick" feature is extremely useful in the beginning of the game to "force" a harvester facility to keep producing resources. You can then manually put the resources into a refining facility without having to use rails. The reason this is a good idea is because if the facility gets overfilled it will still consume the flux and energy resources even if it's no longer functioning. Once the facility is depleted however the chance of a clog is much lower plus you free up 50% of your resources used for that facility. This becomes a moot point once you get a Resource Drop however.

Resource Drops collect items without having to build rails. They can also be used as hub to transfer materials into the production facilities. However you can also just use "manual transfer" from the Resource drop into the production facility as well as production facilities can hold an infinite amount of basic materials.

Modules are very powerful upgrades that can provide many useful benefits when used. Certain modules however should only be used very briefly due to the severe effects: Green refinery, Green Research and their respective overdrives have a far more severe impact than what the modules says. This is because it factors in the "production value" as part of the material cost. So when using Green overdrive you actually consume many times more than just the "50% consumption" listed in the module. And you consume much less the "25% reduction". This actually can be used to quickly burn up basic resources you have excess of or (in the case of the green modules) can even help to infinitely generate acidwood/acidstone with the right recipe.

Speed modules are superior to Efficiency modules as the former works even after the resource node has been completely depleted.

Always try to keep your flux generation at a high value increasing it as you get a larger flux pool to work with. Without it very few things can be built and you can always turn off flux producers when you've hit your cap.

You can track not only produced resources but raw materials in the resource tracker. This is especially good for balancing out how much resources you are pulling in compared to how much resources you are refining. You don't need to have an extremely high balance but you should at least have a slightly positive balance for resources in the beginning. After you get the resource drop it's extremely useful for gauging how many facilities you need to have active to keep up your production of goods.

The resource tracker can also help you fix adjustments when getting an additional infrastructure point or when creating advanced power/advanced flux buildings.

It's not always necessary to work in a "positive" generation environment but, if you go into the negatives you need to make sure you have enough resources to cover the deficit for a while. This is especially true with food and electricity.

Only initiate take-off procedures when you are confident you are going to leave as canceling only returns half the fuel resources. Furthermore, you'll want to pause just before launch so that you can adjust what buildings you want to take with you while disposing of the rest. (The Beavers faction are an exception to the latter half of course)

Each time you go to a new map you'll want to start your expeditions as soon as possible while speed running the entire map with tiny to clear out the trash as soon as possible. As long as you have resources it's not necessary to immediately break the objects on the map for loot and that can be done later when you have nothing else to do but wait.

Thus ends the walkthrough for Dream Engines: Nomad Cities. I would like to thank Suncrash for making another excellent game and thank you dear readers for taking the time to look through my guide. In the mean time have fun and hope that you all enjoy this game as much as I have.