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SpringFall Wiki

Your First Hour

Overview

You start with a handful of colonists dropped into an unfamiliar stretch of world, plus a small scattered loadout of starting tools, materials and a container or two nearby. There’s no tutorial holding your hand past this — everything you need to know is here and in the rest of this wiki.

How it works

A fresh colony begins with your colonists standing together near a scatter of starting supplies. From here, the world runs on the same handful of systems no matter how big your colony eventually gets:

  • Colonists look after their own basic Needs & Satisfaction — hunger, energy, and more — as long as the colony has food and beds for them to find.
  • Colonists with no job assigned do no work at all. They’ll wander, socialise and look after their own needs — which isn’t wasted, it’s what keeps mood up — but nothing gets gathered or built until you assign Jobs & Work. It’s the first thing worth doing.
  • Everything you build, mark, or order goes through the same click-and-command controls.

Playing with it

A reasonable first hour looks like this:

  1. Get your bearings. Pan and zoom the camera around your starting spot — look for nearby trees, rock, water and open ground to build on.
  2. Check on your colonists. Select each one and open their panel to see their skills, traits and starting gear — this tells you who’s naturally good at what.
  3. Get the essentials going. Assign someone to gather Food & Eating and get a stockpile started, and get beds built so people can properly rest instead of sleeping on the ground. See Needs & Satisfaction for the full picture of what your colonists require.
  4. Start marking work. Rather than clicking every tree by hand, use the Orders bar to box- designate a patch of forest or a rock outcrop for your colonists to work through on their own.
  5. Build a roof. A basic shelter — even a single roofed room — gives colonists somewhere to rest and store things out of the open. Start small; you can always expand.

Good to know

  • There’s no fail state for taking it slow — the world doesn’t punish you for spending your first hour just looking around and getting a feel for the controls.
  • Keep an eye on mood as well as hunger and energy — a colonist can be fed and rested and still be miserable if the softer needs (social, comfort, recreation) go ignored for too long. See Mood & Morale.
  • Danger does exist out there — wildlife and hostile factions are part of the world from the start, so don’t wander your colonists too far from home undefended while you’re still getting established.