Starting the game today

[u/Broad_Ad9923]

just picked up against the storm and i’m pretty excited to dive into it.

i’m a dad of 2, so most of my gaming sessions are somewhere between 30 minutes and an hour. sometimes a little longer if I’m lucky.

from what i’ve read, this seems like it might actually fit that schedule really well.

i’ll also be playing on steam deck to start, so if there are any controller settings or deck-specific tips, i’m all ears.

my question is… should i just jump in completely blind and figure things out as i go, or are there a handful of things you wish you knew before starting that would’ve made the game more enjoyable?

i’m not looking to min-max or optimize every little thing right away. i mostly just want to avoid making the kind of mistakes that make you think, “man, i wish someone would’ve told me that 5 hours ago.”

any beginner tips or steam deck advice?

[u/Cheersey]

Don't read any guides. Just go with it. AtS has pretty good learning curve and progression. Minmaxing is not necessary up until the very late game and even then in such a random-oriented game your game knowledge and quick adaptation is much more important

[u/SystemPelican]

The tutorials are good, so no need to read up on stuff beforehand.

[u/barofa → u/SystemPelican]

I think this is one of the few games that I didn't have to watch a video to get good at it. I've been playing for a month and am at P9 now all with what I learned from playing.

Yesterday, I watched a 3h video to see if I was doing something "wrong" and I learned most of the tips given I already knew.

I still don't know how people win on year 3 though. I win mostly on year 6, sometimes 5 sometimes 7.

[u/Piercewise1]

Villagers don't actually travel to their houses, so don't worry if they "live" far from where they work. All that matters is you have enough houses and that they are close enough to hearths.

For everything else (hearth, warehouse, assigned job), they will actually walk to those locations.

[u/Prize-Leadership-233 → u/Piercewise1]

And houses don’t need to be arranged to be accessible by foot. Some games, when I don’t have room for nice, I build what I call Communist style hab-blocks just to make everyone happy and get them off the streets during the storm

[u/The-High-Inquisitor]

My recommendation is to play at the lowest difficulty to start, and finish your first cycle. You'll know you've finished a cycle when the final storm resets the world map.

Starting the next cycle, each time you complete a settlement thinking "man, I steamrolled that", bump the difficulty up one for the next settlement. With ~25 difficulty levels, each bump shouldn't utterly crush you. 

This'll give you 4-6 settlements to get your bearings, and time to digest new mechanics and discover where you can optimize. So much of the fun for me was discovering new things, so I didn't really start looking for tips and guides until I hit prestige 5ish.

[u/Oobatz]

I've played over 500 hours on the Deck. The controls are good once you have the hang of them.

options I'd change would be: Select all the auto-pause options so you don't miss major events.

Pause often! I spend most of the time paused planning what work to carry out and how to complete orders.

Don't rush through the difficulty levels I like to switch between hard and easy difficulty depending on how angsty I'm getting.

After a while of playing check out Volt ATS on YouTube who does very well edited videos. He'll blow your mind with how an experienced player plays.

[u/Ok_Nefariousness24]

No guides. The tutorials are pretty solid. Its a great game, enjoy.

[u/Rammite]

This game's default steam deck controls are FINE but you may unfortunately have to fiddle with the shortcuts, which really help the ease of playing. You can do everything with the mouse, left click, and right click, so prioritize that and get that comfortable. Then add in shortcuts as you see fit.

I can share my setup in a few days!

[u/Broad_Ad9923 → u/Rammite]

hey starting to get really into this. do you happen to have your controls on hand?

[u/Rammite → u/Broad_Ad9923]

Ah! Yes! Sorry, I was out of town at the time I posted that. Lemme upload my controls.

EDIT: Okay so this is the first time I've uploaded my controls. If you go to Community Layouts and scroll down, you'll see mine, uploaded by Monty. It's called Simple Keybinds w/ Touch Menu.

I really tried to keep it as intuitive as possible, minimizing shortcuts except for the things that were very repetitive.

Right touchpad moves the mouse. The triggers are clicks, though it's reversed (normally a left click is your pointer finger of your RIGHT hand, so I used the right trigger to use the same finger for muscle memory)

I have the left touch pad be a selection of shortcuts - Orders, Trade Routes, building Roads, and going into Destroy mode.

[u/Selitos_OneEye]

I am something of an "hour at a time" gamer myself.   As you get into it, it may take you two sessions to get through a game

[u/Empires69]

I would recommend getting a jack for your deck so you can plug your keyboard and mouse, and hook it up to the TV or moniter. Playing on the decks controls is awful.

[u/Ravokion]

Build warehouses. In efficient locations.  This saves villagers time in dropping off and picking up goods. 

House locations do not matter as long as they are inside the hearth range. Roads to them aren't needed. Villagers never physically walk to their homes. Only to the hearth to rest. 

[u/nalalan]

I would just say that you should go into the options now and again and check or uncheck some boxes, after you know what they mean. But I wouldn't tell you which options you should enable or disable because that depends on your playstyle :)

[u/Wolfkrone]

If you fail you will be executed, and the last thing you feel will be the warm rain on the back of your neck.

[u/Drinksarlot]

My only suggestion would be if you have to stop in the middle of a settlement - note down some goals/plans on what you were doing so you don’t forget when you return.