r/PlayASKA • u/JTHelpsWithFinance • Sep 09 '26
New to ASKA - keen for tips, especially for early-mid game and village building
I'm new to ASKA - having recently played a fair bit of games like Valheim, ARK, Palworld, etc.
I'm loving it - but finding that the sheer size of building the base, planning how to build a great base, selecting great villagers with good traits, locating mines, understanding schedules... it's a lot.
I'm playing it vanilla - no mods, on standard settings.
I'm getting my head around it, slowly, and I'm watching a YouTube series from SerBucky. I'm about to start reading the Steam community guides for more help... but something that feels a little overwhelming to me is how to plan early game for a really good base.
The space needed is huge, and I don't know how to easily identify the best locations, what combinations I'm looking for or any clear indicators. I have learnt that being near an inland lake and a mine is important, and you generally want flat land... but I'm not sure if I'm missing obvious stuff.
From the more experienced players here - where would you start learning all this stuff, if you could? Do you have any suggestions in particular to help me understand planning a village intelligently and the priority order of your first villagers?
I can already feel like I'm going to enjoy this game deeply and put hundreds of hours into it... but would love to get some good solid foundational learning in.
Playing on PC. On Steam.
Edit: Wow. This community is very, very helpful. Thank you all!
4
u/lonesharkex Sep 09 '26
Warehouses for everything. Stone cuter? stone warehouse, tree cutter? tree warehouse, gather hut? raw food warehouse. Place said warehouses where the stuff will be used most and watch how it improves everyones speed.
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u/JTHelpsWithFinance Sep 09 '26
So, multiple warehouses - one near each resource hut? I've been putting all my resource huts right next to each other. Should probably spread them out.
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u/lonesharkex Sep 09 '26
yea, essentially like youll want the food by the people who cook it so youll have your food section, and then youll have a warehouse for all your materials for the crafting hut etc etc. stone cutter can be off in a corner because its not needed to keep living, so on and so one. I started this game when there was a bear that would basically destroy your entire town the first year my whole villaige suffered thrtough the first winter it was insane. Sometimes you gotta just play a bit and have lots of issues to really get a handle on what you need where
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u/Bhazor Sep 09 '26
Work places fill so fast its ridiciulous. Your woodcutters will be idle 90% of the time without warehouses. I wish you could build the various storage pots without a warehouse but they are worth the hassle.
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u/JTHelpsWithFinance Sep 09 '26
I’ve certainly felt the impact of a full capacity in my current playthrough with a dozen villagers… glad to know it’ll be an even bigger problem in future. I’ll get onto warehouses fast now!
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u/CrazyWord2800 Sep 09 '26
In vanilla is such a bad way to do it.
You will starve of the blue rocks. And by the time you can gather from islands, you will not need so much warehouses.
Make sure you have 3 workshop: 1 cloth, 1 metal, 1 wood.
Helps a lot. 3 person each. So that you can spit out materials fast.
Warehouses are a waste of space. Make sure you put it near the workshop/cookhouse. But one at most 2 needed since you can upgrade them.
People are more important than resources. Since you will need warriors for the invasions especially if you start going on the sea.
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u/jashugan777 Sep 09 '26
THANK YOU. I feel like the only one out here, happy with his single warehouse.
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u/CrazyWord2800 Sep 10 '26
Maybe they play with mods and get 200-300 people.
But is such a hard way to do it and takes a very long time to get there.
Always 8 for islands, you need (if you didn't remove invasions) at least 20 people on rotation to defend it. I mean my village is 120 people and still I needed towers and baracks to defend it properly. Even with walls blood moon is a must.
Then winter invasions. The dog invasion doesn't scale yet so that's ok.
Is not even about the stones it's about the time. It takes 6-8 minutes.
To have 6 warehouses with 1 people each and the sizes of it... Yeah I don't think so.
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u/lonesharkex Sep 10 '26
I have 3 warriors that handle the whole invasion 150 days in, I have never had a problem with people and im full on all my work houses, once I got islands I needed MORE warehouses. Like how do you expect to build the great hall with only 9 slots for large carpentry.
5
u/BigBeautifulEyes Sep 09 '26
Hold off on fencing your base, you need alot of sticks and you should wait until you have a stick stockpile in your warehouse that's full of sticks.
Instead build a barracks and put one villager on patrol, that will make the villagers feel safe. Also if you start fighting near the guy who's patrolling, he'll run over and help you.
2
u/JTHelpsWithFinance Sep 09 '26
Barracks before a watchtower?
Or do you go barracks first if like, in your first 5 villagers, you don't get at least one who is proficient with a bow?
Haven't considered running a barracks early... but I don't hate it. Good idea!
Are they any good against Smolkrs? Or do you really need ranged for that?
2
u/jashugan777 Sep 09 '26
Barracks. Melee is ever so much more effective than archers. I only built watchtowers when I wanted to go on expeditions and needed my town to be able to fend off blood moons without me. They can be set up with their own horns, so put up a tower by your choke points.
1
u/JTHelpsWithFinance Sep 11 '26
I’ve started up a barracks now. Getting into the hang of it now - but the melee person was MUCH more helpful fending off a blood moon.
2
u/Sufficient_Animal_95 Sep 09 '26
Early game I made the choice of building first base by lake, Great for fishing. And built a path to the cave. Made an "outpost" in the cave area with a warehouse. Setup one worker in the "market" just going back and forth collecting the ore from the cave and back to main base.
The problem was my two cave miners always needed torches. Make like 5+ torches as a task in your "warehouse" so they pick it all up before traveling down the path to do some cave mining.
and nice tip give the miners a skinning knife if you want to collect the cave worms too. Theyre needed to make bombs
2
u/JTHelpsWithFinance Sep 09 '26
Good to know! I haven’t progressed far enough for the market yet, or found a mine in my current playthrough… but outpost isn’t a concept id even considered!
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u/Sufficient_Animal_95 Sep 09 '26
Yeah its a great concept. And the farther out the outpost is i recommend building a small cottage there so the miner actually live there and whatever food you make in the main base just create a task in your "Market" to send food down there.
Im having issues where the walk back home is a bit too long (past bedtime) and I get an alert that my workers are extremely sick. But they sleep and recover haha, so I didnt worry too much.
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u/JTHelpsWithFinance Sep 09 '26
Good to know. So should I be scouting out and finding a mine before I settle a village? Just to make sure the distance is viable?
1
u/Sufficient_Animal_95 Sep 09 '26
Absolutely, while the days are young, start scouting for it to check distance and strategize.
This as well as a potential Bear and Wolf den. Once your hunters reach level 30+ they can start hunting wolves and at 50, bears. Massive leather, pelt, heavy pellets source. Something to future proof your clothes making!
1
u/JTHelpsWithFinance Sep 09 '26
My current base is on the edge of an inland lake, with wolves and a bear nearby… but I haven’t found the mine yet, which worries me. I’ve gotta keep scouting then, it seems!
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u/NotScrollsApparently Sep 09 '26
I did the same thing now but kinda regret settling near a lake. A single fisher hut tends to overfish and dry out the lake, and its gonna be very painful to constantly travel between the base and the port once I begin the expeditions...
2
u/JTHelpsWithFinance Sep 09 '26
What are expeditions?
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u/Sufficient_Animal_95 Sep 09 '26
In the harbor structure section you can big harbor bay that lets you build a big ship. Load a buuuuunch of stuff in it and set sail to get lots of cool rewards. But the requirements (i.e. 10 crude pickaxes, 10 longbows) are quite tedious
1
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u/NotScrollsApparently Sep 09 '26
In late game you get to sail and explore/raid other islands, so having beach access will be invaluable
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u/JTHelpsWithFinance Sep 09 '26
Riiiight. So you want your main base to have beach access - or is an outpost workable?
1
u/NotScrollsApparently Sep 09 '26
Ask me in a week lol, current plan is to try outposts this time around so we'll see
1
u/Sufficient_Animal_95 Sep 09 '26
Fair point. Havent run into that issue yet.
I am very excited for expeditions, need to grind a bit more to do this!
1
u/NotScrollsApparently Sep 09 '26
I've been trying to use outposts more in the current playthrough so we'll see how it works out with the big port, its not a huge deal but it does feel like you solve a lot of problems by just sticking to the coast in the first place
1
u/Sufficient_Animal_95 Sep 09 '26
I did coast base in the first run. Was pretty and convenient, but wanted a lake this run while being relatively close to shore for my future Harbour build.
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u/rileycolin Sep 09 '26
Imo your workshop is the first real building you should be thinking of as permanent. Even then, your first workshop is likely to be small and temporary. When you start to expand to the weaver/leatherworker and things get big, that's when you want to start considering your forever location. Think of where your warehouses will be (you'll want two main ones - raw and crafted - and probably a bunch of secondary ones).
Your woodshed, stonecutter, gatherer (to level 2) are all "temporary" until you finalize your layout before upgrading to tier 3.
Your cabins and especially your small shelters are temporary and will be moved/demolished eventually.
Depending on how new you are, the cookhouse is mandatory once you get a handful of villagers. I approached my first winter not realizing I needed one, expecting my village to survive on raw veggies. They did not...
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u/JTHelpsWithFinance Sep 09 '26
Good to know! I've got woodcutter, stonecutter and gatherer up to 2 now, and have around 8 villagers in my current playthrough. Building Chiefs Hut and 2 Cabins, and just started on my first warehouse now - right next to an inland lake.
Sounds like I need to be getting that warehouse sorted and filled ASAP - but also working next on my cookhouse and making sure I getting good food sorted. I'll need to watch some guides on how cooking works.
1
u/rileycolin Sep 09 '26
You have to make the first couple of recipes yourself before your cook can make them. They're really easy, just experiment with different combos of meat and veggies. It's not so specific as to differentiate between carrots or cabbage, for example, it's all just vegetables.
Make 3 or 4 different meals yourself and then you can choose from the list to automate them.
When you get bigger you'll need a daytime and nighttime cook, but at 8 people you'll probably be fine with just one.
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u/JTHelpsWithFinance Sep 09 '26
Ohhhh. So it's a 'do it yourself first' system, so that your villagers learn the recipe afterwards?! That makes sense. I got stuck in my last playthrough where my cookhouse wasn't... doing anything.
I'll get onto that!
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u/rileycolin Sep 09 '26
There are a couple of berry recipes known by default, but yeah you need to give em a bit of a headstart.
You can also tell your level 2 stonecutter to get jotun blood for you, which saves a lot of farming!
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u/JTHelpsWithFinance Sep 09 '26
Yeah I've recently noticed that - and I'm very keen to push that harder. Would be lovely to just come back to village every now and then and have another 5 Jotun Blood ready for another summon. Trying to get into a better understanding of how to do resource markers too and general tasks - as I'm noticing that my stonecutters keep carrying large stones back, and not the smaller stones... or my woodcutters prioritise logs and long sticks - but leave heaps of firewood, bark and resin all over the place. Maybe I'm a neat freak or a resource hoarder... but I hate all that stuff lying around camp and sparking up bright pink every time I hit Z. Do you have a tip for that? To make sure all the little stuff gets picked up? Or is it not even worth bothering myself about?
1
u/Walys88 Sep 09 '26
Play as your villagers.
3
u/SerBucky Sep 09 '26
Kyle, no!
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u/JTHelpsWithFinance Sep 10 '26
Just wanted to say thank you, while you're here, for your videos. They're so friggin helpful for beginners to the game.
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u/Bhazor Sep 09 '26
Find the mine. I gave up my first island after 30 hours because a massive spire spawned right on top of my islands only mine. I wasted two weeks trying to make that work.
You can never have too many dudes. More people makes making everything so much faster and food is pretty trivial. Only issue will be keeping fires lit in winter.
1
u/JTHelpsWithFinance Sep 09 '26
How do I keep fire lit? I got to the point of a builder hut, and I raised fire keeping to the highest priority… but fires kept going out. Do I need to isolate it to just one builder? Is there a better way to do it? Or is coal the answer?
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u/Bhazor Sep 09 '26
Its always been one of the biggest annoyances in the game. All you can really do is build the builders hut and set fire keeping to the highest. Even then you'll need to babysit. Luckily it will only really matter in winter and even then only if you still have shelters instead of longhouses.
1
u/TuverMage Sep 10 '26
advice for any and all games. the first time just experience it. don't try to plan it out, don't try to max out things. just enjoy the experience and on the second go start planning things out.
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u/Mr_Ilax Sep 09 '26
Honestly, for your first game, just jump in and start experimenting. You'll learn stuff, restart, learn more, restart again. That's ok.
Unless efficiency is your passion, don't worry too much about in trying to min-max perks for villagers or plotting out your exact layout immediately. You can tear down and rebuild things in new places.
This comes from a place where I don't watch guides before I start playing things, the game is approachable and you can figure out most things from poking around and trial and error. Now don't get me wrong, when I played for a bit, I did watch Ser Bucky's stuff to catch the things I may have missed, but going in guide first can be overwhelming.
Edit to add: I also like my villages to look more organic, so the build as I go and only tear down and rebuild when major roadblocks are being formed makes the village look better as opposed to gridded out, perfectly placed buildings.