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The Bonfire: Forsaken Lands
By: Xigma Games

After investing several hours into Xigma Games’ The Bonfire: Forsaken Lands, I realized there were things I wish I had known from the beginning so I wouldn’t have wasted so much time just waiting for things to happen. So I decided to put a guide together for those looking for help. It goes without saying that this will spoil things, so if you’d rather discover everything on your own, stop reading here.

Beginner’s Guide:

– If you’ve never played a game like this, such as A Dark Room, Kingdom, or basically any idle clicker, the core loop is you gather a resource, use it to build something so you can gather other resources and build other things, meanwhile assigning new villagers to different jobs so things can automate themselves.

– Even though your main character can perform a few actions, you can’t take direct control of him and his abilities are very limited. You’ll mostly be managing your resources by scrolling through the user interface on the bottom of the screen.

– Start off by gathering enough wood to build the Bonfire. Wanderers will see it from miles around and come visit you. Once you have enough space for them, you can invite them to stay and assign them a job.

– Pay attention to all the icons at the top of the screen. Those are your current resources. Make sure you keep them all in plentiful supply, and focus on the ones you need in order to build your next building. Don’t forget to always have some workers in the farm, because if you run out of food, they won’t be able to perform well or heal.

– Day/Night Cycle: Each day is accompanied by a night. The workers work during the day and sleep at night, except for the guards who sleep during the day and, well, guard at night. If you want to force someone who’s tired to go to sleep during the day, change their role to a guard.

– Equippable Items: Some items are necessary for a class before you can assign anyone to that job. Those items will be auto-equipped once you assign them the job. But the game won’t tell you that a character can equip another item unless you already have that item available. So my suggestion is to make sure you always have a few of each item available so that when you do select a worker and try to equip them with something, you’ll see what the options are.

– Food and Sleep: You’ll notice that workers get hungry and tired as they work. You can’t force them to eat or work, but at the end of their work cycle, they’ll eat and rest, healing all injuries and hopefully waking up well-rested in the morning.

– If you die, you can restart the last day instead of starting over from scratch. Unless you chose Hardcore mode, which involves permadeath. So the Normal mode is a good way to learn how things work, then later you can try for Hardcore if you haven’t gotten bored yet.

User Interface:

Actions: These are your main characters’ actions. In the beginning, you’ll need to have him GATHER WOOD or even WORK IN THE FARM, but once your workers have carts that can carry five of a resource at a time, you can just let him hang out and watch. During monster attacks, you’ll be able to find the FIGHT button here. You can’t do anything else in a battle. Just press that button when it turns red.

Build: This allows you to construct new buildings, such as huts to house more workers; a farm so you can provide food for your workers; mines to well, mine for coal or iron; a tannery to make leather from skins, and so on. Once a building is ready, make sure to check for new craft-able items or jobs that become available as a result.

Craft: This is where you can make torches, weapons, carts, armor, tools for mining, and even a ship to go exploring! Make sure to check back here every time you build a new structure, as you’ll likely have more items available to craft. I recommend having a few of each item crafted at all times so you don’t have to scramble to make them when you need them. Also, that’s the only way to see if a worker can carry a specific item.

Workers: This is where you can see that status of all your workers, equip them with items, or change their jobs. You’ll be spending a lot of time here and it can be a bit cumbersome to scroll through, so try to set things up so you don’t have to switch jobs around too often.

Trade: This becomes available later in the game when you send out explorers to discover new lands. You’ll be able to trade certain resources for other items. You’ll mostly be using this to acquire Ancient Texts.

Workers and Attributes:

Pay attention to the abilities of each wanderer when they arrive so you can give them a job that best fits them. You won’t be able to see hard numbers or stats, but from what I gather, these are the best roles for each personality type:

Brave/Strong: Guard, Warrior. Maybe Scout?

Hardworking: Pretty much any physical labor like mining, wood cutting, steel work.

Wise: Study texts so they can become alchemists!

Honest: Err honestly, I’m not really sure. I’ve always assigned them to any job that isn’t a Warrior or Guard.

Late-Game Tips:

– Dungeon: Once you’re able to send out scouts, do so until one comes back with news of a dungeon. This only happens at dusk. Wait until you’ve got at least one alchemist and a few warriors and then enter the dungeon. I think 4-5 warriors should be enough to get through without too much trouble. At the end of the dungeon, there will be some ancient text. That’s what the Alchemist is for. If you go in without an Alchemist, it’s a bit of a waste of time.

– Warriors: For some reason, the warriors stay awake all day even though they don’t do anything unless you enter the dungeon at night. So to keep them from getting tired, what I do is keep 4-6 strong and brave men as Guards until right before night falls. Then I switch them to Guards in time to enter the dungeon.

– Alchemist: Once you have the ability to trade, get yourself some Ancient Texts. Choose a Wise villager to study the Texts. The game doesn’t give good feedback for this, as the item just disappears without any explanation. But if it’s successful, after a while you’ll get a message that a villager learned how to the read the Ancient Text and became an Alchemist. Alchemists also stay awake during the day, but I don’t think you can switch them to other jobs without losing them permanently. So I suggest just leaving them as is. Once you use them to read the Ancient Text in the dungeon, you’ll be able to open the gate and give them more work. Give them a Leather Bag so they can hold more Sun Stones.

– The Titan: I’m still working on this, but the end game seems to be to wake the Titan so he can fight off the big dragon-like creature. Once you wake him, you’ll have choices of three moves against him. I’m not sure how to determine which move to use when, but maybe someone else can help with that. It seems you just have to guess what heΓò¼├┤Γö£├ºΓö£├╗ll do. Anyway, you can upgrade his weapon and armor to give him a better chance of defeating the dragon. The battle also seems to be buggy, as it let me win even though I lost all health, as you can see in this video:

And that’s everything for now! I’ll add more if I think of anything useful. Feel free to ask for more help in the comments or add your own tips. I also have gameplay videos here for visual aids.