Clanfolk: Walkthrough: A Fresh Start

This walkthrough uses the map with seed 205182647 and all settings left at 0 0 0 0 0 0. You don’t have to use the same map but it will make the guide easier to follow. A good map will have a central spot that has a decent size lake, some woodland, and some mineable stone (not just rocks on the ground) all close by.

Once you have your map, choose A Fresh Start and have a look at the family it generates for you. If you don’t like them, you can just keep pressing A Fresh Start again to generate a new one until you get a family you like. That’s free, unlike rerolling individuals which costs coin.

Here is the family for this walkthrough. They have a nice mix of good traits like Tireless and Hard Worker and Optimist, especially in the younger generation who will be around a lot longer, so they are good to go with. You won’t be able to generate the same family as there’s no way to put in a seed like there is for the map, but you can clear and regenerate until you have one you like. Once you have a family you are happy with, you can choose a different tartan for them from the row at the top if you like. When you are ready, choose Start Clan to start the game.

Now you are in the game, but wait! The first thing you want to do is pause and set up the skills for your Clanfolk. If you get this set up right, they will work intelligently and you shouldn’t have to micromanage them very much at all. If you have it set up badly, they will be a giant pain.

Here are the skills for this family as I have set them up. I will walk through the process and the logic of setting them up below.

Here is how this setup was created.

First, we move Doctor/Baby Care to the top for everyone. Even if it is a disliked skill, it’s still very important and also, it doesn’t take long, so even if a Clan member is unhappy to be doing it, it’ll just be for a moment.

Second, we move all other disliked skills to the very bottom.

Third, we move the social skills Intimidation and Persuasion down to just above the disliked skills, just to get them out of the way, since prioritisation isn’t really relevant for them.

Fourth, we move Repair up to just under Doctor/Baby Care for everyone, unless it is disliked. Repair tasks are finished quickly and tend to block other tasks so it works well to knock them out ASAP.

Now, we move all liked tasks up to just below Repair. Doing liked tasks improves mood, so we want Clan members to be the ones who do the tasks they like whenever possible. And then for each task that is liked by someone, move it down to just above the social skills for everyone else.

Next, we look at three tasks that are critically important and also usually get done quickly: Cooking, Hunting, and Farming. For each one, if it is already bumped up as someone’s liked task, great! If it is not, then look for someone with a multiplier and/or high potential for it, bump it up to just below Repair for that clan member, and bump it down for everyone else.

Now we do the same for Crafting, Building, and Clothing, aiming for the next rank below what we’ve already prioritised.

And finally do the same for Gathering, Harvesting, Lumber, and Mining.

We should now have all critical tasks covered in the top 3/4 ranks of someone’s priority, and the collecting, cleaning and hauling tasks should be around the middle of most people’s priority, which should be high enough to get them done, at least in this scenario which has a lot of working age Clan members. This skills setup should work well until Clan members die, join, leave or grow up, in which case you can redo the above to refresh the skills setup for the new set of people, or until later in game when the Clan starts growing crops and Farming and Harvesting need more people with higher priority for those tasks.

Now we are ready for your Clan to start their new life, so onward to the next section!

By the end of this day we are aiming to have food, fire, a place to sleep, most of our basic tools, and very importantly, a place to poop. Don’t worry about the chickens, they can take care of themselves for the summer.

First thing we do after finishing the skills is make sure we are on pause and have a look around. Most of the time, the spot the game starts your Clan off in is the right choice. This time however, we’d be better off moving over to the right where there’s an ideal spot by the bigger lake. So that’s what we’ll do.

Open up the Objects menu and place two drinking spots and two washing spots along the shoreline of the lake to the right. You’ll have to find spots with no reeds to place them, but don’t worry if those locations aren’t ideal, because there will be a chance to fix that shortly when we start cutting reeds. Then place seven sleeping spots for our seven family members.

Finally, mark about a dozen of the nearby berry bushes to be gathered, and let your Clan get started.

Once they’ve gathered some berries they will get the idea for a food stockpile. Put a small food stockpile near the sleeping spots, which will also allow them to haul over the dried meat and mushrooms they left behind at the original starting spot.

Now mark a good area of nearby stones and branches for gathering — since you have so many workers and you’ve given them a good skills prioritisation, you can mark 25-30 of each. Once they start gathering they will get the idea for an ingredients stockpile, but don’t bother creating one of those. The important idea is the Work Zone, so build one of those close by ASAP. Build a branch pile beside it. Keep your idle Clan members gathering branches and stones.

As soon as you have the Work Zone, set it to auto supply 2x sickles.

As soon as the first sickle is crafted, mark the reeds along the shoreline to be harvested. That will give you straw, and you’re going to need a ton of straw, so mark big stretches and clear that shoreline. As the bit near you is cleared, take the opportunity to place more conveniently located drink and wash spots and destroy the old ones. Leave three convenient shoreline spots for the eel traps we’re going to build in a minute. When you’ve gathered enough reeds to unlock the planting reeds idea, mark all the bare shoreline to replant reeds and let your idle clanfolk switch to that instead of branches and stones.

Getting some straw will give your Clan the idea for the Thresher, so build that immediately. It won’t be used right now, but it will unlock those eel traps.

Build three eel traps along the shoreline, and set each one to catch 5 eels then wait until tomorrow, and set to repeat the build queue each day. That will make your Clan use them to catch a total of 15 eels per day, without overfishing.

Now you’ll have the idea for the cooking fire, so build that in a clear spot, and set it to auto supply 15 eels. And you’ll have the idea for the flammable blocker stockpile, so put one of those around the cooking fire.

Now we should have the idea for the stone hoe, which will let us build the critically important poop holes! Set the Work Zone to auto supply 2 stone hoes, and as soon as you have one, build two poop holes a little way away. Now you have accomplished the most important things for the first day, and can get in a little more prep for tomorrow before evening and bedtime.

Set the Work Zone to auto supply 2 stone axes and 10 twine, and then 2 stone picks as soon as the idea unlocks. Build a Meat Rack and a Serving Basket near the cooking fire. Don’t worry if your Clan doesn’t finish those things before bedtime, that’s fine. Tomorrow is another day.

Today our aim is to make a good start on clearing the ground for building our house, while keeping up our food supply and crafting some additional helpful things along the way.

For food, we’ll have more eels coming in which will probably be enough, but if we drop below a day’s supply then mark some more berries for gathering.

If we are very unlucky and it rains, then use some straw to quickly build a single straw wall next to the fire (outside the flammable blocker) and extend a bit of straw roof from that to cover the fire for cooking. The Clan won’t be happy about the rain but it won’t kill them and I prefer to push on with building the house rather than divert to temporary shelters. But usually it doesn’t rain in the first several days.

As soon as we craft a stone pick we will have the idea for general clearance, which will keep our Clan pretty busy, but also it’ll be good to keep on replanting the reeds that we have cleared until the shoreline is fully planted. Since we did a good job setting skills priorities the Clan should be able to balance all those things.

So, let them get on with it until we have that stone pick. Then mark an area 11 high by 15 wide for clearance, reasonably close to the shoreline and not too far from some mineable stone.

You can destroy the food stockpile once the Meat Rack and Serving Basket are built. While your Clan members are clearing the area for the house, start building them some better beds. Place two sleep mats near the fire, out of the way of the house clearance, and then after those are built, two double sleep mats, and finally a baby basket. Delete the old sleeping spots.

While clearing, break down any bluebells, hay, or thistles you cut as that will give you more straw.

At end of day my Clan is about half done clearing and has built all but one of the new beds, and has lots of straw ready to go. Food is getting a bit low and may need to prioritise gathering berries in the morning, but we’ll get some from the remaining clearance as well so it might be okay. Tomorrow we should start to build.

Today we continue on with our clearing and other tasks from yesterday, and gather berries if needed to keep food supply up.

Once the beds are finished, build a straw pile by the Work Zone so the straw we’ve left all along the shoreline can be more efficiently collected. Build a butcher block next to the meat rack, and put a rat trap next to each of the meat rack and the serving basket.

We should have the idea for log wall now, so start building the wall of our house in the cleared area, like this. Build log wall, and put straw roof on top.

Move the beds into the house. Set the Work Zone to auto supply 1 bow, and craft 2 flutes and 2 snare kits. Build the rest of the house.

When the idea occurs, build a Dump stockpile.

End of day, house will be finished tomorrow, Clan is sleeping under a roof.

Our focus continues to be on finishing the basic house so we can sleep indoors, while keeping up the food supply by gathering more berries if needed.

Put straw doors in the top and bottom doorways which will let the Clan finish the roof and give us the idea for straw windows. Put two straw windows in place and then the remaining two straw doors. Near the Work Zone, build a log pile, stone piles, and additional branch piles as needed to clear those things out of the house.

Straw is getting low, so set Jobs to 100% harvest only now and start clearing and replanting reeds from the shoreline again as soon as they finish regrowing, which should be soon.

Move the cooking fire into the center of the house and make a new flammable blocker around it. Move the food storage, butcher block, and rat traps inside, beside the cooking fire. Move the thresher inside and build a Clothing Zone.

My Clan trapped their first rat at this point so now they can have cooked meat (Yum!) so set the cooking fire to auto supply 20 cooked meat. We’ll have more soon.

Mark some more space at the left side of the house for clearance, we’re going to build bathrooms and food storage there.

Turn on the temperature overlay at top right and use it to find some rabbit holes nearby. Place the two snares we crafted earlier at two separate rabbit holes.

When the left side area is cleared, build extensions for bathrooms and food storage, again with log walls and straw roof, and a gravel path around it all, like this.

When you get your first skin from the rabbit snares, build a hide rack next to the clothing zone.

Build new, thankfully private poop holes inside the bathrooms once they are built. Destroy the old poop holes.

House is looking good. Move the food storage and rat traps into the new food storage extension so they won’t be so warm from the fire. Start clearing to the right and below the house where we will build our industry, with an overhanging straw roof to keep it dry. Keep harvesting and replanting reeds as they finish growing, we’re going to want a lot more straw.

When the area to the right of the house is clear, build a straw roof overhanging it for three tiles. Extend the gravel path to the shoreline. Dig a bunch of clay and build a charcoal kiln.

Continue harvesting and replanting reeds. Get the charcoal kiln built and set it to auto supply 50 charcoal. Gather berries if needed but eels and snared rabbits may be enough. Build 3 tiles of straw roof overhang along the bottom edge of the house.

Charcoal will give you the idea for the kiln, so build that next. Once it’s built, queue up 100 bricks, 6 jugs, 50 bricks, 50 tiles, and 6 jugs in that order. You’ll need to keep digging more clay from time to time to get through it all.

Build a couple of tool racks, and an instrument rack inside the house. Craft a sack. Build a vacancy sign and turn it off, we’re not hosting guests at the moment. Build a trading post.

Today we continue on to build a bloomery and start mining iron, and we start making uncomfortable but warm sackcloth clothes, which will also put us on the path to getting some cats. Build the bloomery and put a flammable blocker around it, and find some iron to mine. Craft 1 sackcloth pants and 1 sackcloth shirt, and build a clothing basket.

Set the bloomery to auto supply 50 ingots. Craft a sackcloth tunic and a sackcloth hat and immediately destroy them to reclaim the straw as they won’t be needed but will unlock fur cloak. Build a cat bed. Build an iron ore pile next to the bloomery for efficient hauling.

When the trading post is built and the traders start showing up, our top priority is to get dogs, and we’ll need some money. At this stage of the game the easiest thing to sell is gravel, so gather extra stones around the place as you go to build up a good supply. Aim to buy a breeding pair of dogs so look for a young adult female, an older male will be okay.

Once you’ve made and destroyed the sack cloth tunic and hat, queue up 7 each of fur hats, tunics and cloaks, and let them get made as and when you get more skins for now.

Once the cat bed is built you can put a pet food bowl outside to lure and tame wild cats. Put it sort of near the house and sort of near grass and rabbits, and then forget about it for now, it’ll do its thing.

Once you have ingots you can build a meat smoker (first priority) and then a timbery (second priority). Set the meat smoker to auto supply 200 smoked meat and turn off the cooking fire cooked meat autosupply.

Once the meat smoker is up and running, build the timbery, and then make 10 planks.

When traders arrive, sell them as much gravel as you can, and sell the chickens (remember them?) and buy those dogs ASAP. When you get the dogs, build them dog beds and set them to hunting mode.

Build a smithy and put a flammable blocker around it. Build a jug pallet in the house.

More reed harvesting and replant, we still need a lot of straw. Queue up 6 more sackcloth pants and shirts, and build another clothing basket or two to hold them.

Today we want to get that smithy built and start crafting better tools, and to be ready to buy our second dog when the chance arises. We’re going to start hunting soon, but even the smoked meat will last longer once it’s autumn and temperatures start to drop, so we’re going to wait for that before we start stockpiling food.

Set the timbery to auto supply 20 planks. When the smithy is built, set it to build 100 nails and 1 each iron pick, sickle, axe and hoe to start. Once those are built, set it to auto supply 50 nails and 2 each iron pick, sickle, axe, and peat spade.

When you have nails, build a water dipper. Build two bathtubs.

Well it’s the end of summer and we’re looking pretty good. Keep on feeding the smithy and the kiln. When the kiln finishes the stuff we originally queued, set it to auto supply 100 bricks and 100 tiles, they will be good moneymakers to sell.

Food dipped a little low for the first time, probably because the dog is eating some of it, so take this last chance to gather a bunch of berries as there are plenty around.

Once you have an iron hoe, build a clay pit at the shore, nice and close to the kiln, and a clay bin beside it. Set it to auto supply 500 clay and now clay will take care of itself.

Autumn is here! No more planting, time to go hunting.

Kiln has finished the queue so set it to auto supply 100 bricks and 100 tile as we mentioned earlier. And smithy has finished, so set it to auto supply 2x sickle, axe, pick and peat spade. Go find more iron to mine as needed, and chop more trees as needed.

Turn on the temperature overlay in upper right again and find a nice big stag and mark it to be hunted. With the dog it will be a breeze. Set the cooking fire to auto supply 5 pluck on a stick to use the pluck. From now, whenever our raw meat goes to zero, go get another stag, so that we keep the meat smoker going and building up our winter stores.

When we have our peat spades, start harvesting peat. We won’t need a whole lot to heat our small house for the winter, but aim for a few hundred.

Build a haystack or two and harvest some flax and oats, as investment for the spring. If you haven’t unlocked haystacks yet, harvest some more grass until you do.

When it unlocks, build a couple of peat stacks under your roof overhang.

When it unlocks, build a masonry place next to your kiln to store the tiles and bricks.

Time to hunt another stag. More harvesting. Peat is drying.

When we have two iron picks, use one of them to build a quarry. Wait until we have two again, then build a masonry. Move the rock heap next to the quarry and set the quarry to auto supply 6 stones.

Build another meat rack and serving basket in the food storage room, with rat traps.

Build a tiled peat stove in the house.

Build a bog iron crusher and set it to auto supply 50 iron ore. Hunt another stag.

Bought a juvenile female dog to go with previously bought adult male dog, now will be set for a breeding pair. Build another dog bed. Set the new dog to hunt mode.

Back up to 2 iron picks, so build the masonry next to the quarry, then craft 20 stone blocks and build a well.

Hunt another stag. When the well is built, remove the wash and drink spots from the shoreline.

Build a work bench and destroy the Work Zone. Turn off the auto supply of stone tools on the work bench. Set the kiln to make 10 clay bowls and 4 chamber pots. Take the stone tools off the tool racks and destroy them now that the Clan has better tools to use. Harvest more straw, oats, and flax.

Build straw beds to replace the sleeping mats. If 200 smoked meat has been reached and still have raw meat, queue another 100 smoked meat.

Move the thresher outside under the overhand. Build a tailor bench. Destroy the clothes zone. Build a hide scraper. Requeue remaining fur clothing at the tailor bench if you don’t have 7 of each yet.

Build ash wash and bark wash. Leave them until you’ve finished making fur cloaks. Hunt another stag if more hide is needed. Keep queuing more meat to dry so it doesn’t spoil. Turn off the eel traps if you have excess meat at this point.

Destroy the cooking fire and its flammable blocker, and build a cooking pot in its place. Gather some mushrooms, not a ton yet, just enough for the cooking pot.

Cook pot should be up and running for nicer food.

Today we’re going to extend out the left side of the house a bit to turn the food storage into a fridge when winter comes, and to provide covered space for compost and for moving the butcher block and smoker out of the house for a bit more room.

As in the picture, make a small extension on the food storage to hold one jug pallet, which will take those extra 6 jugs we made a while ago. Make a straw vent in the wall collecting it to the food storage, and roof the whole thing with straw. When the pallet has six full jugs on it, wall it in. Move the butcher block and smoker out into the new roofed area.

Build a compost under the new roofed area beside the bathrooms. Craft a manure basket and build two gong places beside the compost. Destroy one poop hole and replace it with a toilet, then again for the other poop hole. Set the tailor bench to auto supply 1 sack for the compost.

We’re not done with fur cloaks yet, so hunt another deer.

Gather more mushrooms, build a mushroom rack and set it to auto supply max. Make another 5 clay bowls.

Look for nearby onions, neeps, beans and kale and start harvesting. Put a temporary seed stockpile on the floor in the house to collect seeds. Build a seed rack and put a rat trap in front of it, then remove the seed stockpile. Aim to harvest veg and mushrooms gradually for the remaining days of autumn, so they get used or processed before they go bad, and then do a big push to harvest them in the final day or two when they will freeze before they spoil.

Now on a morbid note, look at the family grandparents. They’re getting old! It’s a good idea to prepare in case they die during the winter when the ground is frozen. We can build a tomb above ground, but we need to dig a grave to unlock the wake table so the Clan can mourn properly when someone dies. So let’s do that now. Stick it anywhere as we’ll destroy it after we get the unlock. We’ll need to craft an extra sack for it.

And let’s tidy up some more by building a coal bin, an ash bin, a bark bin and a plank stack.

Gather bog iron in the peat bog now if needed to top up iron ore. Build an ingot pin and a couple of stones piles for further tidying up.

At this point we’d be fine if winter arrived — we need a few more fur cloaks and we’re still stockpiling veg and veg seeds, but we can start thinking about what we want to work on next. We have a lot of options. Putting a floor in the house would make it much nicer and make everyone happier, so we could do that. We could start building a separate indoor workshop to move the tailoring and leather stuff out of the house and have more room for a proper kitchen. We could start building a barn so we can buy sheep when the opportunity comes. Or we could start building a nicer house. It’s really a judgement call.

Getting colder and the veg we harvest will last longer, so we can focus on that a bit more. We can use the Growth Rate Overlay at the top right to make it easier to find veg patches, similar to the way we use the Temperature Overlay to find wild animals.

The Clan should get the supply shelf idea around now, so build one of those to hold the twine and nails and sacks. Hunt if we need more hide or raw meat. Start hunting foxes especially for more hides. Build a couple more straw piles to bring in the excess straw from the shore.

Almost winter! Check the seed shelf and focus on harvesting any veg that we don’t have about 100 seeds for. Hunt some more if we still need hides. Build a bowl stand and set the thresher to auto supply 50 oat grain. Now set the peat stove to auto supply 1 brose, which will be a nice winter food and also helps the Clan members recover if they catch cold.

Build a pet food bowl and water dish inside the house.

We’re well supplied with just about everything now, and most of the Clan are idle while a few are out harvesting, so we might as well start building a floor. My preferred floor is cobblestone so set the masonry to auto supply 20 stone blocks and we can get started.

And finally we’ve crafted that last fur cloak, so now we can start making leather and make some leather pants, which make everyone happier. Go to the ash wash that we built a while ago and queue up 100 ashed hide to start. When the first 10 are done, queue up 100 clean hide on the hide scraper.

Last day before winter! We are ready!

Everything we gather today will freeze before it can spoil, so we’re going to top up on mushrooms. Destroy the mushroom rack, it won’t be needed anymore. Check the serving baskets in the food store and aim to gather enough mushrooms to fill them up.

We should have some leather now so queue up 7 pairs of leather bottoms at the tailor bench.

And, our baby is going to become a kid fairly soon so we may as well get a bed ready for her. Now that everyone is wearing all their warm clothes we don’t need so many clothing baskets, so destroy a couple of them to make room and build another single bed.

The serving baskets are full and that’s it really. We have seeds for the spring, we have tons of straw, our food store is full and will become a fridge as soon as those jugs freeze in winter. Everyone has warm clothes, we can hunt more over winter as needed. There are cats hanging around the outdoor food bowl that will be tamed soon. We can sell tiles and bricks to merchants and we can harvest more peat if we need it. We have stone and clay and wood to hand to get started on some better buildings, including perhaps a little chapel with a wake table and tombs for when the grandparents go.

This scenario was pretty easy because we had six Clan members working, and no livestock and just the one baby to take care of. Everything we did in this scenario will apply in the harder ones, but there will be much less margin and worker effort will have to be rationed much more carefully to get just enough done and just enough resources compared to the generous surpluses that could be managed in this scenario.

And continuing on from the first winter, once that’s been survived everything becomes much more flexible. It’s up to you what to prioritise and there are many different approaches you can take for building up your Clan. That’s a great thing about this game.

Another thing to note is that at no point in this walkthrough did we fiddle with priorities or boosts. We didn’t need to, because we set up skills wisely in the beginning. Too much tinkering with priorities and boosts tends to become confusing and is best avoided. Boosts are best used for things that are one and done, when you need to get something perishable hauled in out of the rain or gather those berries ASAP because you are out of food. Changing priorities is best when you are lowering priority, for example if you want your Clanfolk to move a resource to a different storage you can lower the priority of the current storage.

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