Northgard Beginner Build Order: Surviving Your First Year

To survive your first year in Northgard, immediately construct a Scout Camp on your Town Hall tile, train two Scouts, and build a Woodcutter's Lodge with two Woodcutters while your scouts reveal adjacent zones. This opening sequence establishes the timber supply and map vision required to secure food nodes, expand your territory, and bank sufficient supplies before the initial winter penalty hits.

Step 1: Open with Scouting and Timber

Unassigned villagers automatically gather food to sustain your settlement, but your opening priority is securing construction materials and uncovering neighboring tiles.

1. Construct a Scout Camp: Place it on your starting Town Hall zone immediately. Once built, assign two villagers to become Scouts.
2. Scout Adjacent Zones: Scouts will automatically clear the fog of war on adjacent borders. Look for high-value features such as natural food nodes (Deer, Fish, or fertile Fields), stone deposits, ruins, and shipwrecks.
3. Construct a Woodcutter's Lodge: Use your starting timber to place a lodge on your main tile. Assign two villagers to cut wood as soon as it is finished. Wood is required for all early construction, tool upgrades, and winter firewood consumption.

Step 2: Scout and Colonize Key Perimeter Tiles

Colonizing adjacent tiles requires a baseline food investment that increases with every additional territory you claim. Avoid spending food on bare, empty fields during Year 1 unless they form a mandatory path to essential resources.

• Target Food Nodes First: Colonize zones containing Deer for a Hunter's Lodge, Fish for a Fisherman's Hut, or Fields for a Farm. Specialized gathering structures yield significantly more food than unassigned foraging.
• Salvage Ruins and Shipwrecks: Order Scouts to investigate these landmarks to gain one-time caches of Kröwns, Lore, or Wood, giving your early economy an instant boost.
• Prevent Housing Bottlenecks: New villagers stop spawning once your population matches your current housing cap. Build a House whenever your population is within two citizens of the limit to maintain steady population growth.

Step 3: Clear Wildlife and Manage Early Upkeep

Hostile zones containing Wolves or Draugr will block expansion and may attack neighboring tiles. Once key borders are identified, build a Training Camp to handle local threats.

Recruit two Warriors (costing 20 Kröwns each) to eliminate wolf dens and wild beasts. Once the threat is eliminated, claim the territory immediately. Because standing military units consume continuous Kröwn upkeep and do not gather resources, convert wounded or idle Warriors back into productive workers by right-clicking them onto a civilian building or your Town Hall.

Step 4: Secure Food Production and Stockpile for Winter

Unspecialized foraging cannot support a growing population through the winter season, which reduces food output and sharply increases wood consumption for heating.

1. Build Specialized Food Buildings: Place a Hunter's Lodge, Fisherman's Hut, or Farm on the corresponding resource tile as soon as it is claimed, and assign workers to it.
2. Add a Food Silo: Where possible, construct a Food Silo on the same tile as your food building. The silo increases the production percentage of food workers assigned to that zone and expands your storage cap.
3. Construct a Runestone: Assign a Lorekeeper to generate Lore points early. Prioritize baseline economic lore—such as Colonization to reduce expansion food costs, or Sharp Axes to accelerate wood harvesting.
4. Hit Autumn Reserve Targets: By early Autumn (Months 8 through 10), confirm you are not running an active military upkeep deficit. Aim to enter the first winter with a minimum stockpile of 150 Food and 100 Wood to absorb seasonal production drops without incurring starvation or sickness penalties.