Valley 1:What Is The General Game Flow?

Continent Progression

On each continent in the game, you'll go through the following general progression.

Prepare For Expeditions

There are various supplies that you'll need to periodically stock up on, as well as various equipment that you'll need to acquire once and then keep handy for certain situations. For details, see How Do I Know If I'm Prepared For An Expedition?

Complete Missions For More Powerful Spells

Before you undertake any mission, it will tell you what the rewards will be. It will be a spell that has a random modifier to it. Try to find spells with modifiers that fit your playstyle. For details, see Everything You Wanted To Know About Missions, But Were Afraid To Ask.

Gather Common Ingredients From Exploration

Crafting ingredients like granite, cedar logs, cherries and raw gems can be found simply by exploring the environment and destroying background objects. Any time you see a spell cost that includes a given material, you can hover over that material to see where in general you ought to be looking for it.

Defeat Lieutenants To Weaken The Overlord

Every continent has four Lieutenants, who start at the same level as the continent they are on. Each one that you kill will raise the continent Level by one, making the enemies around you more difficult, but also drop the level of the Overlord by two, making him easier to kill. Killing a Lieutenant will also give you a chance to get a rarity orb, which you can use to craft better spells than you would be able to otherwise.

Learn Higher Level Spells

Once the continent (and the world) level go up, all the missions will offer better, more powerful spells. So, you should do a few more missions to gain these tougher spells.

Dispatch Survivors To Weaken The Overlord

In addition to killing his Lieutenants, the Overlord can and should be weakened by sending some of the survivors you have been rescuing (you HAVE been rescuing survivors, haven't you?) out on dispatch missions to his keep. Each dispatch a survivor successfully completes will lower the Overlord's level by one. The exact number of these dispatches your survivors will need to complete is dependent on your difficulty settings. A higher citybuilding difficulty adds more bonus levels to the Overlord.

Kill The Overlord

All your preparation has come to this. You've improved your character, have a host of deadly spells, and you're itching to go try them out on the Overlord and all the monsters in his keep.

After The Overlord Is Dead

After the Overlord of a continent is dead, a new continent will be discovered and you can sail across the deep sea to find it and start the process of taking down the next Overlord. See more about this below.

But there are still things remaining to do on your current continent, too! There are some unlockables that are level-gated, and you might be able pursue those. You may also have NPCs of specific professions on the older continents that can be brought over to help the new continent. But be careful about doing this, as they may not be happy about leaving their home behind.

World Progression

Each continent has a level 1-5. In addition to that, the world has a level as well. As you go to each new continent, the continent level restarts at 1, but the world level continues to go up indefinitely.

Things That Change Between Continents

Enchants

Enchants will only increase in quality a set amount per each continent. As you venture on to a new continent, you can get new and better enchants there.

Lieutenants And Overlords

A lieutenant from one continent, if left alive, won't come to the aid of an Overlord on a different continent. And each continent has its own "big bad guy" Overlord to harass you.

NPCs

The NPCs generally stay right where they are when a new continent is discovered. You can move them around if you need to, but they generally won't be happy about it.

Things That Don't Change Between Continents

Resource Stockpiles/Personal Inventory

All those resources you have in your settlement stockpile on your old continent? Yep, they come with you.

Learned Spells

You will get to keep all the spells you've learned as you move into the new continent. But that doesn't mean you won't need more. All the enemies on the new continent will be stronger than any you've faced before. So you will quickly want to replace some of your spells so that you can continue to fight.

Your Character

Whatever character you're playing as, of course can cross continents. Thanks to the glyph transplant scroll that lets you swap characters, you can actually thus move NPCs around between continents if you really feel that strong a need to... though largely that would be a huge pain and not something worth doing.

As an aside, of course any modifiers to your character (such as from enchants, etc) also come across just like normal.

Enchants, And Progress Toward Your Next Enchant

Everything enchant-related has nothing to do with any given continent. Thus as you continue to play through the game, you're getting better and better enchants as you hit continents 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, etc. Or however many continents you feel like playing, anyhow, is what we really mean.

Unlockables, And Progress On Any Partially-Complete Unlockables

Like with enchants, everything unlockables-related has nothing to do with any particular continent. This is the primary way that the game continues to change and evolve as you play. On the start of your first continent you have unlocked very little, and so the enemies are more basic, the mission activities are fewer, and so on. And various regions don't even start appearing until continents 2 and 3.

But as you play on each continent, you unlock more and more of the world's content -- for good and for ill. You'll be finding new materials and new spells to learn, along with other helpful goodies to strive for. But at the same time, as you demonstrate your proficiency against lesser monsters, you'll unlock more powerful monsters or even elite versions of the monsters you had already mastered. You'll actually need those enchants that you've been carrying forward with you from continent to continent, the monsters on the early part of Continent 2 are nastier than the monsters on the early part of continent 1.

Since so much of what is unlocked is based on how you play the game and what interests you (and actually, to some extent that is true of enchants), no two players will have the same sort of experience from continent to continent. Especially as the amount of content in the game continues to grow, player worlds are going to become increasingly divergent.

A Valley Without Wind