Craft the World game review and tips

My little dwarf home :) I'll get some more screenshots of the underground complex that I've hollowed out. :P

Excellent game, despite it being an indie game. :) It's a god-mode sort of game whereby you are the god/creator of these dwarfs and can order them around (to collect resources so that you can build and research stuff). The upgrade tree is very well developed and may take more than few hours to get from the stone age to the iron age.

Crafting items in order to gain experience for new and better upgrades

There are also plenty of maps and even the smaller maps can occupy quite a lot of your time as you fight off mobs, gather resources for upgrades and dig deeper into this sandbox world.

Another fun stuff is that you can create an underground complex of tunnels and rope ladders for your dwarfs. But do stay vigilant! There are monsters, shades/ghosts, zombies and skeletons who will kill your dwarfs (and sometimes steal your goods) if you're not careful! Keep your dwarfs well armed and armoured. Let them rest up from time to time, however, the 'sleeping' option is pretty much bugged up. Despite that, you can still speed level your resource tree right up to the first tier of alchemy. By then, you can create health potions to use for your dwarfs. OR you can just let them die and wait for 4 mins for your dwarf to respawn (but he will have lost all his skill experience points/ new skills).

A trick that I've found out is that you can build a safe house (a small hollowed out tunnel) deep underground with lots of trap doors between the dwarf/s in the safe house and the mobs on the surface. The mobs can enter your tunnels, but they will take some time to reach your safe house and hopefully by then, the sun would have came up and they will be gone. You'll need to have at least 1 dwarf inside the safe house (you can manually control him into the safe house) and you should shut the trap door to keep him in. As long as you have at least 1 surviving dwarf, your game will not end. The rest of the dwarfs will take time to respawn, but at least you don't have to start all over again. :)

Food is another vital resource that you'll have to provide to your dwarfs. You don't really need to force them to eat (by selecting individual dwarfs and selecting the 'eat' option), the dwarfs will eat by their own when their food icons (max is 3) are depleted. What you'll need to do is place food on tables. Some food can be eaten raw (like apples), but some of them may require some cooking (like fishes/meat).

Also, in order to end the game, first, you'll need to find the secret underground room for the ancient portal. Then, you'll need to dig very deep (the earth there will look reddish) to get crystals and enough mithral ores to build the 5 parts of the portal. Once the portal is built, you can just click on it to end the game. You don't even need to tunnel into the portal and order your dwarfs to enter the portal. Just click on it and choose 'end game' :) However, if you're a completionist like me - try getting your technology tree maxed out as well. That'll take time :P

However, a few major downsides of this game are the very, very annoying 'sleeping' bug, and the 'not-using-the-bridge' bug. Furthermore, the game comes with no instructions and for people who are unfamiliar with these sort of games, you'll need to take quite a lot of time to figure out a lot of the functions yourself. Like how to take control of your dwarfs, how/where to get certain ingredients to craft certain items etc.

Overall, I had a fun time playing this, but I believe that the major bugs need to be quickly addressed. It's a pity to see a game with such potential to go to waste because of some bugs. 

Tips to owning this game! (to level up faster :P)

1. The easiest way to get XP is not by digging useless tunnels, but it is by killing snails. Each kill (of anything really) will award you with 100 XP and snails are the easiest to kill (and they don't run away when you start hitting them lol)
2. If you're in a map without soil for farming, you can make your own soil by hollowing out a cavern underground, then build roofs (any kind will do, but it must be roofs) to use as floors. Then the trick is you build another layer of roof on top of the existing layer and watch in amazement as the bottom layer of roof tiles turned to farmable soil! Then, you just need to remove to top layer of roof to get access to your bottom layer of soil. You may sometimes get mithril as well :) (Refer to the guide below)

First step: Place a roof tile. (Note: This is the desert world btw, did you see my little underground farm on the left? :))

Next, add another roof tile on top. The bottom tile will turn into soil (but in this case, I struck the jackpot lol - Mithril!)

Remove the top layer of roof to get access to your bottom layer of soil/ ore :) You can stack as many layers as you want but then, you can only use the top layer for farming, so why waste the roof tiles, right? :)

3. You can also use roofs (more reliable) instead of bridges (bridges are unreliable) to prevent your dwarfs from falling into abandoned pits.
4. Some technologies can be hard to level, but if the new technology gives you a new spell to use, then it'll be much simpler! Using spells in upgradable technologies will award you XP points as well (for that part in the technology tree).
4. To get a fast regeneration of mana, you can exit the game and start it up again! Your mana will be reset to full.
5. If you're in a map that has very few trees (like the desert map), you'll need to quickly level up until you hit the magic forest spell. Then, have fun using the spell until your mana ran out lol :P Don't waste it though, use the spell once, then chop down all the trees before using it again or your new trees will not have enough space to grow.
6. Build home in your network of tunnels instead of above ground. Build a fortified (but small) house protecting your stash.
7. Have multiple doors to block entry to your network of tunnels/ home. If need to, you can block the doors with 2 layers of walls on top of each other in order to deter the enemy (and wait for sun rise), until you break down those walls again.



Link to buy the game on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/248390/

27/6/14 Update: So, I've realised that you need to complete your house (like really complete it so a pop up will appear with the words 'House completed!') in order to get the dwarfs to sleep. However, in order to complete your house, you'll need to fix up all those parts that have a reddish star-like symbol on them. Sometimes, you need to add another piece of wall onto an existing wall or sometimes, you'll need to replace the earth/sand/ice/snow/stone with walls instead. It's really hard to get a house to be labelled as complete, so do expect plenty of deaths at the beginning. Oh and save the skill books for later, so you won't be wasting them on dwarfs that will just die anyway. :)

Screenshots time!

Post by Aveyn's FB.