Guides:Goldrock Island

This is the page for the Goldrock Island topic. If you have any guides, tricks, or advise for surviving and thriving on Goldrock Island, we encourage you to edit this page! =Landscape= Goldrock island is a small, secluded island, with its closest neighbours being paradise, teraphyx and desert. It has few redeeming features for survival based life, and as a result is seldom inhabited. It's tiny size makes it hard for single players to live there, tribes find it almost impossible. If you are to live there it is almost always vital to create artificial island extensions for the sole purpose of survival, and it is advised for early settlers to take up fishing as a food source instead of wasting valuable space.

Despite these flaws, it still has a handful of redeeming factors. For one it is so secluded most raider tribes wont notice you, and it also has chromium, gold, flax, and a source of lynx fur. It contains small ponds (both freshwater and saltwater), which prevent the need for wells, and although it lacks food, professional players looking for fur or chromium might be willing to spark a trade if you're quick (assuming your not just walling off what they want and saying "Pay me for it"). All in all, it's not a particularly good island to settle on, but it isn't impossible. It's far from the best at anything, but for some that just adds to the appeal. =Soloist Survival - Core Survival= Goldrock Island is a harsh place, despite it's welcoming resume. Who wouldn't want to go to a secluded hideaway with water, cats, and gold? It ticks all the boxes! However, as many settlers soon realise, it's not quite that simple. The main issue being a huge lack of space, and nowhere to place buildings or farmland. A lack of trees and loose rock is also a large setback for potential survivalists.

When you arrive, you can take one of two approaches. There is fishing, requiring more effort but requiring less setup, and there is farming, requiring huge amounts of setup but lots of food and wood afterwards. For the sake of education, this guide will explain the route of the farmer, as the fisherman's route is largely obvious.

Before you arrive, you should bring a lot of trees, leaves, and farming materials (apples and wheat as a bare minimum) with you, as the island has none of that in abundance. If you can get a sickle, that will save countless eons of time, so mining an iron and finding a forge would be a good idea. Once you have all this, and you've arrived at Goldrock, you should quickly set up a farm to obtain level 2 farming (flax works well if you have no berries), six small composts with any crop grown on them will do the trick. Afterwards, you should save space by removing that farm, and quickly replacing it with a apple tree farm. Once this has been done, you should focus all efforts onto this farm. If you find yourself with any spare large leaves, make a temporary platform to expand the farm. You should continue this process until you have obtained roughly a backpack's worth of apples, by which point you shouldn't ever have a tree shortage, or any food shortage for a couple hours. Finally, start planting wheat instead of apples. This will be both your building block and food.

After farming wheat for a while, you should have a plethora of it for crafting. Craft a large quantity of thatching, and use the drag tool to move it onto the ocean (making sure it is the correct way up). Repeat that and you should have a much larger island to work with, which solves one of your many problems. You may also want to simply separate entirely from Lynx island, and set up your thatchings elsewhere, making an artificial island. Assuming you place it somewhere where it wont get any visitors passing by (such as a map corner), it is surprisingly easy to hide away and never be seen. For more information on artificial islands, visit it's corresponding guide page.

The next step is probably one of the most vital, creating a quarry. Using some of the wood you have, you can make a lumbermill and catapult, and get to engineering two. If you do not have any stone/mining utensils, you should create a sailboat and sail to flax or rockma (depending on which island has territorial inhabitants) to get some stone, and head back quickly. An unfireproofed artificial island extension is unsurprisingly going to get destroyed if left unattended to for very long. Make some quarries and start producing stone wells, you will need large amounts of water to help fireproof all of it and supply for the bakery. A good tip is to place a stone well, burn the top bit, and then place the next one on top, then repeat. It helps save space, although will cause issues if you build it more than four/five high, as you wont be able to reach the water.

The next step is probably the most obvious, use the space and remaining wheat to make baked goods, and complete your core survival preparations. Another excellent idea is to make a "Crafting Table", quite literally a table for crafting on. It saves the massive frustration that is caused by accidentally clicking a thatching while trying to craft pies. You should also create a long bow and some stone weaponry, as it is the best the island has to offer, and you need all the protection you can get when you own an artificial island extension. From this point onwards however, core survival is no longer an issue, and this guide has done it's job. There are many options for the residents of lynx island, and you should have lots of fun exploring all of them. =Tribal Survival - Core Survival= Making a tribe on this island is one of the most silly things you can do in this game. Up there with battling a castle with a stone knife and attempting to live up at the very peak of spire island, there is little reason nor advantage to setting up at this little point. Nonetheless, you've decided that you want to lead a tribe to victory on this little island, and we're here to help out.

Obviously this will not be an adventure that requires no preparations. No exception to the rule of "No island has everything you could possibly ever need on it", you will greatly benefit from bringing plenty of farming materials, trees, stone, and perhaps even some metal tools for defence. If you were to be completely minimalistic, you could most likely shorten the list of preparations to "Wheat and Stone", although you would be much better off collecting the following materials: This guide will assume you have brought all the materials in this list, however if you want to be extremely self reliant you can most likely be creative where necessary.
 * 1) A Hut, Mill, and Lumbermill
 * 2) Wheat, Berries, and Apples
 * 3) About 30 Small Tree Stumps and a plethora of Leaves
 * 4) A Sickle

First, you should create about 12 small composts, and arrange them in a 2x6 rectangle on the ocean to ease on space and harvesting. Plant berries/flax on all of them, and while they grow, you should also start to make six large compost, and place your lumbermill. Insert three logs, and craft two seats. You can use these to make two carts, and advance your engineering level to 2. By this time the berries should be finished and the large compost done, so you can begin an apple farm and start farming wheat too. Replant the berries (what harm can it do?) and use some of the stone you brought to make quarries. At least two, but four is ideal. Farm boulders to make statues until you have architecture 4, and make stone walls, which will be used to create buildings. Once you have collected your first harvest of wheat, you can make a well (or three), which will majorly aid in the construction of your artificial island extensions, the core of tribal life on small islands.

At this point you will probably have noticed you've been getting hunger warnings. You could eat berries, but that wont sustain a tribe! Improve your wheat farm and grow a large harvest of wheat, and once you've reaped all the wheat you can slowly but surely make lots of bread, as much as you can is ideal but minimal amounts are still good, it goes a long way and you'll have cooks soon. After creating your first substantial meal of the game, you should focus on your apple tree farm, putting small trees through your lumbermill to get walls and planks, which make docks. Place the docks and fireproof the wooden rectangle that is widest. Burn the rest. This will leave you with a platform to work off, repeat this about 4-6 times and you will be left with a much larger island to use. At this point you may have noticed your architecture has increased, this is because docks actually require architecture two to create. Make some more buildings (a wooden longhouse for storage and a stone hall for hiding in is a great excuse to upgrade your architecture without wasting resources needlessly) and get architecture 7, then make a lighthouse. This may involve a quick trip to the oil spill depending on how prepared you were, but if it does, don't worry about your island, it's unlikely you will get raided because you left it unattended for about a minute. Most people don't realise you exist.

This will change however, because a lighthouse means attention, and a couple tribe adverts in s/ chat makes for a quick tribal boost. It also makes for a quick raider boost however, so once your new friends arrive one quick priority should be to assign one to gathering metals from other islands (most likely spire). You should also try to equip everyone with a longbow, just in case the worst does happen.

From this point, it's hard to tell what will happen, and therefor hard to help. We wish you the best in your tribal adventures, as this guide ends here. Hopefully you will be able to pick up from here and become a great tribe, living on a slightly less than great island. Enjoy!