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New Player Guide/ Beginner Guide

DeletedUser43

Guest
When I first started playing Elvenar I was so confused and I wished there was a new player guide someplace. So far, I have yet to see one posted anywhere. I decided to go back to the beginning, start a new world and follow along with the quests and explain everything in detail. It has taken me a long time to write this much and I know I need to add more. But, this is a beginning. It was too long to make one post, so I had to break it up. Since I will be adding to this, I created a few posts to add on later.

I know this could use a lot of editing, so please, post any edits you think are needed. This is a rough draft and I decided just to post it now or I won't ever finish it. I would like to create a quick start guide too that is a lot shorter. Hopefully, for anyone new you can just do a search on this page for any term that you more information about. :)

This is meant to be a guide to tell you how this game works. It would be great if others will add posts about some of the best strategies to use.

If you are new, please ask any questions you have. Maybe I can put together a FAQ section too.
 
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DeletedUser43

Guest
Welcome to Elvenar! This guide is for the brand new player. I know when I first started I had a lot of questions, so I am hoping this will help. Feel free to ask questions below and I will update this guide as needed.

Forums: You can't ask questions if you can't log into the forums! So first things first. In order to access the forums you need to go to your email and look for your FORUM PASSWORD. That is different than your game password. It was sent in a separate email. If you can't find it, send support a request for a new one. You won't be able to use your game password to log in here.

Overview: Elvenar is a city building game where you manage resources and build a city of your choosing. You have to balance population with culture and have enough coins and supplies to buy these things. It is a strategy game of decisions! So many options lie ahead! But before you can start your city here are some basics:

Controls: The controls for sounds and music and scrolling in and out as well as a link to the forums and advanced settings can be found in the lower right hand corner under the little gear icon.

Icons: Don't worry about memorizing all this! If you hover your mouse over the icons they tell you what they do.

On the top of the page you have icons showing you the number of builders you have, your population, culture, culture bonus, knowledge points, coin storage, supply storage and diamonds. (CAREFUL with your diamonds! They are rare and when you run out you must spend real money to get more. You do not need any more diamonds to play the game than you start with, but they will make progress faster if you choose to buy them.)

On the bottom center of the page are four icons. Buildings, research, world map and inventory. There is also a yellow sell button ($) and a move button above those. (CAREFUL when you sell a building. You cannot get it back once sold. You can rebuild from scratch, but whatever progress you had in that building is gone.)

Diamonds

You do not have to buy diamonds to play this game. They make your life easier, make the game faster, and they will get you really cool culture buildings that you can't get otherwise, but you do not have to spend diamonds to play! I'll go into more detail later.


What do I do first?

Residences

Build a residence.

There is a helper on the left side of the screen that will guide you to start the game. The first thing he says to do is to build a residence. So let's do that.

Click on the builder icon (the lower left icon). Then go to the residence tab. Click on the residence button and a hand a grid will appear. This will allow you to place the residence where you want. You can put the residence anywhere on that grid. Before you can build a residence it must be connected to the main hall (that big building in the middle of your city) by a road.

You can find the roads (called a footpath) under the same builders tab. You can add as many footpaths as you want, but they do take up space and space is a premium! You will want to plan carefully where you paths go.

After you have placed your house a green check mark will appear next to your helper. Click on him and then click Finish. You will get your first quest bonus!

What next?

Workshops

Build a workshop.

The next thing your helper has you do is to complete a quest to build a workshop. That too can be found under the builder tab. But wait! You say the workshop option is greyed out? Yes. First you must get to the research tree and unlock the technology that lets you build a workshop.

Click on the research tab at the bottom (the thing that looks like an open book). Once the research tree is open you see a tab for a workshop. Click on the blue icon and open the tab. A screen pops up and shows you that you need knowledge points in order to open that tech.

Knowledge Points

What are knowledge points and how do I get them?

You get knowledge points by being experienced of course. :) When you start the game your knowledge bar is full of 10 knowledge points. Look at the top of the page and you will see 10 glowing yellow little rectangular boxes. (Under your city name Sproutville). That is a full knowledge point bar. When you use, each one of the boxes ticks off.

After every hour you will get one knowledge point to fill up your bar again. See, all that time you are spending here is gaining you knowledge! :) You also get one knowledge point when you negotiate or fight an encounter.

How do I clear tabs in the Research Tree?

Once you open the workshop tab you see a completion bar to show you how close you are to completing the task. Under that are three tabs. The first one has a little book with a 1, the second has a book with a 3, and the third tab shows you it will take 135 diamonds to clear that tech. You DO NOT HAVE TO USE YOUR DIAMONDS FOR THIS. That is just an option.

You can also clear that technology by using your knowledge. This tech takes 3 knowledge points (kp) to clear. You can put in 3 kp at once or one at a time. That is why you have two tabs for your knowledge points. The first tab will always be so you can put them in one at a time and the second tab is so you can complete the tech all at once.

Let's do this first one the long way. Click on the 1 tab on the left and you will see the completion suddenly gets 1/3 full. Click on it again and put in the next kp. Now you are 2/3 full. Click on it a third time and voila! You have completed this technology. Congratulations. Now let's go back home and place your workshop. Use the house icon at the bottom of the page to return home.

Build your workshop

Now that you are back home, go to the builder icon (bottom left) and click on the workshop tab. Just like your residence, move your workshop next to a road and place it down. Your quest helper on the left will give you another green check mark. Don't forget to collect that reward by clicking on him and hitting finish!

Start beverages (or How to produce supplies in your workshop)

Your helper will now tell you to start your first production in your brand new workshops. Click on your workshop and a tab pops up. You can choose to make lots of different things here: beverages, simple tools, bread, advanced tools, basket of groceries, and a toolbox. This can be a bit confusing here...although it says you will be making these items, you never actually get those things. What you get from the workshops are supplies. If you choose beverages in 5 minutes you will get 4 supplies. Those supplies will be added to your supply total at the top of the page next to the hammer icon.

If you choose to produce simple tools, you will get 11 supplies in 15 minutes. If you choose Bread you will get 29 supplies in 1 hour. As you start to see, the shorter production runs yield more supplies over time, but you have to be there to keep collecting! Only you can decide what is the best for you to get supplies, but it is good to keep your workshops busy.

Now that you have started your beverages, your quest helper will reward you. Go collect that reward!

Next on the agenda....Have 4 Residences.

Your helper is telling you that your city needs to grow. Remember how to build the residences? Click on builder, then residence, then place 2 more residences next to roads. If you have to move the buildings to get them next to the road, click on the yellow four direction icon on the bottom right. This will allow you to grab a building and move it around. You might choose to keep those buildings close together to save room.

If you don't want to squish things together, build another footpath from the main hall and place your new houses next to that road. As soon as your new houses are built your helper will give you another reward.

Quests

Once you have reached this point you will see TWO helpers on the left side of the screen. One gives you a storyline quest that will always help guide you in the next thing to advance your city. That helper does not give you an option. Either you do the quest or you don't. When you complete that quest you will get a reward.

The other helper is more flexible. He (or she) gives you options. You can choose to do that quest or you can decline it. If you click decline you get a message that says once you decline the quest it cannot be reversed and asks if you are sure. For the very first part of the game it is VITAL that you do all the quests that you see otherwise you won't have enough coins and supplies and goods to go very far.

After the second chapter or so you can start to pick and choose those quests. I will update this when I know where you can choose. These quests are on a loop. If you hit decline enough times they will come back around. These are your resource quests. Use them to get coins and supplies. Choose which quest you want to do or decline a quest that might take too long. These are your option. (In the very first stages of the game, I am not sure what happens if you click decline, but after a few rounds of those quests, they are on a loop.)

For now, let's just do what they both want us to do. The declinable quest helper wants you to collect coins. By now, your houses may have a coin floating on top of them. That is your rent from your tenants. Your workshops will also have floating coins above them. Those are your supply productions. Get your coins first to satisfy the quest. If you get confused as to which building is which, hover your mouse over them and it will tell you what is a house and what is a workshop.

Your next quest from the storyline quest is Have 3 workshops.

If you aren't out of room already on your road by now, you will be. So add a road and then add another workshop.
 
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DeletedUser43

Guest
Upgrade Residences

Those starter houses weren't going to keep your tenants happy for long. Time to upgrade! Click on the residence and when the window pops up, click on the upgrade tab. It will show you that you need 2600 coins and 330 supplies in order to upgrade this residence. If you have been following along, you should have plenty of coins and supplies to be able to do this. (If you skipped ahead, and are already out of coins and supplies, then you will need to collect rent and create supplies in the workshop until you have enough resources to upgrade.) Upgrade 2 houses/residences.

Your helper will reward you with goods this time! You will get planks and marble and steel. These are very useful. Your storage for inventory of your goods is the tab to the left of the coins icon at the top.

Negotiate 2 encounters


Now that your houses are producing rent and your workshops are busy making supplies it is time to explore the world!

The World Map

Click on the world map icon on the bottom of the page. (The little globe looking thing). You will see your city in green surrounded by cities you have yet to explore in brown. Cities you can reach by exploration right now have a lit up Scout icon. Each scout will give a different "relic" as a reward for clearing a whole province. (Look at the little pictures next to the word Scout. If you bring your mouse up to the goods overview icon at the top of the page, that will show you all the whole list of goods so you will know what each picture means.)

When you start to make goods you can make three types of goods for tier one goods: Planks, marble and steel. But it is not always wise to produce everything yourself! Each city has a "boosted" good that is handed out randomly at the beginning of the game. You will be a much more efficient producer of your boosted goods than others will be who are not boosted in that good. The more relics you collect for your boosted good, the higher you get boosted!

Boosted Goods

On that same World map page, on the bottom you see 3 new icons. Navigate to Scout. Navigate to City. Relics required for boost upgrade.

Click on the right icon and that will bring up your boost upgrade window. It shows you your relic overview. You can see all the relics you have collected here. (You haven't collected any yet.) At the bottom of that window you will see three greyed out windows. These show you your production boosts. You are a specialist in these three goods! You will want to collect as many relics as you can for your boosts because they will make your factories work much better. (We will get to factories soon).

For now let's concentrate on exploring.

Scouting
.

Before you can negotiate anything, you have to scout a province sector. Click on one of the scout buttons and send your scout off! These first cities are so close your scout will be finished quickly! As soon as your scout is done, you will see more green on the map! Now you can go out into the world. You can negotiate provinces in order to get relics or visit neighbors.

Negotiating.

Let's negotiate first. Click on the province (green hexagon) that has a little goods icon on it. It will say 0/8 on it with a goods relic next to it. Open up the province and ten little circles with ! will appear. Each one of those circles is an encounter. Click on one of those circles and you will have two options: negotiate or fight. You don't have any soldiers yet, so you better negotiate. The negotiating costs are listed on the left. It will show you the cost in coins, supplies and goods. Click negotiate.

Remember your helper? He gave you two tasks. Negotiate TWO encounters. Because your have done one of your tasks he/she is pleased and you will see a ! on the left side of your screen. If you open the helper screen you will see that you have done half your tasks. So go negotiate another encounter now to collect your quest reward. It takes goods to negotiate these encounters and you don't have any factories yet, so you better follow along with him to get your next reward which includes more goods.

Have a Main Hall at level 2 or higher. Have 2 luminous signposts.


Time to go back home. You have more building to do! At the bottom of the page you will see an icon with a house. Click that to go home. The first thing to do there is to upgrade your main hall. Click on the big building....then click on the upgrade tab. When the upgrade window pops up, click the upgrade button. That upgrade will take you 10 minutes.

Culture


Next you need a luminous signpost. What is that? That is a culture item. No city can be all buildings! That would be boring. You need different things to make your city look good! Throughout the game you will always need population (which you get from houses) and culture points (which you get from various culture buildings). If you have a lot of extra culture you even get a boost! Prettier cities command higher rents and make your workers happier in your workshops so they produce more. The more culture buildings you build, the more culture you get!

But..it isn't that simple. You can't just build culture buildings or you wouldn't have room for any more houses or workshops or factories! You will need to balance out your needs for culture with your need for space. This never changes throughout the game. You are always balancing your culture needs.

The culture icon is the little harp looking thing at the top. Now that you have upgraded your main hall your culture is at zero! You better build culture! That is where the lightpost comes in.

Go to the builder icon on the bottom (the far left) and pull up the builder window. That window has different tabs. Click on the Culture tab. Oh no! All the culture items are locked! It says we have to unlock the technology first. Better go back to the research tab! (The little open book icon at the bottom)

Research Luminous signpost

Click on this research technology and you can choose to put in one knowledge point at a time, all 5 at once or you can pay for doing this with diamonds. (SAVE YOUR DIAMONDS.) So let's choose all 5 once this time. You already know how to enter the kp one at a time. After you have the kp entered, click on Activate now and go back home.

Go back to the builder (icon on the bottom left), go to the culture tab and Yay! Now you can make three culture items: A luminous lightpost, a Purple Blossom Trees, or a Shrine of Enar. Notice that the Shrine costs diamonds! This culture item will give you more culture, but it costs diamonds! The other items do not cost diamonds. You can always play Elvenar without diamonds. You do not need to buy these diamond culture buildings. YOU DO NOT NEED TO BUY THESE DIAMOND CULTURE BUILDINGS. Got it? You CAN play the game without them. The diamond buildings make your game easier.

(A word of caution from my point of view): You will face lots of places where you will have a choice to buy a diamond building. For now, do not spend your diamonds on the Shrine. You will need them for other things. If you decide later that you want this shrine, then buy one. But if you spend your diamonds this early, you could get yourself stuck. Just hang onto to them right now.) Besides, the helper wants you to build a luminous signpost.

No Roads needed for Culture.

After you click on your luminous signpost you can put it anywhere. Culture never needs to be close to a road. In fact, the spaces next to your roads are premium spaces, so you are better off NOT putting your culture items next to roads. Place your signpost and go collect your reward.

Negotiate 3 encounters


Time to go back to the World Map. (Globe icon on the bottom). You will see that you have completed 2/8 encounters in that first province. Click on the 2/8 province and lets go negotiate 3 more encounters. (see above for how to negotiate if you forgot) Once you have finished those encounters, go collect your reward from your helper.
 
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DeletedUser43

Guest
Unlock Manufactory or Barracks

You have an option here. You will ultimately need to do both. Your quest will say Unlock Marble or Planks or Steel manufactory based on what your boosted goods is. So now you need to go back to the research tree. Click on the little book icon at the bottom of the page. Go back to the research tree. I will choose the manufactory option.

Manufactories

Before you can build any manufactories also called factories, you need to unlock that option in the research tree. Go to the manufactory tab you want to unlock. You will see you need 8 knowledge points (kp) to unlock that tech. You can choose to add one kp at a time, put all 8 in at once, or use diamonds to open the tech. If you do not have 8 kp available you CAN open the tech immediately by spending diamonds but you don't HAVE to spend diamonds. You can wait until you have enough kp to unlock the tech the free way. You get one kp each hour. You also get one kp for every encounter you solve. So, if you are short kp you can always go back to the world map and try to negotiate or fight an encounter. Or you can put the game down and come back a little later when your kp has accumulated. (This part is true for all the technologies).

Unlock the tech by one of the methods above. Click activate now and go collect your reward. Now you get two helpers again.

Finish the first province

Go back to the world map and go negotiate the rest of the encounters in your first province. Collect your reward. Congratulations! You also earned your first province expansion. This will give you more room for your city. I will discuss this later.

Start 3 Beverages


Go back home and set your workshops for 3 beverages productions. Click on workshop, click on beverages which is the 5 min production time. (remember, you aren't really making beverages that you will find anywhere, you are making supplies, that is just how they differentiate the time periods.)

Have 4 residences at level 2
Have 2 workshops at level 2


For this quest you will need to upgrade 4 of your residences and 2 of your workshops to level 2. Click on the building to upgrade and then click the upgrade tab.

Uh oh!! You can't do it! You only have 2 builders!! You cannot upgrade that many buildings at once. Your workshops should be busy for 5 minutes anyway making beverages. So, upgrade your houses first. Then upgrade your workshops.

(opinion: If you decide that you do want to buy diamonds to play this game a lot of people think one of the best things to buy early on is a third builder. That is up to you. You CAN play the game with only two builders.)

Have one (fill in the blank) manufactory

You will find the factories under the builder icon (lower left) and go to the Goods tab. Then click on the appropriate manufactory and buy one and place it next to a road in your city. Your manufactories need to be next to a road or you will see an error message.

Start a (fill in the blank) production.

This will be different depending on which factory you are building. The city I am creating for this guide has planks boosted so it is a Start a Wooden Figurines Production. This is just like making beverages in the workshops. You aren't actually producing any wooden figurines that you will find anywhere, that is just what they call that time period, instead what you are producing are planks...or marble..or steel. You are making those goods.

This quest has you making a production that takes 3 hours. To make a production, click on the manufactory (after it is done being built) and then choose the appropriate production time. After you produce your goods, you can find them under the goods icon next to your coins at the top of the screen. Each factory looks differently. The planks factory looks like a tree! I love them!! :)

Solve 6 encounters

You can do these next two quests almost at the same time. In order to complete a province you will need to solve all 8 encounters. But before you can do any of that you have to go to the world map (the little globe icon on the bottom of the screen). Then you must scout a province and then you can negotiate these encounters. You still don't have any soldiers yet, so for now your only option is to negotiate. but if you had soldiers you can fight as a way to solve an encounter. To remind you, you are now going to click scout, open the province, then click on the 0/8 relic icon and click on each ! circle to enter the encounter and click negotiate. Do that 6 times.

Complete a province

You have already done 6 out of the 8 encounters in that province, so go ahead and finish the last two encounters to get this reward.

Research (the other two) manufactories


Time to go back to the research tree and start the research for both of these technologies. Click on the research icon at the bottom of the page (the open book) and choose one of the factories to research first. If you use all your knowledge points (kp) to unlock the first factory, you won't have enough kp left to unlock the other one.

Now, when you go to the next factory to unlock, you will that the maximum amount of kp you can insert at once is less than the total kp needed to complete it. If you insert all the kp you do you have, you will probably still be short. Now the only option to have to unlock this technology is to spend diamonds. You DO NOT HAVE TO SPEND DIAMONDS unless you insist on unlocking the technology right now. You CAN open the tech immediately by spending diamonds but you don't HAVE to spend diamonds. You can wait until you have enough kp to unlock the tech the free way. You get one kp each hour. You also get one kp for every encounter you solve. So, if you are short kp you can always go back to the world map and try to negotiate or fight an encounter. You can buy them (see below) Or you can put the game down and come back a little later when your kp has accumulated. (This part is true for all the technologies). Alternatively, you can do something else in the game. Let's see what the other helper wants us to do.

Have at least 10 residences
Have at least 4 workshops


This we can do right now. In order to build these houses and workshops we will need another road coming from the main hall. All residences and workshops need to be connected to a road that is connected to the main hall. You can find the residences and the workshops and the footpath under the builder icon on the basics tab.

Buy one knowledge point

Now we come to another way to gain knowledge points (kp). You can buy them! At the top of the screen just under your city name, next to the knowledge point bar, is a little green plus sign icon. Click on that. You will see three options for buying kp. You can buy them one at a time for coins, you can buy them one at a time for diamonds, or you can buy them 10 at a time for diamonds. For now, save your diamonds! Choose the option where you buy one kp for 500 coins. Now you are one step closer to getting the rest of the kp needed to unlock that other manufactory in the research tree! Yay!! Don't forget to collect your reward for doing this quest. Now that you know how to buy kp you can buy the kp needed to unlock that factory or you can leave it for now and work on the other quest.

Complete a province

For this you need to go back to the world map (the globe icon at the bottom of the page), scout a province, and then negotiate (or fight) all the encounters in that province.
 
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DeletedUser43

Guest
FAQ

Do I have to spend money to play this game?

No!! Not at all. You do not have to buy diamonds to play this game. They make your life easier, make the game faster, and they will get you really cool culture buildings that you can't get otherwise, but you do not have to spend diamonds to play! If you see a task that can't be done and it looks like diamonds are the only way to get through it, look closer. All tasks can be done another way without spending diamonds.

What is the general gist of this game?

This is a city building game. It is a whole lot of fun!! I know this all looks complicated, but I have explained a lot of things that might be intuitive if you have ever tried any other city building game before. Basically, you build houses to get coins (rent) and workshops to get supplies and you use those things to build factories and make goods to keep your city going! It is pretty simple once you get the hang of the mechanics. The game has a lot of strategy though!

How do I fight?

That is a very complicated question. We have a lot of guides around here that help with fighting. Here is the one indispensable guide that we all read: https://beta.forum.elvenar.com/index.php?threads/encounters-guide.488/


What is a fellowship?


Unlike other games, in Elvenar we don't fight each other. You use a fellowship in Elvenar to make friends and to have trading partners for your goods. Once in a fellowship, that consists of 25 players maximum, you have a chat and all your fellows will show up as trading partners without any trader fee. It is important to join a fellowship with players on roughly the same level as you. If you are brand new you can't be a great trading partner for people who are trading 10,000 at a time.

Where can I find a fellowship?

In the forums there is a section for each world...Arendyll, Winyandor, etc. Under the world name is a section of fellowships seeking members and members seeking fellowships. That is a great place to start. You can also find fellowships under the fellowship tab. (On your main city page, under your avatar and your name is your world ranking number. Click on that and then click on the fellowship tab.) Look for fellowships that have members with close to the same ranking you have. Then you can send a message to the archmage (the head of the fellowship) and ask them if they have room (send a message by clicking on the person's name and click the message tab.)

How do I even post on the forums?


You can't ask questions if you can't log into the forums! So first things first. In order to access the forums you need to go to your email and look for your FORUM PASSWORD. That is different than your game password. It was sent in a separate email. If you can't find it, send support a request for a new one. You won't be able to use your game password to log in here.

How do I get points?

You get ranking points by adding up the population and culture points that all your buildings need. Culture buildings in and of themselves do not give you any points at all, but you can't build anything without culture. You do get points for residences and all the upgrades because they use culture.

How do I get more coins and supplies?


First and foremost by helping your fellow man or elf! :) Every day you can visit someone in your fellowship and/or someone in your neighborhood that you have "discovered" or scouted. When you click on their name and click visit or just click on their city in the map, you will have a pair of helping hands on the bottom of your screen. Click on the hands and new little hand icons will appear over buildings in their city. If you click on a Culture building that player will get a culture boost, if you click on the main hall that player will get coins and if you click on their builders that player will get faster builders for a period of time. You might see a C or B or M or H in a player's city title. They are telling you which kind of help they prefer. You get a bonus in coins too for being such a good neighbor!! And if your neighbor has visited you in the past day, then you get bonus supplies too! It pays to be generous!!

The second way is quests quests and more quests! One line of the quests on the left is decline-able. You can decline them as needed. If you hit decline you get a scary message asking "Do you really want to decline this quest? This action cannot be reversed." Don't panic. These quests are on a loop. If you hit decline enough times you will get back to the one you just declined. Some quests are easy and take a few seconds, others take a long time. Use these to your advantage! If you are about to collect supplies, hit decline until you get to the gain x supplies quest. If you are heading to the world map to fight, make sure the fight 3 encounters quest is up. When you collect goods from your factories, have the gain x goods quest sitting there.

If you get really short of goods, you can "flip" quests with a friend in your fellowship. You do this by offering goods for trades back and forth. For example, if you have a quest that tells you to gain 1000 planks, you can trade 1000 planks for 1000 steel and then trade 1000 steel for 1000 planks. At the end of both of those trades you are back to even and you have't gained or lost anything. So why do that? Because if your friend keeps picking up those trades for you while you have the right quest on the screen, you can keep fulfilling that quest over and over. This is a very long and tedious process, but it sure can help in a pinch!

What is the best thing to buy?

If you are going to spend money on this game, then the first thing I would buy is a third builder. That is where the majority of down times comes from....from waiting for buildings to complete! The second best things to buy are expansions. You need room for those new buildings!

How do I make my city bigger?


There are a couple of ways to get more expansions in the game. Each expansion is a new 5 x 5 grid to add to your city. You can get them from clearing provinces on the world map, from the research tree, and you can buy them.

Under the builder icon in your city (bottom left) there is an expansion tab. Click on that and you will see the option to buy expansions with diamonds listed under premium expansions. (You don't have to buy them, but it makes your city bigger right away if you do).

You can get expansions from clearing the right research tab. Click on the research icon and go to the tech tree. Look for the ones that say city expansion. Once you have completed that tech, the new expansion will be under your builder tab. These expansions cost coins to place.

You can get expansions from clearing provinces in the world map either by negotiating or fighting. If you hover your mouse over the province expansion tab it will show you how many provinces you need in order to get the next expansion. If that section is bright green, you might have an expansion sitting there you can use right now! Just click on it and then place it in your city! These expansions do not cost any coins.

Warning: Once you place an expansion, it cannot be moved! So place it carefully!

Can I get diamonds any way other than buying them?

Almost never. Every once in a while there is a contest that you might be able to get some diamonds from if you win, but those are very rare and not many people usually win anything. It doesn't matter though! I have been playing this game from the beginning without ever buying diamonds and I am having lots of fun.

Is there a way to send player's messages?


Yes. Either in game or in the forums just click on the person's name and either send a message or "start a conversation".



Please, anyone with questions, please post them below so I can add to this list.
 
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DeletedUser3087

Guest
Another tip when placing buildings and roads. If your building is rectangular then place the building so the narrow side of the building touches the road and the roads should service two buildings, so if the building is not on a corner and is touching two roads then you are losing valuable space. When you start expanding expand in a square grid for efficient building placement and moving when the buildings orientation changes. If you also keep your main hall in one of the corners of the grid then this will make it easier also. Only have two or three roads touching the main hall and connect to these roads.
Russio
 

Mykan

Oh Wise One
Great guide. With the quests section and repeatable quests I would strongly recommend a new player does decline the repeatable ones initially to give themselves a kick start on coins and supplies, especially once they have the trader.

Key quests are:
- solve 3 encounters
- Complete a province
- obtain 40 of x non-boosted good (there is one of these for each non-boosted tier 1 good)

if you use the encounters and province quests ass you explore you gain a lot of coins and supplies. You can then use that excess to buy the 40 non-boosted goods from the wholesaler. The quest for these goods compensates most of the cost of buying the goods. Any deficit in from buying the goods and the reward is then made up by the solve encounters and province quests.

This allows a new player to accumulate a decent amount of goods (often more non-boosted then boosted) and expand quickly. These quests are only available in the first and I believe second tech eras. They need to be wary moving into tech era 2 as you do get some quests that don't cycle around at the start of each new era. This combination of quests and trader makes life much easier on a new town.
 

DeletedUser

Guest
I scanned too & didn't see anything about joining a FS. I'd love to see some info about that. It's my personal two cents that a FS is a must, so talking about what to look for in a FS, how to find one, whether or not it's a good fit, etc would be helpful - maybe in a FAQs section like you mentioned you might do.

Especially in the beginning, I don't think players should pay the increased trade costs for non-discovered players, so to me this is a key pro-FS argument.

Lots of good & helpful info here!
 

DeletedUser2396

Guest
Also you might add something along the lines you start to build a residence or a workshop and you decide you have to go sleep you can take the building off the road and it will stop the clock on it - then when you come back to the game you can reset your building on a road an the clock will start again this is useful to complete Quests and get credit for them finishing when you want them to finish - generally this applies when you have more than one builder - say your trying to upgrade 3 residences - you have Quest set to upgrade one so it completes while your sleeping and you get credit - the other 2 residences you have taken off the road an stopped the clock - so you wake up come back then can reset Quest and start the clock up again on the next residence you want to complete - just a tip
Note:you have to have available space to set them off a road or you can remove the road and turn the clock off as well in some situations - rule is to experiment with it
SK
 

DeletedUser43

Guest
Mykan, I completely agree about the quests! I did find one thing that almost tripped me up though...in the VERY beginning....I mean the VERY beginning, if you decline a quest you might not be able to get through the build the first buildings stage. I made that mistake. lol I almost couldn't even build my first workshop. I was going to get to what you said a tiny bit little later in the guide. But you have explained it beautifully. I'll try to alter it.

That is a very interesting concept Silvernite! I've always just set my quests to one thing I was doing overnight. And if I wasn't quite ready for a different quest I waited until the morning. But you idea is very clever!

Travels, absolutely! I need to add a section on neighborly help and fellowships! Those are two of the most important parts of the game. I'll try to get to that soon! Those are great ideas for FAQ issues too!!
 

Mykan

Oh Wise One
With buildings overnight it took me a while to figure out that they don't actually upgrade while you sleep. They upgrade when you login so a 2hr build takes 9 hrs if you next login 9 hrs later. I use to think my residences would upgrade and be full of coins when I checked in the next morning. it also explains why peoples main halls can be permanently upgrading if they never come back once they start to upgrade it.

Also as requested:
https://us.forum.elvenar.com/index.php?threads/mykans-guide-to-elvenar.3966/

Edit: Guide is now mostly on the forum, updated link to redirect to the forum.
 
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DeletedUser2396

Guest
I never log out - Mykan - but of course the way i do it depends on not timing out in game and being forced to log-out - i generally go to bed - wake up 7 hours later come back to the computer have a Quest ready and waiting for me to click to get credit - sometimes i don't get logged out all week long if they are not doing an update - then of course i get kicked off - not sure what you mean by a 2 hour build taking 9 hours - i don't seem to have that problem -)

SK
 

DeletedUser2396

Guest
Mykan calls that a Beginner Guide - i can't wait to see his Advanced Guide -) very well done three thumbs up -)))
 

Mykan

Oh Wise One
not sure what you mean by a 2 hour build taking 9 hours - i don't seem to have that problem -)
SK

It relates to those who do log off, just a reference to the building upgrading at the time you login so do not expect it to complete while you are away and the benefits to start while you are offline. Of course if you can stay logged in like you then there is no issue.
 

DeletedUser3694

Guest
Ok folks!! Look at Mykan's link!!!

This is an amazing Beginner's guide!!!!!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ACCAhUm9p_2aq3ZtZZ2HhHRtoYdyYt5vzXBHXbwiTxY/edit?usp=sharing

Mine is great for the bare essentials, but Mykan's beginner guide teaches you how to play! Plus, it is so well organized!!

Thank you so much for both your guide and the link to Mykan's!

The most helpful tip so far has definitely been cycling through the quests and learning how to work with them. I now make sure to only leave one encounter left undone in each province, use the 'complete 3' quest to go through the others, then come back to the 'complete a province' quest before hitting the last one. I'm timing everything a lot better now with quests.

I don't like battling story wise and I'm not doing so well with it right now. Sometimes I fight just because I'm low on goods.

I've got a marble boost, but so far I'm coming across far more provinces that need steel or planks.
 
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