Humans had their chance at creating a better world. Now long gone, it’s the beavers’ time to shine in Timberborn. In a world tainted by the remnants of humans, you can choose to continue humanity’s legacy as the industrious Iron Teeth or the earth-conscious Folktails. With its immersive blend of strategy, survival, and resource management, Timberborn offers a delightful spin on the city builder genre with the unlikeliest of civilizations to rise to the top. Update 4 brings a wealth of quality of life fixes, faction diversity, food production chains, optimization, and a new map. Join us as we delve into the uncharted territories of this quirky city-building adventure.
For my initial foray into the ruined world of Timberborn, I chose the Folktails, because the name is just too precious not to. While the Iron Teeth are clearly experts when it comes to machinery and food production, I just love the natural aesthetic of the Folktails. Plus, you don’t actually start out with the Iron Teeth. During the first playthrough of Timberborn, you’ll need to experience the Folktails and prove that you can keep them happy by reaching a well-being of 15. So for this experience, I stuck to the farming-friendly Folktails.
I started out by naming my settlement “Littlerock.” It felt fitting and natural, which was the vibe that I wanted to maintain throughout my playthrough. Thankfully, there were several difficulty modes to select: Easy, Normal, Hard, or Custom. I got a good cackle out of the description for Hard mode: “Humans will not make it and neither will you.” First of all, rude, but alright - point taken. While choosing Easy mode was a hit to my pride, I just really wanted to experience the game at my own pace. After a long day of work on my feet and dealing with customers, my brain was absolute mush. I didn’t think I could handle much more labor, but my little Folktails could definitely pick up the slack.
With a tutorial to greet me, I watched in awe as a dozen or more beavers shuffled out of my first District building. I’m not going to lie, I spent most of my time in Timberborn zooming in and watching the Folktails work. They are so stinking cute, and I love the adorable chirps they make when you click on them. However, an omnipresent beaver goddess can’t just sit back and watch her people sleep out in the cold all night. We would never increase their well-being that way. It was time to really dig into the mechanics of Timberborn and start building a livable home for the Folktails.
Like I mentioned previously, Timberborn is all about resource and time management. During the day, I had to properly instruct my Folktails on how to chop down the nearby forest to build their homes, water pump, and storage buildings. Easy mode meant that droughts would be short and few, but that didn’t mean I wanted to be any less prepared. Besides, eventually I’d like to try out some of the harsher difficulties and challenge myself!
As my little settlement grew, I needed to learn how to prioritize and balance Folktail responsibilities if they stood any chance of making it through the harsher weather. It’s an interesting ebb and flow starting out; you need wood to build, beavers to cut it, homes to encourage babies, and wood to build those homes. It doesn’t hurt at first to not have those homes. You just feel like a terrible parent because your beavers drop like flies at the end of the night, snoring gently right where they were in the field.
New buildings will try your patience. Sometimes it felt like my beavers had a mind of their own. For example, I had two buildings needing to be constructed: lumber mill and the campfire pit. One of these things would require my Folktails to occupy the building and be a productive member of society by converting the logs from trees they’ve chopped down into wooden planks.
The other building asked the insanely difficult task of sitting around an open fire on wooden stumps with friends, staring into open space. Can you guess which one they were determined to build first? Even prioritizing and directing my resources towards the lumber mill, they were determined to get that fire pit built. Maybe I’m just a bad resource director. This is why we’re on Easy mode.
If a beaver didn’t have an assigned task, or if that building’s work was “completed” (usually meaning there wasn’t anywhere else for them to go because the storage was full) they would just plop down on the building and twiddle their tiny semi-opposable fingers. The first time I saw this, I actually laughed out loud. They looked so silly and adorable. With a little prod, I assigned them to other tasks like chopping wood or running the Invention building.
Even eco-friendly beavers like the Folktails have curious minds and unlock “science points” through the Invention building. Most new building blueprints come from those science points, which are accumulated overtime by a single, fuzzy brainiac. I just kept picturing this Albert Einstein-esque beaver, experimenting away in his little cottage in the woods while his companions looked on in concern.
With Timberborn’s Update 4, the Folktails got to see a lot of love in the way of faction-exclusive buildings and farming. Wheat, carrots, potatoes, sunflowers, cattail, and spadderdock are all exclusive crops to their faction, and since carrots are the first plant you start off with, I filled Littlerock to the brim with carrot patches. It’s good for their eyesight! District buildings also saw an interesting update: they no longer have range limits! But while I could technically build my entire settlement with only one District, it probably wouldn’t be a great idea because that would be a loooong way for my beavers to commute just to build and deliver resources. Breaking up their home into smaller chunks is probably much more economical.
Two of the newer buildings to come out for Folktails in this update are the Efficient and Aquatic Farmhouses. As a fishing lover, the Aquatic Farmhouse was one of the first buildings I sprang for. Since they’re faction-specific, that means that you don’t get those buildings at all on the Iron Teeth side. However, the Iron Teeth have plenty of fun additions of their own like unique crops (coffee bushes being my favorite) , fermenters, oil presses, and hydroponic gardens. I actually really love the idea of hydroponic gardens, since they provide not just a source of water for the Iron Teeth during a drought but mushrooms as well. Very fitting for their society.
A new map also made its way into Update 4: Craters (192 x 192). It isn’t the smallest map currently in Timberborn, but it is a little bit smaller compared to the Plains (256 x 256) or the Beaverome (256 x 256). However, the Craters map is really nice because it offers a lot of different levels to build on and can be a great foundation for some of the more creative builds that want to utilize every level of the terrain.
So far, I’m enjoying the heck out of Timberborn and its newest update. I’ve still got a little ways to go before I unlock the Iron Teeth, but I am actually pretty excited to view the world from their industrious lens. Hydroponic gardens and coffee bushes are especially intriguing to me, and I’d also like to try out the food production chain that is specific to their faction! Regardless, I’m definitely taken with the Folktails. I could throw on a chill music playlist and sit around for hours just zooming around and watching them work.
Needless to say, I’m nowhere near done with Timberborn and I probably won’t be for a while. I also still want to push through some of the other difficulties and see how far we can make it through the drought! Timberborn is currently in Early Access so we still have many more features and updates to look forward to and report on!
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