Welcome to my beginner’s guide on Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles – a world where your imagination sets the stage for boundless adventures! In Bulwark, you’re not just a player; you’re the architect of your destiny. Set amidst the tumultuous Ursee, a world scarred by decades of conflict, you lead a band of refugees yearning to rebuild amidst the chaos. As your settlement flourishes, so too does your influence, attracting new faces and opportunities from across the factions. Will you nurture alliances through trade or forge your path through conquest? The fate of the Ursee lies in your hands. Dive in, and let the journey begin!
Ultimate Beginner’s Guide For Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles
Objectives:
To unlock various building options, you’ll require the four essential resources of Ursee: workers, wood, stone, and iron.
Their roles are quite straightforward: Workers breathe life into your settlement, crucially enabling extractors to generate the other resources mentioned below. Outposts serve as the source of workers, with the potential to evolve into citadels for increased worker production.
Wood facilitates the construction of wooden towers and pathways, allowing you to expand your settlement as desired.
Stone grants access to upgrades for towers, pathways, and outposts. It also empowers workers to construct improved housing capable of accommodating more residents.
Iron is essential for upgrading outposts to citadels and constructing towering command centers. Commanders can oversee these command centers, introducing defensive turrets and battlegroup units to bolster your defenses.
Resources:
To establish Resource Extractors, you’ll utilize your surveyor, placing them atop suitable wood, stone, or iron deposits scattered throughout the world. Resources are characterized primarily by their distribution range.
For instance, a woodmill yielding +4 wood can supply wood to structures within a radius of up to 4 buildings. Absolute quantities are insignificant; only the distance they can reach matters.
Each building in your settlement consumes 1 resource, with Command Towers being the exception, requiring an additional 1 worker per floor. The number of workers a Command Tower is utilizing is indicated above it in the resource view.
If a building has access to all necessary resources, you can construct without limitations in that location until the resource’s range is exhausted.
When an extractor is positioned over a wood, stone, or iron deposit, the resource diminishes. The number displayed around the deposit’s radius denotes how many structures can utilize that resource before it depletes entirely.
Given the war-ravaged state of the Ursee, resources are naturally scarce. Additional Resource Extractors can be obtained by either assimilating some of the open-world settlements into your Bulwark—by aligning with their faction and inviting them to join you—or by subjugating them in combat and compelling their surrender. Moreover, Resource Extractors can be acquired through a limited number of Random Events (refer to the section below).
How To Acquire More Resource Extractors:
- Exploration: Explore resource-rich locations on the map. While exploring, you may stumble upon neutral or enemy-controlled extractors. These extractors can be captured and claimed as your own.
- Diplomacy or War: Expand your influence by either diplomatically convincing other settlements with extractors to join your cause or by engaging them in combat and subjugating them. Once a settlement becomes yours, you gain control over its extractors.
- Settlement Management: Once you have control over extractors, you have the flexibility to manage them as you see fit. You can choose to leave them in their current location or dismantle them to relocate them to more strategically advantageous positions.
- Optimize Production: As you expand and acquire more extractors, it’s essential to optimize their production. Develop the areas surrounding the resource nodes and assign commanders who can enhance production, maximizing the output of your extractors.
- Resource Depletion: Keep in mind that resources deplete as you expand, necessitating the relocation of extractors to new resource nodes. Managing your extractors efficiently ensures a steady supply of resources for your settlement’s growth.
- Bottleneck Consideration: The number of extractors and trade ships you possess serves as a bottleneck to your expansion capabilities. Striking a balance between acquiring more extractors and efficiently utilizing existing ones is key to sustainable growth.
Construction:
The game’s building mechanics follow a “spoke and wheel” design. Buildings serve as the central hub, akin to the hub of a wheel, with towers automatically linked via walkways and sky bridges extending like spokes. Additionally, players have the option to construct foundations and balconies extending from towers.
Foundations and balconies offer extra space for inhabitants to construct superior housing compared to ground-level dwellings.
Commanders also utilize balconies for deploying defensive turrets. A command tower’s maximum height is influenced by its foundations and access to workers. The greater the number of foundations and available workers, the taller a command tower can ascend.
Trade Routes:
Ships traversing the oceans serve primarily as transport or combat vessels. Throughout your journey, you’ll encounter Captains offering their services in both categories.
Transport Captains facilitate the shipment of one or more resources between two harbors.
Combat Captains patrol between two harbors, ready to engage any threats within the vicinity of their designated route.
Harbors can be constructed using the surveyor tool. Simply place two harbors, regardless of distance, and they will automatically be paired and connected. It’s crucial to always establish harbors in pairs, as the trade route operation functions seamlessly between them.
Command Towers:
Command Towers serve as the residence for the Commanders you encounter throughout the Ursee. These Commanders offer a range of utilities, most notably spawning units of different classes to bolster your battlegroup.
To enlist these units, approach a tower allocated to a Commander, and their troops will rally to your cause. Additionally, some Commanders enhance the performance of resource extractors linked to their tower. Faction Leaders unlock a fresh roster of Captains and Commanders within the Soul Tree, expanding your strategic options.
Random Events:
During your exploration of the world, you might stumble upon buildings, anomalies, and diverse individuals. These encounters can result in acquiring new Commanders, buildings, random enterprises that could populate your settlement, and other surprises. However, it’s important to note that some encounters may escalate into hostile situations, particularly if your actions have been aggressive towards other factions.
Settlements:
Settlements represent the surviving towns and cities scattered across the Ursee, remnants of those that endured the war’s devastation. Though often struggling, they eagerly welcome trade opportunities with you.
When engaging with a settlement, the interface displays your alignment with the settlement and its faction, which is influenced by your faction alignment. For instance, a substantial presence of Bannerless Captains, Commanders, and outposts would attract a sizable Bannerless population, resulting in a high Bannerless alignment. Continued dominance could even lead to your settlement being identified as Bannerless. Settlements react based on your faction alignment; for instance, if you’re aligned, you might have the option to extend an invitation for them to join your settlement.
Additionally, the settlement interface includes a measure of intimidation. Intimidation reflects a military comparison between your forces and theirs. High intimidation levels may grant you leverage in certain scenarios, such as compelling surrender during a conflict.
Combat:
Combat mechanics are relatively straightforward. Your battlegroup automatically engages enemy units in close proximity to your surveyor, swiftly eliminating them. Upon declaration of war, your forces will also target settlement defenses.
However, be cautious, as your enemies may receive reinforcements during or after combat. The health of your entire battlegroup, compared to that of your enemy, is indicated by health bars during combat.
Each engagement contributes to the experience gained by your battlegroup as a whole and individual units, enhancing their performance. The cumulative experience of your battlegroup is displayed in your inventory. Should you lose fighters, your total experience may decrease.
In the event of unit losses during battle, you can replenish your forces by visiting the Command Tower housing the Commanders that spawn them, following a brief cooldown period. Newly acquired forces start as Rookies, potentially reducing your battlegroup’s overall experience.
Map, Soul Tree, and Inventory:
The world map provides an overview of your settlement buildings and enables fast travel between them. It also allows you to assign surveyor destination commands to new, remote areas. Accessible from the world map is the inventory screen, which displays any constructs (unique buildings) or Resource Extractors you possess, all deployable via your surveyor.
From the inventory screen, you can access the Soul Tree, which presents all the Commanders and Captains under your service per faction. It also highlights potentially available Commanders and Captains, along with the required population threshold to attract more. Additionally, you have the option to dismiss Commanders and Captains from this interface.
Once you’ve fully unlocked the Soul Tree for a faction, a quest may emerge prompting you to discover that faction’s ‘Wonder’.
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