Demo Walkthrough

The demo’s story follows one line: Herbert, the Head of the Guards, wants the town back from the zombies, and every step toward the first battle goes through him. He asks for four things in turn: a burial certificate, a graveyard of quality 10, 3 Faith, and a Barracks of quality 12 with a Magic bell. Everything else in the demo, the village, Jack’s boat and the church, is how you get those four.

This page gives the order and the reasons. The system pages explain each part in full: Graveyard, Corpses, Sermons, Technology, Energy and Insanity.

The introduction

The first four chapters are a fixed sequence: the Inquisition’s prison, the empty town, the defence of the town square, and the retreat to an abandoned Inquisitor base that becomes your home. None of it appears on the Story Tree, and there is nothing to miss.

• Put tools on your hotbar. The story checks the hotbar, not the backpack: the pickaxe in the prison, the armour and sword before you leave Jack’s workshop.
• The defence of the square cannot be lost. When your health gets low you stop taking damage, and the retreat starts on its own.
• Your first sleep at home opens the technology tree with The Concept of Wood for free, and from then on sleeping in that bed is how the game saves.

The first burial

The talking donkey brings your first body to the morgue.

1. Carry it inside and lay it on the Autopsy Table I. This opens the Anatomy tab of the tech tree with two free technologies. Closing the autopsy window is enough to move on.
2. Before you close it, pick a pocket. It cannot fail, it gives a blue tech point, and it completes the first level of Pickpocket. Together with the burial you are about to do, that opens the inspiration page and your first talent point. See Talents and Inspirations.
3. Carry the body to the graveyard. Place an Empty Grave, dig it, lay the body in and fill it. The chest in the graveyard has a shovel, a hammer and 3 Wooden Signs.
4. Put a Wooden Sign on the grave. The burial drops a Burial Certificate, and the Story Tree opens.

Certificate, Please

Show the certificate to Herbert at the Crossroads, east of your house. In Certificate, Please he only looks at it, so you keep it and can sell it later. This one quest does a lot:

• The village opens. Until now its gate guards turn you away.
• The donkey starts regular deliveries: every other day, at 13:12 on Gluttony, Lust and Pride days. The morgue holds only one body at the start, so bury each one before the next arrives.
• Town quality goes up by 10. That caps your happiness at 10 for the rest of the demo.
• Grave Expectations starts.

The village

The village lies south of the Crossroads. See The Village and the Crossroads for who is where.

1. What the Fairy? Walk into the tavern and talk to Januarius. Trading opens. He buys Burial Certificates for 1 silver each, and the first five each week also give 1 happiness.
2. Supply and Demand. Meet Herm at his store. He sells Wheat seed and Bronze Scrap.
3. Planted and Delivered. Bring Herm 5 Wheat. You need a Garden Bed from Gardening (5 green), and a shovel on your hotbar to plant. Wheat takes a while to grow, so plant it as soon as Herm sells you seeds.
4. Two Peas in a Pod. Visit the twins over the bridge south of the village, then find Jeffry by the Hangman’s House. They want 6 Clay Plates, made at a Potter’s Wheel from clay dug at the riverside west of your house. They give you a fishing rod.

Do both the wheat and the plates. Each gives 5 village reputation, and two later quests ask for 10: the twins’ part of Jack’s boat and Januarius’s Good Fellow. There is no other way to reach 10 in time.

The workshop you need

Nearly every quest item in the demo comes down to two materials: Wooden Planks and Bronze Details. None of the workbenches exist at the start; you build them in your yard. This is the chain, with the technology for each step:

To make	You need	Workbench	Technology
Board	Log	Sawhorse	The Concept of Wood (free)
Wooden Plank	Board	Woodworking Workbench I	Woodworking I
Wood wedge	Short Log	Chopping Spot	Chopping
Piece of stone	Stone, Wood wedges	Stonemason’s Workbench	The Concept of Stone
Clay Plate	Clay	Potter’s Wheel	Pottery I
Brick	Clay, fuel	Kiln	Brick Making
Bronze Nails	Bronze Scrap	Wooden Anvil	Bronze Works
Bronze Ingot	3 Bronze Scrap → 2 ingots	Furnace I, built with bricks	Bronze Melting
Bronze Detail	1 ingot → 6 details	Wooden Anvil with a Hardening Bucket next to it	Bronze Works (the second one)

Most of these jobs also have a mastery requirement, and below it a job cannot be started at all. At the start your Rusty Axe and Rusty Pickaxe give Building 2, and the Rusty Hammer from the graveyard chest gives Smithing 1. That covers Boards and Wooden Planks (Building 1 and 2) and Bronze Nails from scrap (Smithing 1), but not Wood wedges and Pieces of stone (Building 3) or Bronze Details (Smithing 2). The furnace is built from Pieces of stone and bronze tools are made from Bronze Details, so the first node of the Building branch and of the Smithing branch on the talent tree have to come first. Keep every tool on your hotbar, since they all count: later a bronze axe or pickaxe (2 each) takes Building to 4 for the Oiled Planks, and a bronze hammer (2) takes Smithing to 4 for the Reinforced Planks.

The same technology that unlocks Bronze Details also unlocks the Hardening Bucket (4 Wooden Planks, 8 Bronze Nails). Build it touching the Wooden Anvil: until it is attached, the anvil will not start Bronze Details or the bronze tools.

Buy Bronze Scrap from Herm rather than waiting to find it in junk. Three scrap make two ingots, and two ingots make twelve Bronze Details.

Grave Expectations

Herbert wants graveyard quality 10. A demo grave scores at most 3: a Wooden Cross I (2) and a Wooden Fence I (1) from Wooden Gravestones I, capped by the body’s white skulls and reduced by its red skulls. So you need at least four good graves, or three and an Exterior Bench I (+3). Take the Fat and Blood out of each body’s pockets before burial, since each carries a red skull.

Bodies are the slow part: the donkey brings at most one every two days. Keep the morgue empty on delivery days and fill every grave you dig, since an open pit or unfilled grave counts −3. The quest gives Herbert’s second 10 reputation, which the barricades need.

Jack in a Boat

After you meet Herm, Jack shows up at your house one night. Jack in a Boat asks for 5 Wooden Planks, then 5 Bronze Details, and for the twins to be talked into rowing, which takes village reputation 10. Once all three are done, ask Jack if he is ready. He sails the next time you sleep.

You cannot go to bed with full energy, so do a little work before each of these sleeps.

Fighting Spirit Required

Hand Herbert 3 Faith in Fighting Spirit Required. This time the Faith is taken. Faith only comes from sermons in the church, so this step waits for the church. The quest opens the Barracks and gives you 2 Town Gratitude.

Oiled Planks and Melted Fat

The Barracks needs barricades, and barricades are the longest chain in the demo:

• Every barricade takes 2 Reinforced Planks, 6 Bronze Nails and 2 Short Logs.
• A Reinforced Plank is 1 Oiled Plank and 2 Bronze Details, made at an anvil.
• An Oiled Plank needs Melted Fat, and the only thing that makes Melted Fat is the Distillation Cube, from the technology Alchemy, Distillation. No trader you can reach sells it.

One Melted Fat, from 1 Fat, 2 Clay Plates and fuel, makes four of them, and one Oiled Plank run turns 4 Wooden Planks into 4 Oiled Planks. That is enough Reinforced Planks for two barricades.

Swords and Bell

Swords and Bell asks for two things, in either order, reported to Herbert in the Barracks.

Barracks quality 12. Each Barricade I adds 2. The four mercenaries add 8 together, but only while they are paid for the next battle (5 silver for the first). So it is two barricades with the mercenaries paid, six without.

The barricades come from Simple Barricades, which hangs from Reinforced Plank, which hangs from a reputation technology that needs 20 reputation with Herbert. Certificate, Please and Grave Expectations give exactly 20. Reputation technologies unlock by themselves, but only when you open the technology tree, and with no message, so open the tree after Grave Expectations. The reputation node itself sits under Bronze Forge, so buy that too.

The Magic bell is made at an anvil from 1 Blood and 1 Bronze Ingot. Blood comes from corpses’ pockets. The recipe unlocks later in the story, after Jack’s boat has sailed.

First… Sludge?

Once both parts are handed in, talk to Herbert in front of the Barracks. He gives you the red banner and 2 Healing Potions, and the battle can start on any day of the week.

The start button stays disabled until your defence power reaches 12, which is the same barricades-plus-paid-mercenaries total, and until you have a sword or bow on your hotbar. If you lose, talk to Herbert and try again; nothing is lost, and the mercenaries stay paid.

Technologies on the main path

Buying only what the story needs:

Technology	Cost	For
Woodworking I	10 red	Wooden Planks
Chopping	8 red	Wood wedges for stone
The Concept of Stone	15 red	Pieces of stone
Pottery I	10 red, 5 green	Clay Plates for the twins and for Melted Fat
Brick Making	15 red, 5 green	Bricks for the furnace
Gardening	5 green	Wheat for Herm
Bronze Works	5 red	Wooden Anvil, Bronze Nails
Bronze Melting	10 red	Furnace, Bronze Ingots
Bronze Works	30 red	Bronze Details
Bronze Forge	20 red	Leads to Herbert’s reputation technology
Tool Rack	35 red	Leads to Oiled wood
Oiled wood	20 red, 20 green	Oiled Planks
Alchemy, Distillation	5 red, 5 green	Distillation Cube, Melted Fat
Reinforced Plank	45 red	Reinforced Planks
Simple Barricades	60 red, 25 green	Barricades
Total	288 red, 65 green

No blue tech points are needed. Wooden Gravestones I (5 red, 2 green) is optional but makes Grave Expectations much easier. The Barracks alone (Tool Rack, Oiled wood, Bronze Forge, Alchemy, Distillation, Reinforced Plank and Simple Barricades) takes 185 of the 288 red, so it pays to save red tech points while you wait for the church.