The Tribe Must Survive: 5 Best Tips for Beginners

If Banished and Northgard had a child, or if the Stone Age prehistoric time period and gloomy Lovecraftian did, they’d push out a bouncing The Tribe Must Survive baby. Merging strategy, survival, and tribe-building, The Tribe Must Survive has fans of Against the Storm and Frostpunk on a chokehold. Of course, with the game still in Early Access, a few gameplay issues can use extra polishing. But in its current state, it's still a blast to explore and build when the sun is out and brace yourself for the sheer terror of the night as the sun falls. Can your tribe survive out of the darkness? Can you protect them from the dangers lurking in the shadows? Here are the The Tribe Must Survive: best tips for beginners to make sure you do.

5. Find the Right Balance to Keep Your Tribe Happy

The Tribe Must Survive has a distinct gameplay system. It tasks you with finding ways to grow and protect your tribe from harm. Essentially, each person has a unique personality and trait. However, they generally do what they want. So, to control them, you manipulate activities in the game, like rituals, buildings, politics, and more, to keep things moving. The idea is to keep your people happy by meeting their needs. These include sleep, social interaction, and spirituality. If they’re not satisfied, people will start to go into shock, which makes them stop working, eating, sleeping, socializing, or attending rituals. 

Here are a few quick tips to get things done. If you want everyone to assemble for a ritual, you’ll need to turn everything else off. Make sure to turn off any ongoing jobs around the flame area. Then, call the night horn, start the rituals, and your tribe members will all join in. Buildings, on the other hand, help to regulate how many people you can handle. You can add, remove, or close buildings to control the population. If you notice your tribe’s social need reducing, you can close some tents to force them to group together. If you notice food is running low, you can shut down the lumber camp, for example, so they join the hunters. 

4. Keep an Eye Out for New Recruits

Sometimes, you can lose track of the number of people joining your tribe. Your resources can be running out too quickly simply because you’re growing your tribe too fast. However, if you feel you have too few members, you need to leave some empty tents to gain new people. Thereafter, as new people join your tribe, be sure to assign and unassign roles as needed. For instance, you’ll need more food to feed the extra mouths, so assign more people to the farmer's and hunter's roles. 

3. Take a Breather to Plan

Any survival game, especially an unforgiving one like The Tribe Must Survive, needs a pause function. Otherwise, you risk messing up your playthrough because you’ve been running on fumes. Even if not to re-strategize, you’ll probably need to step away from the game for any number of reasons: grab dinner, pee, etc. Fortunately, The Tribe Must Survive allows you to pause the game to assess (and reassess your strategy). If you want to be even more strategic, you can have a pause schedule. Every time, at the start and close of the day, you pause the game to plan your way out. 

You can take the time to decide which buildings to close and keep open. Alternatively, pausing helps you to take inventory of the resources you have. Do you need more food or wood? How many people are currently assigned to jobs? How many are unassigned? Depending on your tribe size, you may need to balance farmers and hunters to fetch enough food for everyone. Besides strategy, pausing also halts resource consumption. As long as the game runs, your tribe will consume wood fuel and food. You could run out without warning. 

2. On/Off? You Decide

At the heart of The Tribe Must Survive is the ability to turn different switches on and off for control. At the start of the day, people need to report to their working posts. For that to happen, you must turn off sleeping beds for the day. When it’s time for a ritual, you must turn off all jobs, relieving people of work and nudging them to attend the event. Before dusk, you need to turn on the Nighthorn as a warning for your tribe of the incoming darkness, as well as for you to turn on the fire, and so on and so forth. 

1. Fire Knows Best

Fire plays several vital roles. During an Eclipse event, sunlight will be blocked for several days. So, your primary source of light is fire, which you should keep running. It means you always need to have enough wood. Besides events, every time it gets dark, your tribe members’ fear level spikes. Some dreadful monster lurks in the shadows and snatches people wandering about in dark areas. It means you must keep your fire burning all night, as well as food and medicine. Additionally, be sure to keep a torch by your people’s beds. So, if their fear rates spike while they’re asleep, you can turn the torches on.

If your people go into shock, the only way to help them is more light. You’ll need to burn more wood for a brighter light. All of these eat through your wood resources fast. So, make sure that there’s an actual need. Otherwise, turn off the fire to save wood. Meanwhile, you want to farm some crops within the fire radius so there’s a constant supply of food during the night and eclipse events. If you’re straining too much, you probably have more people than you can handle.

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