Endzone: A World Apart beginner guide: Surviving the first 15 minutes

Endzone: A World Apart will not nuke you if you mess up a bit at the start of the scenario. Nevertheless, it’s still nice not to stumble when taking your first steps. So, let’s look into the things you need to do to turn your humble beginnings into semi-prosperous proceedings. Yes, this is an Endzone: A World Apart beginner guide.

Note: This is a beginner’s guide for Endzone: A World Apart. For a more in-depth look at certain mechanics mentioned here, you may also check out our guides regarding buildings/production chains and expeditions.

Note 2: Do play through the game tutorial, as it takes you through the basics and advanced mechanics in a non-threatening, hand-holding manner.

Starting humble

The spherical cow of Endzone: A World Apart starting conditions is 10 adults and five fairly useless children. Here’s our suggestion on how to get your settlement off on the right rack:

1. Set a “Gather All” task at a nearby forest to keep resources coming in via idle settlers.
2. Set at least three people to be builders – you’ll be eating into this pool as time goes on.
3. Build a Jetty at the closest lake.
4. Build a Water Cistern close to the Jetty.
5. Assign two folks to carry water.
6. Build a Fisherman’s Hut next to the Jetty.
7. Assign two folks to fishing.
8. Build two Recyclers close to the Van, and set them on Cloth.
9. Assign two Settlers to work them.
10. Build a Tailor nearby, set it to make cloth masks.
11. Assign two people to it.
12. Build a Charcoal Kiln.
13. Assign a person to run it.

Now, this guide uses more than 10 starting adults, and that’s fine. Those kids will mature fairly soon, especially with the time spent raising buildings.

What to do next

The steps above will have a very rough and not very efficient economy going. But once you have some breathing room, you can consider more options:

• Cabins: You’ll hardly ever want more than 10, because later in the game, babies can overwhelm you. Besides, you’ll be able to upgrade those cabins to house more people later on. The unlucky types can stay in Shelters.
• Scrapyard: Scrap goes into everything, and having a fully-staffed scrapyard running feeds the hungry maw of your industry, especially when it comes to Activated Carbon Masks. A note on Scrapyards and other similar buildings: They gather resources in a certain radius, but you can set the location of that area anywhere you please. Your Scrapyard doesn’t have to be next to scrap.
• Diversifying food stock: To avoid plagues, you want to feed your settlers a variety of different meals. Gatherers are a good and easy way to boost variety, and so are farms, though they work slowly. Eventually you’ll want to have a Hunting Lodge, as it not only hunts animals, but captures them for raising in pastures.
• Decontamination post: It produces decontamination kits used to make food non-radioactive. Make sure its work radius covers your resource storage spots like the van, warehouses, and so on.
• Well: This is your permanent, drought-independent water source. Get one, have it be next to the cistern. Unfortunately, it requires one staff.
• Activated Carbon Masks: When you have a good Charcoal and Cloth supply going, you’ll want to switch to making Activated Carbon Masks at the Tailor. If you’re in a resource crunch, but have free hands, you can have two Tailor huts. Assign one for Cloth and another for Activated Carbon Mask production.
• Water Tower: Your Cistern has to be updated to a Water Tower soon. This will allow you to filter all of your water supply from radiation as long as you have Charcoal to pay upkeep. Water Wowers need Plastic to build, and you can set one of your Recyclers to produce it until you have enough.
• School: School-educated children earn tags, which helps productivity and is immensely useful in expeditions.
• Herbal hut: Not the highest priority, but good to have at least one person gathering herbs and turning them into meds.
• Workshop: Your people need tools. Until you have a good supply of metal going, you’ll have to make do with scrap ones.
• Research Station: Eats a lot of resources, but you must get a Weather Station researched and built as soon as possible.
• Weather Station: Doesn’t require any staff, and it allows you to set policy on when to cover rainfall collectors and farms. I like to set them to cover up farms and collectors at even a low radiation level, though that’s not entirely necessary once you have Decontamination Posts going.

At this point, your settlement should go somewhat steadily, covering most of its basic necessities.

Note 3: If you’re in a bit of a bind resource-wise, your settlers might give you a mission to improve the situation. No reason not to accept as you’re already trying to solve the issue, and it will give you more resources.

What to expect in the future

Now you start planning for luxuries.

Expeditions Station: Important for a variety of reasons that have to do with research and resources, and also fun.
Graveyard: Collects unsightly corpses, recycles gear.
Pastures: Allows you to farm a variety of animals, making it an almost drought-independent food source.
Medical Facility: Treats large-scale plagues.
Forum: Makes settlers feel better and allows you to pick from a variety of missions, some with unique rewards. Also issues edicts, but they’re kinda lame.
Researching defense: Raiders will come sooner rather than later, but you can’t even research defensive towers without finding the required tools for tier 2 research via expeditions.
Electrification: Electrification improves the productivity of everything. Again, it needs at least tier 2 research to even get to the first buildings in the chain.

Hopefully this beginner guide gets you going in Endzone: A World Apart and leads to many radiant memories of radiation-filled adventures. We also have guides on other games like Wasteland 3 if you need more help in the art of survival.