Your first two hours in Wild West Pioneers

Place the Town Hall, get a staffed warehouse and a supply of logs going, then unlock tents and give every resident a roof, water and food. Once the residents are looked after, whims, gold and scouting open up one after another. The order matters more than it looks: during the open playtest, almost half of the players who tried it stopped inside the very first quest.

Why almost half of playtesters stalled on the first quest

The team measured it. After the open playtest it wrote that “we learned that 45% of you have dropped off during the very first quest.” (Written in Steam announcement: Playtest Retrospective) The causes it found were quest text that did not match the guidance, and players who had switched the tutorial off with nothing left to go on.

Three things changed during the playtest and carry into Early Access. The first quest was reworded and rebalanced so you cannot lock yourself out of progress early. The Tutorial Assistant, Jesse, can be switched back on after you close him, instead of staying away until the next quest. And for players who prefer no assistant at all, dynamic prompts now show up: “They appear after you're inactive for a while and point you toward the relevant video and written guides”. (All three are described in the same post, Steam announcement: Playtest Retrospective) If you feel lost, reopening Jesse is the fastest fix; he breaks each objective into small tasks.

The opening, step by step

The same eleven steps, in the same order, are a tick-off checklist on the home page that remembers where you are.

1. Place the Town Hall You choose the spot, and the buildable area is large. Water is the first thing to weigh: “Settle next to the river, and water access is free.” Settle away from it and you will be building wells and water tanks early. (Said in Steam announcement: Walk Your Own Journey (Dev Spotlight)) Then watch the bottom bar: “Shortly after placing your town hall, a fourth button appears on your bottom bar: your Journey.” It holds your progression tasks and the Ideas tree where buildings are unlocked. How it pays out is on the journey points page. The game also has you pick the Town Hall’s first official at this point, a choice you can’t undo; the three options are compared below.
2. Build a warehouse and staff it Everything you gather is carried to a warehouse, and the ring around it marks its working range, so production buildings need to sit inside that ring. The assistant suggests placing it near a big patch of trees. Filling it with workers is also one of the first quick wins: “small tasks like building a warehouse and staffing it to full range, each rewarding journey points.” (Said in Steam announcement: Walk Your Own Journey (Dev Spotlight))
3. Get logs coming in Your party arrives with a few leftover logs stacked by the Town Hall, which is not enough for long. Put a logger’s cabin by the trees, inside the warehouse ring, and assign workers. If a building lands outside the ring, move it; the team’s own let’s-play simply relocates it. (Shown in Let's Play With Marty (Toplitz Productions))
4. Unlock tents and house everyone The Residents’ Needs objective now sends you to the tent unlock first, and journey points were rebalanced so you can afford it straight away. (Changed in Steam announcement: Playtest Hotfix) Then build tents until nobody is left outside. This is not cosmetic: “Homeless residents can’t work, satisfaction drops”. (Said in Steam announcement: Life on the Frontier, Residents' Needs)
5. Put a well on groundwater By a river, houses draw water from it. Away from it, a well has to sit on underground water, which the underground water view shows, and water tanks stretch its reach. During the demo the publisher added: “At this stage of development, it's mandatory to build houses inside the blue circle around the well.” (Said by the publisher in Steam discussions: publisher reply on wells and housing range)
6. Feed the town “Mushrooms gathered from nearby forests and hunted game can provide the first reliable meals.” (Said in Steam announcement: The Pioneer's Journal #3, The Frontier Table) In the builds creators played, the quest asks for a kitchen producing soup and a food shop close to the tents, with mushroom gatherers supplying the kitchen. (Shown in Wild West Pioneers Full Gameplay (RonEmpire, YouTube)) The shop itself has to be in range of both the tents and a warehouse. Don’t panic if people stay hungry for a moment. In the demo the publisher explained that “The food shop delivers meal to the settlers once per day”. (Said by the publisher in Steam discussions: publisher reply on food shop deliveries) The longer chains are on the food page.
7. Finish Residents’ Needs In the launch footage the objective has four lines: unlock the tent, no homeless residents out of 30, all 30 able to buy food at the Food Shop, and water for all 6 houses. Finishing it is what lets the next stage start. (Shown in Wild West Pioneers Gameplay (PC) (GameZine, YouTube, launch-day footage)) Whims only start appearing once it is complete, so this is also when houses begin showing an exclamation mark. Click it to see what the household wants. How to fulfil them is on the whims page.
8. Hand in the 50 Gold An early quest asks for 50 gold, and you do not need to mine for it: “Your starting settlement now provides enough gold to complete the 50 Gold quest.” (Said in Steam announcement: Playtest Hotfix) The rest of the debt is covered on the gold page.
9. Sawmill, planks, cabins “A sawmill turns those logs into planks, and planks turn a tent into a wooden cabin.” (Said in Steam announcement: The Pioneer's Journal #8, From Tents to Cabins) The sawmill is unlocked in the Ideas tab, and in the team’s let’s-play it is also the step that opens a wider range of buildings, such as the barber and the potato farm. (Shown in Let's Play With Marty (Toplitz Productions))
10. Scouts’ Cabin and canned goods The main quest will want scouts eventually, but when you build the cabin is your call. Before sending anyone out: “Your Scouts will need supplies, so make sure to pack them well with canned goods before sending them out!” (Said in Steam announcement: The Pioneer's Journal #6, Into the Uncharted Lands) Expeditions in general are on the scouts page.
11. The buried treasure: fetch the shovel One of the early scouting jobs is a treasure map, and the dig stalls because nobody packed a shovel. It is the next place people get stuck, with its own help thread on the Steam forum; where the shovel is has the answer and the clip.

Working inside the warehouse ring

Most early stalls come back to range. A building outside every warehouse ring produces nothing anyone can collect, and a food shop out of range of the tents feeds nobody. The team describes the ring plainly: “the circle is indicating the working range of the warehouse”. (Said in Steam announcement: Your Frontier Settlement, A Closer Look) When you place a building, the game now shows how well it will work in that spot, and moving one carries no real penalty, so fix a bad spot early rather than building a second warehouse to cover it. (Both shown in Let's Play With Marty (Toplitz Productions))

Choosing the first official

Right after the Town Hall goes up, the game asks you to pick its first official, and the pop-up warns that the choice “cannot be changed later”. Three names were on offer in the gameplay footage released at launch: (Shown in Wild West Pioneers Gameplay (PC) (GameZine, YouTube, launch-day footage))

Nothing on screen says one is the right pick. Amos pays off if you keep people happy, since his downside only bites when they are angry; Virgil helps most in the rush to house thirty people; Isaac only matters once you settle a second place. Appointing a first official in Dust Creek, and later all three, are both Steam achievements. (Listed on the game's Steam achievements page)

The numbers on screen at launch

These are read off the gameplay footage GameZine released the minute Early Access opened, in build 0.1.0 18818. Creators who played before launch saw the same numbers, so the cost cut the team promised after the playtest (“we're reducing the cost of every building available in your first two hours of play”) looks to be already in them. (Promised in Steam announcement: Playtest Retrospective) If a patch moves a number, the costs panel in the Ideas tree has the final word.

(Read from Wild West Pioneers Gameplay (PC) (GameZine, YouTube, launch-day footage)). Journey point prices for each idea are on the journey points page.

Related

Next steps from here: journey points and ideas, residents’ needs and whims, food chains, gold and the debt, scouts and expeditions and the buried treasure shovel. What comes after the opening, quest by quest, is on quest order and achievements.