Have you ever imagined life as a rat? Ratopia allows you to build your own rodent settlement in a fantastical land. This city builder is fully hands-on, and the entire colony can crumble if you misstep even once as a leader. Even with the tutorial to guide you along the way, Ratopia can be a bit much for beginners without a few tips on surviving a base-building game like this.
Getting Started in Ratopia – Beginners Guide
The setup process in Ratopia is an important start for beginners as it guides them through the character creation. You can craft your perfect rat leader from fur to clothes. Even more fun is that you can create your own banner to stick into the ground once you reach that point in the story. Beyond that, the setup also gives you two vital settings to tweak:
- Difficulty
- Tutorial
Difficulty Settings
Like most games, Ratopia gives you a handful of difficulty options. One of the best picks for me is Normal. Easy offers a pure, laidback experience with little to no challenge. Meanwhile, Normal holds as a comfortable middle ground. You’ll see challenges, but there’s some comfortable hand-holding, too.
My best tip for beginners in Ratopia is to not start with the Hard setting. It presents too many challenges (disgruntled ratizens right away, short invasion cycle, etc.) that you cannot handle just yet.
Tutorial Mode: Yes or No?
If you want Ratopia to guide you along the way, another strong recommendation for beginners is to keep the Tutorial mode turned on. You’ll crave it when you start playing otherwise. It offers all the tips you can use to start building your colony.
Building, Gathering, Mining, and More
Speaking of building, Ratopia provides a compelling twist on the “city building” aspect. You are creating a colony, just underground. It can seem intimidating to build, mine, and gather everything yourself. Thankfully, you don’t have to.
Once you unlock access to take in migrants, utilize them as much as possible. If you select “Q,” you will notice a gather option near the build tool. Select it and then click the areas you want your ratizens to gather. From there, they will spring into action.
Also, once you lay blueprints down, your fellow ratizens will also jump in to lend a helping hand. It makes things far easier so you can focus on everything else. Be sure to mine often so they have resources to gather for you. Remember that you cannot build anything of use if there’s nothing underneath to support it.
Beginners Guide To Ratizen Happiness
An important feature that beginners must never ignore in Ratopia is how a ratizen feels, and trust me, those feelings will guide you to what they need. Notifications arrive in the top right corner to highlight various issues, such as a ratizen feeling hungry, tired, or generally upset.
Interaction
On occasion, ratizens will want to speak with you. In this case, track them down and interact with them. You have to make a decision in this case that comes with consequences, but for the most part, they help. For instance, they might suggest building services you’ve yet to add.
Fulfilling Needs
As beginners, you will notice how much Ratopia guides you to ensure ratizens stay content. Otherwise, you’ll deal with a revolt, and no one wants things to get that bloody, right? Instead, build structures that will satisfy them. The more ratizens you add, the more beds and bathrooms you need. Don’t forget things like the Circus Stand or Massage for added happiness. If you need help, remember to research to unlock additional buildings.
Beginners Guide to Defense in Ratopia
There’s a reason your little rat hand can also hold a sword at the start of the game. There are creatures that lurk around the area. At times, they’ll invade. So, you want to stay aware of the notifications that something is attacking your colony. If they break through, they’ll damage your structures and wound your ratizens.
Here’s another Ratopia tip for you: You can destroy an enemy’s home base to lessen the attacks. Do note that the creatures will come out and attack as you would when they come to disrupt your home. If you’re not equipped for it, retreat as the enemies can quickly overwhelm you. It pays to build training grounds so you can develop some soldiers among the ratizens to help out. Barricades help slow things down, too.
If there are any injuries or damage, repair the structures to keep ratizens happy. Also, you can interact with wounded ratizens and carry them to any bed, even if they aren’t assigned to it for healing. As for our fearless leader, you need the Royal Bed to heal up if you don’t have a medical structure yet.
The features discussed above are things beginners will experience in under 10 days in Ratopia. This is why it’s helpful to nail down these basics so you aren’t left for dead before you can even plant your banner flag. Or worse, left with revolting, fire-starting ratizens.
Ratopia is available for PC via Steam.
