Medieval Dynasty Starter Guide

Our Medieval Dynasty Starter Guide will teach you the basics of the game, walk you through the first 4 Chapters, and help you survive your first Winter!

Quicklinks: HUD Explanation | Starter Guide | F.A.Q.

Medieval Dynasty is not just a survival game. While you'll begin the game worrying about having enough Food and Water, you'll eventually Build a home and start Farming. That's not all you can do, though -- you can invite people to live in your Buildings and eventually grow a small little homestead into a bustling town. Read on to learn more about getting started with this game!

Medieval Dynasty HUD Explanation

1. Hat slot - This is where you can equip Hats. Hats are an easy way to protect yourself from the heat in the summer.
2. Shirt slot - As you might expect, this is where you can wear a shirt.
3. Gloves slot - This is where you equip gloves on your hands. Gloves are an easy way to upgrade your protection against the cold.
4. Pants slot - This is where you equip pants on your legs.
5. Shoes slot - This is where you equip shoes on your feet.
6. Hood slot - This is where you equip a hood, which covers your shoulders and head.
7. Ammo slot (Arrows, Bolts, etc.) - Ammo for your equipped weapon goes here.
8. Torch Slot - Your equipped Torch goes here if you have one.
9. Pouch slot (for Farming) - Your currently-equipped Farming Pouch goes here. These usually store Seeds or Fertilizer.
10. Bag slot - This is where you can equip a Bag on your back to increase your Weight capacity.
11. Health - This is your bog-standard HP bar. If this goes to 0, you die.
12. Hunger - Hunger represents how well-fed you are. If this reaches 0, you will start losing Health.
13. Thirst - This shows how well-hydrated you are. If this reaches 0, you will start losing health.
14. Poison - This shows how poisoned you are. Eating certain foods can raise this meter. If the Poison meter is above 0%, you'll lose Health until it returns back to 0%.
15. Drunkenness - This shows how drunk you are. Getting too drunk can impair your ability to do things.
16. Current Temperature comfort - This shows how hot or cold your character is feeling based on the white arrow. Blue is too cold, red is too warm, and green is just right.
17. Heat Resistance - This shows how much Heat Resistance you have for warmer seasons.
18. Cold Resistance - This shows how much Cold Resistance you have for colder seasons.
19. Cleanliness - This shows how clean you are. Performing work (or simply letting time pass) increases this meter. You can reduce it by swimming in a river or using a washtub.

Medieval Dynasty Starter Guide

We'll kick off this Medieval Dynasty Starter Gyude by getting right into the action -- the game doesn't make you wait terribly long before giving you your very first quest.

You've arrived in a new land only to find that a relative you were planning to visit passed away three years ago. With your parents long gone, you are now truly alone. On the upside, this is your opportunity to make a new life for yourself. As you might expect, such a complex game takes a little work to understand. It's extremely rewarding, though -- especially with the high amount of freedom that Render Cube and Toplitz Productions have provided players.

Follow the on-screen instructions and speak with the Castellan, the local representative for the King. After a short conversation, you'll be released into the world, ready and raring to forge your destiny. That all begins with building your first house.

Where to Build a House in Medieval Dynasty

The first major decision you'll have to make in this Medieval Dynasty Guide for Beginners is where to build your first house. Contrary to what you may think, there is absolutely nothing stopping you from planting down roots anywhere you'd like on the map (with the exception of existing towns and points of interest, of course).

You begin the game slightly to the East of Gostovia. This location is particularly important; this is where your relative lived and you'll have to return here at the start of every year to pay your taxes. It's not a terrible idea to build nearby this village, but you have several things you need to consider.

Let's start with buying goods. Not every town has the same kinds of merchants. Suppose you wanted to purchase goods from a Farmer vendor -- your only options are Rolnica, Gostovia, and Denica. Similar situations exist for other vendors.

You're also going to want to ensure that you have the following resources relatively near your home -- keep in mind that you'll likely expand your homestead into a full-blown village after the first year (or even sooner than that):

• A source of drinking water, such as a river
• A deeper pool of water for bathing (until you unlock the Washtub)
• Forageable food, such as berries and mushrooms
• Animals that can be hunted for Meat and Leather or Fur
• Dozens of nearby Trees
• Reeds -- near the larger rivers and lakes -- which provide Straw for building and crafting
• Near enough at least one Village for shopping and recruiting People to join your village

I personally chose to settle just to the East of Denica, right next to the little stream that cuts vertically across the Southern part of the map. While I have to make a slightly longer walk to Gostovia than if I had started at the beginning, I like being relatively close to all of the villages in the region. Keep these things in mind when you decide where you'd like to get set up, and don't forget that you can always demolish everything and start anew if you don't like your location.

Chapter 1: A New Beginning - Building Your First House

Once you've chosen a location, it's time to build your first House! Chapter I: A New Beginning helpfully provides some instructions on what to do:

• Sticks: 0/10
• Stone: 0/2
• Stone Axe: 0/1
• Wooden Hammer: 0/1
• Cut Trees: 0/5
• Straw: 0/32
• Build your first House

Your first step is to pick up the necessary Sticks and Stones off of the ground. You'll now have your first introduction to the Medieval Dynasty Crafting System -- press Q, select Handcrafting, and make a Stone Axe. After that, cut down 5 Trees; you have to chop the felled trees to split them into Logs. You can't do anything about the Stumps just yet, but you will be able to remove them later.

All of those Logs may bog you down with extra weight; you can safely drop them on the ground for now if you're overencumbered. Figure out exactly where you want to build. Next, press Q and select Building > Houses > Simple Small House. You'll see a wireframe pop up on the screen; fiddle with it until you have it in just the right place and build it.

Building your house is not that easy, though! Now you'll have to build the walls and ceilings. Take note that you'll be using simple materials here; if you press E on a wall, you can switch the walls and roof to something sturdier. Making Stone walls will take more work since you have to find all of those Stones, but it will inevitably provide a higher-quality building. Now it's time to move on to survival:

Chapter 2: A Survivalist - Surviving for One Season

Completing Chapter 1 is pretty easy, and now it's time to move on to Chapter 2: A Survivalist. As the name implies, this is all about building out your survival skills. Here's what you have to do:

• Set a trap: Rabbit Trap
• Wooden Spear: 0/1
• Stone Knife: 0/1
• Hunt a wild animal: 0/1
• Survive for a season

Let's break this down point-by-point, starting with the Rabbit Trap. This can be Built in Q > Furniture & Decorations > Traps > Rabbit Trap; all it takes is 10 sticks to Build it. A Wooden Spear can be crafted in the Handcrafting menu, as can the Stone Knife. The Wooden Spear can be used in melee or thrown. If you're going to throw it, I recommend that you Craft multiple spears. The Stone Knife is best used as a tool for skinning animals.

Now it's time to hunt your first animal. Your best bet is to simply run at a slow-moving rabbit and poke it to death with your Wooden Spear. Deer will likely run away too fast because you simply cannot do enough damage to kill them before they get out of range and you don't yet have any real ability to track them.

That leaves somewhat more dangerous animals such as Lynx, Boars, and Wolves. Get within throwing range of your Wooden Spear and manually save the game. Then, throw spears until the animal closes into melee range. You may have to finish it off in melee, but those first few throws should reduce its health enough that you can win the fight without dying. We'll move on next to that final point about surviving for a season.

How Seasons Work in Medieval Dynasty

The final point of Chapter 2 is to "survive for a Season." Don't worry, you're not going to be running around the woods for 30-90 days: Medieval Dynasty Seasons are surprisingly short by default.

A Season in Medieval Dynasty lasts for a grand total of 3 days. The game advises that you leave it at this value; increasing it to more days can make for a particularly challenging experience due to the way that Farming works.

Outside of that one anomaly, Seasons work exactly as you'd expect. You begin the game in Spring and you'll subsequently experience Summer, Fall, and your first Winter -- more on that later -- in the coming hours.

How Skills Work in Medieval Dynasty (and Which Skills You Should Take)

Since we're talking about your character, let's also briefly touch on Medieval Dynasty Skills. Skills work much like they do in Skyrim: you raise your skills simply by doing things. You increase your Hunting skill by killing animals, you increase your Production skill by Crafting items, and so on.

Leveling up your Skills is necessary to unlock new Buildings and Crafting recipes. You'll also get a Skill Point to spend for that particular tree; I recommend first investing in the "Knowledge" skills to further speed up your progression.

Note that there are also "Tiers" of Skills -- you need to spend at least one point in Tier 1 before you can spend a point in Tier 2. You'll then need to spend one point in Tier 2 to access Tier 3, and later one point in Tier 3 to access Tier 4.

There's one exception to investing in Knowledge: I strongly recommend that you get the Tier 2 Hunting Skill "Prowler" and the Tier 2 Survival Skill "Survival Sense" -- these will allow you to easily see animals and forageable/collectible items, respectively, simply by entering Inspector Mode with the Alt key.

Chapter 3: Good Morning My Neighbours

Moving on, it's time to talk about Quests, Side Quests, and the NPCs of the world. Quests and Side Quests can give you all sorts of neat rewards, along with the all-valuable "Dynasty Reputation."

Dynasty Reputation is exactly what it says on the tin: it's the world's perception of you and your family. This is effectively like an XP bar for your entire village. You'll have to cross certain thresholds to expand to larger villages. If you hit -10,000 Dynasty reputation, you lose the game.

Here's what you need to do for Chapter III: Good morning my neighbors:

• Complete some quests for neighbours: 0/3
• Spend a skill point in any Skill Tree: 0/1
• Successful flirting: 0/1

That "flirting" bit is also an important part of building your dynasty and carrying on your family name, so that's what we're tackling next.

As I said earlier in this guide, this is half a survival game and half a village builder. Part of expanding your village involves simply talking to people surrounding Campfires in town and asking them to move in. (That is, of course, assuming that you have some spare housing and empty beds for them.)

What may be more important, though, is finding yourself a wife. You can find out who is eligible for marriage simply by hitting the "Romance" option in the conversation menu. From there, you can talk with a woman to learn about her personality and Flirt with her. Once you've successfully Flirter with someone (and completed the other objectives), it's already time to move on to Chapter 4.

Chapter 4: Into the Wilderness - Expanding Your Town

If you've strictly followed this Medieval Dynasty Guide for Beginners, the only building you'll have at the moment is a single Simple House. We've finally reached the time to build more buildings and expand!

Here's what you need to do for Chapter IV:

• Construct buildings; Hunting Lodge
• Hunt: (Boar | Fox) 0/3

Note that you need to hunt either Boars or Foxes. As long as you kill 3 total of either of those two animals, you'll complete that objective.

What if you want to move some more people in, though? Well, you're going to want to build a handful of other buildings first. I recommend that you unlock and build the following buildings at the bare minimum:

• Simple House (which you should have by now)
• A Second Simple House - Optional, but a good idea
• Hunting Lodge (Survival 50 required) - required for Chapter 4 objectives and allows you to craft a Bow
• Resource Storage I (Building 50 required) - allows your People to access and store resources such as Firewood and Stone.
• Food Storage I (Farming 5 required) - allows your People to access and store Food.

You may also want to build some other structures such as a Workshop II or a Woodshed I to employ your People and get some help with resource collection and item production.

Mind, you don't have to move people in right away -- I've been taking my time slowly building up my town, collecting resources, and improving my character. Remember that you have to provide Food and Water for your People -- they'll abandon you if you don't provide for them!

Surviving Your First Winter

If you've been keeping a reasonable pace, you're likely approaching your first Medieval Dynasty Winter. You've probably acquired some Food, made a little Coin, and maybe even started Crafting some items to sell. Another big challenge is on the horizon, though! As a great man once said: Winter is coming.

The clothes you begin the game with are wholly inadequate for Winter. If you're too cold, you'll take HP damage and will eventually freeze to death. You can use a lit Torch or Campfire to keep yourself warm, but that makes it awfully hard to move around in the world.

The solution is to get yourself some good, warm clothes. I simply bought a pair of Thick Leather Gloves, a Strawhat, and a pair of Fur Boots from the store in Denica and I was toasty warm.

If you have any People in your village, they will need Wood to stay warm. Note the daily "Wood demand" in the Management Screen. Make sure you don't empty out your stockpile!

Paying Your Taxes - The End of Your First Year

And now, we come to the conclusion of the Medieval Dynasty Starter Guide with something that is as inevitable as your death: paying taxes.

The start of every Spring requires that you visit the Castellan and pay an amount of Coin based on how many buildings and crop fields you own. You can see the tax for each of these items in Management > Buildings, and you can see your total Taxes (and any Debt you may owe) on the right side of the Management screen.

To pay your taxes, simply take the required amount of Coin to the Castellan in Gostovia and speak with them. You'll pay up and then you're all set for the year -- everything leftover is yours to keep!

Medieval Dynasty F.A.Q.

What is Medieval Dynasty?

Medieval Dynasty is, on its face, a survival game -- you'll need to manage your Food, Water, and Temperature to stay alive. You'll do this in a fairly large open world with multiple towns, dozens of NPCs, and deadly animals all around you. That's only half of the equation, though -- you're also trying to rebuild your life after fleeing war. This means you'll have to find a wife. And if you're going to go to all of that work, why not build a town and move some people in, too? With a couple dozen hours of hard work, you can become a wealthy landowner just like your family once was.

Is Medieval Dynasty Multiplayer?

No, Medieval Dynasty is not multiplayer. However, Toplitz Productions has added co-op to the development roadmap and this feature is planned to launch before the end of 2023.

Where is the Medieval Dynasty Save File?

The Medieval Dynasty Save File can be found in:

C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Medieval_Dynasty\Saved\SaveGames

Where "USERNAME" is your Windows username.

What Happens When You Die in Medieval Dynasty?

If you die in Medieval Dynasty, you will have to load an earlier save to continue playing. If you have an Heir who is over the age of 18, however, you can choose to continue playing the game by taking control of the Heir.

Is Medieval Dynasty Related to Wild West Dynasty?

Yes, Medieval Dynasty is related to Wild West Dynasty. Wild West Dynasty is essentially the same style of game and created by the same publisher. The main difference is that it has a wild west theme instead of a medieval theme.

Is Medieval Dynasty Related to Sengoku Dynasty?

Yes, Medieval Dynasty is related to Sengoku Dynasty. Sengoku Dynasty is another game in the same style as Medieval Dynasty, although it will have a Japanese theme instead of a medieval theme.

That's it for our Medieval Dynasty Starter Guide, but you're just getting started --  there's so much more to learn about this game! Check out our other guides to learn about some of the more involved systems or get answers to the burning questions you might have about the game. Good luck and have fun!