Dice Legacy Guide for Beginners

Destinybit has created a pretty cool roguelite survival city builder on PC. In this Dice Legacy Guide for Beginners, I'll tell you everything you need to know to get started with this game.

What is Dice Legacy?

Dice Legacy is a game that mixes together several different genres in some pretty surprising ways. On its face, it's a city builder... but there's also a fair amount of combat that takes place, too. There are roguelite elements in the game as well, owing to the fact that your units are represented by dice.

Each side of the die allows for a different function. The pickaxe icon, for example, can be used to gather resources. The gear icon can be used for farming or processing wheat. Each side of a die has multiple uses. What makes this game especially challenging is that each of your dice also has a durability score. It dies when the durability reaches zero, so careful management of your resources is important as well.

Dice Legacy Guide for Beginners - How to Play Dice Legacy

I'll be covering the "Stranded" campaign throughout the Dice Legacy Guide for Beginners. This is the only campaign scenario that's available to players and I found it to be surprisingly challenging -- I ended up having to restart it several times.

Your adventure begins with a handful of Dice, some gear icons on the shore, and an unfinished Cookhouse. Start things off by assigning a Hammer Die to the Cookhouse to complete construction. This building consumes 1 Food to restore 8 durability (out of a maximum of 16) to one of your dice.

As your dice handle their work, you'll note that a timer is counting down. DIce Legacy is not a turn-based game; it operates in real-time. It should be noted that there's a fair amount of randomization in the game, too -- restarting a scenario will likely provide you with different placements for resources.

The seasons progress in real-time, too, and we're going to want to get to work preparing for your first winter. That means you'll need to learn all about producing food.

How to Get Food and Ale in Dice Legacy

Getting Food in Dice Legacy isn't all that difficult in the early game. Aside from the leftovers from your shipwreck, there may also be Hunting Grounds spread throughout the map. However, none of these sources of food are renewable, and you will definitely need a renewable source of food throughout the game.

Your first goal will be to collect some materials. Roll your Dice until you get the Pickaxe symbol and have them collect Wood, Stone, and Iron by placing them on resource nodes. You may have to expand your map northward with a District Hall to get Iron; fortunately, it's pretty cheap to build one.

Ultimately, your goal is to build the following as shown in the above image:

• A District Hall
  • Upgrade the District Hall to a Peasant District
• 2 Wheat Farms
• A Mill
• A Brewery
• A Tavern
• A Steam Generator
• A House
• 2 Cookhouses

This will allow you to regularly produce Wheat and turn it into Ale (which unfreezes dice that get frozen in Winter) or Food (which can restore Dice durability). The House will allow you to produce more Peasant Dice pretty quickly, and you're going to want to focus on getting up to a full complement of 12 as soon as you can to speed up work.

Another key goal is upgrading your District Hall to a Peasant District; this will require the use of one Peasant Die and 2 Gold (which can randomly be acquired from Stone Mines and Iron Mines). Why do this? Well, there are several Policies that can protect buildings placed within a Peasant District. This will allow you a fair amount of flexibility should you be lucky enough to get a good one; here are some of the more appealing Policies you can get:

• Workers are immune to Freeze within a Peasant District.
• Peasant District buildings are Immune to Fire.
• Wheat Farms in a Peasant District can be worked during Winter.

Each and every run will be different. Odds are you'll get at least one of these powerful policies, so establishing your Food production within the Peasant District is a solid move. You'll also have a fair amount of Ale on hand which can be used to remove the Frozen effect from Dice at a Tavern.

Dice Legacy Guide for Beginners - Surviving Your First Winter

Even in the best-case scenario, it's unlikely that you'll finish everything before the first Winter arrives until you have a lot more practice with the game. Your key focus should be building a Steam Generator (which requires 5 Iron) and collecting a ton of Wood to fuel it.

Building this Steam Generator will allow your workers to continue to be productive throughout the winter season. If you don't have a Steam Generator, your dice will get the Frozen effect and will be rendered unusable until the following Summer comes along. Always try to save up enough Wood for Winter!

There are two key things you need to know for Winter. Firstly, your dice will have a 30% chance of getting Frozen during the worst part of the season if they work in any area not covered by an active Steam Generator. The second key point is that you can add multiple units of Wood to extend the timer before the Steam Generator burns out; I recommend using at least 12 Wood per Steam Generator to cover the worst of the season.

Should you encounter a scenario where you run out of Wood, it's probably a good idea to stop working until the Freeze percentage chance dips lower to 15% or 5%. 1 in 6 or 1 in 20 odds of getting Frozen are much better than 1 in 3 odds, after all.

Making the Most of Your Second Year (and Second Winter)

Once everything thaws out, you'll want to continue to build out your Peasant District and all of the other things in the surrounding area. After that's done, it's time to expand once again.

Build another Steam Generator to cover a new section of land. This time, you're going to build the following:

• District Hall
  • Upgrade it to a Citizen District
• A School
• A Workshop

The School will let you convert Peasant Dice into Citizen Dice. Citizen Dice have a different set of faces, including a unique "Book" face that can be used for Research.

How Dice Legacy Research Works

Dice Legacy Research requires a School, a Workshop, and three Citizen Dice. You'll have to convert at least 3 Peasant Dice into Citizen Dice at the school. Then, roll your Citizen Dice until they have the book symbol and place them on the Workshop. The Citizen Dice will eventually give you a single Knowledge Point.

Research is separated into several tiers. The earliest stuff can be unlocked with just one Knowledge Point, but higher tiers will require more Knowledge Points. You'll also have to spend Wood, Stone, and Metal to unlock the ability to use these higher tiers.

It's best to take your time doing Research because you will unlock some truly powerful upgrades. I particularly recommend the "Rations" tech in the Civic tree; it will make Cookhouses heal for an extra four points of durability, an effective 50% increase. You can also speed up the game by increasing resource gathering and the like.

Building Up Your Military -- Year 3 and Beyond

With Food production and Research capabilities up and running, your next step is to start building up your military. To do that, you're going to need to place a Barracks to make Soldier Dice.

Soldier Dice have more Sword faces, making it easier for them to engage in combat. Unfortunately, they're not all that great for anything outside of combat. I recommend having no more than two Soldier Dice for the start of your first game; you can always get more later.

How to Maintain Happiness in Dice Legacy

The addition of a third Dice Class also happens to bring some problems thanks to the "Happiness" mechanic. To keep it short and simple, gaining new Dice or accepting a Policy in a class can increase Happiness and losing dice or picking an opposing Policy can reduce Happiness.

Happiness is very important -- if the Happiness for a particular Class gets too low, there can be some serious negative consequences. Angry Peasants, for example, will literally burn down your buildings, so bottoming out the Happiness bar is to be avoided at all costs.

Thankfully, there's a simple solution with the "Town Square" building. This can be used to hold a festival for any Dice Class of your choice and increase its happiness for the paltry cost of some work, one piece of Food, and two pieces of Ale. You're going to want to set this up as soon as you start building your military in earnest. You should run a festival for any Dice Class that gets below roughly 50% on its respective Happiness bar.

Discarding Dice and 'Holding' Dice with Buildings

Before we wrap up the Dice Legacy Guide for Beginners, I want to touch on one more important concept: discarding and "holding" dice.

Normally, you can only have a total of 12 Dice in your inventory. If a job completes and you go over this limit, you will be forced to discard Dice. There is, however, a way to hold onto extra Dice without too many issues.

I like to build a bunch of extra District Halls off to the side. Each District Hall can hold one of your Dice, easily saving it for later use with minimal consequences. Your best bet is to save up Soldier Dice so that you can rapidly deploy them for any oncoming attackers.

How to Beat the 'Stranded' Scenario

By now, you have a pretty solid understanding of Dice Legacy's underlying mechanics. Now it's time to apply them to actually beat the first Campaign scenario.

You've probably noticed the prompts on the top of the screen telling you what to build next. The game does a pretty solid job of explaining advanced concepts I haven't touched on here, so you should simply follow along with the prompts and learn about all of the mechanics.

This leads us to our final objective: finding the source of the neverending attacks against your Settlement. As you might expect, this is going to be an enemy village — you're going to need a lot of Soldiers to take it down. I recommend saving up at least 8 Soldiers and learning the ability to produce Catapults.

You may also notice other Dice Classes that you can unlock such as the Merchant Class and Monk Class. I don't think these would be strictly necessary to actually win this scenario, so you can hold off on building them.

You're going to want to think defensively, too. Unlock the Tower technology and build two towers side-by-side ahead of your base; these will easily defeat most oncoming groups of attackers, saving your precious Soldier Dice for more serious combat. Once you have a comfortably large army and some defensive Towers in place, it's time to move further north.

The pace of their attacks will really pick up once you've discovered the village at the other end of the map. Make sure you are well-prepared for a lengthy battle. Use either Catapults or Soldiers to break down buildings and place District Halls to expand your territory.  All you have to do is destroy the enemy Town Hall and you'll win the scenario.

That's pretty much it for the Dice Legacy Guide for Beginners. I've only scratched the surface with this guide; this is a highly challenging game even on normal difficulty. You should go in expecting to lose several times before you'll finally earn that dub. Good luck!