Dream Engines: Nomad Cities Guide For Beginners

With all city builders, finding out how to start the game and have a successful beginning is always difficult, but something worth finding out to have a strong game overall. Dream Engines: Nomad Cities makes it slightly harder; you have a very limited amount of city to build with, as it floats away when you need to make a quick escape, or you’ve run out of resources in the place you are currently boarded in. However, don’t let that deter you. There is a tutorial that will help you figure out the basics, but there are a few more things that you should know if you want to have a successful Nomad City.

Dream Engines: Nomad Cities —Plan Efficiently

One of the most important things in this game is to be organised with your buildings, your rails, and utilise your space efficiently. Whilst the city has a limit of tiles you can use, you can build outside of the city, for things like walls and gates for defense. However, you’re going to need to put your essential buildings within the city walls so that they are connected to the city for power. You’ll want to have your railings as neat as possible so that you have enough space for all of your buildings. As you can see above in my Dream Engine city, it’s a bit of a mess. However, you can demolish the railings with no punishment at all as you gain back your resources, making it very easy to restart and clean the city as you need. In the top left, it shows you your most important resources. 

To be able to have all the extra buildings in your city, such as a wood warper or a flux vat, you’re going to need workers. Which to get more of, you’re going to need to build more houses, which in turn needs to have a constant food supply. Which is why it’s very important to remember to build a Purptato farm or two, as it’s very easy to forget that you don’t have a pre-existing resource. 

Tower Defense

As you can see in the above screenshot, there are Drep guarding the supplies. They are surrounding the bloodwood supply, and you’ll need to kill them to be able to access it. 

To make sure that you are able to protect your city when the time comes, you’re going to want to be well-stocked on repair kits to make sure Tiny can survive. As the time passes (called cycles in the game) your threat level will go up, and you will experience Drep raids. You will experience one fairly early into the game, and you are responsible for killing the mobs that attack the city. You will be able to build wooden walls. However, they are rather flimsy and won’t protect for long. As long as you have a good supply of wood, which you will be able to access during your first bouts of exploration, then you should be good to go. When you experience an attack, you will notice that if they get into the city, they demolish the buildings fairly quickly, which can make things quite stressful in the moment.

One of the good things is that the mobs are pretty easy to kill early on, and there aren’t that many during a raid that you have to deal with. It is recommended to build up a defense early on, and you can unlock better defense options through the research table, which you will access once your city has a higher population. During these first couple of raids, it is essential that you have the repair kits. If you don’t, it’s unlikely you’ll survive them, even if they are small.

You are given time to prepare, and you will see an icon on the map when the Drep are coming, which is very helpful as you can intercept them on their route to your base, and start attacking them first before they even get a chance to get to your base. It is important to keep in mind that the longer you stay in the Nomad City that you’re in, the higher chance that the Dream population will get agitated, and attack you in higher strength raids. 

Travelling Abroad

One of the most important features of Dream Engines: Nomad Cities, is the fact that your city can travel. Your city can fly, and by doing so, it can take you to new lands and give you access to supplies that you may not have had access to when you started. For example, one land may give you access to a Tech Ruin, which will give you the opportunity to build modules that you may not already have. If you can’t build them, you can scrap them for supplies, which can definitely come in handy. Before choosing where to travel, it’s important you look at all the notes beneath the pictures of the cities.

As well, you have to make a decision on whether you are willing to reap the benefits of a town, but risk having a higher threat level overall upon entering the city, and whether you are able to defend your town well enough to successfully get as much as you can out of that city you landed in. If none of the cities that they have shown you seem worth it to you, you can use two of your fuel to get access to other cities that may have better rewards for you upon landing. In the above screenshot showing you the destinations, by hovering over each icon it tells you the statistics of the place you might end up going to, and whether it will be worth the fuel for you to go there. It is important to read these and consider if they will have enough resources for you to be able to survive.

Education across the nation 

One of the most important things that you’ll unlock early in the game is the research lab. Make sure you have enough space for it, because it is the key to progression and expansion within the game. It’ll help you unlock new supplies that you’ll need to upgrade your buildings, such as starwood. Another great thing it offers is free expansions if you research them. However, they will take a couple of cycles to complete, so keep that in mind as you may face raids and you’ll want to keep your research lab protected. Make sure that you have ample supplies to be able to research, as some of them are done quickly, allowing you to move on and craft more important things, such as the starwood armor and free expansion as you can see below in my research table. 

Once you have the research lab, creating a workshop is equally important, as it creates supplies out of your pre-existing inventory to allow you to upgrade the stats of your character, Tiny. It will allow you to upgrade stats such as how much damage you deal, how much loot you get from corpses, or even speed up the production rate back in your city. It’s very important to get this unlocked early on, and make sure that you have enough happy workers to be able to man the building. 

That is all the tips and tricks for Dream Engines: Nomad Cities you need to help you get started. Always make sure you have plenty of resources, a lot of repair kits, and prepare to kick butt against the Drep raids to protect your city at all costs.