The Wandering Village Onbu Guide

Knowing how to properly take care of and garner friendship with the Onbu is key to your success in The Wandering Village. After all, you won't be able to keep your people alive for long if the creature carrying it is constantly angry with you, desperate for rest and on the verge of starving to death. Fortunately, we're here to make sure you know everything about the subject with our Wandering Village Onbu guide, which will help you understand the best ways to take care of your titanically sized landlord and keep his trust in you as high as possible.

The Wandering Village Onbu Guide - Basics

Before digging into the more complicated points of this Wandering Village Onbu guide, it's worth touching on the basics of the Onbu and what it requires.

Like your Villagers, the Onbu will have certain needs you'll have to be aware of and address as necessary. Most all of them directly impact the creature's Health, which is shown in the top right corner of the screen. Failing to prevent the Onbu's Health from hitting zero will result in a Game Over, so keeping your ancient friend healthy is key to a successful playthrough.

This means keeping an eye on and managing three specific needs at any given time. For starters, the Onbu will only be able to travel for so long before it requires Sleep, and failing to do so could negatively impact its health and ability to travel quickly. This means you should always give it proper time to rest. When it decides it needs to sleep, leave it be and avoid waking it up to travel to a different location unless absolutely necessary - i.e., if it collapses in a poisonous area where sleeping could negatively impact its health.

You'll also need to make sure its Hunger stat is properly managed. Like with Villagers, the Onbu will need a steady supply of food to remain happy and healthy. Though it can happen across food on its own based on where you go in the world, there will be long stretches where you'll be the primary provider of sustenance for the lovable behemoth. You can cultivate Mushrooms to make it meals using a Mycologist building, which will be made available to you fairly early on in the game.

The Mushrooms can then be made into a meal via an Onbu Kitchen and launched up to the Onbu's Mouth via a Trebuchet; both of which are fairly easy to build and which the game will help you make fairly early on.

Finally, you'll need to make sure your Onbu doesn't build up too much Poison Toxins. This occurs when it spends too much time in Poisoned areas, and leaving it untreated can result in the creature's health nosediving. Do your best to get it through and out of Poisoned areas as quickly as possible. If its Poison buildup gets too bad, construct an Onbu Doctor building to get it back to a healthy state as quickly as possible.

All of these stats can be viewed at anytime via the indicators in the upper righthand corner of the screen. Monitor these carefully, and react accordingly should any of them reach a concerning level.

How to Build Onbu Trust

However, this isn't the only factor you'll need to keep in mind for The Wandering Village's Onbu. You'll also need to build a sense of Trust between it and yourself, which is easier said than done when the going gets rough.

At several points in the game, you'll be given the opportunity to do something that helps your Villagers but harms the Onbu. This includes things like harvesting its spines for resources despite the pain it puts the Onbu through; harvesting its blood for food and resources despite the negative impact it has on the creature; and forcing it to keep moving toward a more agreeable climate despite it being too tired to keep going.

While choosing to indulge in these opportunities will be beneficial to your Village, choosing to forgo them can be just as fruitful. This is because the Onbu will listen to you more if you restrain yourself from putting its wellbeing on the back-burner. This is paramount to having a long and successful playthrough, as you'll have several instances where you'll need to tell the Onbu where to go, which areas to avoid and how to keep itself from winding up in a dangerous situation.

To that end, it's always recommended to put the Onbu's health and wellbeing above quick rewards for your Village. This will keep the Onbu happy and trusting, allowing you to guide it through the increasingly dangerous world without issue.

How to Give the Onbu Commands

This leads nicely into the last point of our The Wandering Village Onbu guide: Issuing commands to the Onbu.

Early on, you'll gain access to the Hornblower building. with it, you can issue simple commands to the Onbu such as waking up and moving to a different place to sleep or choosing a particular path when the road it's traveling on splits. Issuing the right commands can be paramount to ensuring the health and well-being of the Onbu, especially as you get into the later parts of the game.

As mentioned above though, the likelihood of the Onbu listening to you will be directly impacted by its trust in you. This means it's less likely to listen to you if you've recently or regularly hurt it for your own gains, or if you're constantly putting its needs behind those of your Villagers.

Keep this in mind as you progress through the game, and take the actions necessary to ensure the Onbu will listen to you when you need to issue commands to it.

Hopefully this The Wandering Village Onbu guide gives you a better idea of what caring for the ancient beast entails. For more on the game, check out our review of the Early Access build as well as our guides on topics like how to farm properly and how to manage your Villagers' needs.