Even though my posts so far were only about my work as a developer, Rise to Ruins presented a nice opportunity to write a post about a game. Unlike many other games, Rise to Ruins actually doesn't really tell you that much about it's goal. It's pretty simple you might think, you just have to survive, right? But how you do it wasn't clear from the start, not for me at least.
After installing the game I quickly started playing the World Map. I failed several regions and doomed the world quite a few times. The saving grace for playing the World Map is that the bonuses you unlock from opening chests, on the World Map view, with God Experience will persist, even after dooming the world in order to restart.
However, after several attempts I was really looking for how to actually play this game. Basically, the Corruption that spreads after the first night really goes everywhere. You can prevent the Corruption from spreading by building Fire Pits. Build some towers and maybe walls to defend yourself. But... can I actually win this game and beat the corruption?
Yes, you can! I stumbled onto https://gameplay.tips/guides/8235-rise-to-ruins.html, which did help me a lot. It just left some things unclear and I think I can do a better job showing you how to beat the Corruption. Also it mentioned covering the whole map with Corruption Resistance, but I did not and found no need for it.
Disclaimer
Before you think it will be easy; prepare to doom the world (at the top of the World Map view) a few times and start over many many times! There are two main reasons for this; firstly because you might not have played this game a lot and need to learn it. Secondly; the bonuses I retained after many tries might have probably helped me a lot. So with those bonuses it might just get easy enough after a while.
Region
The World Map consists of many different regions, but one of them has a unique advantage for you, the player; it’s an island! To be more specific, there is one main island on which you will settle and several smaller islands surrounding it. I’m talking about Survival Island, all the way down south.
The Corruption, which spawns after the first night, will spawn on either the north west island or the south east island. To my knowledge those are the only possibilities. I only have experience in beating it on the south east island. The north west island is hard to reach, except for when you’ve placed the base camp all up north, which doesn’t work since the corruption might spawn south.
Anyway, Fire Elementals cannot cross the water, so it acts as a natural barrier against them. The only exception is winter, when the water can become completely frozen. Then they can cross the ice and wreak havoc on you.
Let’s get started
So you start on Survival Island, place your base camp in the middle around the two Bow Towers, a house and Lumber Camp you can reclaim. Leave the Bow Towers at first, just claim the Lumber Camp and the House. To get to the House you need to claim the Wooden Gate.
Build some small Fire Pits towards the south west, through the forest. You might want to remove some trees to go around a corner easier, but just chain more Fire Pits together, that’s faster.
Basics
I’m not going into specifics all the time, I’m assuming you know how the game works and if not you’re learning to fill in the gaps on some retries.
Anyway put some workers into the Lumber Camp when you can. I made the mistake in assigning to many workers as Builders, which works but is way slower. When you have some Ancillary eventually, you need more Organizers then Builders. I’m not sure what perfect ratios are, but Organizers should probably be double the amount of Builders you have. Also make sure you have enough Lumberjacks/Miners/etc., check the stockpile of Wood/Rock/Crystal at the top all the time to make sure you have a slightly growing amount of it. This goes for refined resources to. Build extra storage for Wood/Rock/etc., I put them next to additional Ancillaries to make sure storage is nicely spread across the map.
Food is the next item on the list. Start with 4 Farms, add a Clucker Coop and Animal Pen when you can. Next you build a Kitchen to more efficiently get some food up and running. I ended up with 10-12 Farms, 2-3 Clucker Coops, 2-3 Animal Pen’s and 3-4 Kitchens, all fully upgraded. Just like with the other resources, keep looking at the stocks. Depending on your population you might need ~1000 Raw Vegetables, ~100 Rations and ~100 Cooked Meat in stock. But those are late game numbers, so don’t get stuck on them. You just have to keep the food stocks slightly growing and stockpile enough for a harsh winter.
Something easily forgotten is to stockpile water! Other than what I thought, you can run out of it. Assigning all of the population as Water Master is not going to help you! Culprit being the winter again. All of the water surfaces might freeze for the whole duration of the winter, or at least close to all of the duration. So besides building up to 4-5 Water Purifiers and 6-7 Rain Catchers, also invest in a dozen Large Fountains. Keep an eye on the amount of Drinkable Water you have, I ended up with 50.000-60.000 in stock, which dwindles to half during a hot summer, and probably a quarter in a winter.
Nomads are your friends, they make sure your population grows nice and fast. To get them you need plenty of housing and lot’s of food. I try to keep 50% of my housing available. Upgrading to Standard Housing, no need for High Capacity or the other option. When Nomads spawn, try and find them right away and use the Recall spell if they are in trouble.
Containing the Corruption
Finally, let’s talk about the actual subject of this post, defeating the Corruption! First of all check where the Corruption spawned after the first night. If it’s at the south east continue, otherwise simply exit the region and doom the world, you will have to restart. Like I explained before, the Corruption is hard to reach when it spawns up north.
You should have built some Fire Pits the first day/night towards the south east. When you reach the rocks just outside the forest, switch to Large Fire Pits. Build all around the corruption, surrounding the island it’s on, do not build on the island itself. It’s important that there remains a body of water between you and the Corruption. I found it easy to make a vertical line, using the remove terrain tool, on the left side of the Corruption island and a horizontal line above the right side of the Corruption island. Help building the Fire Pits as fast as possible.
Now you should have the Corruption contained, it cannot grow anymore. At least not through the line of Fire Pits. Be sure to check the Corruption Resistance in the Data View to make sure you actually contained it. If you failed to contain it on the south east island, simply leave the region and doom the world. Retry!
Defending against the Corruption
Early game I used Holy Golems and dragged enemies into the Ancient Cullis Gate to defend myself. But that will not be enough for long. So let’s start building a wall!
I started with Stone Walls, with a thickness of one. If you’ve lined up the Fire Pits in a straight line it’s best to make them part of your wall. Building Range does not go through walls, so you need to keep your Fire Pits connected. Hard to explain, but you will end up with Fire Pits on the inside of the wall like this:
(o)
||||||||||||||||||||||||
========
===(o)===
In this example the north side is your side of the map and the south side the corruption.
Start with one Stone Wall (is =) thickness, expand to two. Later you need to add the Crylithium Curtain Wall (is ||) on the outside. One layer of the latter is enough, but sometimes Spectres might slip through, so consider adding another layer later on. Instead of going for the Crylithium Curtain Wall right away, the basic Crylithium Wall will suffice at first.
Completely wall in the corruption, but leave one mazed entrance. It’s up to you how to make a maze, maybe search for some images online, but in my case I ended up with ~8 Element Bolt towers Two of which Established (increased magic damage to Spectre’s) and the others upgraded to Ice. Besides that I added ~2 Ice Spray Towers, ~2 Phantom Ice Dart Towers and one static tower. Use the Cold Aura spell in the maze to help defend.
Use Ice Stone Golems and Lightning Crystal Golems for additional defence of the maze. You need at least ~2 Combulators each. They really help keeping the enemies inside the maze. Also cast spells like Lightning Bolt on groups of enemies if you can. The body of water before the maze is usually where they clump up and become slowed and easy targets.
Some Ice Ballista Towers could be added around the Corruption outside the walls, ~4 in my case. Be sure to have walled in before doing that, because the towers will start attacking Corrupted Buildings which will spawn all kinds of nasty! Besides that I spread ~3 in the village, to defend against Blood Moons for example.
Coup de grâce
So a small recap; you’ve walled in the Corruption completely, stocks are full, you survived the first winter and you’re approaching a population of 200 villagers.
Start building Large Fire Pits on the Corruption island to further push back the Corruption. Use your spells to help build them, villagers take to long and might get killed. You cannot drop resources on a Fire Pit when a villager is already on it’s way, so it’s best to set builders and organizers to 0 when you do. You should only build during the day (dawn to and including evening) and make sure you have enough Energy for the night, when you are defending mostly.
You have until the second winter to defeat the Corruption. If you did not, the Fire Elementals will run you over when the water freezes. Just keep building Large Fire Pits into the Corruption, you will see it continue to shrink. It will go slower and slower but you will get there. Use the Charm spell on the Fire Elements and Flame on the buildings you can reach. Check the Corruption Resistance in the Data View to make sure you’ve covered every inch of what was formerly Corruption.
Eventually the Corruption will vanish and the region will be a stepping stone for other regions!
In closing
I'm not sure what comes after this. The guide I mentioned at the start of this post has some content about what to do, so be sure to check that out.
If you had any use for this post or if you have questions or suggestions, please let me know on Twitter. Maybe I'll add some screenshots of my own region to better show how I did it.