This past weekend, we achieved reaching Rank 10 on our Island Sanctuary! Overall it has been a really relaxing past time, especially since over the last two years all we’ve really been doing mainly is all the combat & story content. Don’t get me wrong, that’s the content I enjoy the most (this does not count extremes/savages/ultimates as I do not do those), but this been a very nice change of pace.
When we first got to the island, I wasn’t exactly sure what to do. The game does nudge one into a direction though to understand the basics of how to progress things on the island like the pasture, garden, making tools, building facilities to make/gather things, etc. So we really kind of just were led by the metaphorical string (carrot for me?) to get all the basics down. Upon doing all of that, one reaches about rank 4 and from there it becomes a free for all on what to work on and how to proceed.
We really mostly focused on the workshops, and making sure it had a full week of things to make and sell based on materials we either gathered personally, or had a granary assist with said gathering. Granary was unlocked a rank or so after 4, so at first it was just making sure the one Workshop was always busy.
The early ranks were a blur since they go kind of quick keeping the workshop(s) busy and building out landmarks as they become unlocked. As the ranks go by, one can make tools for the mammets to assist in making the Hideaway bigger with more plots to add additional workshops (up to 4 for these), landmarks, and granaries (up to 2 for these). Landmarks are just nice features to add to one’s island, but they also help speed workshop production up.
After a certain point, one can move around all of these things if one so wishes to. We took the ‘build it, and forget it’ approach, but might nudge around things eventually. It does cost a little bit and some time, but that’s really about it. The island itself has two currencies in seafarer or islander cowries. The seafarer cowries expand the hideway and are accrued from the workshops, meanwhile the islander cowries I believe are from exporting additional gathered goods and can be used to buy fun cosmetics. Seafarer ones can be used for buying goodies too, but we haven’t yet.
One thing is it doesn’t necessarily mention when workshops/granaries/hideaway can be upgraded unless one looks at the plot that it was placed at. It could probably be examined in the hideaway management menu, but never tried that. This is something I wished was mentioned or had a better way to let us know, but I guess it’s not really a big issue. The neat thing with the hideaway upgrades specifically, is that the entire hideaway’s looks changes as well! From the base level to level 2, torches, and dirt pathways appear with wooden staircases where dirt ramps once were.
It’s a super nice touch that I began to enjoy seeing when I leveled up the hideaway itself. Each upgrade, no matter what it is minus landmarks, just required certain gathered materials and time for the granaries & workshops only. The hideaway is immediate. Just have to make sure it doesn’t affect the workshop’s materials otherwise it warns of it causing a deficit in the current crafting schedule. Messing up and adding a deficit once really bit me, so I had to make sure to not let that happen again.
Workshops are ran on an agenda schedule. One selects from a list of items that take 4, 6, or 8 hours to make, and it will automate the rest assuming the materials are gathered. It does a great job saying what materials are needed and when, so this makes gathering the materials a lot more streamlined.
Gathering is kind of similar to how it works normally, except each node is 1-2 materials per node. The good is there’s a bajillion nodes out in the island wilderness to be gathered. As the Ranks go up, more tools can be crafted to get more than one material off the node at a time and the secondary material is something different. So, say one hits a copper ore with the hammer – they’ll get one copper and one island rock. Both can be used to make things or used in the workshop.
Also, leveling up the hideaway itself adds larger gardening and pasture land for more animals to be placed once captured. Kind of like a basic Pokemon game really. We only still have the tutorial’s sheep capture but eventually we’ll expand that out as well.
The pure gathering aspect is pretty relaxing and therapeutic as it is. After a couple of weeks of doing this, we reached Rank 10 which allows for flying across the island. Ground mounts run at flying speed, but flying does help getting around the terrain all the easier and makes inaccessible places available – like the top of the mountain for a bonkers set of nodes that make gathering those specific ones crazy fast. All gathering nodes give 10 experience per node in island experience, so it does help but would take an eternity to just rely on those for ranking up.
Building anything gives far more experience, and gathering from the garden gives 120 per item planted. Gathering things like wool off a sheep give experience as well, so far 50 per gathering attempt.
Granaries allow access to ‘rare’ materials that one cannot gather, and those are needed for upgrading workshops/granaries at certain levels. Even later landmarks need these items as well. Granaries cost seafarer cowries, but it’s really not that all expensive to max out a week per granary.
It may sound really overwhelming, but it’s really not and is meant to be taken at a more relaxed pace; just a nice little place to come relax between things, put on a favorite song in the hideaway’s orchestration, play with some minions, or just enjoy the simple island life when not trying to kick the tails out of yet another evil force threatening Etheirys.
I’m already excited to see what happens next and what the island will continue to evolve and look like over the next 10 ranks. Will be curious to experience certain quests that pop up once we’ve gotten certain criteria met in the near future as well!
