Even though Anvil Empires is in pre-alpha stage, this fictional land living through early middle ages won't show you any mercy. You will face many challenges on your way to dominate Calligo. This guide will help you take your first steps.
NOTE: Anvil Empires Pre-Alpha tests will last around 5 to 7 days. Ultimately the game will evolve into a 24/7 persistent world. If you wish to see how it will work, check out Foxhole, another game of Siege Camp. We also have a starting guide for Foxhole.
Do not team kill, grief, or intentionally harm your own team in any way
Do not harass, threaten, or personally attack the development team or other players
Do not use hateful or offensive language
Do not use communication tools for purposes other than gameplay
Do not exploit bugs, modify the game client, or use external tools to gain an unfair advantage
Do not use alternate accounts to join the opposing alliance or gain an unfair advantage
Do not abuse the in-game reporting tools
Do not attempt to circumvent account suspensions/bans
Breach of code may result in a ban without warning. Bans are issued at the sole discretion of the development team. All incidents are investigated on a case-by-case basis.
Before signing up for the Pre-Alpha you should be asking yourself which of the following categories you fall under:
1) I am joining the Pre-Alpha to get a first glimpse of what Anvil Empires will be like
2) I am joining the Pre-Alpha to have a new "fun" game to play regularly
3) I am joining the Pre-Alpha to help the development team test out new ideas and provide feedback
If you fall under 1) or 2), then you should not join the Pre-Alpha at this stage or you will be significantly disappointed in the experience and you will not be a productive tester. If you fall under 3), then it's appropriate for you to join the Pre-Alpha as your contributions will be valuable. Please read our latest blog post for details:
― Markfoot from Siege Camp (on Anvil Empires Official Discord)
Even if you don't think you are fit for Pre-Alpha, you can wish list Anvil Empires on Steam and check it again when it's released.
How to join Pre-Alpha?
If you want to help the development team test out new ideas and provide feedback as development continues, you can simply sign up for playtests on Steam. Sign-ups are currently only open just before a test starts, so it's recommended to join the Anvil Empires Official Discord Server for announcements when sign-ups are active.
Bugs and Feedback
In order to gain access to the bugs and feedback channels in the Anvil Empires Official Discord Server you can link your discord and the game to gain a Pre-Alpha role.
Click the "Claim your Pre-Alpha Discord Role" button on the in-game main menu
Finish the authentication steps.
On the Anvil Empires Discord, click the Server Name and then Linked Roles.
Link your account and you will automatically be assigned the Pre-Alpha Access role
Once you have the role you should be able to see the feedback channels.
Controls
Basic
Move
Sprint
Climb
Push
Action
Aim
Reload
Mouse Select
+ Mouse Interact
Arm Primary Item
Arm Secondary Item
Primary Item Alt Mode
Secondary Item Alt Mode
- Inventory Hotkeys
Use/Interact
Drop Item/Open Gate
Mount
Mouse Rotate Camera
+ Zoom in and out
Rotate Camera Left
Rotate Camera Right
UI/Menu
Inventory
Build Menu
Rotate Structure
Upgrade
Map
Disable Build Snapping
Center Map
Open Chat
Push to Talk
Toggle Voice Chat
Cinematic Mode/Hide HUD
Toggle House Screen
How to play/spawn
Alliance selection screen
Calligo, current Pre-Alpha Map
Congratulations! You opted in to help developers by testing their game during this very early pre-alpha stage. The development team is waiting for your valuable feedback and suggestions. Now, keep an eye on Anvil Empires Discord Server and wait for the next test to start. After servers comes online, launch Anvil Empires and click Play.
You will be prompted with an alliance selection screen. There are two available alliances; Ancients and Remnants.
NOTE: Currently, the only differences between the alliances are character aesthetics and spawn locations.
After deciding on your alliance, you should see a world map with various spawn locations . The ones with your alliance shield are the pre-placed Town Centers you should be spawning at for your first time. For Ancients and for Remnants . Select one of them and spawn into Calligo!
Homesteads built within a Town will have a small area while if placed outside a town, will have much larger area. Structures within a Homestead can be set to public so before building your own homestead, ask around if there is any public homesteads or any people willing to share their homestead with you. If this is your first time, you'll have an easier time by utilizing Town Workshop or by joining an existing homestead with others.
Starting Resources
Once spawned, start moving out of town and look for basic resources such as Branch Pile, Berry Bush and Flint Pile. These resources will be needed for crafting basic flint tools.
Here is the full list of resources you can gather with your Hands.
As these resources are gathered you will also get Silver. Silver is an important resources that's obtained from gathering in the world.
Silver can be used for:
Houses (also called Families) are clans in traditional sense. Houses can claim Homesteads and Forts, preventing other players from using them or pledging to them respectively. Access level of individual structures can be set independently regardless. Houses can ally other houses. Members of allied houses will have Guest rank access level. To create a house, press and then click on .
Claiming a Homestead
In order to claim a homestead, you need to go to the Homestead Keystone and press to interact with it. Once the homestead UI has opened look to the bottom buttons menu for claiming homestead .
Avatars and Spawns
Avatars are characters used to spawn. There are currently two avatar types available. Auxiliary is the default avatar that comes with Crude Short Sword and Crude Shield and can be trained into a Named Avatar through most in-game activities, including but not limited to combat, hunting, smithing, mining, woodcutting, gathering, and farming. Avatars can only be transported via a Caravan.
Basic Systems
Crafting
Crafting of flint tools is done through the player's inventory, which can be opened with . From here, you will see all available items you can craft, and you can hover over recipes to see their requirements. More advanced items can be crafted by opening the inventory of a Workbench or a Advanced Workbench depending on the item. Other types of items have different processes for production:
Trees in the world can be cut down using axes. The Flint Axe is the first axe you craft that will be able to do this. Craft your axe, run up to the tree and press to swing your axe.
After a number of hits the tree will fall in a direction away from you. This will drop logs onto the ground for you to collect. Run to the logs and press to pick them up, as a large item you can only carry one at a time. These logs can now be carried to a Resource Stockpile for storage or directly to a Sawbuck. If you're living in a town the Town Workshop can be used to process logs for a Silver fee.
Logs placed into the Sawbuck can now be split via an axe into Wood Planks.
Hunting
Hunting animals is a key part of gathering resources, with many crafting recipes requiring items gained in this manner. The four raw resources currently dropped by animals are shown in the table below.
There are two main groups of animals, passive and aggressive. Passive animals include the Rabbit, Deer, and Chicken. While the main aggressive animals are the Boar, Wolf, Dire Raven, and Bear with some having two versions, either normal or elite. Elite versions of animals will often be larger, and have a different colour than the smaller, more normal versions. They will also do more damage and have more health, but drop more resources. In some cases the Elite animals may even drop resources not normally dropped by their lesser counterparts. Such as the Wolf (Elite), who drops Thick Pelt, whereas the normal Wolf does not.
Once an animal has been killed it will drop a husk that must be skinned with the correct tier of knife for the animal in order to gain its resources. See each animal page for specifics on which knife can be used to skin each animal. Skinned animals will then drop a collection of resources on the ground to be collected and transported back to your Homestead. A Hand Cart can help here when transporting a large number of pelts.
It's also worth remembering that raw meat will degrade over time, thus hunting over long distances runs the risk of losing your new potential food stocks. One solution is to build a Firepit near you hunting area so that you can cook the meat acquired from your kills immediately after skinning them.
Building
Building is accomplished through a blueprint system. To start, open the build menu by pressing . This will bring up a row of tabs, each containing various structures or vehicles that can be placed and constructed. Hover over a structure to view its description and its build requirements, which typically include the tool needed for construction. While lower-tier structures can often be built with just your Hands (not requiring any tool), most structures require a hammer to build. The most simple hammer is the Flint Hammer which can be crafted at player's inventory.
Once you select a structure from the build menu, a blueprint version of that structure will attach to your cursor. Move the blueprint to your desired location and click to place it. If the location is unsuitable, an on-screen message will notify you of any issues with the placement.
After placing the blueprint, you'll need to gather the necessary resources to complete the structure. When you approach the blueprint, the required resources will be displayed. Ensure you have these resources in your inventory, then hold down to start building. If the structure requires a hammer, make sure it’s equipped in your hands.
Food is an absolute necessity in the game. Your avatar has a hunger bar that will gradually decrease over time. When depleted, your avatar still start starving and losing its max health.
In order to eat, find or cook a food. Open your inventory with . Now just click on a cooked food item in your inventory and it will switch into your primary tool slot. Press again to close your inventory and press to take the food in your hands. Click to eat.
NOTE: You can also press the - keys to equip items from your belt without opening inventory with .
The most basic food in the game is the Bloodberry Field Bar. You can craft it from Berries at the Firepit. The fire pit consumes a fuel such as Fibre or Branches to cook your berries. Once you have eaten, you can not eat the same type of food again for 5 Minutes. Maintaining a variety of food sources is therefore important to make sure your satiety bar is high. More advanced food types like Trencher Bread, Boiled Cabbage, and Grilled Whitefish require an Oven or a Hearth to prepare, respectively.
Food quality, which is displayed by the number of green icons on top of the food item, affects how much the food item will satisfy your hunger and regenerate your health and stamina. To achieve the highest quality of food, which is three green icons, you must retrieve the food as fast as possible from the cooked slot of the Firepit, Hearth, or Oven. Leaving the cooked food in that slot with fire still burning in the cooking station will result in the item degrading in quality and eventually turning into Wood Ash. You can tell when a food item is starting to burn by the black smoke the emanates from your cooking location.
Advanced Topics
Mining and the Underworld
Mining can be categorized into surface mining and underworld mining. Surface mining involves searching for small ore deposits scattered across the surface of Calligo. This method typically yields simpler materials like Malachite Fragments or Cassiterite Fragments, which are used for producing bronze, as well as smaller quantities of Stone Off-Cuts.
There are currently two types of animals you can tame: Horse and Donkey. In addition you can lure, but not tame, Chicken. To tame horses or donkeys, you need Equine Feed. You can produce it at the Grain Mill from Cabbage Seed, which you can acquire either from Wild Cabbage Plant or by harvesting Cabbage Plant. Once you have equine feed, you need to find a horse or donkey foal. These can be found wandering around in the wild. If you have equine feed equipped in your Hands, the foal will start to follow you once you are close enough. You can then lead it to a Food Trough. If there is enough equine feed in the food trough, the foal will start eating from it, and after a few minutes it will grow into a full-sized Horse or Donkey. Horses can be used to travel quickly in the world by equipping them with a Basic Saddle or used to pull a Resource Wagon or a Caravan. They are therefore useful for moving larger amounts of raw materials like Rock Slab over longer distances.
Donkeys, unlike horses, do not need a saddle to be ridden. They can also be used to power a Power Mill or equipped with a Pack Saddle to help haul resources and equipment. You can lead multiple donkeys by attaching a piece of Rope to each of them individually, increasing your total carrying capacity. Tamed animals can be placed inside a Stable when not in use. If there is equine feed in the stable, the animals will eat from it, and if there is Water Bucket, they will breed. Horses and donkeys must be kept fed or they will starve to death. To manually feed a horse or a donkey, equip equine feed into your Hands and press on the animals's mouth while standing in front of it. Your character will crouch and the equine feed will be consumed. Each equine feed restores roughly 30% of the animal's hunger bar.
Your Next Steps
Once you have a handle on the basics of resource procurement and homestead and town progression, you can start to explore other areas of the game.
A video guide made by Freerk. Please keep in mind this video guide was prepared for a quite outdated version of the game so it might not be 100% accurate on every topic.
Move
Sprint
Climb
Push
Action
Aim
Reload
Mouse Select
Arm Secondary Item
Primary Item Alt Mode
Secondary Item Alt Mode
-
Inventory Hotkeys
Use/Interact
Drop Item/Open Gate
Mount
Mouse Rotate Camera
Rotate Camera Left
Rotate Camera Right
Inventory
Build Menu
Upgrade
Map
Disable Build Snapping
Open Chat
Push to Talk
Toggle Voice Chat
Cinematic Mode/Hide HUD
Toggle House Screen
. The ones with your alliance shield are the pre-placed 
and for Remnants 
. Select one of them and spawn into 
.
.
