Understanding your research options is the key to survival in The Wandering Village, a city-builder that takes place on top of a mythical beast.

The Wandering Village is a quirky little indie city-builder in early access for PC. As poison ravages the lands and leaves many people wandering the world as nomads, you’re tasked with building a small civilization on the back of a massive mythical creature known as an Onbu. With so many resources to gather and buildings to construct, it can be hard to know where to start.

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This is a game that rewards thinking ahead, especially when it comes to researching new technologies. As you scavenge for knowledge to research new upgrades for your village, you’ll want to be thoughtful about how you spend those opening knowledge points. While there’s more flexibility the further you get into the game, this guide should help with the early stages of village research and development.

The first thing you’ll want to prioritize is getting to the Scavenger Hut research. Scavenging is one of the most important parts of The Wandering Village. For starters, you need knowledge points to research new technologies. You gather knowledge points by scavenging from shrines. So, you want to build scavengers as soon as possible so you don’t pass by any shrines before being able to scavenge them. Shrines appear to be the rarest location in the game currently.

Outside of shrines, scavengers should always be on the move, supplying your village with valuable resources. It’s always wise to prioritize rarer resources, like sand from a dune, because it will give you a stockpile to work with later.

The hornblower is a high-priority building because it allows you to give commands to the Onbu. However, the Onbu won’t listen to you if you’re hurting or neglecting it, so be sure to treat your Onbu well. Don’t harvest its spikes for quick stone or drill into it for bile. These things may provide you with a short-term boon, but they come with long-term consequences.

If you’re coming up to a poison forest, you want to be able to tell your Onbu to run and have it listen to you. If, for instance, your Onbu decides to sleep in the poison forest, both Onbu and your village will be in a desperate situation. You always want your Onbu to listen to you, so you should do your best to treat it well and earn its trust.

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Your third research priority should be building a dung collector and a compost heap. It might sound a little gross, but the sooner you get these set up the better off you’ll be. Poison can be a wicked enemy in The Wandering Village. Prolonged exposure to poison can lead to corruption on the back of the Onbu that wipes out trees, farms, berry bushes, and taints the land underneath.

For this reason, you’ll want to start collecting dung and turning it into biogas as soon as possible. The biogas will go on to fuel your decontaminators who will be your first and last defense against pollution.

While you research village doctors, be sure to build herbalists so the doctors have what they need (herbs) in order to cure anyone who is sick. Once you have your doctors in order, you’ll want to immediately start researching decontaminators. By the time you’re finished researching and building decontaminators, you should have a steady supply of biogas for them to use in defense of your village. It can’t be stressed enough how important these decontaminators are. Build them in several places on the Onbu, and they will use flamethrowers to burn away infestations.

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The next research focus should help prepare you for life on the back of your traveling creature, the Onbu. As you move from biome to biome, different crops will thrive or wither based on the climate. It will benefit you greatly to research cactuses, tomatoes, corn, and wheat. Not only will your villagers be very happy to have some food variety, but you’ll also be prepared for when you reach a desert and have corn and tomatoes that thrive.

In the beginning, you may have to switch a farm’s crop as you move from biome to biome. However, as the game goes on, you should be able to afford enough farms that you’ll have everything growing at all times. This will keep villagers happy and create a certain ebb and flow as you move from place to place.

As mentioned above, you want to take good care of your Onbu so it trusts you and listens to your commands. Once you have your village up and running, you’ll want to make sure you can care for this majestic beast. Research an Onbu doctor who will use herbs to heal the Onbu after prolonged poison exposure. Next, be sure to research the kitchen and trebuchet. While you’ll often come across food Onbu can eat, there can be long stretches where the Onbu will begin to go hungry. You don’t want that, so be sure to have some food on-hand to keep Onbu from starving.

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At this point, you should have covered the threats to your village that can become an emergency. You’ve got doctors and decontaminators ready to combat poison, you’ve got a good variety of food for your villagers, and you hopefully have your scavengers working overtime. Well, get ready to work them even harder. For your next bit of research, you’ll want to upgrade your villager housing. This will make the villagers happier, more productive, and more resilient to poison.

After you’ve upgraded your villagers to huts, you’ll want to research the Scout Tower. This tower will allow you to see much further than before, meaning your scavenging opportunities will expand exponentially. If possible, build more scavenger huts and get all the resources you can gather from nearby locations.

NEXT: The Wandering Village: A Guide To Farming

Matthew (he/him) is an Evergreen Article Staff Writer at DualShockers. He has been an avid gamer all his life, starting with his original NES. He has spent his life eagerly recommending games of all sorts to his friends and anyone else who would listen. After graduating from Stetson University with a degree in English and Creative Writing, he went on to receive an MFA in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University. When he isn't playing games on his PS5, Series X, or Nintendo Switch, you can find him here at DualShockers writing about games.