Starting your first colony in Whiskerwood can feel overwhelming at first glance. You’re dropped on a distant island with only a handful of Whiskers, a few crates of supplies, and a rather demanding feline empire expecting regular tribute.
This Whiskerwood Beginner Guide walks you through your early colony setup, core systems, and the decisions that matter most in your first few hours. By the time you finish, you’ll know how to sustain your citizens, stay on top of taxes, and grow your settlement with confidence.
At its core, Whiskerwood is about building a functioning settlement across a chain of islands while balancing production, survival, and taxation. Your colony needs to gather resources, craft goods, and build essential services to keep Whiskers fed, warm, educated, and productive. Every decision feeds into two major outcomes:
- Keeping your colony alive and expanding
- Maintaining the trust of the Claws, the ruling feline empire that taxes you
Success comes from managing both sides without losing efficiency or morale.
Your Colony and First Moves
Before your adventure begins, the game asks you to configure your colony. These opening decisions shape the difficulty of the run, so take a moment to understand what matters here.
Your Starting Setup
Colony Name
Pick something memorable; it helps give your run identity.
Difficulty Presets
Presets instantly adjust all the underlying settings. If you’re new, start with Standard and adjust when you understand the systems.
Custom Settings
Here you can fine-tune map size, number of islands, resource richness, climate severity, and even how greedy the Claws will be. For a first run, avoid harsh winters or low fertility.
Your Starting Crew
You begin with five Whiskers. Each has Guild alignment, traits, abilities, and expectation levels. Hovering over these shows how well suited they are for certain jobs. You can reroll the entire crew if the lineup looks weak.
Starting Resources
You’ll begin with basic supplies, enough to build the core structures and keep everyone alive long enough to produce food on your own.
Once you embark, your ship lands, your Export Dock blueprint is placed, and the colony begins.
Your First Steps After Landing
Place your Export Dock smartly:
Pick an island region with trees and berry bushes nearby. You need food and wood instantly.
Build your Warehouse
This unlocks your resources and begins the colony officially.
Sign your Royal Charter
This commits you to taxes. You’ll see what the Crown demands, how taxes work, and which goods can be used to pay them. Signing hands full control of the settlement over to you.
From here, you’ll start receiving small quests that act as a gentle tutorial. Follow them; they lead you through the most important buildings and mechanics in a logical order.
Interface
Whiskerwood’s UI gives steady feedback on colony needs, tax pressure, and overall progress. Knowing where to look saves disasters later.
Key areas include:
Upcoming Events: Shows when taxes are due, how much you owe, and what goods you currently have for payment.
Citizen Panel: Tracks total population, idle workers, approval level, diplomacy seals, food supply, and warnings.
Resources Bar: A quick view of everything your colony has in storage.
Colony Reports & Menus: Access detailed breakdowns on your Whiskers, storage, taxes, and quests.
Construction Menu: Split into logistics, housing and production, and administrative structures.
Time Controls: Speed up or slow down the day as needed.
Weather and View Toggles: Weather affects crops and warmth, while slice views help with mining and vertical planning.
Mastering the UI early makes colony management far smoother.
Your Workforce and Greatest Asset
Your citizens are more than generic workers. Each one has Guild training, traits, expectations, and stats that influence how well they perform their jobs.
Guild Association
There are four: Explorer, Miner, Farmer, and Engineer. This affects job efficiency and gives three traits aligned to that Guild.
Traits and Characteristics
These can alter food needs, resistance to climate, movement speed, and job performance. Sometimes a trait supports a job outside their Guild, which can create very strong specialists.
Expectations (Star Rating)
High-expectation Whiskers require more comfort and luxuries but tend to be educated or highly skilled. As they improve, their demands grow.
Stats and Modifiers
Productivity, movement, carrying capacity, and body temperature can all be changed by food, clothing, lodging, or current job alignment.
When a Whisker works a job that matches their Guild and traits, output increases dramatically. Keeping them fed, warm, and rested boosts productivity further.
Training and Education
The School lets you shape your workforce:
- Assign a Craftsmaster as Teacher
- Train up to 3 students at a time
- Education paths:
- Guild Specialty: Switches a Whisker to the Teacher’s Guild
- Apprentice: Beginner crafting proficiency
- Craftsmaster: High-tier specialist capable of teaching others
- Scholarly: Trains researchers for the Research Lab
Specialization increases expectations, so balance training with your quality of life infrastructure.
Research and Technology Growth
Research unlocks new buildings, production methods, logistics upgrades, and late-game comfort items. Only an Educated Whisker can work the Research Lab.
The tech tree is structured in tiers. You must spend planks to unlock each tier before choosing individual research topics inside it. Some techs require prerequisites, so plan a path towards the upgrades you want most.
Once completed, new buildings become immediately available for construction.
Taxes and Serving the Claws
The Claws judge your loyalty through tax payments delivered every three days. Each visit is a moment of high-stakes decision-making.
The tax screen shows:
Trust Level
Drops if you underpay. If it falls too low, you lose your charter.
Tax and Debt Breakdown
Includes your basic tax, imports purchased, and travel costs of new Whiskers.
Accepted Resources and Value
Each item has a set value. Some are far more efficient to pay with than others.
Payment Levels
Partial payments reduce trust. Full or overpayments increase trust and unlock rewards such as:
Supply gift choices
Building schematics
Diplomacy Seals to reroll gifts or negotiate for bonus benefits
Good tax strategy often means exporting higher-value goods rather than hoarding basic supplies.
Building Upward and Downward: Vertical Construction
Island space is limited, so you must build vertically. Use stairs, ramps, and wooden paths to stack buildings, dig into cliffs, and layer your colony across heights. Managing height efficiently becomes critical as population rises.
Climate, Seasons, and Heat Management
Weather influences productivity, farming, and survival.
- Spring/Summer: Warm, ideal for crops and daily activity.
- Autumn: Temperatures fall; prepare heating before winter.
- Winter: Harsh cold can kill Whiskers and ruin crops without proper heat sources.
Use the Heat Overlay (H) to monitor temperature zones. Campfires provide early heat but burn wood often. Later tech unlocks better heating and cooling.
Practical Tips for New Governors
A few early habits make a huge difference:
Do not rush to stockpile food and wood. Metals and advanced goods are more valuable for tax shipments and can return luxury supplies through rewards.
Use Slice View (Z) when mining. Resource veins often extend deeper underground.
Add storage near work sites. Reduces travel time and prevents your main warehouse from choking with low-value items.
Plan housing near dining. Whiskers eat at night before bed; distance wastes valuable rest time.
Treat approval as a spendable resource, not a happiness meter. Use it to attract new Whiskers or activate policies.
Winter delays tax ships, but debt still accumulates if you import supplies. Build financial and resource buffers.
Building over water works but requires structural supports that consume logs. Use stone and Earthworks later to reduce log costs.
Pay attention to traits when assigning jobs. A single trait can outweigh guild alignment in some cases.
Picking up Whiskers and relocating them can fix pathing issues, but it costs approval.
Demolish temporary structures to recover partial resources once they are no longer needed.