Planning where settlers start to build your town in Farthest Frontier’s untamed wilderness is part of the puzzle, but you’ve probably been wondering what’s the best way to get gold so you can build up a large vault of money to use for expansion and an army to protect your settlement.
Gold is a key production resource in Farthest Frontier, and there are multiple ways to obtain it, so we’ll go over all the options and best strategies to build up your coffers, and what you can spend it on.
Farthest Frontier gold, money and taxes
- Taxes
- Marketplaces
- Trading Post
- Gold Mines + Foundry
- Amenities and Services
Taxing your population and building markets helps to level out your basic costs, but you won’t want to be relying on this to fund your way to Tier 3 structures or keep your best entertainment venues like Theatres running in the later stages of the game.
Houses won’t start giving you tax income until you’ve been able to upgrade them to a homestead, which automatically takes place once each shelter is stored with enough food, herbs, raches the required desirability, has a Well located nearby and you’ve upgraded the Town Center to Tier 2. You can build up desirability with entertainment venues, hospitals, gardens, and other Amenities and Services, but the income from this will only be just enough to maintain your basic services, so it’s unlikely you’ll make much of a profit.
You can boost your monthly income with markets, which villagers will stock with food, pottery, clothing, and other items that you can sell to the residents in your town, but we’ve only gained an average of 8 to 10 income per month with each one placed in the early game. Place them next to your houses as they produce the most income here and help with desirability, leveling up your houses to the next tier.
Trading Post
The Trading Post is vital if you want to secure the most income as it allows you to sell your goods and materials to traders that visit your town. Traders tend to visit once or twice a year, and we’ve found that you’ll normally notice them arriving just after the winter season, but keep a watchful eye as they’re easily missed.
You may only get one or two visitors a year, and they’ll both stay for about 50 days on average. It’s a good idea to stock up on items that you want to sell before they arrive, just so you’re not rushing about hoping that your villagers stock the Trading Post in time, and sell anything that you’ve got in abundance. We don’t recommend selling firewood or food that you’ll need during the winter months when you’re workforce is stuck in houses due to the cold.
Another good tactic is the old supply-demand method, where you purchase a material that’s cheap from the marketplace - anything that’s 3 or 4 gold per item - and wait for demand to build and for it to rocket in price. If you hold out waiting, you can often pick up a tidy profit this way.
Finally, we should really warn you about raiders that will attack your camp, and we’ve found that it’s often triggered by the gold you can amass at the Trading Post. This especially happens once you transfer the gold to your Town Center, and generally, anything over 300 can spark an attack. You can fend them off by placing 4 watch towers around your Trading Post and several more dotted about your town to guard any escape routes.
Hunters are also a good way to get some protection early on in the game, as they’ll attack any raiders that try to pillage your wares. All this does depend on what difficulty level you’re playing at, so keep that in mind too.
Gold Mines and Gold Ingots
Once you’ve found a gold location on the map, you can build a Gold Mine in order for your workers to start mining Gold Ore, which can then be taken to the Foundry in order to turn it into Gold Ingots. Five Gold Ore converts into 100 Gold Ingots, so while this is a great way to build up gold, it won’t be available until you can build the Foundry once you’ve upgraded the Town Center to tier 3.
If you’re looking for more Farthest Frontier content, you should have a look over Bogdan’s impressions of the early access build, or check that your system requirements are up to scratch.
Keep updated on the latest PC Gaming news by following GameWatcher on Twitter, checking out our videos on YouTube, or giving us a like on Facebook. Thank you.
