Timberborn 1.1.2.4.52e959e.gm — Mac version

If you know the quiet satisfaction of a well-stocked toolbox, Timberborn works on the same instinct: build, adjust, keep things running.

District — your beaver settlement, zoned in the top-left. Every building belongs to one.

Water level — the number under the weather icon. It drives everything: crops, trees, wheel power.

Dam — a wall you place across a river. Water backs up behind it, then spills over. Simple, but it changes the whole map.

Water wheel — sits in flowing water and feeds power to mills and workshops. No flow, no work.

Dry season — the real test. The river drops, your stores need to hold, and every dam you built either saves you or doesn't.

Pause immediately, scout the river, and place a lumberjack

You start a new map — say, Plains — with a handful of Folktails and a district centre already placed. The river cuts a lazy line across the valley. First job: pause the game. Always pause. You drag a lumberjack flag near the nearest stand of birch, then a gatherer post beside the blueberry bushes. A water pump goes right on the riverbank. Unpause, and your beavers get moving.

Day two, you place a few small lodges and a science hut. The inventor sits down and starts drawing blueprints — slowly, one point at a time. While she works, you lay out a farm for carrots. The planting window is tight before the first dry season hits. You check the water-level gauge: 2.3 and steady. Fine for now.

Cycle three, the river drops. The gauge reads 0.8 and falling. You've built one dam upstream, but it's not quite high enough — water is sneaking past the edges. You unpause construction on a second layer. A beaver climbs the scaffolding, hauling logs. The dam finishes with half a day to spare. Water pools behind it, deep and slow. Your crops survive. You breathe out.

Bump camera speed to 70% and turn on the water depth overlay

The default camera speed feels sluggish when you're panning across a large district. Slide camera speed up to about 70% — it makes scouting rivers much less of a chore.

Turn on show water depth overlay immediately. It paints the river blue-to-red so you can see where flow is strong and where it's barely a trickle. You'll use this every time you place a water wheel or a dam.

Under gameplay settings, switch district centre range to visible. The faint green ring shows you exactly how far a district reaches. Without it, you risk building a farm that no beaver will ever tend.

If you find the night cycle too dark — and it gets properly dark — tick bright nights. You lose a bit of atmosphere but gain the ability to actually see what you're building after sunset.

A Folktail farmer's summer

Elena runs a Folktail settlement on the Lakes map. She's not chasing population numbers — she wants a colony that feels like a working landscape. Her first district hugs a wide bend in the river. Upstream, she's built a reservoir behind a three-layer dam. Downstream, irrigation channels fan out across a terrace of carrot and potato fields.

Mid-summer, a six-day drought arrives. Elena watches the reservoir level drop each morning. Her water wheels stop turning on day four — the flow is too weak. The lumber mill goes idle, but the food stores are full. She diverts a beaver crew to build levees along the southern channel, tightening the flow so the remaining water reaches the furthest field. It works. Potatoes come in on day five. The drought breaks on day six with a thunderstorm that refills the reservoir in an hour.

By autumn, she's added a second district on the plateau above the river, connected by a long wooden bridge. That district runs on windmills and grows wheat for flour. The two districts trade through a drop-off point — logs go up, bread comes down. It's the kind of quiet, satisfying setup that has you leaning back and just watching your beavers potter about for ten minutes before you build anything new.

One practical tip: plant trees near the river early. They drink from the water table and survive a dry spell far better than crops do.

• New maps added in the 1.1 release.
• New statistics features help you track how your district is actually doing.

• Apple Silicon (ARM) or 64-bit Intel