The Tribe Must Survive is the newest survival, tribe-building roguelike to hit Steam in early access, and I have not been able to stop playing it. The game’s entire premise is to survive while growing your tribe numbers and exploring the territory around you. You don’t control your tribe members, but you can add, remove and close buildings to give yourself a sense of control.
Because of the roguelike elements in The Tribe Must Survive, you learn something new with every play-through. I finally made it to the end of Act V and met the screen with the message, “We have survived!” so I have played through my fair share of tribes. I wanted to gather some of the knowledge I found along the way so beginners can help their tribe survive, too.
I don’t claim to be a complete expert…yet, but here are some of my tips and tricks to getting through The Tribe Must Survive! All of these tips are based on Beta v0.39.10.
After your first run-through, you’ll be able to choose a perk for each game.
The Tribe Must Survive Perks So Far:
- Spiritual people: Gain 1 spiritual aspect at random
- The Wealthy Few: The tribe starts with 2 less members, +124 wood, +50 food
- Inherited Knowledge: Gain one random building upgrade from Tier 1
- Moths to a Flame: Tribe growth for each fire radius above 1: +0.4
- Strength in Numbers: The tribe starts with 2 more members. -25 food, -25 wood
- Perspective Through Terror: Panic reset base stability to 0. Panic reset base tolerance to 0.
The Tribe Must Survive General Tips
- Don’t try to grow your tribe too fast. As you gain people, you need food and wood, and they run out fast.
- People sharing tents seems to help social need. So don’t have too many more tents than people, or close tents to group people together when social need is low.
- Keep some crops inside your fire radius for food growth during night/eclipse/other events.
- You need empty tent space to gain new tribe members.
- Use on and off switches for control: Turn off beds for the day if you need people working, or turn everything off to force people into a spiritual ritual.
- Pause at dawn and dusk to plan the day. This will help you save wood, open/close buildings, and get your barrings.
- Turn off any jobs within the flame area, call night horn, and then do spirit stuff, and all will join
- Keep a torch by the beds. When fear gets really high, you can turn it on to help lower fear while people are sleeping.
- Keep an eye on people joining your tribe. You don’t want anyone unassigned or too many people joining without balancing the need for crops and hunters to feed them.
- Keep up spiritual rituals every couple of days to avoid the “Weird Gleam” trait. As of Feb 24, 2024, this trait cannot be removed.
- NOT CONFIRMED: I turn off my Spirit Lodge when I’m not using it, so that the tribe members won’t work there.
- Yellow Medicine grows from mushrooms, and Green Medicine from toads. You will need to explore to find these areas.
- Mines to deplete and do not refill. You will need to explore to find more areas.
- After exploring outposts and unlocking them, you need a Trading Post to send new people/materials to the new area. Demolish for extra resources back.
- Save up 100 Influence at the beginning to bring your Stability up one. It makes things a lot easier.
- Be sure to turn off your fire after hour 5 each day to save wood unless fear is high
- Make sure to turn on Nighthorn automatically. 21:00 gives you a second to turn on the fire before it is dark. It’s your warning as much as it is theirs.
The Tribe Must Survive: Act I Tips
- Eclipse Event: Day 17-20 – Tribe Member Fear +20, Sunlight -1, Chance of Shadow-Death +100%
- No sunlight, so tribe members can only go as far as the fire/torches.
- Place torches toward treelines overlapping light so tribe members can still collect lumber.
- Save 45 influence to avoid sacrificing 125 food or 2 people during the eclipse
- Save more influence by doing the Eclipse Ritual (at the top right of the screen) to reduce fear (approx. 25 for each ritual).
- Make sure you have Lumber Camps, Crop Farms, Spirit Lodge and Tents within fire range.
- Need a minimum of 48 wood for each day (144). You will likely need more when someone goes into shock. Add 1 wood per hour for each torch you want to burn.
- Aim for a safe 500 wood and 200 food for around 20 people
- Keep Nighthorn on during the eclipse.
- Make sure to turn on Nighthorn automatically. 21:00 gives you a second to turn on the fire before it is dark. It’s your warning as much as it is theirs.
- Can set up torches to trees and have lumbar yards in camp to keep wood producing
The Tribe Must Survive: Act II Tips
- Flood Event: Day 33, hr 11-40
- Tribe Member Discontent: Shallow Water +5, Medium Water +10, High Water +15
- Light Buildings Range +2
- Light Buildings Inactive: In Medium Waters, In High Water
- Production Time: Shallow Water +20%, Medium Water +50%, High Water +100%
- Starts raining on day 32
- Begin this act by stockpiling wood, food and stone.
- Save up wood and stone to create a flood barrier.
- The barrier needs to make a solid wall to stop water. Help it reach wooded areas and make sure there are Crop Farms, Tents, Spirit Lodge and Lumber Camp inside it
- This act you gain tinkering which gives boosts to things in-game. Get someone working here to stock up.
- Make sure to press the button on the top right that stops tribe members from going into deep waters.
The Tribe Must Survive: Act III Tips
- Locust Event: day 54-60:
- At specific intervals, Locusts will devour your food supply. You move your hunters to nest duty to slow how much they take (top right of screen)
- I’ll be honest: I’ve never made it out of here with food left
- If you have people with a “Weird Gleam,” take them OFF the hunting posts and put them on something less urgent. You need hunters who work to survive this.
- 3 waves, 5/5 100%, 7/7 120%, 10/10 150%
- If you have outposts, locus nests WILL spawn there, so keep an eye on your hunters.
- Try to make the most of your hunters, forcing them to sleep at night and closing Tents first thing in the morning
- Ensure you’re still giving everyone time for rituals, or they will start to go into shock or get the Weird Gleam
- Make sure to focus on restocking the food supply when it is over.
- You will likely lose people here. Say your goodbyes.
The Tribe Must Survive: Act IV Tips
- Plague Event: Day 74-80
- “Try to isolate the infected”
- Sleep Need Increase Interval: -50%
- Chance to spread the Plague through interactions: +5%
- Chance to disappear per hour: +0.5%
- Multiple waves spreading the Plague through the tribe
- I built extra Tents so people could stay apart
- Make sure to forbid social interactions so it doesn’t spread, but beware that your tribe members can go into shock when needs aren’t met.
- First forbid is free, for second and third wave it is 75 Influence each (top right corner)
- Once you get through the Plague, pick one resource and stockpile it for Act V
- I recommend stockpiling food, as you will need to burn a lot of wood, and nothing else is quite as plentiful.
- Be very aware of how many people have “weird gleam” it
The Tribe Must Survive: Act V Tips
- Cataclysm Event: Day 86-101
- Keep the insane busy by building with resources.
- Tribe members with Weird Gleam go insane.
- Tribe members will become insane instead of Weird from low Spiritual Need.
- Dispair – Spiritual Need Increase Interval: -75%
- Unrest – Panic Build-up Progress: +50%
- Loss of Control – Influence Gain: -25%
- No sunlight
- Cataclysm just feels like hard mode.
- All Outposts and Journeys will be brought back to the main camp.
- Make sure to turn off the automatic Night Horn here. Your tribe members will end up roaming in the dark. You want it to stay on at all times.
- Build torches in wooded areas so you can continue to stockpile wood. You will need it for people in shock and general fire maintenance
- Keep Lumber Camps and Crop Farms in the lit area to continue with production.
- You will need to run constant Rituals here so people don’t go insane. Don’t plan on people doing a lot of work.
- This is the end of The Tribe Must Survive, so if you need to deplete resources to survive, do it.
The Tribe Must Survive Journeys & Outposts
I’ll be honest: at this point in the game, I have not mastered Journeys and Outposts. I feel like there is so much going on just to get through each event that I struggle to balance spreading my tribe out. Also, I feel like these are going to play a bigger role later in The Tribe Must Survive Early Access or perhaps when the full game launches.
For now, the game ends abruptly, but I feel like there could be more added if you survive Act V, where you could really explore and build communities. That being said, I didn’t go for quantity over quality of tribe members yet, so who knows how much I might be able to explore the more I continue my playthroughs.
That being said, here is what I know so far about Journeys and Outposts.
Journeys
- Send 1-3 people on a Journey using an Explorer Platform.
- The more Explorer Platforms you have the more Journeys your tribe can go on.
- This is how you uncover outpost regions. There are 12 sections in each region.
- Send valuable resources to aid them. I usually went with two stacks of wood and food and one stone, leaving one space blank for found items
- Remember not to deplete your base tribe or resources too much.
- Make choices throughout the journey that can help you gain materials, progress the mission, kill your tribe members, and more.
- Make sure to pay attention to your tribe members’ stats because they need to be happy, too.
- Watch your wood and food, as they will use it the longer they are out.
- Bring tribe members back when resources are low, or their needs aren’t met.
Outposts
- You can unlock Outposts after Journeys have uncovered 50% of an area.
- Each Outpost unlocked is like a brand-new tribe.
- You need everything you needed on day one: Granary, Stockpile, Hunters Lodge, Spirit Lodge, Lumber Camp, Campfire etc.
- Build Trading Posts to move people and certain resources between your main tribe and Outposts.
- Trading Post also emits light.
- I don’t believe people naturally join outposts.
- Make sure to keep an eye on your wood, food and fires. Your tribe members have all the same needs and will go missing if you don’t turn your fire on.
- You can easily swap between the main camp and Outposts on the top right of the screen.
- Everyone is brought back to the main camp from Outposts in Act V
- The biggest tip is DON’T FORGET ABOUT THEM!
The Tribe Must Survive hasn’t been out for very long, but they already have a busy Discord for anyone looking for help or community. I’m sure there is plenty they can teach you!
