The Farthest Frontier tips that matter most for beginners fit in one line: get through the first winter, then build around desirability, a three-year crop rotation and walls around your valuables. Keep industry away from homes, never grow wheat on the same field two years running, and expect raids to grow with your town. Below: the best city layout, crop rotation, how the population cap works, and raider defence.
Facts come from Crate Entertainment’s official Game Guide, its patch notes up to v1.1.0 (April 9, 2026) and the v1.2 preview (October 6, 2026), plus PC Gamer’s guides. Tips marked “our tip” are our own advice, built from those facts. Checked November 6, 2026 UTC.
Table of Contents
Quick answer
- First year: a Firewood Splitter right away, enough shelters, and food from foraging, hunting and fishing. Winter decides whether a new town survives.
- Layout: homes in a core around a Market, a well and decorations; smoke, smells and noise (Smokehouse, Compost Yard, mines) on the edge.
- Crops: fields run on a 3-year rotation. Rotate wheat between fields, put clover, beans or peas in the cycle, and add Field Maintenance until weeds and rocks are gone.
- Population cap: the old 1,000 hard cap is gone. It is a setting now, and since v1.0 it has more levels.
- Raiders: they want your goods. Wall the Trading Post and storage first, then add Lookout Towers, then a Barracks. You can switch raids off with Pacifist Mode.
Farthest Frontier at a glance (November 2026)
| Item | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Developer and publisher | Crate Entertainment (makers of Grim Dawn) | Steam store page |
| Price | $34.99 (PC, Windows only) | Steam, checked Nov 6, 2026 |
| Left Early Access | October 23, 2025 (v1.0) | Crate on Steam |
| Current version | v1.1 (April 2026: gridless building, Guided Start); v1.2 previewed, no date yet | Crate forums |
| Buildings / tech tree | 190+ buildings, 142-point tech tree | Steam store, Crate |
| Crop field size | 5×5 to 12×12, 1 to 7 farmers | Official Game Guide |
| Crop rotation | 3 years, repeats indefinitely | Official Game Guide |
| Raider camp cleared | Next raid delayed by up to 12 months | Official Game Guide |
Farthest Frontier tips for the first winter
The Game Guide’s basics page warns that “the first winter will quickly decide” a town’s fate, and running out of firewood “can quickly spell doom”. PC Gamer’s beginner tips say to build a Firewood Splitter immediately with two workers and keep it running, because the starting food stockpile buys you a little time but cold does not.
- Pick the Town Center site carefully. Crate’s guide says to check nearby food (berries, fish, deer), ores and threats such as wolf dens and boars before you settle.
- Use the Guided Start. Since v1.1 it is on by default for your first settlement and gives objectives up to a Tier 2 Town Center.
- Keep laborers free. If the laborer count turns red in the Professions window (P), you have pulled too many into jobs.
Plazas, gardens and statues raise desirability, which lets nearby homes upgrade. Image: Crate Entertainment
Farthest Frontier best city layout
Layout matters because of desirability. Homes only upgrade in desirable areas, and higher-tier homes pay tax, hold more people and are needed for Town Center upgrades. These are Crate’s rules:
- Bad neighbours: many production buildings lower desirability. The Smokehouse is an early example. The Compost Yard affects a large area and belongs far from homes. Mines also hurt nearby homes.
- Good neighbours: the Bakery and Well are the only production buildings that raise desirability. A Market and a Healer’s House help nearby homes, but each service counts only once per home, so a second Market next door adds nothing.
- Decorations are the biggest lever. Variety helps, upgraded decorations help more, and duplicates or overlapping parks of the same type add little or nothing.
- Neutral buildings such as the Fletcher can sit next to homes.
- Abandonment: new construction can push an upgraded home below its requirement and it gets abandoned. Tier 1 shelters never are.
Our tip, a three-ring town:
- Core: Town Center, Market, Well, Bakery, Healer’s House and housing blocks, with gaps left for gardens and plazas. PC Gamer also advises against packing homes tight.
- Middle ring: storage (Root Cellars, Storehouses, Granary) on roads between homes and industry, so carry trips stay short.
- Outer ring: Smokehouse, tannery-type workshops, Compost Yard next to the fields, mines, and Temporary Shelters near remote Work Camps and mines. The guide says these let far-off workers keep working longer.
Upgrade dirt roads to cobbled ones on busy routes, because the guide says cobbled roads are faster. Stock Root Cellars with barrels too: each barrel cuts spoilage by 5%, and a Root Cellar holds 10, so a full one spoils 50% less. Since v1.1 you can place buildings off the grid at any angle, but crop fields, walls and bridges still snap to the grid. Plan those first.
Farthest Frontier crop rotation explained
From Crate’s farming page:
- Each field has three rows (years I, II and III). A new year moves to the next row, and the cycle repeats indefinitely.
- Check the fertility overlay first: poor land starts low and improves slowly.
- Field prep (clearing and tilling) can take years on rough ground and stops when the ground freezes.
- Soil mixture (clay vs sand) gives up to +10% yield. Pair crops with similar needs in one rotation.
- Diseases build up in the soil over time. Rotate away from an affected crop and don’t plant the same crop on neighbouring fields.
- Clover needs no harvest. Crate suggests timing it so that fewer fields ripen at once, which means you need fewer farmers.
- Field Maintenance is a slot in the rotation that removes weeds and rocks. Weeds come back if you skip it for years.
Two v1.0-era patch notes matter here. One compost pile now fully fertilizes a 12×12 field (smaller fields use less), and a later hotfix made crop diseases decline even when a rotation is left empty. Compost goes onto the field at the start of the next rotation.
Neighbouring fields growing different crops helps stop diseases spreading. Image: Crate Entertainment
Which crops to plant first
Crate’s Steam page says there are 12 crops. This table uses the traits in PC Gamer’s crop rotation guide. That guide dates from Early Access (August 2022), so check the in-game crop tooltips after v1.0’s rebalance.
| Crop | Strength | Weakness |
|---|---|---|
| Turnips | Short grow time, sturdy against frost, heat and disease | None noted; PC Gamer calls it dependable |
| Beans / Peas | Raise soil fertility; beans store well | Peas are weak to heat |
| Clover | Best fertility restorer; no harvest needed | Not food, can’t be sold |
| Buckwheat | Short grain, handles heat, suppresses weeds | Grain needs a windmill and bakery |
| Carrots | Frost resistant, store long, low fertility needs | Poor on rocky fields |
| Rye | Needs less fertility than wheat | Long grow time, drains fertility |
| Wheat | Very high yield, flour and beer | Drains fertility fast, prone to disease |
| Flax | Linen for clothing | Lowers fertility |
| Leeks / Cabbage | Frost and heat tolerant | Spoil quickly; cabbage needs high fertility |
Our tip, a starter rotation for three fields: stagger the heavy crop, as PC Gamer suggests, so each field grows wheat only once every three years. Field A: wheat in year I, beans or peas plus turnips in year II, clover plus Field Maintenance in year III. Fields B and C run the same rows shifted one and two years. You harvest grain every year, and each field gets a fertility year and a cleaning year. Check the soil mixture bar before you lock it in. The v1.2 preview adds a Crop Rotation Almanac that saves rotations and reuses them on other fields and in other towns.
Farthest Frontier population cap: is there a limit?
Not a fixed one any more. Here is the history from Crate’s own posts:
- August 2022 (Early Access): population stopped at 1,000. Crate’s Zantai called it “a temporary performance measure”.
- v0.9.0 (August 2, 2023): “The population cap of 1000 has been removed,” the patch notes say. You set your own cap in the game settings.
- v1.0 (October 2025): “Added additional levels to the Population Cap setting” (v1.0 notes).
If your town is stuck at exactly 1,000, check that setting. In 2024 a forum moderator said its default was 1k. Don’t leave the cap on for decades, either. In January 2026 Crate reviewed a save with a collapsed birth rate and found that the player had “capped your population so long” that most women had become too old to have children.
Growth also depends on housing and food: immigrants won’t come to a town that can’t sustain them. Hotfix 1.0.5 raised immigration at low populations, and the v1.2 preview raises it again. Rejected immigrant groups “may become desperate and even attack”. The Town Center also has population thresholds for its upgrades.
How to defend against raiders in Farthest Frontier
Crate’s combat guide says early raids are small, but they grow with your town and later bring better armour and siege weapons. Some armies demand gold before they attack. PC Gamer’s tips add that raiders are “more interested in stealing than killing”: they head for the Trading Post, storage and even the foundry, then leave once their pockets are full.
Fortified stone walls and a mounted company guard the town core. Image: Crate Entertainment
| Defence | What it does (Crate’s guide and patch notes) |
|---|---|
| Town Center bell | Villagers shelter inside and shoot arrows; enough for wolves or a bear, not a full raid. PC Gamer: ring it off afterwards, or villagers stay inside and can starve. |
| Lookout Tower | Up to 2 armed guards; upgrades add range and damage; Tier 3 towers added in v1.0; upkeep is charged even when empty. |
| Palisade to Fortified Wall | Holds raiders while towers work; gates let villagers through but not raiders or wildlife; fortified walls need a lot of stone; wall and gate health raised in hotfix 1.0.2. |
| Fences | Keep livestock in and deer out, but raiders cut through them easily. |
| Barracks | Gold to recruit plus upkeep; garrisoned soldiers with bows shoot from inside; Flag Combat Area sends the company to a rally point. |
| Military Stable | Mounted units; needs horses bought at the Trading Post; no ranged attack from the garrison. |
Our tip, the order to build in: wall the Trading Post and your main storage first, as PC Gamer recommends, then put towers on those walls, then add a Barracks once you have steady gold for upkeep. Arm soldiers well. The guide says only Heavy Infantry and Lancers can use the best gear. Don’t leave a rally point up for long, because soldiers will stay put until they starve. Clearing a raider camp, which is always ringed by towers, pays twice: you get loot (sometimes relics), and the next raid on your town is delayed by up to 12 months.
v1.0 also lets archers shoot through non-wall buildings and makes rams wait for the rest of the raid. The game drops back to 1x speed when raiders arrive unless you turn that off in Combat Settings. If you don’t want raids at all, Pacifist Mode removes them. If you want them back later, building the Military Monument and pressing its taunt button triggers a raid, which Crate confirmed is “by design”.
Farthest Frontier vs Manor Lords: what’s different?
Farthest Frontier is the more survival-heavy of the two medieval builders: a deep farming model (rotations, soil mixture, crop diseases), “old-timey” illnesses such as dysentery, scurvy and plague, a desirability system that drives home upgrades, a tech tree and monuments with victory conditions, and optional raids. If you’re coming from Manor Lords, the biggest adjustment is the farming and the first winter. For that game’s own systems (smallholdings, pelts, salt and a first-year build order), see our Manor Lords beginner’s guide.
For more survival-heavy builders, see our Against the Storm tips for beginners and the Frostpunk 2 factions tier list. If you want production-chain planning, start with our Anno 117 production chains and layouts.
What’s coming in v1.2
Crate’s v1.2 preview lists a Trading Post overhaul (supply and demand prices, auto-trading), Knowledge earned monthly with tech costs that scale by tier, the Crop Rotation Almanac, Dangerous Area Banners, a Construction Office and a Labor Office, and a lower chance of fires on Pioneer and Trailblazer. The update is free. Crate hoped to start a playtest this fall and expects it “to go live for everyone by the end of the year”, if testing goes smoothly. After that, Crate plans v1.3 and the game’s first major expansion DLC.
FAQ
Can you turn off raiders in Farthest Frontier?
Yes. Pacifist Mode at town creation disables raids at any difficulty. Crate’s store page says you can also switch off disease, and Custom Game options go further, but turning on any custom option disables achievement progress.
What is the max population in Farthest Frontier?
There is no fixed maximum since v0.9.0. The limit is the Population Cap setting, which got more levels in v1.0, plus what your PC can handle.
Is Farthest Frontier multiplayer?
No. Crate’s FAQ calls it an offline singleplayer game that only needs the internet for the download. Steam lists it for Windows at $34.99 (checked November 6, 2026).
Sources: Farthest Frontier on Steam; Crate Entertainment’s official Game Guide (Basics, Farming, Desirability, Population, Combat, Food, Buildings); Crate on Steam: leaving Early Access, v1.0 hotfixes, v1.0.5, v1.1.0; Crate forums: v1.0.0 notes, v1.1.0 notes, v1.2 preview, v0.9.0 notes; PC Gamer: 9 beginner tips and crop rotation guide (both August 2022). Checked November 6, 2026 UTC.
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