Guide
- This article is a stub. You can help by expanding it.
This page adds a guide for players who are stuck or do not know what to do in the game. This guide tells you what te basics are of the game and what the different catagories do like how to manage food or how to make friends and so on.
Be sure to also check tutorial here you can also find some tips & tricks.
This guide is posted on steam by the user t_spacemonkeys.
Basics
So you’ve created an adorable character and they’ve been left clueless on a plot of land. Here are a few tips and some general information to help you get started.
Little tutorials will pop up as you start doing things, but there are also some helpful tutorial pages in the menu, on the rightmost tab. Be sure to check them out!
If you need to use something on your toolbar that isn't a tool, hit the spacebar. Space is how you refill your watering can, eat food, and read recipes/blueprints.
Don’t want to worry about food, sleeping or diseases? Turn those options off in the menu. I’d suggest trying with them on though, as it makes the game unique and fun. You can always try with the options off at first and once you're settled you can turn them on.
Things you can interact with have a darker outline. If you don’t get anything from shaking a tree/bush, it might not be in season or you've already shaken it.
You can find several useful things on the Family tab of the menu, on the left underneath your character portrait. Here you can: turn your lamp on and off (and use the mini button next to it to refill it with oil if you have some), see what level your various skills are, attach lures to your fishing rod and check the calendar.
Trees
Always shake trees twice as you go past them in the world. Not only is the wood useful for building things, it also makes you a reasonable amount of money – each piece is worth 10 gold, so a stack of 50 is worth 500. This is an easy way to earn some extra money at the beginning. Almost all trees with a black outline give you wood, except fruit/nut trees. On the map there are cherry, hazelnut and persimmon trees that don't give you any wood, as they have fruit/nuts which you can collect in the appropriate season.
Food
At the beginning of the game in spring, the easiest food to cook is survival salad, which you can make with plantains and violets you can forage from the ground.
The best way to continue feeding yourself (indefinitely) is to put fruit/vegetables/fish onto a drying rack or in a preservative jar. This produces an item that will refill 10-20 hunger, and last for a long time in your inventory. And all you need are the fruits you can forage off bushes, some crops from your garden, or some spare fish. If you have 3 of any combination of drying racks and preservative jars, this will more than fulfill your hunger needs and give you leftovers. You can always turn hunger off if you find it to difficult to feed yourself and once you are settled, you can always turn it back on in the settings menu.
To cook, you need recipes that can be obtained through quests or levelling up your cooking skill. These are fun, but require a lot of ingredients and don’t satisfy that much more hunger. If you make food, or receive it as a quest reward, it’s probably worth selling it instead, as it’s worth more to you that way. Keep on the dried fruit diet, it will lead you to victory!
On the other hand, once you have money, why not take the time to eat those waffles? Your little person deserves it, and they were sent by a friend, after all! It would be rude not to eat them. Cooked items can also give buffs, that may give bonuses to eg. item quality.
Farming
You need seeds, which you can buy from people working in the fields in the area left of your farm. People in the top right and bottom left fields have different stocks, and change their stock each day, so check back if you are looking for different seeds. You can also get a lot of starting seeds by doing the Mayor’s quest to meet people. There are also a lot of children who sell you seeds.
When you harvest them the crops, they are likely to spawn more seeds of that type.
You have to water each plant or tree individually – if you miss a day, the plant will go brown, but will still be alive. If you miss another day, it will die. If you place seeds but don’t water them, they will disappear the next day.
Fertilizer, obtained from putting rot in the compost bin, can help improve the quality of your crops. It does not make them grow faster. Rot can be obtained by letting organic items decompose, and 1 rot per day can be harvested from adult pigs (currently restricted to the mod beta users).
Items gradually turn from gold to silver to bronze quality, and then they rot. Eat/sell your bronze quality food first. But remember rot is useful, because you can add it to your compost bin.
If using your family as farm helpers, ensure you've built and placed the helper chest and put tools in it that they will need. You have to provide them with filled watering cans in order to water as they will not refill them themselves - having higher grade watering cans will help. They also only have a certain number of working hours in a day, so check to see all your crops got watered. Once you select farm helper in the drop down menu of the family menu, you may want to untick every option except for watering underneath to ensure it gets done and they don't wander off to pick weeds. -Note- If they do not help you it might be because they only accept the 'basic' tools.
Livestock
Once you own the building required for holding a particular animal, you can buy that animal from the animal farmer. Once purchased, they will appear at your farm and wander around. Make sure to build a fence if you wish your animals to stay in one area.
If you have any two of the same species, there is a chance for them to reproduce, which can get you free livestock! It's therefore worth focusing on fewer species early on, and letting them breed. Ie. get two chickens, or two cows. You can then sell or butcher the offspring.
Every animal requires one straw per day. You can buy straw from the farmers, scythe the grass on your farm, or grow it from hay seeds.
Once the barn or chicken coop is built, go through the door to access the interior space. Click on the trough to collect eggs dropped from chickens and geese, or to place straw to feed your animals.
To milk your cows and goats, buy a milk pail from the animal farmer and select your animal. Cows and goats can only be milked once per day and must already be adults. To sheer your sheep, buy sheers from the animal farmer and click your sheep. They will drop one sheep fur every two days.
Animals will eventually die. Furthermore, when an animal becomes elderly, it will yield products less often and butcher for less. You can check their age progression by clicking the animal twice to pop up their info menu and looking at their age bar.
On game release, all animals are currently marked as male (Will be changed in the upcoming update), but they will still all give milk/produce eggs, and can reproduce with each other.
Double click on an animal to change its name. (Currently doesn’t work with pregnant coop animals)
Making Friends
Talk to everyone! You can talk to people 2 times per day (until their talk button is greyed out). Once people are friends with you, they will send you gifts in the post – sometimes very expensive, helpful ones.
If you see a question mark above someone’s head, it might be that they are offering a quest, but they could also want to give you a gift, so it’s worth clicking on them.
Insulting people annoys them for that day, but if you were friends it will only put a minor dent in your relationship. You can safely do the quest to insult people without losing too much ground. Indeed, insulting other people makes some villagers like you, if they have the cruel trait!
Giving gifts can end up losing your friendship points, as people can be very picky about what they like. They will frequently tell you a favourite item one of the first times you talk to them, but otherwise cooked dishes seem to always get a good response. Everything above a price of $30 is a liked gift.
Quests
Quest can be obtained through the board outside of the town hall, but sometimes you will see villagers wondering around with a question mark above their head.
Be aware that you are frequently offered quests that you cannot complete yet – they may require out of season items, crafting skills/equipment you don’t have, or things you would have to buy that wouldn’t be worth the reward. Don’t worry about not taking or finishing a quest if it ends up too hard.
Prioritise quests that give blueprint or recipe rewards. Once you have a comfortable amount of money, take these quests even if you cannot produce the items needed but know you can buy them – it’s worth it to get blueprints.
When you have the items you need for a quest, that person’s icon will show up on your map.
Tools and Materials
Tools made of better materials give increased durability, but no special abilities. In the case of the watering can, more expensive cans give higher water capacity but do not let you water more squares at once. Move to the next level up when you feel it’s worth it, and otherwise give your tools to the blacksmith for repair just before they break - you'll find them returned in your mail box the next morning.
Steel tools appear rarely at the blacksmith, and are also rarely sold by ship captains at the docks at the weekend.
Trees and stones you clear from your farm do not currently grow back (also, the brambles/dead bushes are cleared with a hoe). You will have to use alternate sources of these materials once you’ve cleaned up your farm.
Wood can be gained from shaking trees in town, stone from the mine, straw from growing hay. Villagers will also sell these items, so it’s worth checking with the blacksmith, carpenter and farmers if they have some in stock if you need a boost.
Crafting
Sometimes you need to put several of an item into a crafter for it to work – ie. 3 wheat in the flour mill to get flour, 3 iron ore into the smelter to get an iron bar.
Don’t think that you have to craft everything! You are given a crafting station, and might therefore assume you will need to do a lot of crafting to obtain all the items you need – the way you do in other farming games. But one thing Echoes does really well is emphasize that your starting character is a farmer. You do not have the skills or the equipment to make your own iron nails, even though you need them for lots of things and your first thought might be that you should make them. But you first need to unlock the anvil (crafting skill 6 or a quest) and a smelter. That will take a while. So embrace the game. Be a farmer. Go to the blacksmith and buy your nails. At the start it might seem like a lot of money, but you’ll soon have plenty of that, and you’re not in a hurry. Build up your crafting empire gradually – your child can always do what you didn’t get around to.
When you want a building to be placed or want to upgrade a building you have to talk to the carpenters. They will have an option build. Once clicked you can see all the building costs. Ensure that the entire area you want to place your coop/barn/house in is clear before you visit the carpenter, otherwise you’ll end up doing several trips back and forth.
The first house upgrade includes a cellar, which essentially contains a free mini fridge, with 8 storage spaces where items won't rot.
||Build requirements:|| Chicken coop: 999 gold. 80 wood, 30 stone, 15 nails, 20 straw, 4 iron bar. Large chicken coop: 2100 gold. 59 stone, 30 nails, 160 wood, 40 straw, 3 copper bar, 4 iron bar. Barn: 1200 gold. 100 wood, 40 stone, 25 nails, 20 straw, 7 iron bar, 4 glass. Large barn: 2700 gold. 57 stone, 30 nails, 2 steel bar, 10 brick, 200 wood, 4 glass, 40 straw. Saltbox Home: 1699 gold. 40 stone, 30 nails, 5 iron bar, 122 wood, 8 glass, 5 paint. Atlantic Home: 4999 gold. 57 stone, 50 nails, 3 steel bar, 35 brick, 300 wood, 20 glass, 10 paint.
Disease and Death
Once you have a bit of money, ask the doctor for an inoculation. Smallpox can wipe out half the town, and you don’t want your character to be one of them.
Befriending the doctor means they will send you free medicine, which is great, and likewise quests for them will have medicine as a reward.
It’s nice to gradually build up a stockpile of medicine, because if you get sick, the doctor might diagnose you but not have what you need in stock on the day, or they might be closed.
If you see someone looking ill, try and avoid them. When you are sick, try and avoid talking to people, especially your family. Unless you’re trying to wipe people out – in that case hang around them all you like.
When sick, ensure you eat regularly and spend most of your time sleeping, to enhance your chances of survival.
If the village blacksmith/carpenter etc. dies, and there is no one to replace them, someone new will arrive by boat in a couple of days to take over the position.
There are a couple of items in game that are labelled in a way suggesting they bring horrible death to people that consume them. It is possible to give these items to people. If you want to.
Marriage and Children
You don’t need to upgrade your house or bed to get married and have children.
Befriend a villager and give them the bunch of flowers bought from the lighthouse. This indicates your serious interest. They will possibly ask you to complete another condition, like reaching a certain friendship level with someone from their family. Once this is achieved, talking to them again asks you to select a spot for a ‘date,’ usually the following day. This is actually your opportunity to propose, so make sure you have a ring ready for your date. Hopefully a nice one, as there is the possibility for them to refuse. If they are on or above 80% friendship, they are likely to accept. You can buy different rings at the blacksmith. The better the ring, the more likely someone is to accept.
Your spouse will live in your home, and you can track them on the map (enable on the family page). If you want all hours access to a carpenter, blacksmith or doctor, maybe choose to marry one!
Once married, there is a 25% chance to trigger a pregnancy or adoption each night when you go to sleep. Once pregnant it will take 3 days for the baby to be born.
Once the baby is born you can take care of them by clicking on their crib.
Children will go to school by default, but you can also talk to the head of any profession to get them an apprenticeship there. You can modify what any of your family spend their days doing in the drop down menu in the family tab of the menu - select farm helper to have them help out on the farm instead.
You can also adopt orphaned children with adoption papers, bought from the mayor. To do so, you’ll need to find a child with no parents (you can have a look on the village tab, or just talk to children). This normally only happens after a wave of disease. As long as you have space in your house, the option to adopt will appear in yellow at the top of the menu when you talk to them.
You can have two children in your household. Once they are grown up, there is an option to kick them out of your house, at which point you could have more until your house is at capacity again.
You can modify the clothing/hair of your whole family at the tailor if you choose the tailoring option, where each of them will have a separate tab. Tailering children is free.
Generations
If playing with normal aging, your character will stay in the adult lifestage until the end of the first year, then become an elder. This gives you a bit of time to make life choices. But, on the other hand, you could die horribly of a disease, so don’t wait too long to have an heir!
Normal life stages = pregnancy 3 days, baby 3 days, child 2 seasons, adult 4 seasons, elder 2 seasons (not 100% sure on elder).
If you alter the aging to short, it halves the time for most life stages.
Miscellaneous
Festivals: Put your all into the spring fishing contest, as you can get a really good rod as a prize. Most events don’t need any preparation, but for the Harvest Festival in fall there is a grange display where you can place 9 of your best items to compete. Remember to prepare some in the days leading up to it and take them along!
Some people find it hard to participate in festivals. For the bake-off you need to talk to the mayor before noon. For the harvest festival you also need to talk to the mayor before noon.
Businesses: If you desperately want to build a house upgrade or get diagnosed with a disease, the responsible people will usefully still do these things for you even if it’s their day off – you just have to track them down.
Paint: To upgrade your house you’ll need paint, which you can buy from the ship captain at the docks at the weekends.
Winter: Assuming you have some drying racks/preservative jars, you will be fine throughout the winter, as you can stock them with fish. Do a bit of mining, go to bed early, admire the snow.
Fishing: areas appear to be categorised as ocean, freshwater (river/lake), mine, and swamp. There are some fish that say they can only be caught during the day or night, though I have sometimes caught night fish during the day. You can find this information on the collection page (accessed from the family tab) by hovering over fish you’ve caught, and quests to catch fish will normally tell you where to find them.
What to Aim for in Year 1
The game has a very gentle pace, and there is no rush to get anywhere - you can always carry on as your child if your character runs out of time. Explore and tinker at your own pace. Getting money may feel like a bit of a struggle at the start, but that’s okay, that’s a natural part of the game. You’ll have plenty of money by summer/fall.
Based on my own experiences, here are my recommendations for the first year: You do not need to follow my recommendations, please play at your own pace and as you like it!
In the first weeks, prioritise farming a small square of land and buying a fishing rod from the fisher. Along with selling excess wood, this should start making you some money. Sell pretty much everything that has a quality meter on it unless you need it for an immediate quest or to eat – there’s no point holding on to it until it rots.
Build another drying rack and a preservative jar, and keep them stocked. Gradually build more if you can, as the items are also great to sell.
Take the story quests at your own pace. After the initial quest from the mayor and the ones from the blacksmith that provide you with useful tools, don’t worry about pushing forward. There’s no rush to repair the bridge to the west if you’d like to build up your farm a bit first.
A wave of some kind of deadly disease might well hit the town in the first summer/fall, so it’s probably worth getting married and having a child or adopt a child as soon as possible, just in case. A spouse and children will also earn money or be able to help on your farm, so they’re useful to have.
Particularly useful things to craft are: Drying Rack, Preservative Jar, Flour Mill, Compost Bin, Smelter, Small and Large Ice Boxes (stops items from decreasing in quality/rotting - remember to fill them with ice!).
Entirely personal preference, but a suggested build order is: barn, house upgrade, coop. Personally I found the barn more useful and profitable than the coop, as the products are more versatile and it was fun setting up production chains. Upgrading your house gives you more room to put more crafting items and includes a mini-fridge.
I hope you enjoyed this guide and found it useful, it’s the first I’ve ever written! Have fun playing the game, and please let me know on discord or on the steam page if you have any tips of your own or notice any mistakes!