Tips and Tricks for Beginners

Although Tinyfolks isn’t quite as harsh and unforgiving as similar games such as Darkest Dungeon, this charming turn-based tactics game is by no means an easy experience; when playing on the intended difficulty or on any of the game’s challenge modes, Tinyfolks is a tactical puzzle that’s easy for beginners to mess up, especially if they’re new to the genre.

More experienced strategy and tactics fans might have an easier time with Tinyfolks, but the game has a few quirks that make it easy to slip up and lose an otherwise sure-fire victory. These tips should help ease players into the game and have a smoother first experience with its systems.

8 Pay Attention to Enemy Resistances

Tinyfolks has a handy info panel for each enemy that players can view by hovering over them with their mouse cursor, allowing them to see their current health as well as what types of attack they are weak or resistant to.

This information is extremely valuable; blindly attempting to poison an enemy who is resistant to poison is a mistake that can be avoided easily by glancing at each enemy’s info panel, and it doesn’t take long.

7 Don’t Be Afraid to Retreat

Tinyfolks allows players to retreat back to town after each combat, and although this means that they’ll have to start that dungeon again from the beginning next time around, retreating is sometimes the best option.

This is because death is permanent in Tinyfolks; if an experienced soldier dies in a dungeon, they don’t come back, which can cause a multitude of problems further down the line and result in losing a run. If a squad is looking worse for wear before the boss fight, it’s probably best to cut and run.

6 Conserve Power

Power, or “POW” as it’s displayed on the game’s minimal user interface, is Tinyfolks‘ version of mana and is required to use each character’s more powerful abilities; using these stronger abilities at the right time and conserving enough power to get through an entire dungeon, is key to keeping a squad alive.

Using potions to restore power is one way to do this, but it’s also important to use abilities on the right enemies at the right time; a high-damage ability that targets a single enemy isn’t going to be worth using on a rat with five hit points, but it might be worth using on the boss.

5 Upgrade the Tavern Early

The tavern allows players to recruit new folks and put them to rest for a speedier recovery, which is absolutely vital; recruiting more folks is integral to ensuring players have a broad and versatile squad, and being able to heal folks quickly after a dungeon crawl is important in keeping the strongest folks in the fight.

Upgrading the tavern simply means more options and more space to heal wounded folks. Usually, players have to sleep away several days in order to heal heavily wounded folks, but the tavern speeds this up significantly, meaning fewer of the player’s dwindling days are wasted.

4 Don’t Be Afraid to Sleep

Tinyfolks is played to a time limit (unless players turn it off, making the game significantly easier), and this means that when players choose to sleep away the day rather than dungeon crawling, they are essentially spending a resource in the form of time.

However, everything outside of battle in Tinyfolks takes days; building, training, upgrading, forging new weapons and healing all take days to complete. However, it is necessary that players interact with the town, train, and upgrade their folks at every opportunity. Although days do pass while adventuring through the game’s dungeons, sometimes it’s worth skipping a day in order to get a weapon upgrade before heading out or to wait for a strong soldier to heal their wounds rather than sending in a sub-par squad.

3 Train Folks ASAP

Besides upgrading the tavern, building the training buildings in Tinyfolks should be a top priority for players because these buildings allow players to train their peasant folk into stronger, specialized classes.

These classes have stronger abilities that cater to more specific situations, making it easier to build a powerful and versatile team of folks. It’s also worth keeping in mind that folks with a specialized class can be upgraded into another unique class by training them at different buildings. Although there are a variety of classes to experiment with, most beginners should aim to build the temple first in order to train a priest or two to act as healers for their team.

2 Balance AOE and DPS Abilities

There is an abundance of different abilities in Tinyfolks, some of which are single-target and some of which target multiple enemies in a row. While at first, it may seem obvious to focus on AOE abilities, single-target abilities, especially those that consume power, often deal higher damage and can be perfect for taking out larger enemies and bosses.

Because of their situational use, it’s best to field a team of folks with a variety of AOE and high DPS abilities so that players are prepared for all kinds of encounters, although fielding a team of single-target-focused folks might be great for taking out a boss, they’re still going to have to wade through several combats, often facing multiple enemies at a time, before they reach it.

1 Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Basket

Because squad members permanently die in Tinyfolks if they’re defeated in battle, the game can be fairly unforgiving; losing an experienced, highly trained, and well-equipped soldier in battle can be a devastating turn of events. However, this can be made less devastating (and prevent players from outright losing) if players manage and train their town’s population effectively.

While players only really lose Tinyfolks if their leader dies or they run out of time, losing too many experienced squad members and being left with nothing but weaker folks can result in players running out of steam and not being able to beat the game’s dungeons in time.

This can be avoided by upgrading the tavern early to get access to more folks, as well as training folks as soon as possible (as previously discussed) and making sure that the town’s population contains a variety of versatile squad members. This means that even if an entire party gets wiped, players should have a backup team to take their place.