Since their entry into the mobile gaming industry back in 2013, WildWorks has consistently been a top source of wholesome, quality games aimed more towards younger audiences. The company has amassed more than 30 million downloads across its apps from the Google Play Store alone, maintaining a solid app portfolio of 7 games. Tag with Ryan and Animal Jam are just some of its most successful titles, enjoying millions of installs and maintain largely positive average user review ratings on both mobile platforms.
Fer.al is the latest game from WildWorks to join its mobile app portfolio. Unlike the company’s other mobile games, Fer.al is targeted at slightly older audiences, particularly gamers who enjoy exploration and opportunities to express their creativity. Fer.al is still in its early access stage, with a limited number of slots for players to venture into its virtual world. Despite being in its neo-natal phase, the amount of time and effort the developers invested in the game is already evident.
Fer.al sets you off to venture in a unique fantasy world as a mystical creature amongst other mystical creatures. Unlike conventional role-playing games, Fer.al is designed to give players a more relaxing experience as you explore different realms and accomplish various quests as you please.
Customization does not end with your avatar’s appearance and accessories as you will have your very own private place known as the sanctuary that you can likewise build and design to your heart’s content. Beyond exploration and socializing with other mystical creatures, Fer.al provides tons of mini games as well to help you earn various rewards, which includes materials needed to craft a variety of items.
There is certainly a lack of tutorial sessions in Fer.al to give players a solid enough idea of what to expect from their unique adventures but the introductory phase introduces you to the basic controls, which is all you actually need to begin a journey of discovery and exploration. Fer.al’s overall design and atmosphere promotes a relaxed gameplay, even across its quests and mini games.
However, if you are simply caught awestruck by the sheer enormity of the realms and would want more introduction before you continue on with your journey, then read on as our Fer.al beginner’s guide provides plenty of useful tips and strategies to jumpstart your adventure!
1. Pursue Quests And Accomplish Them
The question of what to do and where to go quickly arises after the short tutorial session and as you dive straight to the one of the realms, its either you will not immediately realize just how huge of a world there is in Fer.al or you will be overwhelmed by the number of possible actions laid ahead of you.
City Fera may seem huge to explore as a starting realm but it stands as just one of the six realms currently available in Fer.al. To start off, you should familiarize yourself well with the map and each distinct icon you can see on the mini map. Click on the mini map at the upper right side of the screen to see the realm’s full map. Note that resources you can harvest will not show on the full map.
On the mini map, different store icons can be seen on City Fera and the other common icons include a white arrow, which is you; yellow arrows, which indicate other players; and white dots symbolizing NPCs. The huge white icon that looks like a Chrome logo is also hard to ignore. These are teleportation portals that can instantly move you from one realm to another. Orange circles with exclamation marks and a bright glow indicate an available quest. Once you have familiarized yourself with navigation and controls you should start on your adventure by pursuing these quests.
Fer.al offers a wide variety of quests to complete. Each of the quests relate to gathering and exploration as there are no depictions of violence whatsoever in this game. Quests are initiated once you finish a conversation with the relevant NPC and typically ends after heading back to the NPC again after fulfilling the task or tasks at hand.
The exact location of the quest or the quest area can be clearly seen on the whole map and will also be noticeable at the borders of the mini map if they are far away. Based on what we have experienced, time and effort are the only necessities in completing the quests, and there has yet to be any objective that requires platforming or even puzzle-solving expertise.
Completing a quest always comes with valuable rewards. These may be one or a combination of accessories, inspirations, furniture, and other valuable items. Some of these items cannot be obtained anywhere else so taking on quests and accomplishing them ought to be your top priority in the world of Fer.al.
2. Keep On Gathering Resources
The whole world of Fer.al or the expanse is divided across different realms. There are currently 6 available realms now and, while there may be fewer resource spots on City Fera may seem scarce, the rest of the realms will be overflowing with an abundant supply of different resources. Note that each realm holds resources exclusively available within it which is why it becomes an even more fun and immersive experience to hop from one realm to the next.
Although you can tap and hold on the harvest or capture icon on the screen where the resource appears whenever you are close enough to them, it is a more convenient approach to simply hold a similar icon that appears just beside the jump button at the lower right side of the screen. Note that while some resources and items can only be gathered once, some resource spots allows you to gather from them up to 3 times consecutively.
While some resources and items to be gathered are very visible and noticeable even from a distance, non-NPC objects in Fer.al that you can interact it will always have a unique glow on them. In addition to the usual sickle or net icon that appears when you are at close proximity to a resource that can be gathered, a hand instead appears on a quest item as well as other valuable items, like lock picks.
Although pursuing the completion of quests are on its own more than sufficient to keep you immersed in Fer.al for a long time, taking a bit of time to take a break from quests and simply enjoy each lush realm can be very refreshing. Beyond the quantifiable results of each harvest, which earns you not just resources but XP as well, discovering rare finds in the wilds can be very satisfying.
Gathering resources blindly works but in some instances and later on, you will have to prioritize amassing specific resources for your crafting needs. Until then, it is best to familiarize yourself with various resource spots across all the realms.
3. Talk To NPCs
Approaching or engaging in a conversation with NPCs scattered across the realms in Fer.al should not be motivated exclusively when they have a ready quest for you. Yes, quests are the bread and butter of RPGs but immersion into any fantasy world evokes getting to know as much about it as you can for better understanding and appreciation of its lore and stories. Beyond that, some conversations with NPCs trigger inspirations, which is another unique and exciting feature of Fer.al to drive your explorative urges even further.
Some NPCs even trigger a wide array of conversation narratives and you can engage them again to trigger the other choice strings. It is worth to spend time talking with every available NPC you see as some of the inspirations they can unlock cannot be obtained in any other way.
As far as inspirations are concerned, these wind up as sketches within the players sketchbook, which can later be combined to create new content. Although all inspirations lead to become sketches, there are also sketches obtained outside of inspirations.
4. Check Shops Beforehand To Set Farming Goals
As we mentioned earlier, harvesting resource materials and other items blindly can be very fun and liberating but at some point, you will want to target some items and cosmetics to further customize your avatar and have something to spend all those earned likes on.
The customization options available for your mystical creature before you jump into Fer.al’s world is but a small fraction of what it has to offer as far as customizations are concerned. If you check the available shops, you can view the different items you can craft as well as the needed ingredients for each one.
There are currently 5 different shops located in 3 different realms within the expanse and each one sells items unique to the shop. In the main social hub and starting point for every adventurer, City Fera, you can visit the most basic shops.
Fera’s Fashion sells cosmetic items for your avatar while To Dye For sells different dyes that can alter the color of your items, exponentially increasing the customization options available for your avatar. Both these shops can be seen at the left side of City Fera’s map, indicated by a garment and a bottle icon, respectively.
Shattered Bay hosts 2 unique shops as well: Twigla’s Workshop and Reputable Goods. Twigla’s Workshop, located at the north side of the realm, is your go-to place for all your homing furniture needs. Reputable Goods, ironically a black market of sorts, is located at the northeast side of the map and sells more extravagant items and accessories for your avatar.
Last but not the least is Bellamy’s Outpost, located in the Sunken Thicket. This shop sells materials that cost only likes and these materials serve as ingredients for some of your crafting needs. Note that most materials for sale here cannot be gathered from resource spots or harvested I many way. Be sure to take not of the resources for sale especially if it is an ingredient for something you have been eyeing on.
There are also 2 shops that are not physically available on any realm but can be accessed at any time through their corresponding icons at the upper right side of your screen. These are the Royal Boutique and the Astral Shop. The Royal Boutique, symbolized by a yellow crown icon at the top-right area of your screen, sells star fragments, which are a premium currency in the game that is difficult to acquire through normal means. The Astral Shop, on the other hand, sells premium items for your avatar that can be bought only through spending star fragments.
5. Revel In The Mini Games
Pursuing quests and constantly gathering resources from different realms can certainly take up a lot of your gaming time on a daily basis. Though there are a lot of grounds and features to explore and discover in the world of Fer.al, there are numerous min games to revel in as well to break the monotony of traveling and adventuring. These mini games are not just designed for fun as each one offers different challenges and rewards that are sure to get you hooked in on each of them, or at the very least one of them.
There are currently 6 mini games scattered across 3 realms in Fer.al. City Fera hosts 4 of these min games while Sunken Thicket and Shattered Bay each hold 1. There are no pre-requisites or underlying requirements for most of these games save for the 2 ones that require you to place bets. Achievements in these min games often come with additional rewards as well on top of the immediate winnings.
Dizzywing Dispatch is a match-3 puzzle game located within the Fera Fashions building in City Fera. You can earn likes, ingredients, accessories, and sanctuary items from playing this game. Almost everything about this game works the same way as conventional puzzle games in that matching 3 tiles, or in this case birds, of the same color clears those tiles, leaving other tiles including new ones to drop down the puzzle. You can match 4 or more tiles to unlock special tiles and every successful match you create fills up the bar that clears the level.
Unlike conventional match-3 puzzle games, though, levels in this game take place on the same puzzle and your progress continues on from one level to the next one. There are no time limits imposed on the puzzle itself but some levels have extra conditions on top of the bar you need to fill up. Hatching eggs or dropping down items all the way to the bottom of the screen with limited number of moves available are example of extra conditions. The presence of these extra conditions and failing to satisfy them are the only ways for you to end your run in this mini game.
Do or Dye, which is located inside the To Dye For building in City Fera requires a combination of analytical skills and luck for you to win each round and can earn you likes, ingredients and dyes as a reward for winning. The objective of the game is to find the correct ingredients and the order they are used to mix and arrive at the desired output. The ingredients rest inside a wheel that you can spin so controlling which ingredient drops first is well within your discretion. When all the ingredients are dropped, you can command the beetle to mix them.
Once you arrive at the mixture, symbols will indicate to give you a hint on how you performed in the guessing game: A star means that you have the correct ingredient in the correct order; a diamond tells you that you have the right ingredient in the wrong order, and a skull means that the ingredient you used is not a part of the supposed mixture.
You have to be able to guess the correct mixture and order before the ingredients run out. The initial levels are easy as there are only 2 ingredients but will soon grow in complexity as more ingredients pour in on the mix, even requiring some to be used more than once.
The next 2 mini games located within City Fera as well are hosted by Kino and are somewhat gambling games that do require luck in addition to strategy for you to win. These are also exclusively the only games that require you to bet likes in order to partake in. The similarity of ideas in both mini games lie in the concept of earning as much as you gamble or losing it entirely.
Four Crows is a strategy card game of sorts where both you and Kino duel with you hoping to have 1 to 4 crows on the branch while Kino attempts to have 0 or more than 5 on it. There are 3 types of cards to play, cards that add 1-2 crows from the branch, cards that remove 1-2 crows on the branch, and cards that do nothing and skip turns. Both you and Kino will play the game with 5 cards each, placing cards consecutively one at a time.
If there are more than 4 crows on the branch or if the number of crows go below 1, you instantly lose the game. Your winnings, on the other hand, depend on the remaining number of crows on the branch at the end of the round, meaning that you can earn 4 times as many likes at the end of the match if there are 4 crows on the branch.
Queen’s Duel is yet another strategy game against Kino that banks a lot on luck as you will be playing with a set of 6 dice with little to no control over its outcome. Your goal is to score a higher points for each lane against Kino. The sides of each dice consists of a helmet, a crown, 2 masks, and 2 swords. Crowns have 3 points, helmets have 2 points and masks have 1 point. You need to place these on the base lane and swords to add to their power.
Beyond the first roll of the dice, you can reroll any or all of them depending on your strategy. Knowing the full mechanics of the game is practically the only tip you will be getting as any game involving dice is a game of probability and is largely anybody’s game.
What the Hex is perhaps the hottest mini game within Fer.al that probably deserves an entire guide of its own. This mini game can be found within Sunken Thicket and can earn you likes, ingredients, and accessories. To some extent, it is a puzzle game that works like a match-3 game as you will also be matching colors of elements to score combos and points.
While matching similar elements of hexagonal runes on the plate is the means to score points, the limited area you are provided with is also a constraint to keep an eye on. There are no time limits to pressure you into making a move and the set of runes you have in hand can also be adjusted to suit the puzzle better depending on your strategy. This is a puzzle game that can be a tad bit more challenging than Dizzywing Dispatch so if you are going for a high score, be sure to come packed with a lot of time and patience as every move counts.
Twiggle Builders is another unique puzzle game where you guide Twiggles in a production line to have them prepare the correct ordered items needed. Likes, ingredients, and furniture can be earned from this mini game.
The whole idea of the game is for you to drag across aguiding pathway that Twiggles will travel through to get the needed materials into the exit bin. There are no time limits within which you must carve a path so be sure to analyze the entire work area’s layout first before mapping out the correct route or routes for each Twiggle and each needed material.
Fer.al certainly holds a lot more in store for its growing number of players and given that the mobile version is only at 0.13.3 at the time of this writing, we are certain that more content will come before its full version release. For now, this is where we wrap up our Fer.al beginner’s guide and we hope you learned a lot from the basic tips and strategies we shared. There are potentially a lot of secrets to discover in the game that we have yet to uncover ourselves so if you are fortunate enough to stumble on any additional tips and strategies, be sure to drop us comment down below!