Primitive Era: 10000 BC is a casual MMORTS created by 37 Mobile Games. In this game, you play the role of an intelligent chieftain on a quest to flourish your Village into something much greater than it is. It is your goal whether you want to create an everlasting empire and stand against the test of time or just brutally maul anything like a caveman stuck in Plato’s test.
If you have played similar titles such as State of Survival, Viking Rise, or Stormshot, then you will be easily familiar with Primitive Era’s type of gameplay. You build your Village from the ground up, build your army in the hopes of contesting lands and fighting against enemies, and explore a vast world.
And in your journey, you will find yourself in a hostile world where only the strong can rule the weak. You know that the only way to rule is with an iron fist, with a club in your hand. But how will you do so, given that you are pitted against everything? Especially when you’ve just picked this game up?
Fret not! With this Primitive Era: 10000 BC Beginner’s Guide, you’ll learn the ropes and swing through them, cultivating your Village and creating an empire from the dirt of your home! We have compiled a detailed guide with tips, tricks, and strategies so that you won’t end up doing caveman strategies and start showing that homo sapien intellect!
Ready your club, don your pelt dress, and let’s get going with the prehistoric world of Primitive Era!
Overview
Before we get into the intricate aspects of Primitive Era, let’s look through the surface level of the game first. After all, learning the intricacies of a game without knowing how it works will only slow down our discussion on how you can make your gameplay better. Let’s go on with that first.
As said earlier, if you’ve played titles such as Rise of Kingdoms, Last Shelter Survival, or Rise of Empires, you’ll be immediately familiar with the type of gameplay that this genre has in store. Primitive Era mainly has three gameplay aspects that you have to keep in mind: Base Building, Combat, and Exploration.
There are more nuances to Primitive Era, such as Heroes, Clans, Technologies, etc. However, we’ll most likely gloss over them in favor of these three gameplay aspects or find them as subsections in the following. After all, these three gameplay aspects encompass what the game has in store for us.
Now that we have an idea let’s go on with the first important part of the gameplay loop: Base Building!
Base Building
Without a base of operations, there can be no home for those restless soldiers. There is also no way to support your villagers and the inability to defend oneself from other tribes or barbarians. But once you have a place that you can call a base—and essentially home—you can rest easily and maybe conquer other far places.
Base building is one of the three main gameplay aspects of Primitive Era. Without a base, you’re just down to villagers with lost causes. Whenever you think of the economy, building, researching, or building troops, it all encompasses the base building. This specific part forms the heart of the player’s operation, thus spending more time on it than any other part of the game.
Of course, when we talk about base building, we talk about the buildings. Each building falls under many categories. These categories are:
• Economy Buildings: These buildings are the heart and soul of your base. They provide you with ample resources to improve your measly Village. Without these buildings, kiss any possibility of making a powerful army goodbye. Research also falls under this category, as well as the customs building that you will receive later on.
• Military Buildings: Despite how Primitive Era calls itself a casual game, it is by no means casual once the fighting is involved. Military buildings completely nullify whatever means of casual is, as it allows you to create an ever-expanding company of cavemen willing to throw rocks at whoever they hate. Clan buildings fall into this category.
• Decoration Buildings: While there is no gameplay advantage when placing these buildings, decoration buildings ensure that your base looks as good as possible, even in the face of adversity. Compared to other games, Primitive Era has a building that allows you to grow said decorations in the form of trees or any other.
These three categories are how you should view the buildings. This is because Primitive Era has 15 categories of buildings, all of which can be immediately condensed into the 3 categories above, as nearly half of these categories focus on the economy of the game. That, and each resource categorization only has 3 or fewer buildings.
A new quality of life feature that Primitive Era provides to its players is the ability to upgrade a building without stopping anything that it is doing. Say that you have technology research going on, and you would have to upgrade for the next future Research. In other games, you’d have to wait for either the upgrade or the Research. Here, you can do both at the same time… and both have different building speeds in case you’d speed up their construction/research!
Laborers
But before we can delve deeply into the majestic, long-term planning of the base building, we’ll have to go through the hard-working men and women who drive the pillars of your community. Considering that Uncle Rud’s goal is to create a Laborer’s Hut first, then there’s a need to create one.
Laborers are the construction workers of your base. They are used primarily for building new structures or upgrading buildings. Every time you do the following actions, a laborer would then be used up, doing said task for the period needed to do it. If it takes a second to upgrade something, then a laborer would have to waste a second for it. The same goes for an hour, and so on.
You can obtain laborers via the Laborer’s Hut, and additional ones would be granted the more you progress through the game. The game also offers in-game purchases that allow you to get Super Laborer’s Hut, allowing you to get more Laborers than usual to speed up your building (granted that you have the resources to double the effort).
However, we do advise against the following—especially since you can still get the same progress regardless of the following.
Now that we have those in mind, let’s delve deep into how the base building works, starting with economy buildings.
Economy Buildings
The study of economics revolves around the use of scarce resources in an environment. While resources are infinite in Primitive Era, it is scarce in the sense that you’d be limited to how much you can gather as time goes on. To alleviate this problem, we have the economy buildings for this.
Specifically, economy buildings allow you to gather resources without having to march your troops out of the Village in search of them. This is regardless of the option that you can choose—as the sake of this section is to only provide you with a safer approach to getting resources. Compared to other games, there is more sense in how your economy works and builds on its own—even though it can be annoying at times.
Economy buildings (except Research) are dominated by resource buildings. These resource buildings are also categorized by the resources that they provide you with. These resource buildings have two building categories of their own. It’s confusing, but it will make sense after this paragraph.
Resource Generation and Their Respective Warehouses
For a resource you have, you have two buildings that generate the resource and store it in the form of a warehouse respectively. For the stone resource, as an example, the Stone Yard is where you gather the stones that you need for construction. Once these resources are gathered, they are then stored at the Stoneworks, the Warehouse in question for stone, for safekeeping.
This is also the part of the game where you would realize that there is no such thing as ‘safe’ resources. Other games like Stormshot and State of Survival have safety nets in the form of ‘Warehouses’ in which you can surpass the number of resources that your Warehouse can protect at the cost of said resources being stolen when a raid happens.
This is not the case for Primitive Era. You cannot surpass the limit that this specific resource’s Warehouse can provide. Should you do so by using items that give you resources, expect those resources to be completely discarded rather than being added to your coffers. Not only that, these warehouses do not provide a safety net during a raid.
Instead, the protected portion is a static number that is indicated whenever you press the resource on the top portion of the screen. The only way to increase the amount of resources that you can protect is through the Stockbreeder Custom (which we will discuss later) as well as through Research.
Rapid
Unlike other MMORTS games, Primitive Era handles resources differently. While you can gather resources passively through the buildings specified, it gives you the option to do them ‘rapidly.’ This is where the Rapid mechanic comes through. It is an option in resource-gathering buildings that unlock later on.
Introduced early in the game and having an exclusive research tree of its own, Rapid is a mechanic in which you can gain an ample amount of resources in a short amount of time. This does, however, come at the cost of gambling it through a probability ranking from 25% to 75% (100% is only unlocked through future Research in the Rapid technology tree).
There is no downside to using Rapid aside from having to fight against probability. This means that if you get to the point of a 50/50, you can either win it or lose it. Once you reach 25% or lower, you cannot use Rapid again until it replenishes up to a usable cost.
One of the biggest advantages Rapid gives you is that it scales with the resource-gathering building’s level. The higher the level of the building, the more that Rapid gives you resources. This way, you can get more resources as long as you upgrade your buildings. Given that you have four resource-gathering buildings for each resource, the possibility is endless.
However, only the gold resource has no Rapid function. There are other ways to get Gold in an instant, but they are locked either in the form of quick-use items or through the Travelling Merchant.
Hero Commissioning
Primitive Era allows you to set heroes, based on their category and buff, to buildings to receive buffs from them. While they do give bonuses, these are usually locked-in later skills that require the player to unlock them first before one can enjoy said buff throughout the game.
Effectively, the player can quickly commission heroes by pressing the ‘Quick Commission’ key. Only one hero can be commissioned to a type of building at a time, else they will be removed, and their buffs have gone as well.
Travelling Merchant
It can’t be an MMORTS without its resource exchange building, especially one reminiscent of Stronghold: Crusader.
The Travelling Merchant is a ‘building’ that allows you to exchange resources given that you have said resource. If you have 33.5k stone, for example, you can get 50k wood in return. These resources usually rotate within a day and will refresh soon after that time has passed.
However, the Travelling Merchant is the other way to quickly obtain Gold, one of the only resources in the game that does not have its Rapid function. Leveling up the Travelling Merchant building allows you to get more Gold as well as more options.
All resources traded scale up to your current level, so don’t worry much about having to spend a few days in limbo on not doing anything.
Villagers and Bonfire Plaza
If there’s a Village, then there are Villagers. You can’t have a community without people in it, now, wouldn’t you?
Primitive Era has this odd mechanic in which you now can have a population in your Village, similar to that of RTS games of old. This completely differentiates Primitive Era from other games, as you now have to keep track of your villager count if you want to keep your home safe.
Not only that, but these villagers also ensure that you have a stable Gold output as well as an influence on some structures. You cannot construct some buildings without a stable villager count. And if you have fewer villagers, expect your gold coffers to be running low as soon as possible.
This micromanagement is made more tedious as you need to transport food and water into the Bonfire Plaza, a special building in the game that affects how fast your residents will grow if you have ever increased your village cap numbers.
And speaking of village cap numbers, these numbers can rise by building or upgrading Living Tents in the game. They are the only building that affects how many villagers you can have in your base; nothing else will.
And that’s all there is to economy buildings. We can skip the Heroes’ Lounge as it is simple in its premise; just recruit heroes as long as you have the scroll to summon them. These economy buildings will be the backbone of your army; make no mistake about it. Once you have them geared up, expect yourself to dominate the playing field.
Now that we’ve discussed economy buildings let’s jump to the military buildings.
Military Buildings
It can’t be an MMORTS without any military buildings—the only source of infantry that you can get in Primitive Era. Unlike other games, there are no other ways to obtain troops aside from the following buildings in this game. Of course, military buildings aren’t just ones that create troops.
They encompass ones that allow you to upgrade your troops, defend your base from threats, and allowing you to attack opponents aside from your base. This category of buildings is your last and only defense against the dangers outside of your Village. Without them, consider your peaceful living goodbye.
Troop Buildings and Drill Ground
For the same games that Primitive Era shares its genre with, Troop Buildings are your constant source of troops on the field. They are divided into three categories: Infantry, Archery, and Cavalry. These troops counter one another, with Archers beating Infantry, Cavalry beating Archers, and so on.
Each troop is divided into tiers, which are unlocked when you upgrade their following troop building. Higher tier troops hit hard and are much healthier than those below, thus the incentive to have more of them to keep up with the rest of the game. Of course, like other MMORTSs out there, you can upgrade the lower-tier troops into their higher versions via the Drill Ground.
Witch Doctor
In MMORTS games, there’s no way to avoid injuries. Once a battle has been initiated and ended, there are no killed units—only wounded troops that will be sent to the hospital of the game. In Primitive Era’s case, it is the Witch Doctor building, housing your injured units until you can heal them back to shape.
Unlike other MMORTS games in the market, Primitive Era ensures that there are no intrinsic and complex systems regarding wounded soldiers. If they are defeated in battle, they are wounded. No in-betweens are similar to Viking Era’s ruling system regarding health, which has a complete ruleset system regarding combat.
But once the following buildings cannot have more wounded, any subsequently wounded soldiers on the battlefield would then be considered killed. The only way to avoid this is either to make sure that the Witch Doctor building is empty or allows more occupants or the following is upgraded to have more wounded soldiers.
March Queue Buildings
Another mechanic found in MMORTS games is the March formation. This mechanic plays similarly to command groups in RTS—in which you organize a specific composition of Heroes and troops and send them into combat. Primitive Era, however, plays it fairly differently than other games.
Here, there are two types of buildings to create marching groups: the Military Marquee and the Elite Territory. They function the same, but the main difference is that the Elite’s Territory bases its composition on your current Custom, which will be discussed later on. Lastly, you can have more Military Marquees, allowing you to make more march groups in the later stages of the game.
More about marches can be found in the Combat section of the Overview.
Fortress and Archer Tower
Before the enemies can destroy your Village if they try to raid, they have to deal with a few things first before they can do. The following would be the Fortress and the Archer Tower. Primarily, enemy invaders would have to deal with the Fortress, as the Archer Tower acts passively on its own.
The Fortress acts as the final defense of your base, with its unique garrison composition that the player has to set on their own. They are uniquely named as the defense queue, and they have to be set by the players themselves, as the game does not count any garrisoned/stationary units as defenders.
Naturally, the Fortress has its Durability. The higher the level of the Fortress, the higher the Durability of said building. Every single time an invader successfully defeats your force, Durability lowers, and they inflict an Ablaze effect on the Village, losing the Fortress’ Durability over time. If Durability drops to 0, the Village will be randomly relocated around the map, and Durability will be set to 500.
As for the Archer Tower, it acts as a buffer to your forces, giving you the advantage of the defender against the horde outside of you. Similar to that of the Fortress and other buildings, upgrading the Archer Tower increases the defense of your buildings.
Sentinel Camp
The Sentinel Camp’s use case is unique compared to the other buildings of the game. Whereas some create troops or mine resources, the Sentinel Camp provides you with intelligence regarding the area surrounding you as well as your opponents. However, their primary use is to ensure that you are immediately alerted of any sudden attacks or advanced scouting from the enemy.
With its primary use, the Sentinel Camp alerts you whenever you are the current target of an enemy player. Whenever your screen flashes red, in this case, you are likely to be today’s next victim by an invader. To access relevant information, you can check the Sentinel Camp for more information.
It will bring up any information regarding the aggressor as well as the number that they have. To know more about any upcoming attacks or scouting parties, the Sentinel Camp must be upgraded to learn more. A high-level Sentinel Camp ensures the safety of the camp at all times.
Now that we’ve talked about military buildings let’s parse through a unique aspect that this game has to offer: customs.
Customs
If you’ve played Civilization V before, then you may know the term ‘Ideology.’ Once you reach the Industrial Age or build 6 factories, you get to choose whether you want to have Freedom, Order, or Autocracy as your following tenets for the new world order. Why are we discussing this here?
That’s because Primitive Era has the same mechanic that is inspired by the said game. Customs is your equivalent to Ideology, down to its use and mechanics. It is unlocked after you reach Chief’s Hall Level 7. Similarly to the Ideology mechanic, you can also change your Ideology in the Chief’s Hall as long as you have the necessary items to do so.
For more information, a specific custom gives you advantages and disadvantages, which depend on what you pick. And like Civilization, there are three customs to choose from, each even having its unique buildings that you can build. In this case, as well, changing customs on the fly can lead you to go back to zero, so choose your customs wisely.
Now that we have that in mind let’s go through each three customs that you can get in the game!
Farmer
Unique Building: Crops Garden
Going back to the roots of your farming ancestors, the Farmer custom focuses on the farming and gathering side of the base building. Your biggest advantage over any other opponent is the increased power of your economy. You get more resources from gathering points; you get more stuff from your resource-gathering buildings.The Custom also allows you to protect a portion of your resources against invasions.
The downside is that being a farmer means being a pacifist. Attacking other players means less damage to them when invading, and you get more wounded troops as a result. Your marching speed is also decreased, although you can gather more in return. This does not mean you are weak against roaming monsters. You just don’t want to fight people.
Plunderer
Unique Building: Victory Cave
True to its name, the Plunderer only knows one thing: war. Able to loot more resources, have fewer casualties, as well as heal the wounded faster than normal, the Plunderer thrives off the misery of other chiefs. They also carry more Gold than usual from their victims, allowing a new steady source of income from battling opponents.
The only downside to this is that being a Plunderer means taking a blow to your economy. Harvesting resources will be reduced, and you’re more likely to fight off opponents just to sustain yourself. This also means that you’ll always have your Peace Shields down unless you intend to thrive off monsters.
Trader
Unique Building: Grocery Bazaar
The odd bunch of the customs, the Trader focuses more on one thing: trading. They get off more by buying extra resources from the Travelling Merchant or the Grocery Bazaar. Not only that, they get more Gold in general than the other customs, with a primary focus on having more than necessary. Oddly enough, troops also need less food to train them.
They act similarly to the Farmer, as well as having the same downsides that they do. Attacking is a complete no-no, as invading other chiefs means less damage to them and more to your troops. Said wounded troops take longer times to heal as well. However, a bigger departure from Farmers is that they have no resource protection, relying more on different avenues in the game.
Combat
Combat in Primitive Era is like sending troops to the slaughter. That’s basically it. There’s not much nuance to fighting anything aside from watching your troops be sent at one moment before slaughtering anything they’re supposed to. There’s still merit to talking about it, however.
Of course, it still plays out well as intended. You have to send troops to a target and then watch as they duke it out the moment the marching troops reach their destination. How they win depends on a few factors: the number of troops, the quality of said troops, and the quality of heroes. Marching troops can be sent back to base without delay.
What makes Primitive Era different, however, is that there is more nuance in how a hero and his troops are positioned in the march queue. More on that will be specified later.
We can safely ignore troops, as they have already been discussed in an earlier section. For now, let’s put our focus on heroes, the quintessential aspect of your army.
Heroes
For without a warlord, who will lead your troops to battle? Without a leader, who will guide our villagers to prosperity? A theme that plays well in Primitive Era is how much you will rely on Heroes in your day-to-day playthrough of the game. Without them, you can’t progress through the game easily.
Heroes are your archetypal leaders, with their obtaining method similar to that of a gacha game, as they are found in the Heroes Lodge. When obtaining them, they will be immediately classified as their rarity. Heroes are also divided into two types: Combat Heroes and Growth Heroes.
Combat Heroes are heroes who lead troops into battle in the form of a marching queue. To have a complete marching queue, a hero is required to complete it as much as a troop does. Their Combat Skills are always used in battle, freely and against their opponents at will.
Growth Heroes act more as the ones helping the Village prosper. They are used by garrisoning them to a specified building (such as a resource gathering building). They also have the unique Growth Skills that they use to either quicken production or gather more resources in the process.
They can also garner EXP by using potions or by using them either in the Village or in combat. Combat Heroes require you to send them to the field for them to garner experience. Growth Heroes require you to trigger skill conditions for them to level up.
Marches
To send troops and Heroes into battle or defense, Primitive Era forces you to assign them to ‘Marching Queues.’ These Marching Queues are your select group of composed troops and Heroes that you will send on the battlefield, either to clean up your base, gather resources, kill opponents, or defend it.
Marching Queues consist of up to three rows: the back row, the middle row, and the front row. These rows affect the range of your heroes and troops, as well as any available skill that they can use. When attacking, the attack order is based on the row’s combat speed which depends on the hero and his units.
When a row attacks, they first use their combat skill, then normal attack, then pursuit attack. If ever two opposing squads have the same combat speed, the invader gets to attack first before the defender. As for skills, they are also dependent on how far their target is from their position in the march.
Marches also have their system in the form of stamina. Each Marching Queue has 100 points of stamina, which will be consumed based on what they will do. Stamina, however, does recover slowly when it is not in use. One can use Rations to restore them immediately, though they are only available through Value Packs in the game’s store.
Peace Shield
And finally, the last piece of Primitive Era’s Combat that you have to remind yourself with: The Peace Shield. While there are buffs in the game that one can talk about extensively, the Peace Shield is the one buff that you have to be mindful of from the early stages of the game until later on.
The Peace Shield is an in-game item/buff that protects your Village from any danger from the outside world. It defends your Village from being attacked and scouted by others, allowing you to safely do things your way. However, it can be removed under certain conditions.
These conditions are the following:
1. A village’s Peace Shield expires after a certain amount of time specified by the item/buff used.
2. The chief attacks or scouts other players’ encampments during the duration of the Peace Shield.
Once a Peace Shield expires, it takes a certain amount of time before it can be used again. Another is that using another Peace Shield buff/item does not extend the time of the current Peace Shield and only resets it to the duration specified. If your 8-hour Peace Shield has an hour left and you use an 8-hour variant, it only goes back to 8 hours.
Lastly, the Peace Shield does not offer any protection to any forces outside of your base. If you have a march outside doing whatever, they can still be targeted by other players on the field.
Exploration
The world of Primitive Era is one that fully encapsulates what it feels like to live the life of a caveman in 10000 BC. However, don’t expect it to be a complete 1:1 replica of the past, considering the concepts that the game has is completely advanced to what said Era holds. Yet, there is much to explore in this game as a whole.
The exploration part of Primitive Era is similar to that of other games that are within its genre—you have a base that you can move around in your wish and a whole world to roam around and conquer. There are relative points in this part of the game that we can talk over if you haven’t played games similar to the genre.
Let’s go over them and see what they are.
Wild Beasts
Resource-gathering buildings aren’t the only ways to get resources. To replicate the feeling of persistent hunting, Primitive Era allows you to hunt down these wild animals in exchange for resources. The following beasts pointed out in the list below give out the following resources:
• Megaloceros — Food
• Dire Wolf — Wood
• Carved Tooth — Stone
• Giant Warthog — Pelt
• Gold Thief — Gold
Not only do they give you resources, but also Hero EXP whenever you triumph against these creatures. Wild Beasts also have levels, with each succeeding level increasing the might needed to kill these creatures, as well as the rewards that they give.
Resource Points
Similarly, there are also resource-gathering points scattered throughout the map, with indicating levels that specify how much you can get from that one spot. To gather from that point, you can send a Marching Queue to that spot and mine resources from it. How fast and how much you can gain from these points depends on your Custom, your hero, and your troops.
The following list below specifies what resource point gives what item:
• Bramble — Food
• Tree Farm — Wood
• Sandy Riverbank — Stone
• Beast’s Den — Pelt
• Ruby Mines — Ruby
Unlike other parts of the game, resource points do not have their inherent gold type that one can mine off. However, it is replaced with the ability to mine Ruby from other parts of the map, allowing you to get this invaluable resource with your Marching Queue.
Barbarians
Barbarians deserve a separate category from the wild beasts cataloged in the section, even though they are still wild beasts by the definition of it. The reason is that they are far more deadly than your average wild beast. A level 1 Barbarian is far more powerful than a level 2~5 wild beast.
Another reason is that barbarians act more as a sort of mini-event of their own. They only appear for a period amount of time, and they will refresh after a few hours. They also have their own Durability and distinct rewards. You get first clear rewards for the first time you defeat a barbarian of its level. Similarly, you can only get 10 rewards from one barbarian group.
They are also dangerous as they require you to have a clan at the ready to fight these behemoths. While you can deal with these barbarians on your lonesome, they still merit respect as they deal more damage to your troops compared to the other threats looming around the map.
Other Chief Bases
In a game where the strict rule against the weak, it’s no surprise that there are countless other chiefs out in the open wanting either cooperation or bloodshed against you. All you need to know is that they act similarly toward you. How you act, how you move. You can attack and scout them if they don’t have any Peace Shields, but that also means the loss of yours given a chance…
Tips And Tricks
We now know the little bits and grits of Primitive Era, so it’s a matter of time before we can finally delve into the tips, tricks, and strategies that we have compiled for you! With everything that we have compiled for you, your Village can not only thrive but also grow more into an empire!
Now, let’s parse through what we have in store for you so that you can be better at your game!
Log In Daily
When playing Primitive Era, there is a VIP System which is immediately introduced to the player after they try to tinker with a few things. This system is your holy grail for everyday needs, as well as one of the few systems that will give you advantages earlier on in the game. To ignore it is suicide for the later parts of the game.
Logging in daily gives you the benefit of obtaining daily rewards in the form of resources, speed-ups, and Hero Experience items. The game also gives you free VIP points, which allow you to gain more buffs and exclusive items that are locked at higher levels. The more you have, the more you can easily get more buffs.
There’s also the added benefit that playing every day allows you to get more out of the day as opposed to playing sporadically within the week. As you get more VIP Points, the more bonuses that you get when it comes to resource gathering. You’ll be building up your base in no time.
Another thing to take note of is the Daily Missions in the game. They only require you to do a few things, from training a set amount of troops, conducting Research, or attacking wild beasts. These tasks, naturally, are just what you do in the game. But keeping them in mind allows you to get more rewards than normal. Who’s to say no to a few more speed-ups?
And finally, several events give you rewards if you do play every day. As these events are sparse and only pop up now and then, missing these out will only hamper your development of the base. Whenever you have the chance, make sure to get their rewards whenever you can.
As a side note, logging in every day makes sure that your base is fully operational. As some buildings require you to place resources for them to be fully functional, like the Bonfire Plaza, it’s a must to always be online and placing those resources so that you won’t have fewer villagers that are needed for your gold resources.
That and not being kicked around by players who decided to invade your home in your downtime. You could never be less vigilant in this game, regardless of how it calls itself casual.
Position Your Buildings Correctly
While most would see this as a pet peeve that one could do rather than a tip, it still merits the need to be talked about. Whenever you do your thing early on in the game, you notice how… scrambled your base is. The more you play, the more frustrating it is to navigate this landscape.
Of course, the game offers you the ability to move your buildings freely. This alone is where this tip comes in, not just to save your time but also for future buildings that give you buffs whenever they are near a specific building. Position your buildings depending on what type they are.
For resource-type buildings, try positioning them around your Chief’s Hall—the main building of your Village. In this way, whenever you have to upgrade buildings, all you have to do is either hover over the Chief’s Hall or tap on one of the qualities of life mechanics, which brings you to said building.
For any other building, than anywhere else, as long as they are neatly arranged. How they are arranged is up to you, as long as it doesn’t obstruct anything that requires future expansion in the game. As there are only limited buildings for military-type ones as opposed to resource types, you’re more likely to give space for the mines.
But the bigger picture here isn’t just for accessibility but also because of buildings that buff your building’s worth and ability.
Later on in the game, you will get a building named the Sun’s Blessing. This sole altar blesses buildings around it with specific buffs for said building. If it’s a military type, chances are you’re giving a building with a buff that gives them more experience or less training time. For resource-gathering ones, how much bounty you will gain?
If you err on the economic side of things (which this guide will focus on), then place them around the economy buildings. Having more resources gathered means faster development. Faster development means stronger soldiers. Stronger soldiers mean no one is ever going to butt their heads at you.
This natural progress allows you to strategically place yourself at the top of the game. Still, you have the option to place these buildings anywhere else. This tip only reminds you that having an economic advantage is far more powerful in this game. That and having OCD to ensure you’re not going crazy having to parse through buildings in your Village.
If you are, however, indecisive, there is an option to automatically lay out your buildings. There is still merit to doing it on your own, as it does not account for blessings given to other buildings.
Focus on Solo Missions to Advance Further
There can be no MMORTS without its quest system, and Primitive Era fashions its missions. This system divides the following into three types: Solo Missions, Daily Missions, and Main Mission. Do not be confused between Solo Missions and Main Missions, as both are campaign-specific quests and progression quests, respectively.
The main focus of this tip is for you to lean more into the Solo Missions of Primitive Era. At the start of the game, you will be immediately introduced to this mechanic in a heartbeat. This is the story of the game as you go through your village lands and clean it of any barbarian infestation or scour it of anything good.
The more you do these missions, the sooner you will advance later on in the game. They act as your guide as to what to do next, especially since they are the only indicator that you have regarding your progress in the game. If ever you are lost, the Solo Missions are there to tell you what building or task needs to be done.
Of course, the game locks some of its content behind this. Completing Solo Missions is your only way of unlocking said mechanics to boost your base, as well as its economy. The resources it provides also allow you to rapidly expand faster the more you do these missions.
The only way to clear any of the adjacent forest tiles that surround your base is by finishing these Solo Missions. As some parts of it are locked completely until you reach a specific chapter in the game, clearing these missions becomes your sole task against anything else the game throws at you.
While there are more things to do, like the Daily Missions and the Chapter Missions, this tip constantly reminds you that doing Solo Missions gives you more resources, such as speed-ups and the rare Gold currency. Having a few of those would immediately allow you to expand at a faster rate.
Raise Your Economy (And What You Should Prioritize)
This beginner’s guide focuses on one thing and one thing only: economic power. While there is power in any other strategy out there, Primitive Era’s resource scarcity forces you to one cruel conclusion—you do need resources to succeed. You can’t have a force without resources, and you can’t have anything without food and water.
In this section, we’ll be rambling about only one thing: more economy. More and more of it will be the only salvation you have between getting mauled by other players or anything the game will send to you. While being in a clan gives you protection from other players, that does not mean you’ll be opportune pickings for any opportunistic players.
So, let’s get on with what we should be doing to turn your Village into a near-capitalistic venture. There are a lot of things to talk about. Primarily, it focuses on what you should be upgrading and researching, as well as the Customs that you will pick in the future. This also includes how you will spend your rubies as well.
So let’s get on with that, shall we?
Upgrade Priority
The first woe of any beginner player: what should I upgrade first and foremost? It’s tempting to have an army for its relative safety (as, in the end, Durability can only owe itself much to the player). Other things allow us to keep ourselves safe from relative harm.
If you’re lost, there’s still the Solo Missions and what they can provide for you as a guide. As it is the sole indicator of progress for the flourishment of your Village, checking the ticks in that list allows you to unlock a few more mechanics. Keeping the Chief Hall up to date allows you to upgrade all of your buildings to its current level.
Of course, we can’t just completely rely on our instinct. We have to plan it out. Yes, this game is casual, but only once the fighting hasn’t started yet. Once it does, everything becomes completely personal, and everything starts to become a complete mess as everyone tries to go for the coveted throne of the wild.
Upgrading your buildings is a good start on where we can expand our economy; let’s have that done first. Long-term planning, in the end, allows us to outmatch our foes in terms of economic power. And that alone allows us better safety than the rest. That still means having a strong army, but even then, you can’t have it without resources.
Nevertheless, and ignoring the ramble, let’s consult the table below as to what you should be upgrading first:
| Priority | Building (or Building Type) |
| 1 | Chief Hall, Foreteller’s Dome, Living Hut |
| 2 | The Rest of the Economy Buildings |
| 3 | Military Buildings |
| Up to the player | Decorations |
Upgrading the Chief Hall is one of the few requirements that the game expects of you. It’s the main requirement for every Solo Mission and becomes the upper-bound limit for the levels of your building. If you want your buildings upgraded, have your Chief Hall upgraded first.
And then next to the priority list would be upgrading the Foreteller’s Dome and the Living Hut. One allows you to have better Research (and makes it faster) as well as gives you more villagers to mine Gold with. Having both of these buildings upgraded allows you to have a better economy backed up with up-to-date technology.
Your next priority, at Priority 2, would be the economy buildings. Having more resources harvested gives you a better starting position than most players. Considering how many resources starved you will be after a few Solo Missions, having those upgraded first makes your work faster.
This also counts on the fact that there wouldn’t be much need for a military until later on in the game when your Peace Shield is over after a few Chief Hall levels and Solo Missions. Once you have an economy backed up, that’s where you can produce military units for self-defense. That is unless the Solo Missions require you to hunt down a few wild beasts in return.
Then finally, the Military Buildings. In the end, you cannot neglect these buildings as they are the only ones providing you the defense that you need in the game. Invaders have a large advantage over you when it comes to combat (especially due to the engagement rules), so having an edge counts. That and an upgraded Sentinel Building allow you to shift focus if an enemy chief does want your head in a pike.
The Farmer Custom: The Best Custom
The moment you pick Customs, immediately go for the Farmer Custom. This Custom allows you access to the Crop Garden, allowing you to gather resources at 12-hour intervals. Besides that, you’ll also have more powerful benefits in the form of more resource buffs from the Custom.
While you may not have the advantage of attacking other players, you still gain more out of it as well as just focusing on resource-gathering points and wild beasts. Any of the other Customs only slow you down, as the Plunderer only focuses on attacking, and the Trader only focuses on Gold and nothing else.
Research Development and You
Research in the Foreteller’s Dome is crucial to the long-term economy of your Village, and Primitive Era makes no exception to that. After all, we’ve already rambled so much about having many resources means a lot of things to do, so let’s keep it that way here. Let’s tackle how you should do your research development in Primitive Era.
First of all, let’s go with the basics. There are 11 research categories in the Foreteller’s Dome—from Village Development to Troop Promotions. As this guide focuses on the economy, we’ll be dealing with Village Development first, right? That won’t be the technology we’ll be pursuing first.
One thing about Primitive Era is that its early game sucks out your resources quickly. Other games compensate for this by giving you more as long as you finish the Missions. Sadly, here, the Solo Missions rewards don’t scale that much for the progress that you’re making. You’ll be running out before you can even make that much impact.
So, our target research type to finish is Rapid Production. As said before, the Rapid function is exclusive to Primitive Era, allowing us to get resources as we gamble for it. Later on in the research development tree, we’ll get the chance to have Rapid rewards without having to gamble it on biased 75% rewards.
Having Rapid allows us to mitigate the short-handed funds that the game provides to us as rewards. This also allows us to get more resources faster and focus more on a few aspects, such as our gold farming—as it is the one that doesn’t truly have a Rapid function. Combine that with the Farmer trait, and we’ll be cranking out our economy in no time.
Afterward, we can focus on Village Development. For each Village Development research, try your best to balance it out with other military Research to keep your defense up high. A good example would be 3 Village Development research for something like a March Queue research. Having more March Queues means more resource gathering outside of the map or quelling wild beasts or barbarians for items.
Try not to focus that much on Military Research until you are being targeted by other players… if they can even target you for how fast you’re climbing up the ladder with your economy. Speaking of the threats outside, we can talk about how you can tackle wild creatures and resource points.
Wild Creatures and Resource Points
Primitive Era makes no joke about resource-gathering points or wild creatures. They are scarce and take a long time to refresh, giving a sense of scarcity throughout your run of the game. You will have to fight for the right to kill a wild beast or a resource point sometime in the future.
Regardless, the wild creatures you should be killing are the ones where you are the most lacking in terms of resource gathering back at base. Most likely, the case would be Gold, which means you would have to hunt down Gold Thieves to get more Gold that you are severely lacking. If it’s not Gold, then another creature corresponds to that resource. Even so, there’s still merit to beating up barbarians to get valuable speed-ups from them.
As for resource points, it’s also a hard thing to plan with. The existence of Ruby Mines on the map is where most players would immediately rush for it. The problem now stems from the fact that you’d have to fight for it, meaning that the moment you find one, it’s a race to farm it immediately. If you’re going to fight someone stronger for it, you might as well just go find a resource point that you can mine off instead. It is not worth it to lose troops just for a few Rubies.
Hoarding Rubies and Spending Them
And finally, where do we spend rubies in this game? There are a lot of places to spend them. Primitive Era’s in-game store, finishing your buildings, anything that needs to be done. Anything that screams premium requires Rubies, as well as anything that needs to be done in a flash.
Of course, we advise you to hoard your Rubies for something else. As much as speeding up your progress is tempting, they aren’t that feasible to do in the long run. The cost of Rubies goes higher exponentially for each second that is required to finish a job, like upgrading or researching.
And once you get enough Rubies, spend them on leveling up the VIP Points. A higher VIP Point system will allow you to gain more buffs to any of the things that you have in your Village, such as faster resource gathering. You can also spend Rubies on Peace Shields if it has expire later on in the game.
And that’s all there is to keep your economy in tip-top shape. As long as you keep that up and running, you won’t hit any snags in the long run. Have an updated economy, have an updated military, and you’ll be fine on your own. What else do we have to keep in mind?
Do Events Immediately
Primitive Era won’t be a social game without its fair share of events. Compared to other games that take a long time to come due to their development cycle, Primitive Era will always have seasonal events as well as one that recurs for about two hours or less. If you want to check out what events will happen shortly, check out the Event Calendar in the game.
Of course, joining events means getting more rewards out of it. That means chances to get more heroes recruited as well as speed-ups taken for your pleasure. Not having to spend a dime on Rubies allows you to focus more on the VIP system, which allows you to gain more buffs.
But the one aspect of events that you will focus on more is the Infinite Challenge. This challenge lasts for an hour and then comes back again after 2 or more hours. In this challenge, you’re tasked to develop your Village as fast as possible. The faster you’ve developed, the more points you’ll gain.
This is where the previous tips come into play. You’ll also be solely relying on the Infinite Challenge to rack up speed-ups, items, and Gold to flourish and cultivate your Village even further. As it takes a few just for this event to come back, you can abuse that knowledge to just wait for the event to appear to start upgrading or developing your Village again.
That’s not to say the other events that are there. They all still tie in with the other tips. Some events reward you for logging in and some that just reward you for playing normally. All in all, they just give you more rewards than usual, and it’s your priority to have these rewards taken in a flash.
Join an Active Clan
And before we cap off these tips and tricks, the final advice I can give you is one more thing: join an active clan. Why so?
Primitive Era, as stated earlier, borderlines that of an MMORTS and a social game. You will have to find allies or enemies sooner or later in your playthrough. And when the past few tips are focused on the economy, finding an alliance that has your best interests as well as defending you will allow you to cultivate even more.
Why an active clan, specifically?
One of the biggest boons that the game can offer you is in the form of the Clan Assist mechanic. Similar to other games in the genre, clan members can offer their aid to you and lower the build time of your building or Research. Compared to those games, Primitive Era automates this feature by immediately sending the request to your fellow clan members.
Once it does, it should show up as a ‘handshake’ button at the bottom right of the screen. Only they can see it, not you. If you do, that means your fellow clan mates need your help as well. Return the favor to them, and they will do so in return. It’s the right thing that you can do, given that you are in a clan.
But before we continue, you should not only join an active clan. You should join a clan that’s focused more on economy and development. Why exactly? It’s also because other clans have differing interests in this game. There are no prompts or limitations or buffs regarding it in the game, rather just a set outlook by the clan’s members.
If they want the blood of your opponents, you might as well skedaddle and find another group entirely. Given that you followed a tip from earlier to be a Farmer, chances are taking the fight to your opponent with that Custom is just an accident waiting to happen on your end. And a not-withstanding Peace Shield waiting to be lost the moment you engage someone.
Joining a clan that focuses on development allows you to focus more on the development of your own as well. This also means that they’ll focus on Clan Research based on development first and foremost. And having Clan Research with development in mind allows you to grow your Village even faster.
And by donating to Clan Research, you’ll also receive compensation in the form of Clan Contribution. The following acts as a point system for you to use in the Clan Shop. The more you contribute to the Research, the more points that you’ll gain. Considering how little resources you need to contribute, to begin with, that’s a little price to pay for something that will help you out in the future.
With the Clan Contribution points, you can now spend them on the Clan Shop. In the Clan Shop, there are a lot of things that you can spend your points on. Naturally, you can get more items for your heroes or recruit them in the Hero’s Lounge. But the item that you should buy the most out of the Clan Contribution is speed-ups.
Given how little speed-ups you get, and as you can only get them more out of the Missions, obtaining speed-ups this way allows you more leeway in your development of the Village. Try contributing daily in the hopes that you’ll get more speed-ups the moment you reach the later stages of the game.
As upgrading, training, and researching units, later on takes up about a day or two, having speed-ups gives you the advantage that you need to have powerful troops at your call and beckon. That also means the other advantages that you have in the form of gathering resources and such. Just being more powerful, if you know what I mean.
Another thing that Primitive Era trivializes for you, lastly, is the fact that once you join a clan, you’ll be immediately teleported near the clan’s territory. This trivializes the need for a base relocator, a luxury that is never usually given in other MMORTS games whenever you join a clan.
Since you are now in the clan’s territory, that also means added defense from whatever outside element wants to destroy you. Of course, this will not stop other players from trying to hone in on your Peace Shield-less village but having this many players’ backs allows you to have any preemptive counterstrike if needed. However, it’s best not to participate in it. An eye for an eye, they say.
Play it smart. Join an active, development-focused clan. You never know that the clan you joined will also be the greatest in the entire server if everyone puts their effort into it.
Conclusion
And that’s all that we have for this Beginner’s Guide for Primitive Era: 10000 BC! Quite a lot of things that you have to look after for a casual game, but the aim here is certainly being better than the rest that will just immediately laze off! An empire didn’t just appear out of nowhere; it all starts with a few simple steps—like a village that dreams of rising even more than it needs to.
If you have any questions, hit us up in the comment section below. If you need more information about the game and its events, check out the Facebook and Discord servers of Primitive Era! Maybe you’ll find a few chiefs out there that have the same interests as you, don’t you think?
And that includes our beginner’s guide! Go forth, chieftain. Show us that your Village can stand the test of time!