Nevaland Wiki

What Nevaland is

Nevaland is a calm, three-dimensional life on a coast: you grow a farm, turn the harvest into bait and supplies, fish rivers, lakes and open sea, and carry what you catch and make to villages that actually want it. It runs in your browser and saves there too.

There is no combat: no weapons, no hostile creatures, no raids. The pressure comes from the weather, the clock, how much you can carry, how fresh a fish still is, which road is open, and the people waiting at the other end of a delivery.

Your first hour

The opening quests walk you through this on their own. If you would rather know where it is heading, this is the order.

1. 1

   Take the gate: “The Gate Is Yours”

   Talk to Elspeth in the farmhouse yard. She gives you six wheat seeds and points you to the field. Your garden hoe is already equipped.

   Leave spare seeds and materials in the chest at home; your satchel is small.

2. 2

   Plant and water: “Three Seeds In”, “Before the Crust”

   Choose Hoe ground or press 1, aim and click to loosen a patch. Then press 2 for the Seed Belt, choose wheat and plant three on fully worked soil. Then press E beside a dry crop to water it. See Farming.

   Hand watering costs no Work. Rain waters the field too.

3. 3

   Harvest, mill, mix: “The Cycle of the Soil”, “Milling & Mixing Chum”

   Harvest the wheat, grind it at the village mill, cultivate bait worms at the compost bin, and mix a chum bucket at the workbench. This is the first turn of the loop below. See Workshops and crafting.

4. 4

   Go fishing: “Reading the Currents”

   Cast a line from the river bank with the willow rod. Worms shorten the wait for a bite. See Fishing.

5. 5

   Sell something: “Fair Trade at the Village”

   Sell an item at the village produce market. Shops pay a fair price and charge more than they pay, so goods do not make money by being bought and resold. See Trade and money.

6. 6

   Walk to the harbor: “Journey to the Salt”, “Commissioning the Old Rowboat”

   Meet Maeve at the fish market and Old Silas at the pier. Silas commissions the family rowboat for 30 gold and 1 Ground Grain, and from then on you can board her at the slip and take to the water. See Boats and cargo.

How the pieces connect

Every system feeds the next one. Progress opens new abilities, places and strategies rather than only adding a percentage.

1. FarmGrain, vegetables, fruit, flax, worms
2. ProcessMill, mix, cook, sew, forge
3. PrepareBait, chum, lures, fuel, ice
4. FishRivers, lakes, coast, open sea
5. CarryBoats, wagons, donkeys
6. SellMarkets, orders, trade runs

Gold and experience from selling buy better tools, boats and recipes, which let you farm, process and fish further than before.

Work Capacity and time

Controls

The keyboard and mouse. The same list is on the title screen and in the pause menu. The prompt beside your character always shows what E will do right now.

Habits that pay off

• Check the forecast before you plant a field or leave the dock: F opens the farm forecast and M the nautical chart. A storm gust can damage a hull.
• Fish are best sold fresh. Pack ice, use a boat hold, or sell the same day. How freshness works.
• Keep fish scraps: they become fertilizer for tired soil. Soil fertility.
• A trade run to a different village pays; selling a pack where you packed it barely does. Trade runs.
• Rest when you can. Sleeping at the farmhouse at dusk or night gives back a good share of your Work, once every 90 minutes.
• Explore. 14 named places across the valley and its islands are worth a look.

Day, night and the seasons

The day is split into four windows. Fish bite in some windows and not others, people keep a schedule that follows them, and lighting changes at the same boundaries.

A year is four seasons of 6 days each: Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. The season changes which crops thrive, which fish run, and what shops and villages pay for goods. The journal's Accounts page keeps a calendar of the coast's fairs, seasonal wants and price peaks.

Weather

Weather moves in fronts that last roughly 6 to 12 game hours. It changes how fast crops grow, which fish are willing to bite, and how rough the sea is.

The map

Highridge Uplands Pinewatch Forest Reedhaven Marsh Sunreach Island Nevaland VillageNevaland HarborSunreach CovePinewatchReedhavenHighridgeFamily FarmSunreach TerracesPinewatch LakeReedwater RiverSilverwater RiverReedhaven Cove GroundsNevaland Offshore GroundsVillage MillMountain SpringWestern OverlookHomestead HeightsLighthouse CliffsExposed RidgeSunreach Reef ShelfGull's RestDriftwood CayLantern ShoalThe Channel Seam

500 m

Villages and landmarks

Getting around

Moving costs no Work. Sprinting, galloping and trotting use a stamina bar that refills on its own after a short rest, so the choice is about pace, not cost.

Speeds are top speed in good conditions. Slopes, soft ground, rough water and cargo all slow you down. Boats and cargo covers carriages, wagons and the hulls in detail.

Seed to harvest

1. 1

   Hoe a patch

   Choose Hoe ground, or press 1 near a farm. Aim at empty legal ground, then click or press E. The preview shows the area and Work before you commit. A stroke beside a growing crop works the ground around it and leaves the crop's own soil alone.

   One press makes one stroke; hold to continue across adjacent ground. Escape puts the hoe away.

2. 2

   Choose a seed

   With seeds in your satchel, choose Plant or press 2 near a farm. The Seed Belt opens so you can pick a crop. Pick one that suits the plot's climate; climate decides how fast it grows.

   Buy seeds at village stalls. Every crop lists where.

3. 3

   Choose a spot

   Point at clear, prepared soil and click. A ring shows the spacing the crop needs and corner brackets show its footprint.

   Trees are wide: an apple or olive takes about 2.5 metres each way.

4. 4

   Water it

   Inspect a crop with a right click: its card shows the grade it is heading for and, while it grows, what keeping it wet would make of it. A crop the card calls Normal still grades better kept wet. Press E beside a crop to water it. Hand watering is free, and rain waters the field for you.

   The field pump waters every crop at once.

5. 5

   Harvest when ripe

   A ripe crop shows its mature stage. Press E beside it to harvest, then sell it, mill it or pack it. Better care gives a better grade.

These are the starting costs. Higher Farming ranks and some gear cut them; the Work section has the full picture.

What speeds growth up or slows it

Each crop has a base growing time. Four things scale it, and they multiply together. The total is held between 0.5× and 1.5×, so no single field is ever hopeless or unstoppable.

Weeds slow a crop after that limit: light weeds to 0.9×, heavy weeds to 0.8×.

Soil fertility

Each worked patch has its own fertility rating from 10 to 100. Each harvest uses some up beneath that crop, and how much depends on the crop (0, 5, 8, 10, 12, 14 and 15 points a harvest across the crops here). Tired soil grows crops slowly, gives lower grades and smaller harvests: below 30 fertility a crop gives only the least of its range, and from 80 never less than the middle of it. You can read it on the bed before you sow: rich ground is a dark, crumbly loam, poor ground dries pale and dusty, and the fair ground between keeps the plain tilth. The crop card gives the exact figure.

Fish Fertilizer restores up to 20 points in the selected local patch. Press 4 for Soil care, pick the fertilizer, aim and check the dose before applying; a full patch refuses the dose without spending it. Fed ground turns dark and flecked with pale meal, and takes no second dose until the crop on it is harvested or dug in; a stroke reaching over it feeds only the unfed part. It affects future growth, never the recorded care of an already ripe crop. You make it from three Fish Scraps at a fish table, so every fish you clean feeds a field. Keep your fishing and your farming connected: this is the loop in miniature. Hold Alt on a farm to read the soil overlay.

Garden Compost is plant matter rotted down at the farm's compost bin. A dose raises the patch's organic matter by 40 and its fertility by 10, and rich soil holds water longer, so its crops dry out more slowly. Plant Matter laid as mulch covers the patch in straw and slows drying further; it is worked into the soil when the crop beneath it is harvested or the ground is hoed. Each harvest draws some organic matter back out. Both are picked from the same Soil care strip, and a patch that would gain nothing refuses the dose without spending it.

Prepared ground supports 3 annual harvests before it needs loosening again. Stubble marks a harvested bed; you can sow again while it remains prepared, or hoe it to refresh the ground. The whole crop footprint must be prepared, including its corners.

Rotation, weeds and cover crops

Every bed remembers the family of its last crop. The Seed Belt shows it before you sow, with the weeds that sowing would bring, and the crop card says what grows well there next.

Weeds are judged once, when the seed goes in, and never spread afterwards. Sowing the same family again brings one level. Sowing into unturned stubble, over at least 50% of the crop's footprint, brings another, up to 2 levels. Hoeing the stubble first clears that part. Mulch over the whole footprint takes one level off, and you can pull the weeds once for each crop, for 3 Work. Trees start clean. A crop under heavy weeds still ripens and still harvests, but unless you pull them they take 1 from its harvest, never leaving less than one; light weeds cost only time. Mulch slows weeds without saving that harvest: only pulling does. The crop card's yield already counts the loss.

Broad Beans feed the ground they grow in. A harvest gives 5 fertility back to the ground under it. Or dig a growing crop in as a cover crop, for 8 Work and no harvest: the ground under it gains 25 fertility and 30 organic matter. It has to reach its growing stage first, and the crop card asks you to confirm. Pulling up a seedling restores nothing.

Wider strips and rows

The Broad Hoe can work a strip 4 m long and 2 m wide in one stroke. Turn on Wide strip in the Soil care dock; the strip runs the way you face. It costs the same Work as the ground it covers, and compost or mulch takes one dose for each 2 × 2 m of it. The ordinary stroke is still there for small jobs.

At the Skilled Farming rank (3,000 XP) you can sow and gather short rows. Turn on Sow a row in the Seed Belt and one click sows up to 4 seeds in a line away from you, each spot shown before you click. The row ends early at ground a single seed could not take. On a ready crop's card, Harvest row gathers up to 4 ready crops of the same kind of harvest in your line, within 6 m. If your satchel cannot hold the whole row, nothing is gathered. Each plant still costs its own Work.

At the Master Farming rank (15,000 XP) an Exceptional or Prize grade harvest of an annual crop also gives back 1 seed of that crop, when the satchel has room for it after the produce. Trees give no saplings. At the Artisan Farming rank (30,000 XP) Harvest row also picks ripe orchard trees down your line, within 14 m; each tree costs its own pick's Work and sets its fruit again, unless that was its last picking. At the Famed Farming rank (60,000 XP) a row pass covers 8 spots and reaches 2 times as far.

Stalks are cut with the sickle (Wheat, Barley, Flax and Sunflower). Roots are lifted (Potato and Carrot) and pods and fruit picked (Sweet Corn, Tomato and Broad Beans) by hand.

Where you can farm

The climate of a plot matters as much as the seed. Match them, or accept slower growth.

Every crop

Growing time is for a plot with the right climate, damp soil, normal fertility and fair weather. 11 crops in all. Trees take longer, then keep giving: harvesting one starts its next cycle.

Harvest grades

Every harvest comes in a grade. The grade depends on how well the crop matched its climate, how well watered and how fertile its soil was, your Farming rank, and a roll of luck. A higher grade sells for more and earns more Farming XP. Stacks of different grades never merge, so your satchel can hold Common and Prize wheat side by side.

A Harvest Apron raises the chance of a better grade.

The field pump

Once you have finished the errand Water Where It Matters, a farm well can run a pump that waters every crop within 2.8 metres of the well in one go. It costs 120 gold to install, and each use costs 5 Work plus 1 for every crop it waters.

Workshops

Processing happens at fixed stations. Walk up, pick a recipe, and the job runs on the game clock while you do other things; collect the result when it is done. A job needs all its ingredients and all its Work up front.

Recipes

37 recipes, from a handful of grain to oilskin coats. Times are real minutes at the normal game speed. The Work tier says how heavy the job is; the Work section has the exact cost of each tier and how rank and gear reduce it. Many recipes open with Processing XP.

Trade packs are made at the packing yards and have their own table under Trade packs. A few recipes belong to the story and are left out here.

Clothing and tools

Gear is crafted at workshops and never bought. Each piece sits in one slot on the Character screen (C). Gear lowers Work costs but never below a floor, so it speeds you up rather than removing the cost of work.

Casting and landing

There are two kinds of fish. Basic fish are quick to land: cast, hook the bite, and keep the fish inside the catch bar. Sport fish are real fights that need chum, an armed lure and the right rod.

1. 1

   Cast

   Walk up to fishable water and press E to take out the rod. Press it again to start the power meter, and once more to cast. You can also left-click water.

   Bait Worms shorten the wait for a bite.

2. 2

   Hook the bite

   Press Space when the fish bites. Hold to raise the catch bar and release to lower it; keep the fish inside the bar.

   Keeping the fish in the bar the whole way is a perfect catch and gives extra Fishing XP.

3. 3

   Sport fishing

   Chum the school first, then arm a lure with R. In the fight, follow the highlighted response: W reels, S gives slack, and A / D swing the rod against the run. Press X twice to cut the line and end the fight.

   Each hook uses one Woven Lure.

4. 4

   Keep the catch

   A sport fish is physical cargo. Keep it in a free hold slot or in your hands, collect it from the docked boat, and carry it to a village counter. See Boats and cargo.

   Use ice to keep it fresh. Freshness.

Rods

Each rod is a step up the ladder: stronger reel, safer tension, and a larger class of fish it can land. Rods open with Fishing XP and are bought at harbor and village stalls, never crafted.

Bait, chum and lures

Worms are optional on a basic cast and shorten the wait. A sport fish needs a school that has been chummed, and a lure armed for the hook. Chum comes from grain you grow and mill yourself, which is the farm feeding the sea. See Recipes.

Every fish

15 species. Season, time of day and weather decide who bites; the rod class decides who you can land. Base value is the starting point for a sale; freshness, weight, grade and the counter's mood move it. How fish are priced.

Freshness and spoilage

A sport fish starts at full freshness and loses it as the minutes pass. Freshness sets what it is worth, and a fish with none left is spoiled and cannot be sold.

In the journal, freshness reads as fresh from 85%, good from 60%, turning from 35%, and spoiled below that. Where the fish is kept changes how fast it ages:

Boats

Your boat is your fish hold, your delivery truck and your way across the sound. Step aboard at a berth, steer with W A S D, and dock when you arrive. An empty rowboat or skiff can be sent for from a serviced pier that berths it, for 10 or 40 gold; a rowboat cannot be sent to Sunreach, and a boat with cargo aboard has to be sailed home by you.

Upgrade: Fish Finder

Fit it at a serviced berth for 450 gold once you have 3,000 Fishing XP (Skilled). While you are aboard it picks out live schools within 180 metres, names what is in them and marks them on your nautical chart.

Cargo and what carries it

Everything you carry fills a slot, and a slot has a size. A sport fish and a trade pack are physical loads: each takes a slot of its own and goes with you until you sell it.

Each cell is the number of bays on that boat that can take a fish of that size. The size of each fish is on its card in Every fish.

Storage

Your satchel holds 20 slots, so surplus goes into storage. Open Hold & Stores with L to see boat cargo, supplies and every container in reach at once.

Fish kept in a crate, barn or warehouse lose freshness 10% slower than in your hands; the harbor cold room slows it by 85%. Freshness has the figures.

The economy in one page

Work Capacity

Money: earning and spending

What each shop sells

Each village shop stocks its own goods. Prices move with demand and the season, and a shop sells at a markup over what it would pay you. Stock is limited, so buying a lot raises the price. The money section explains the markup and the daily reset.

Trade runs

Every trade pack

35 packs, packed at a village's packing yard. What a pack sells for depends on where you carry it, so the price is in the planner above rather than a table here. The fee is paid in gold when you pack, and the time is real minutes at the normal game speed. Cargo and carriers says how many packs each carrier takes.

Harvest packs are crops of one kind and open from the start. Crafted packs are made from goods out of your workshops and need Processing XP. Premium packs need Trading XP as well. A house pack also needs the village to trust you.

What fish are worth

The order board

Every counter keeps a board. An order names a counter, a good, a quantity and a time limit, and pays a multiple of the market price when you deliver in time. How many can be open at once grows with your Trading rank, which Ranks lays out. Which orders get posted at a time varies; this is the full book they are drawn from. 16 later orders, which open with the late game, are not listed.

The multiple applies to the market price of what you hand in. The last column is the experience an order needs before it can be posted to you.

Ranks and rewards