Travellers Rest: Basic Starter Guide

Each dish that lets you choose a custom ingredient will always have a “Best In Slot” because it has more value, which slightly increase the price of what you’re making. There is zero reason to cook anything without using BIS items. The one exception is customer orders which can want lower value items. Here is an example – you want to make Vegetable Broth. You can serve this as food, or use it as ingredient with other recipes. You might notice Pumpkin has most value, and 2 pumpkins is BIS. Therefore, unless fulfilling a customer order, ALWAYS make your Vegetable Broth with 2 pumpkins. Likewise, Watermelon is the BIS fruit for Fruit Juice, Jam, and Cocktails.

Some rules to remember:
1. Hake, Pike, and Glit-Head Bream are the BIS fish most of the time. There are a few recipes where a different fish becomes the best. Meagres and Morays can be used to make Crab Pots as they are the most common fish to catch in my experience. Since there are BIS fish, this means the BIS bait are the ones those fish want.
2. Yellow-Foot seems to be the BIS Mushroom.
3. It’s worth having Big Chests in your Kitchen for each “type” of thing. Because you will find some of the best recipes at each stage of the game do use some of the lower quality items in each category – green beans, turnips, garlics, sardines, etc. Find out which of these recipes you want to focus on and prepare your farm and fishing bait accordingly.

You do want to maintain a wide variety of food and 8 drinks (4 kegs, 4 taps).

Be aware that later game, different Alcohol and Food items will be required for some of the best recipes at that stage of the game. Remember to focus on a small amount of recipes at a time.

Your first year is rough because you have to go through the cycle of seasons to farm/fish the BIS and slowly get the money going. It’s very slow in the beginning to build up money.

Earlier in the game, buy things that increase comfort. Be mindful you get Diminishing Returns on the same item so every table doesn’t need an oil lamp and incense burner and 2 coasters and candle holder. I like to set up each table with a Candle Holder in the middle, then on the middle row above and below it, one item of that type.

Having more than 6 Tablecloths doesn’t help. Some big ticket items that give +20 you can have a few more of because even with diminishing returns you still get an extra +3-8 out of “just one more”.

It’s worth having ONE of each Light Source that provides comfort – other than the ones that provide comfort, it’s only worth Candelabra, Shiny Candelabra, and Wall Torch for lighting.

Later in the game, money just rains from the sky but levels stagnate as reputation is hard to get. I have 20 tables and 8 rooms at <3 level 200+. My tavern deco is 500+. I am level 30 and it’s a real grind to gain a reputation/level.

Individual Tables are required for rooms. Otherwise build Large Tables + Large Benches. Smaller tables than this give you less customers per space and more tables to clean.

Mon/Thur, check all the shops.

Tue/Fri, forage. Weekends all shops are closed so use it to fish and make drastic changes to your farm/tavern.

Wed, Fri, Sat remain. Fri/Sat are pretty worthless because all shops closed. Great days for fishing and foraging.

Wednesday I usually just harvest crops and help wipe tables and serve food.

It’s worth a daily run to the beach to check if turkey or beach spawn spots and crabs are present, aromatic plants and herbs, also walk up one screen and see if the turkey is hanging out.

Look at the recipes you have and determine which ones are the most expensive and easiest to make. As said above it’s better to focus on a small number of drinks and food.

I only focus on having 8 drinks. Likewise I only focus on 10 foods. I still make a lot of other foods. I basically want to keep about 20 foods in stock made of BIS ingredients at all times, and I don’t make the same recipe with different ingredients.

Always hire staff. You need them ASAP. In the beginning, you are juggling cleaning with taps. Once you can hire staff, the game changes.

Look for traits that make them clean tables/floor faster or cause customers to be less messy. At first it’s easy for your staff to manage 4-6 tables. Once you upgrade to 10-20 tables, your staff will be overwhelmed and dirty tables everywhere. Once you expand toward this size, have 3 Enchanted Brooms with one in middle, one on left, one on right.

You will Fire and Hire new staff frequently enough to not get attached to the ones you have. Before upgrading to new staff make sure you’re able to afford it. Sometimes it’s worth hanging on to a less good worker if the upgrade won’t pay for itself.

Don’t worry about Customer Orders for the first year. If you really want to do that, then do NOT buy out cave recipes. Just pick like 1-2 from each category that have high value and between your recipes, don’t overwhelm yourself on needing Milk, Herbs, Aromatic Plants, or Honey or the nuts or chocolate. Customer Orders want a random item with a random ingredient and usually don’t give enough reputation to be worth doing. Once the first year is done, it’s worth filling anything you can and placing the excesses into the menu at the bar.

Your menu at the bar should have 8 or so recipes of focus and scraps of fulfilled orders.

Do NOT overfocus on rooms to rent. They take your housekeeper staff away from housekeeping the bar (where you make money). As you expand the tavern you will need the housekeeper wiping tables and sweeping and having 8 big rooms will result in dirty tables everywhere.

I like to stop at 4 rooms, 2 large and 2 small. It’s worth expanding their size to fit in more <3 giving furniture items such as Aquariums, Rugs, wall deco, etc.

Wall Torch + a few well placed Candelabras are the ideal lighting, and a coral lamp.

ANIMALS can get stuck. At the beginning of each day, pet the cat, water its bowl if needed. Pet cat when its still or on bed, not when its walking. Then, go to barn and ring the bell, If your animals get stuck you can reset and lose nothing.

On a non-weekend day, a trip to Buzz, use “Facilities” improvement – this usually forces the invisible/stuck animals to correct themselves. Sometimes a broom swat can work.

Animals stuck outside can’t usually be helped. Sometimes you can run to Buzz and do the thing above, and it will reset the inside of the barn and they will all appear inside.

Best animals are 3 cows, 3 sheep. It’s worth a few rounds of pigs because Pork makes Lard and Intestines are needed – but once you get a healthy stock you won’t need no more for a while.

Around the mid-game, you will never have enough milk, always buy out all the milk from the farm shop.

Top Star animals don’t produce extra milks, but they do give extra meat/products when butchered. So whack them 3 times with a broom.

CAT:

Pet it when it’s still, not when it’s walking.

Keep its water full.

Expand size of your room – you want cat Bed and Bowl to have a few free spaces on all sides.Put them toward middle of room not on a wall.

Keep the tavern lit.

PARROT:

Feed it when it says something “good” that has Green Numbers with a + sign. You can feed it 2x a day and need to feed it 2x a day when you can. Sometimes it’s just “bad bird” all day and takes a bit to get going.

Once you’ve fed it a few crackers for a few days, it will progressively begin making more good comments and less bad ones (though the frequency of comments does not change).

Its meter will go down as well, so you can’t just forget about it. If you get the Cage, birds in the cage do not have their meter drain.

– Convert upstairs crafting room to rental room ASAP.
– You can scroll past the wallpapers/floors to see more options.
– Check out the discord for the game.
– Check out the wiki for the game.
– check out the mods on Nexus for the game.

Thank you for checking out the guide.
This guide will grow and expand over time as the game does.