• The TWC Interface
• How to begin
• Aims and Objectives
• Introduction to your skills
  • Combat
  • Construction
  • Farming
  • Forestry
  • Management
  • Textile
  • Weaving
  • Whittling
• Regaining Health
• Expanding horizons
• Building a base
• Using workers
• Advanced
  • Farming
  • Statues
  • Birds
  • Industrial Hemp
  • Squirrels
  • Idols

What you can see: a 7x7 area (an acre) with yourself in the middle. Grey squares around (depending on your screen size/resolution) denote areas you have yet to explore. There are various toolbars and windows in TWC, some of which you can see immediately, others can be opened or closed using the 'view' menu:

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The Info Center shows you your skill levels, health etc. Your health at the start is just 1, you have 0 gold, and each skill is at level 11. The green bar represents your health level - this bar goes yellow and then red as your health goes critically low. You can set the levels at which it should change color by selecting Game->Options on the TWC menus. The blue bar is your thirst level: currently this is not in use The brown bar is your poo level - this fills up a little more each time you eat. Once it is full, you need to use an outhouse before you can eat again. The red bar is the action bar. You can queue up to 5 actions here which your character will then carry out. If you wish to cancel the actions in your queue, use the stop button. The first action in the queue is already being carried out - this cannot be cancelled.

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The hoard shows what you are currently carrying: You will only have a 'crude axe', 10 balsam fir seeds, and a level 100 staff to begin with. The first figure is the quantity of the item which you are carrying, the last figure is the value of the item (per piece). If there is an item which is in green, this is the item you currently have selected. This means that when you click on a square next to you, you will use this item. If you have an axe selected, you will chop; if you have a seed selected, you will plant it etc. Of course, if the square you click on is not suitable for using the item you have selected on, then you will get an error message.

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The whittling toolbar allows you to make items out of wood. Select some wood in your hoard and then click one of the buttons on the whittling toolbar to attempt to make a new item.

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The construction toolbar allows you to construct items out of planks and fences. Select a plank (for a fence or an outhouse), two planks (for a gate), or two pieces of fencing (for fence repairs) in your hoard and click the appropriate button.

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The textile toolbar allows you to weave items. You need 10 beggars cloth and 10 beggars yarn. Select the 10 beggar's cloth (you will need to have 10 beggar's yarn also in your hoard) and click the appropriate button to attempt to make a beggar's milking glove or beggar's seed bag. For higher level items you need more material: 20 each of cloth and yarn for middling items, 30 each for imperial.

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The stop button clears queued items out of your queue. The first action cannot be cleared, as this is already being done.

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The workers window allows you to view and select any workers you have hired to do jobs around your base.

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The weather window shows you the current humidity, temperature, windspeed and direction.

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Lots of tasks in TWC can be done using keyboard shortcuts instead of the mouse: View Shortcuts

 

How to begin:

Please read the Introduction which gives detailed instructions on how to get started in the game.

 

Aims and Objectives:

Your aims are whatever you choose. Some ideas are:

• Become a god and get a statue
• Have the best whittling skill
• Get a record
• Have the most impenetrable base

 

Introduction to your skills:

There are 9 skills in toadwater, these are combat, construction, farming, forestry, management, poo textile, weaving, and whittling. More details about each one are below. Each time you perform an action in Toadwater, you gain two types of experience points. One is overall experience, in this you normally get one point for each action, ie one point for each chop with an axe, one for planting a tree, etc. This determines your health. The other sort of experience points are skill experience points. These go towards improving your various skills, and the amount of points you get, and the skill they go into, is dependent on the action. For example, when you chop a tree with an axe, you get (axe level) points added to your forestry skill. However, this does not mean that for each chop with a level 1 axe, you get an extra level added to your forestry. Your forestry level is worked out from your forestry XP but the higher your skill gets, the harder it becomes to get to the next level (you need more experience points to get to the next level). You also gain one level in all of your skills, each time your in-game age goes up by a year.

The other way to improve your skills, at least in the case of Combat, Construction, Farming, Forestry, Management, Poo and Whittling, is to place a magazine into your outhouse . Now every time you poo in that outhouse, you get XP points added to whichever skill the magazine relates to, for each piece of poo you 'drop' there. This is currently the only way to (permanently) improve your combat skill.

 

Combat:

There is as yet no combat in Toadwater. You may wish to improve this skill in anticipation of a combat system being added one day - however, combat is not included in the ranking system and you are likely to get some warning if its addition is imminent! Combat skill can be temporarily increased by eating Red Devil radishes.

 

Construction:

Your construction skill is used for making fences, gates, and outhouses from planks, and fence repairs from fences. Your construction skill can be temporarily increased by eating Cherry Belle Radishes. The easist items to construct are fences and gates, which use up one plank each, and gates which use two planks. Fence repairs are twice as hard to make as the other items and require two pieces of fencing.

 

Farming:

Your farming skill determines how good a crop you will get when you plant Radish or Industrial Hemp seeds. Your farming skill can be temporarily increased by eating China Rose radishes. More about farming in the Advanced section.

 

Forestry:

Your forestry skill determines your success in planting trees. Your forestry skill can be temporarily increased by eating Crimson Giant radishes.

 

Management:

Your management skill affects the speed at which your workers complete their jobs. It also determines the chances of a worker finding one or more seeds when s/he chops down a tree. Management skill can be temporarily increased by eating Plum Purple radishes.

Poo:

Your poo skill determines how many times you can eat before your poo bar becomes full and you have to visit an outhouse. Your poo skill can be increased by pooing, and by reading 'poo' magazines while you are in the outhouse!

 

Textile:

Your textile skill affects the results of the following stages in the industrial hemp process: Breaking and Scutching, Hackling, and Spinning. There is no radish to increase your textile skill, as this is considered an 'elite' skill. However, eating a gold radish increases all of your skills by 10 percent for an hour, including textile.

 

Weaving:

Your weaving skill determines your success in weaving gloves and other items from cloth and yarn, and the amount of cloth you can produce. There is no radish to increase your weaving skill, as this is considered an 'elite' skill. However, eating a gold radish increases all of your skills by 10 percent for an hour, including weaving.

 

Whittling:

Your whittling skill is used for making items out of wood such as planks, taps etc. Your whittling skill can be temporarily increased by eating White Icicle radishes. The easiest items to whittle are mallets, planks, shovels, taps and posts. Birdhouses are twice as hard as these, scutching swords 4 times as hard, idols and oars ten times, and clogs 20 times as hard.

 

Regaining Health:

You regain health in the following ways:

• Standing still
• Eating from a fully grown tree
• Eating radishes
• Drinking Squirrel Milk
• Dying(!)

When standing still, your health normally regenerates at a rate of 0.1 point per minute. However, if you are standing on a tree, your health gain per minute is (tree age in days) / 100, with a minimum of 0.1 health points.

Whilst standing on a tree, you can eat fruit from its branches by pressing 'e' (or choosing 'Eat' from the 'Actions' menu. This will give you the same health gain as you get each minute from standing on the tree. However, you can only eat until your poo bar gets full up - once it is full you will need to visit an outhouse before you can eat any more.

If you manage to buy or grow some radishes, you can eat them, they give you health as well as other bonusus. The best radishes for health are the French Breakfast Radsih, which gives you 10 health points, and the Gold Radish, which fills up your health bar. Other radishes give you an amount of health equal to the value of the radish - but don't eat compost worms because they give you -5 health each!

Squirrel milk also gives you some health, 3 points per drop. However, squirrel milk is quite valuable so you should only use it for health as a last resort.

When you die, you reappear with 10 health. This is not recommended as a good way to regenerate your health, particularly since if you die more than 10 times your account will be vaporized!

 

Expanding horizons:

Now that you have got accustomed to the Toadwater Interface and learnt how to make items from wood, you will also have gained enough health to move futher afield, and you now have more options about what you should do. It will soon be time to leave the safety of cloud world, and jump down into the real world. Remember that once you are in the big wide world, other people may come and cut down your trees, take your idols and taps, and perhaps even fence you in. You will need to be able to protect yourself by making lots of fencing, and building a base. You will also need enough health points to find a space big enough for your base, some areas are more crowded than others so this can be quite a task.

 

Building your own base:

When you reach level 45 or 50, it is time to move out of your starting Cloud World and look for a place to set up your own base. You need quite a big space so do your research before you start building. You can always move again later though! Fence off as big an area as you think you need, or as big as you can create fences for, using the highest level fencing you can manage to make.

To build a fence, first construct fencing materials from planks by selecting the planks in your hoard, and then clicking the 'Fence' button on the construction toolbar. Now place the fence on a square next to you, and use your mallet to pound it in until the icon changes to a fence icon. You cannot build fencing within the 4 starter worlds, as these are for transit only.

Plant some balsam fir trees strategically within your new base to use as 'healing trees' - as they get older they will become good resting places.

 

Using workers:

Once you have some cash and a fair number of trees, you may wish to start hiring workers to help you around your base. Workers can cut down trees, fertilize land, build and remove fences, and remove roads. The speed at which they work is determined by their farming, forestry and construction skills, and your management skill.

To give a worker a job, open the workers window by pressing Ctrl-W or choosing 'Workers' from the Actions menu. Now click on the worker's name in the workers window, and then select a tool in your inventory. You will see the name of the worker and the tool selected, displayed in green letters at the top of your screen. Now click on the square where you want the worker to work. This may be any square within your range of vision.

Before you hire a worker, it is a good idea to decide what jobs you want done, and use this to choose which worker to hire. For example, if all your jobs are forestry jobs you would not want to get a worker with a low forestry skill, as it can take them all day to chop a single tree! See also workers.

 

Advanced items:

The following is a description of how some of the more advanced toadwater features work, things that you will not attempt until you have either saved up a lot of money, or gained a high level in certain skills. They are arranged in approximately the order you should begin to work on them! For example, do not try Industrial Hemp farming until you have done a lot of Radish farming, and you will be unable to get the high level seeds needed for birds before you purchase your first statue!

 

Farming:

The first type of farming you will do is Radish farming. To grow a crop of radishes, first fertilize a square using 100 pieces of poo (grandma's can be bought from the store, or you can use your own from an exploded outhouse), or 10 compost worms. You can also fertilize using Enriched Bird Poo but this is more costly and the only advantage is that your radishes will grow in 30 minutes instead of an hour. Next buy 100 radish seeds from the store. Then select them in your hoard and click the fertilized square. Once the radishes are fully grown, step onto the square and click yourself to open up the radish screen. You will see a number of radishes, how many you get is dependent on your farming skill. To get a full crop you need farming skill 200! It is advisable to raise your farming skill a little, using a magazine - otherwise you may get empty crops!

There are various different types of radishes, each of which has a different purpose:

• Cherry Belle: The construction radish. Eat up to ten at a time to temporarily improve your construction skill.
• China Rose: The farming radish. Eat up to ten at a time to temporarily improve your farming skill.
• Crimson Giant: The forestry radish. Eat up to ten at a time to temporarily improve your forestry skill.
• French Breakfast: The health radish. Eat as many as you like, each one restores 10 health points.
• Gold Radish: The rarest radish! Eat one to improve all of your skills by 10 points for an hour, and lots of other benefits when combined with squirrel milk!
• Plum Purple: The management radish. Eat up to ten at a time to temporarily improve your management skill.
• Red Devil: The combat radish. Eat up to ten at a time to temporarily improve your combat skill.
• Round Black Spanish: The poo radish. Each one you eat adds 10 poo to your current poo level.
• White Icicle: The whittling radish. Eat up to ten at a time to temporarily improve your whittling skill.

You should also get some compost worms in your crop, these are used for fertilization and for attracting birds from their trees into your hoard.

You might also get fungi in your crop, if you are extremely lucky. There are two types of fungi, Death Cap Mushrooms which remove one death when you eat them, and Flaming Fungus which has no use at this time.

See also: Radishes.

 

Statues:

If you want to place a statue on the ground, you will first need to plant a creeping red fescue lawn on the square: fertilize the square to 100% using dried poo, compost worms or EBP, buy 100 creeping red fescue seeds from the store, and plant them in the fertilized soil. The grass takes one hour to grow. Now you can place your statue on the square and wait for bird droppings to appear (see below for more about this)!

Once you have got some bird droppings on your statue, you can scrape them off by walking onto the statue. When you do this, for each dropping a check is done to see if it has a tree seed in it - there is a one in (ten times tree level) chance that it will contain a seed, for each tree, except for the top ten seeds which are not available from statues. The highest level seed is checked for first, if a seed is not found then it looks for one of the next level, down to level 11. If no seed has been found then you get a random amount of EBP, between 1 and 10 pieces. There is no skill check on this.

Statues are the only way to get seeds for trees above level 1 (apart from trading with other players). Whenever someone reaches the top ten in the ranking , they are given a statue to commemorate their achievement! 100 of each statue are initially available, at a price which reflects the current ranking of the person. High level statues, and those of people expected to rise through the rankings, are usually snapped up quickly - but each player can only buy one statue per hour to stop people from hoarding too many of them. Statues are used by some players as an investment: If you spot someone who is playing a lot and is likely to improve their ranking, you can buy their statue and then sell it back to the shop later on. However, the statue has to be put on the ground, otherwise its value remains the same it was when you bought it.

The ranking of the player depicted on the statue also determines the frequency of bird droppings appearing on the statue. When you hover over the statue you will see a time, the basic time is 10 minutes for the highest statue, plus an additional 10 minutes for each level you go down in the rankings. However, you also get a bonus which reduces this length of time, dependent on the length of time the statue has been left on the ground without moving. Over a long period this can make a significant difference to the timer!. This timer shows you the frequency with which birds pass your statue, and each time a bird passes there is a one in ten chance that they will leave you a dropping! So for a statue with a 10 minute timer, you can expect to get one dropping every 100 minutes, on average. This happens whether you are on or off line though so it's not as rare as it sounds!

 

Birds:

There are 5 types of birds currently residing in the toadwater trees, each with a different purpose, detailed below.

To attract a bird to one of your trees, first whittle a birdhouse , and then attach the birdhouse to the tree. The higher level the birdhouse, the sooner you can expect to get a bird in it. The exact amount of time is random and varies between bird types.

Birds can be summoned into your hoard by tempting them with a compost worm. You can only summon birds that belong to you (except in the special case of a passenger pigeon that has been lodged on a ponderosa pine tree). You can scare away birds that belong to you by feeding them a piece of dried poo, for example if you want to chop down the tree that they are living on. A bird has a number of uses, this number is set when they first arrive at a birdhouse and is a random number between 1 and a maximum which depends on the age of the tree. For each 100 days old the tree is, the maximum number of uses increases by 1. So a 200 day old tree will attract a bird with a maximum of 3 uses.

• Bearded Vulture: This bird resides in a western hemlock tree. When used on another player anywhere within your field of vision, it picks them up and carries them away, dropping them randomly in another world square. The only way to avoid being 'birded' by someone with a BV is to hide in an outhouse - or run away! Once summoned, it will only stay in your hoard for 10 minutes.
• Passenger Pigeon: This bird resides in a horse chestnut tree. You can carry one in your hoard for up to 100 minutes, and when placed on the ground, it picks you up and carries you back to its birdhouse. A pigeon can also be lodged in a birdhouse attached to a ponderosa pine tree, where it will stay until someone summons it into their hoard, at which time it returns, with that person, to it's original birdhouse. Once lodged in the ponderosa pine tree, the pigeon can be used by any player who finds it, but there is no way of telling where it will take you.
• Sharpie: This bird resides in a quaking aspen tree. It is your lookout, when placed on the ground next to you it will inform you of any other players who are currently in the world square that you are in. Useful for checking that no-one is attempting to breach your defences!
• Wood Duck: This bird resides in a black tupelo tree. When summoned, it immediately carries you to 'South Winter Island' (SWI), a snowy landmass where players can trade quickly if both have wood ducks. One day SWI will have player-owned shops selling items unavailable in the shop. After 20 minutes, the wood duck will return to its birdhouse, taking you with it. If you want to return earlier, simply place the bird on the ground.
• Yellow-Bellied Sap-Sucker: This bird resides in a yellow buckeye tree. When placed on the ground, it goes around all the trees within your field of vision and collects the sap from them, provided there is space in your hoard. You must use your sapsucker within 10 minutes of summoning it, otherwise it will return to its tree.

 

Industrial Hemp:

The process of growing hemp stalks and turning them into cloth is a complicated and expensive one. It is advisable to get your farming skill up to somewhere near 200 before attempting any hemp farming.
Thanks to Jarak for the following explanation of the full process:

Planting:

• fertilize the ground the same as for radish farming.(100 poo or 10 Compost Worms (recommended) or EBP).
• Remember to eat your China Rose radishes before planting. (This boosts your farming skill for a short period)
• Plant 100 hemp seeds, bought from the shop for 1000 gold.
• Wait 2 hours for the seeds to grow (or one hour if planted in EBP).
• Harvest the Hemp Stalks (Each crop will have 15% Compost Worms (on average))

Retting, Breaking and Scutching

• Take 100 hemp stalks.
• Put them on the ground to Ret.
• Retting takes from 1 hr 5 mins to 3 hrs 15 mins, but is normally about 2 hours.
• When a field is not retted fully it shows a (-) in the tool tip.
• When it is over done it shows a (+).
• When it is just right the image gets the button bevil / 3d effect and the tooltip just says 'Retting Hemp'.
• To Break & Scutch the field, use a scutching sword on it.
• The better the scutching sword, the more fibres you will get, so wax your sword with your best sap!
• You will get raw hemp fibers and seeds back, the higher your textile skill the more you get.

Hackling

• Buy a hackling machine, place it on the ground.
• Select your fibers. You need 100 fibers per click on the hackling machine.
• This will convert the Raw fibers to low grade slivers.
• You can hackle the low grade again to get medium and the medium to get High grade fibers, but the amount is reduced each time.
• The hackling machine lasts for 1000 uses before it must be replaced.

Spinning

• Buy a spinning wheel, place it on the ground.
• Select 100 low, medium, or high grade sliver in your hoard and click on the spinning wheel to make yarn.
• The quality of the yarn is determined by the quality of the sliver used.
• A spinning wheel lasts for 1000 uses before it must be replaced.

Weaving

• Buy a loom, place it on the ground.
• Select 100 lengths of yarn in your hoard, and click the loom to make cloth.
• The quality of the cloth produced is the same as the quality of the yarn used.
• A loom lasts for 1000 uses before it must be replaced.

Once you have 10 beggar's cloth and 10 beggar's yarn, you can attempt to make a beggar's milking glove. Your chances of success are dependent on your weaving skill. To make a middling milking glove requires 20 middling cloth and 20 middling yarn. An attempt at an imperial glove requires 30 imperial cloth and 30 imperial yarn.

Once you have raised your weaving skill a bit, you will want to attempt to make a seed bag. Seed bags are made in the same way as gloves, but your odds will be much lower!

 

Squirrels and Milk:

Red Squirrels live in Butternut trees. They can be milked once a day to obtain milk, using a milking glove.

Milk, when drunk, boosts your ability to fertilize, break&scutch, lay down stalks for retting, hackle fibres and spin yarn - you can perform these tasks twice as fast.

When combined with a gold radish, you can do any of these things five times as fast - but watch your health! The other benefit of drinking milk is that when you scrape a statue, you will only get level 20+ seeds. Instead of any level 11-19 seeds you will get EBP. When you have also eaten a gold radish, you only get level 30+ seeds from statues. This allows you to scrape statues loaded with poo without needing to clear out so much space in your hoard, also the EBP is more valuable than the seeds you would have otherwise got.

 

Idols:

Idols can be wittled from wood, however, beware! They are even harder to whittle than scutching swords! Idols, as with all whittled items, must be whittled in order of wood level. Once you have successfully whittled an idol, you can attach it to a tree. The idol must be attached to the same type of tree as the wood it was whittled from. Now you can start worshipping the idol, by feeding it seeds. Select seeds of the same level as the idol, and click the idol. With each click, the idol will take (tree level + 1) x 2 seeds (if available). This costs you health so beware! In return, the idol will give you one seed of the next highest level of tree.

Each idol has a power level, which is based on: Length of time idol has been attached to the tree, age of the tree to which it is attached, number of seeds which have been fed to it, and wood level.

The person with the highest-powered idol for a tree type is the tree lord of that tree. This brings benefits such as increased odds when whittling items from that type of wood.