Stepping into the post-apocalyptic skies of City From Naught's new factory builder requires tossing out old genre habits. If you are searching for conveyor belts, you will not find any here. This comprehensive Brave New Wonders beginner guide breaks down how to run an entire industrial empire using autonomous worker drones, plain-text commands, and modular logistical circuits.
Because early mistakes can quickly stall your production lines or leave your infrastructure vulnerable to hostile rogue drones, following a reliable Brave New Wonders beginner guide is vital for a smooth launch on the Americas continent. From placing your first smelter to launching your first sky-faring Wonder, here is everything you need to know.
Core Mechanics: Ditching Conveyor Belts for Automatons
In Brave New Wonders, you step into the role of Mira, an aspiring pioneer exploring floating islands held aloft by Levitanium. Accompanied by your mentor Coren and your artificer companion Brooklyn, you traverse the terrain on a nimble monowheel vehicle. Instead of running endless conveyor belt buses across the map, every single resource transfer is handled by autonomous robots known as automatons.
You construct these automatons at an Automaton Factory using compute cores recovered from old-world supply drops, exploratory points of interest, and defeated hostiles. In the earliest stages of the Americas biome, you rely primarily on two types of units:
- Miners: Deployed directly onto resource nodes such as metal ore, crystal shards, and coal. They extract raw chunks and deliver them to your designated drop-off point.
- Movers: Transport carts that haul intermediate parts, fuels, and finished components between production machines, warehouses, and research hubs.
Expanding your layout is exceptionally forgiving compared to traditional factory sims. You can place structure blueprints even before you possess the required materials in your monowheel inventory. Once you gather the ingredients, approaching the ghost outline and pressing G immediately finalizes construction. Furthermore, the game features a dedicated Relocate button, allowing you to pick up and shift misplaced smelters or factories to nearby tiles without spending additional materials or suffering teardown penalties.
Blueprints further streamline expansion. Tapping the spacebar pauses the game and switches your camera into top-down blueprint mode. From this view, highlighting an operational setup and pressing Ctrl+D duplicates the entire production loop. Cloned automatons retain their programmed behaviors, allowing you to copy-paste complete, self-sustaining factory cells in seconds.
Plain-Text Commands and Signals: Programming Without Code
The defining pillar of the game is its natural language behavior editor. Rather than forcing you to write code, the game uses an internal AI model to translate plain-text English sentences into functional behavior graphs. You do not need a computer science degree to automate complex tasks, but understanding the basics outlined in this Brave New Wonders beginner guide will prevent unexpected idling.
When configuring a Mover, you can choose from ready-made presets like standard hauling, merging, and splitting, or you can write a custom prompt. If you create custom instructions, you can define target locations using bracketed variables (such as [Ore Warehouse] or [Smelter]) to make prompts easily reusable across multiple buildings. For instance, a player can prompt:
- Deliver metal ore from [Ore Warehouse] to [Smelter].
- Then, deliver metal plate from [Smelter] to [Plate Warehouse].
Once generated, the system creates an interactive state flowchart. You then click on the corresponding buildings in your yard to bind them to the prompt's variables.
As your tech tree advances into Signal Intelligence, you can link automaton routines to dynamic environmental conditions. Buildings broadcast color-coded signals (such as Red, Blue, or Green) based on internal thresholds like inventory capacity or ambient temperature. Movers can be instructed to alter their delivery targets based on these broadcasted states.
| Signal Condition | Building / Trigger Example | Typical Automaton Action |
|---|---|---|
| Empty Inventory (Red) | Gun Turret out of ammunition | Fetch Ammunition Mark 1 from central armory |
| Specific Resource Request | Trial of Capacity relic vault | Deliver metal plates on Red; deliver refined crystals on Blue |
Community reports from early playtests note that syntax precision matters. If you tell an automaton to inspect a series of chests sequentially, it may stall indefinitely at the second chest if that chest happens to be empty. Specifying fallback conditions or utilizing signal-gated triggers avoids these bottlenecks.
First-Hour Americas Walkthrough: Power, Smelting, and Science
Your journey begins near the train station hub, which serves as your primary research center and repository. To begin tech progress, collect metal plates from nearby supply crates and deposit them into the train station terminal to research Monowheel Mining.
Your initial base relies on a pre-built Solar Power Collector generating 4 megawatts (MW). Power is distributed across your yard via power poles, with each pole supporting a maximum of six connections. Keeping production compact early on prevents wasted resources on excess poles.
To establish your initial production loop:
- Mine raw crystal shards and metal ore manually using your monowheel until you have enough to construct two Smelters.
- Place a Smelter near your power pole, assign it to produce Refined Crystals (10-second crafting cycle, producing 6 per minute), and feed it crystal shards.
- Place a second Smelter configured to produce Metal Plates (also 6 per minute) fed with metal ore.
- Erect a Warehouse (capacity 500 units) nearby to store excess materials so your Smelters never shut down due to clogged output buffers.
- Unlock Mining 1 at the train station hub to deploy your first Miner automatons, routing raw materials directly into your Smelter or input buffer.
Once base refining is automated, construct a General Factory powered by an extended power pole. Producing Industry Research Packs requires combining Refined Crystals and Metal Plates inside the General Factory. Setting up dedicated Movers to shuttle these packs directly into the train station hub automates early research nodes, including Energy 1, Blueprint Mode, and Combat 1.
Starter Production Ratios:
- 1 Miner on Pure Node -> Feeds up to 2 Smelters
- 1 Smelter (Metal Plates) + 1 Smelter (Refined Crystals) -> Feeds 1 General Factory (Industry Research Packs)
- 1 General Factory -> Continuously supplies Train Station Hub for Tier 1 Techs
Combat, Defense Logistics, and the Sky Pillar
Floating continents are not deserted sanctuaries. Hostile rogue automatons roam designated red danger zones across the landscape. Venturing into these zones on your monowheel lets you engage in direct combat by pressing R to draw your sidearm, but relying on manual defense quickly becomes unsustainable.
Before expanding toward contested supply drops or ancient ruins, research Combat 1 and set up an automated ammunition line. To manufacture Ammunition Mark 1, build a Weapon Factory and supply it with Metal Plates and Gunpowder (smelted from raw coal).
Gun Turrets are your primary defensive bulwark. As experienced players in this Brave New Wonders beginner guide suggest, placing turrets in defensive clusters of three provides sufficient firepower to eliminate incoming waves without taking critical structure damage. Supply each turret bunker using an automated delivery loop:
- Build a dedicated ammo storage Warehouse near your defense line.
- Set each Gun Turret's signal behavior to emit Red when its internal inventory is empty, and Green otherwise.
- Program a single Mover with a signal prompt: "When [Turret] signals Red, deliver Ammunition Mark 1 from [Warehouse] to [Turret]."
- Bind that single Mover to monitor all three turrets, keeping your defenses perpetually armed with zero manual hauling.
Securing your perimeter paves the way to the Sky Pillar, the central narrative milestone of the Americas island. Exploring the Sky Pillar requires building a crane and delivering large stockpiles of resources, including metal plates and dynamite, while defending against hostile machines spawning in the surrounding red zone. The structure involves handling hot and cold gusts of wind by setting parameters for a temperature range, using a mover to deliver two different items that raise or lower the temperature to keep it within that range. Exploring the Sky Pillar and retrieving the Old World Core unlocks your first Wonder: the massive transport Airship that doubles as an airborne fleet of factories.
Scaling Up: Natural Gas, Power Plants, and Hauler Trucks
As your factory footprint stretches across the continent, standard solar arrays (4 MW each) will struggle to support advanced chemical processing. Researching Energy 1 allows you to construct additional Solar Power Collectors to expand grid output. Each collector provides 4 MW of power and requires energy cells, which are crafted in a General Factory by combining coal with crystal compounds. Natural gas geysers also dot the landscape as an environmental resource discovered during exploration.
Power Generation Comparison:
| Power Source | Output | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Solar Power Collector | 4 MW | Passive, zero fuel, large footprint |
Transporting materials, ammunition, and construction components over vast distances using slow-moving Movers causes logistical paralysis. Researching Trucks solves long-range transit by unlocking trucks and truck hubs, which serve as long-distance, high-capacity transportation tools. You can create custom truck behaviors in the main campaign to coordinate transport across your expanding logistics network.
For official patch notes, system requirements, and community announcements, check the official Brave New Wonders Steam store page before configuring multi-island transit networks.
Early Game Mistakes to Avoid
A key takeaway from any Brave New Wonders beginner guide is learning which common pitfalls to steer clear of during your first hours of play:
- Do Not Demolish Spawner-Blocking Obstacles Prematurely: Certain fallen tree barriers block enemy patrol paths from reaching your factory. While dynamite clears them to reveal infinite resource nodes, leave chokepoints sealed until you have established Gun Turret clusters.
- Avoid Over-Complicating Prompts Early: You do not need conditional signal logic for simple smelter loading. Stick to standard mover presets for basic two-point transfers, and reserve custom prompts for multi-building balancing or defense resupply.
- Watch Warehouse Capacities: Smelters and factories halt production once their tiny internal output bays fill up. Always place a dedicated warehouse on output lines to buffer intermediate materials.
- Audit Cloned Blueprints: When using Ctrl+D to clone production arrays, verify where the copied Movers are assigned to drop their loads. Clones retain their original assignments, which can lead to workers trekking across the map to drop items into distant warehouses.
- Do Not Rely on Manual Crafting: Processing dynamite, thermal plates, and research packs by hand drains exploration time. Automate intermediate components immediately, even if the temporary layout looks messy.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do I need a Brave New Wonders beginner guide if there is an in-game tutorial?
While the in-game tutorial introduces basic monowheel movement, building placement, and basic text prompts, it does not explain long-term optimization strategies. Player discussions frequently highlight confusion surrounding behavior editor parsing errors, ratio management between miners and smelters, and defensive turret automation. This guide bridges the gap between basic tutorial drills and functional base-building execution.
Can I finish the game without writing custom AI prompts?
Yes. You can complete the primary campaign progression using the library of pre-built behaviors, such as standard Movers, Splitters, and Mergers. However, utilizing custom plain-text commands allows a single automaton to perform the work of two or three individual drones, drastically reducing compute core costs and saving physical yard space.
What should I do if a Mover automaton shows a purple error icon?
A purple icon indicates an invalid path, a full destination container, or an incompatible item filter. Check the automaton's inspection panel to see its active decision tree. The issue is usually resolved by emptying the receiving warehouse, verifying that the target building has power, or adjusting your text prompt variables.
Does my demo save carry over into the full release of Brave New Wonders?
Yes, demo and playtest saves carry over into the 1.0 release on Steam. However, the development team and veteran community members strongly recommend starting a fresh game for version 1.0. Older saves often carry forward obsolete balance values, cluttered automation routes, and brittle early-game behaviors that can break when expanding into later island biomes.