Virtual Villagers 5: New Believers

Real-time Play:
- This game continues to progress while you are not playing. You need to use this to your advantage and not get frustrated.
- You are not going to be able to push this game out in a day; you just can't force it.
- To speed things up, you can play in fast mode (available in options).
- I advise that you just keep the game running in the background while you do your other tasks on the computer.
- Also consider going back to normal, slow, or pause while you are at work or sleeping.
- Putting it in slow mode overnight will allow plenty to happen without the risk of waking up in the morning with too much damage to your tribe.
- Also be sure to have assigned your villagers the appropriate skill preference; you don't want to go to bed and discover every female in your village with a baby (well, maybe you do; but that's for later!)
- Play several games at once. If you are determined to keep playing, then start 2 or 3 tribes. If you do this, you can start with different starting tribe mixes and try doing different tasks first.

Villagers:
Nursing mothers: Will not work and will carry their babies until they are 2 years old in game time; about 2 hours in Fast mode and almost 4 in Slow mode.
Children: From the age of 2 to 13, children will not work. They will pick up mushrooms, relics, and lab items and run around all over the place! They are very handy to keep orange masks out of the way (see below).
Teens: From the age of 14 to 17, teens will work. They will not pick things up any more. They cannot reproduce. Your younger villagers are particularly prone to stopping work and not knowing what to do. You just need to keep putting them back to work until they gain some skills.
Adults: Age 18 and above. Adults will be able to reproduce.

Character Selection:
There are several ways you can select a specific character.
1. You can click on him.
2. You can use the Detail arrows on the main screen without going into the Detail screen. Using the left arrow will show you the youngest villager first and the right arrow will show the oldest. The view will move around and show you the selected character circled in white. If you are paused, you will have to click on the little picture to see where the person is.
3. You can go into the Detail screen. Whichever person you are on when you click done will be the person selected.

Detail Screen

Details:
- Your Detail screen is usefully in several ways.
- The main screen only shows the name of your character, her current selected skill and action.
- The Detail screen shows you the age, health status, skills, likes and dislikes of your characters.

Skills:
- One goal of the game is to get your villagers to be masters at the skills, which means to fill the blue bars.
- There is a check box on the right that you can check so that your villager will prefer to do that task. It does not seem to make them improve at a skill any faster, but it will have them persist at that skill longer and more frequently.
- It is especially important to have these boxes checked appropriately when you are leaving the game as you want them to be productive while you are gone and not standing around too much.

Farming: Basically this is food collection. Be sure to have at least one person collecting food. If you get below 300 food, have more farming people checked as your villagers will start to worry about food. I check either this box or Research for my little ones too, so that when they turn 14 they "might" start working.
Building: Besides building structures, building skills will increase with dismantling totems, working on the statue, and doing repairs. Concentrate on getting one master builder at first and then work on getting a second one. All building will go better if you have Master Builders, plus absolutely need at least two later (see walkthrough). You might also want to consider using males to become Master Builders because you may find your female nursing a baby when you need it.
Research: To gain points you must do research in the lab. This is a skill that you need lots of your people to stick with. You need lots and lots of Tech points and this is the only way to get them. You also need at least one Master Scientist for some of the puzzles.
Healing: Increase your healing power by healing sick villagers and studying at the "hospital."
Parenting: Increase parent skills by trying to reproduce and having children. You can also tell stories and teach at the nursery school.
Devotion: Increase Devotion skills by trying to convert the blue masked heathens. Also one can honor at the statue.

Item Collection:
- You will need to collect mushrooms, relics, and lab items.
- Only children under the age of 14 can do this.
- They need to have a heathen free area between the object and the destination. As you play, you will discover just how far away a heathen needs to be before your tribe gets scared.
- These items disappear and often faster than you would expect. As soon as you find something to pick up, press the space bar to pause the game.
- Find your child by pressing the right arrow key on the detail menu at the bottom right of the screen.
- Move your child to the object and then check around the pick up area, the path to your destination (food hut for food, hand statue cubbies for relics, and laboratory cubbies for lab items), and the actual destination for red and orange masked heathens.
- You will not find collectibles in the dry lake or at the edge of the woods or up by the farm or pools.

Maximize your pickups (cheat/hint):
- A really handy hint to maximize your pickups is that you can actually drop 2 or 3 children on a single item. As long as you drop the next child as the first is picking up the item you will double or triple your input. This is especially useful in the beginning of the game to maximize food when mushrooms are your only food source and later when you are trying to build up your energy as each duplicate relic gives you 10 energy points.
- To do this trick, pause your game; drop a child on the item; pick up the next child and hover it right next to the first child; unpause the game; drop the second child right next to the first.
- You do not have to do this super quickly and you don't need to drop the child super close to the first child. Just wait for the first to squat down and as he does so, drop your next child.
- It turns out you can do this a second time for 3 pick ups by pausing the game as you drop the second child, picking up a third child, unpausing, and dropping the third child. Personally I played the first time through to almost the end before I figured out how to do this; so it really isn't that necessary if you can't quite handle it.

Heathens:
Blue masks: These are the ones you can convert. Send the person you have chosen to be the first devotee (to ramp up its skills quickly) to any blue mask that doesn't have a light flashing over its head. Eventually the Faith meter will go past the center and you will get one to convert to your tribe. Blue masks are completely harmless. However, there are times when they will get in your way; when that happens you can just keep trying to convert them and they will get annoyed and walk away.
Purple masks: These are harmless also. These are heathens who are attached to a puzzle of some sort. Once you solve their puzzle, they will join you.
Orange masks: These are the ones who will chase you. If you are carrying something or doing a task, you will drop what you are doing and run away. However, you can use the running away to your advantage because you can lead the orange masks away from an area. It's very easy to get them to move towards your camp by just dropping a child (or adult, but children run faster) on the orange mask and they will give chase for a short distance. However, there are plenty of times that you want the orange masks away from your camp or statue. In this case you have to be a lot more persistent with picking up and dropping the villager in the direction you wish to go. Don't let an orange mask keep you from going anywhere; just move them out of the way.
Red masks: These just scare the heck out of your villagers. The only way to get them to move is to scare them with a godly power, such as lightening. Also solving puzzles that involve the red masks, such as destroying a totem, will cause them to move on to somewhere else.

Stop the orange masked heathens (cheat/hint):
- Take a child or a nursing mother and drop it on an orange mask, especially the rascal that is always running around and getting in the way.
- When the orange mask starts to chase, pick up your child just a little bit, you will frequently find that the orange mask will stop moving.
- When it does stop moving, click on M to open the map and then close it.
- If you are lucky your villager will be stuck hovering over the orange mask and both will stop moving.
- If you are not lucky, your person will be stuck in the air and the orange mask will still be running around. Just keep doing it until you capture him.
- As long as you don't leave the game completely or change tribes, he will stay trapped.

Godly Powers:
Spawn Butterflies (10 energy): This is a great way to distract your children, including your orange mask rascals.
Swarms of Bees (25 energy): When your noni bush runs out of fruit, the bees will regenerate the fruit. The bees are also handy for chasing off heathens, although not the most effective.
Divine Sunshine (50 energy): Chases away the rain and fog, but not really necessary to use.
Lightning Strike (100 energy): Zap your heathens to get them to run away for a while; does not work in the pools.
Hand of Bloom (150 energy): Instant plant growth. Use to regenerate your crops or to instantly grow a patch of mushrooms.
Tempest (300 energy): Cause a storm; great to fill in your lake.
Fog of Doom (400 energy): You can use this fog to mask yourself and get close to the orange and red masked heathens. I used it at the end to get to the blue masks when they were hanging out at the encampment with the others (see Jenga trick below).
Time Warp (500 energy): Super accelerate one of your villagers. I transferred this power over to a newer tribe and was able to build a hut in about a minute. This would be great to have when destroying the Blocking Totem.
Revive (600 energy): Bring a villager back to life. This only works before they are buried in the mausoleum. You use it on the bones.
Grant Youth (700 energy): Make someone young. You can use this on your old folks that have lots of skills, make them young again, and then when they turn 14 you can polish off the missing skills to work on the Jack of all Trades trophy.
Earthquake (800 energy): Self-explanatory.

End of the game:
So when does the game end? Your choice, I guess, as I don't believe this game has a definitive end.
Here are a few choices:
- Solve all the puzzles. This seems a little early to me as there is still a lot of stuff left to do.
- Convert all the heathens. This is when I decided to quit as I just got tired of the game.
- Complete your collections.
- Receive all your trophies. This is next to impossible to get unless you are playing a second time because one of the Jenga trophy requires that you tear down a building with an earthquake. However, earthquakes don't come to the end and it's hard to hold off on building the clothing hut (at least it was for me!) Also you just have no guarantee that you will have triplets before you reach the 80 population limit for breeding. And then, do you really want to keep playing until you have 10 masters of all 6 skills? Not me, but you can certainly do it.
- Get bored and just stop.

Jenga trick: One way to use Jenga is after you get the Earthquake in one tribe, take it over to another. To do this just select the godly power you want to use and then click on the menu. Change tribes and you will see the godly power available for use. I also tried this with the Time Warp and was able to build a hut super fast! However no matter what power you pick, you will transfer over the highest power you have.

In the beginning: Your goal is to keep your tribe alive while building up your food stock. Certain activities need to be done first so that this will happen.

Choose your tribe:
- You are given the opportunity to choose 5 members of your tribe.
- You should choose 3-4 people around 17 to 19 so they will have a longer life and 1-2 children around 6-8.
- You only need 1 male as when it comes time to have children, he will be happy to help out. These guys are not monogamous!
- I have played the game both ways, using 1 or 2 children at the beginning. The 2 children are nice if you are going to use the double drop technique to pick up food and relics, but you won't get as much work done as quickly. Honestly, this game takes long enough to play that it really doesn't matter.
- Be sure to look at the character's likes and dislikes. They won't have any skills because they will be too young, but you want to make sure that they aren't lazy or scared of certain things. You can always just play it safe and pick a character with no likes or dislikes.
- It seems that you have an unlimited amount of characters to choose from.
- If you mess up, just select the rest of the tribe super quick and start over.

First tasks: Once you are dropped into your main goal is to maximize food production.
- Have your child pick up mushrooms whenever they pop up as these are your only food supplies. Use the double drop technique to maximize food and energy. (see Collections above)
- Have your child pick up relics as they appear also; the first time they are found, you will increase your total available energy and each additional time you will increase your current energy.
- Select one adult to convert the blue masked heathens; drop this person onto a blue mask who doesn't have a little light flashing above their head. If there is an orange mask around it, you can lure him away and then pop back onto the blue mask, or use a kid to lure the orange mask away. Sometimes, especially in the beginning, you will have to try multiple times before you get your light.
- Assign the rest of the adults to making food storage out of the bamboo fence; they will be hungry and quit at times, so keep putting them back.
- Get another villager by solving Puzzle 1--The Sick Heathen (see soluton below)

- Complete your food storage hut and you will have solved Puzzle 2--Prison Break.
- Find a more robust food source by solving Puzzle 3--The Hungry Totem. (below)

Noni Berries:
- Once you have access to noni berries, you can assign your workers to pick them and store up.
- Workers will "worry" about food if the food stock is below 300, so have all of your workers but 1 or 2 working on the noni bush.
- Noni bushes will need a fertilization boost every now and then by placing bees on them to pollinate and regenerate the fruit. If your farmers aren't picking fruit, click on the bush to see if there is any noni left.

Get access to the woodpile:
- Before building your hut or love shack, you need to get rid of the orange masks hanging out at the woodpile.
- Set one or two villagers to work on restoring the statue, just above the camp, by dropping them on it.
- There is no point trying to build anything else because you need that wood and your workers will get scared away.

Build a fire:
- Once you have free access to the wood pile you can build a fire.
- Drop one adult on the woodpile
- Drop another adult on the little patch of dry, brown grass just above the hospital. (see map)
- They will return with fire supplies to the fire ring in the camp.
- Drop an adult on the unlit fire and she will light it.
- Later on, you can start the fire with lightning to get a trophy; but don't do this until near the end as it isn't necessary and wastes energy points.
- Fire is supposed to keep your tribe healthier and happier, but I never saw a request to actually build the fire.

Build your housing:
- Select an adult to become your first Master Builder to build the Love Shack first. I chose the male so that it was easier to find him and you don't have to worry about him nursing a child.
- Just choose one person because you need to get a Master Builder as soon as you can.
- First build the Love Shack and then the first Hut.
- You need the first hut to go past 10 population.
- You need Level 2 Construction technology to get the second hut and Level 3 to get the third hut.
- You cannot go past 80 without converting heathens.
- Be sure to look around for building supples; sometimes they show up near the hill or across the stream.
- Note that you can move them to a better spot, as long as it flashes green. Unfortunately you don't have a lot of choices. You want to be close to the wood pile and away from the Heathen Camp. Try above the statue.
- Once you have a Master Builder, give him another preferred skill and select another person to prefer building so that you can acquire a second master builder.

Get Tech Points: - After getting your food stores above 300, you can work on gaining access to the lab to start getting tech points.
- You will need Lightning at 100 energy points before you can start solving Puzzle 4--The Knowing Totem.

- Your goal now is to build up tech points.
- Send as many people to the laboratory as you can spare from food collection and building.
- I left one farming and one building and sent the rest to the lab.

And then there were more! - Once the Love Shack is finished and before you leave for a long time, you will want to have a baby.
- If you run the game overnight your children may turn 14 and you won't have a child to pick up supplies, so don't leave for the night without a baby in hand. If you need to do so, stop your game over night.

Making babies:
- Grab a guy and girl and drop them over at the Love Shack. It is hard to get them to reproduce the first time and they might not want to do so. Just keep trying.
- Once you have a female go indoors, she will start accruing Parenting experience so once you have one do so, select Parenting as her skill, and then keep trying with that female.
- Use any males you have to try with her. If you stay away from your computer at this point for a while, you will find that when you come back you will have a child running around and another one nursing with the same female.
- This is very important to do so that you have at least one child running around at all times. However, at this point in the game you don't want more nursing mothers as you need their research abilities.

Keep racking up technology
- Send everyone you can spare to the lab as researchers.
- Now is a great time to take a nice long break as this will take a long time.
- First buy Science to increase your tech points, then buy Food Mastery to increase food supplies, then buy Construction.

Increase your food production: - Once you have a Master Scientist and Level 2 Construction, you can increase your food production by solving Puzzle 5.

Continuing On:
- Keep as many people as you can researching.
- Take a look at skills and select the most experienced builder who is not a master, and keep that person building huts.
- Have another female start parenting once you have the farm up and running (and keep 2 nursing for the time being).
- One person can usually collect from the farm because the crop yield is high. Check occasionally that the farmer is harvesting crops and not collecting noni.

- Keep racking up tech points, buy spirituality, learning, and medicine.
- Once you have Level 2 Spirituality, send 2 non-Master Builders to work on the second stage of the Statue.
- As you start to get more people, start breeding more children.
- All along don't forget to keep converting blue masks when their lights go off.

Work the puzzles This order is based on what becomes available the first. It does not have to be done in this order.

- At any point, once you have a Master Scientist and Level 2 Science, you can solve Puzzle 13--The Heathen Scientist
- At any point, you can solve Puzzle 11--The Pain Totem.
- Once you have built the clothing hut and have Level 2 Science, you can solve Puzzle 12--The Rainbow Totem
- Once you have 6 children, you can solve Puzzle 8--The Hollow Totem
- Once you have 2 Master Builders and 300 plus energy points, you can solve Puzzle 7--The Blocking Totem
- Once you have solved Puzzle 7--The Blocking Totem, you can start solving Puzzle 6--The Mauseolum
- Once you have solved Puzzle 6--The Mausoleum, you can start with Puzzle 15--The Blind Totem.
- As you get additional levels on Spirituality, you can repair the statue twice more to solve Puzzle 14--The Tribute Statue.
- After you get up to 600 energy points, you can solve Puzzle 10--The Lake.
- After you solve Puzzle 15--The Blind Totem and have the 4 necklace pieces, you can solve Puzzle 16--The Heathen Chief.

Finish the game:
- After solving the 16 puzzles, your goal is to get the trophies you wish to attain.
- Upon hitting a population of 80, you will stop breeding children.
- To convert all your heathens, you will have to have the Earthquake godly power.
- Use Earthquake over the heathens, it will take multiple attempts to get these to finally convert
- You don't need to wait for the lights over their heads to go off.
- You can still attain skills after everything is done; it is just harder. See the Skills section above.
- When you have converted the last heathen, their encampment will grow grass, flowers, and your tribe will repair their little hut.

- A child can cure the sick heathen; but you will have better luck, thus more quick results, using an adult.
- See if you have any that have any healing skills; drop the adult you choose onto the purple mask on the hospital mat (see map).
- After healing the heathen, he will convert.
- Do this early on to get an extra worker.
- Purple masks drop a blue piece of necklace when they convert. Send a child to pick it up and she will bring it back and drop it on the ground near the statue. Don't worry about orange masks as your necklace piece will just appear back at the first spot.

- Simply complete the food hut.

- Send your villagers when the food hut is finished over to the totem just to the right of the camp to start breaking it down.
- Use your Swarm of Bees godly power to get the red mask and orange masks to leave the noni bush and not bother you while you are destroying the totem.
- Use your children to pull the orange masks away from bothering you.

- You will need Lightning to remove the heathens guarding it.
- Zap the totem and then send your villagers over to the totem.
- You will need to keep putting some of them back onto the task at hand.
- Eventually the heathens will return and sometimes this happens before you finish destroying the totem.
- Just rebuild to 100 energy to get Lightning again and finish it off.

- Send a Master Scientist up to the aqueduct, just below the hot springs. He will "supervise" the repairs.
- Send as many people as you can spare up to repair the aqueduct.
- Be sure to change their skill preference to building so that they will stay on the job.
- You will need to check that they don't go back to building a hut.
- You also need to have a Master Scientist supervising at all times.
- Once the aqueduct is repaired, you will be able to grow crops. However, they grow very slowly. - As soon as you have the Hand of Bloom power, use it to instantly grow crops.
- Don't forget to pick up the necklace piece and give your new convert a job to do.

- Send lot of workers over to the Mausoleum. This will take a loooong time to do.
- Be sure to pull them off when you get Level 3 Construction and build the third hut.

- Send 2 master builders to start destroying the totem.
- The heathens blocking up the mausoleum will comes over to scare you off and start rebuilding it.
- Pull your builders away across the river and zap the heathens with lightning.
- The heathens will run off and you can put your builders back to work.
- At times, you will have blue masks and orange masks come to bother you.
- Set an adult on the blue masks; you will irritate them by trying to convert them and they will leave.
- Set children on the orange masks and they will start to follow the children away from where you are working.
- I found with 2 builders, I would get about 25% destruction before the red masks came back.
- Keep zapping the red masks with lightning when they come back; if you are lucky you will have enough to do it a fourth time
- When you have less than 100 energy, if you need beset the red masks with bees, but do it before they cross the river.
- You need to keep at the destruction because of the heathens will repair their totem when they get back to it.

- All you need to do is place 6 children at the entrance.
- When the sixth child goes in, the totem will collapse.
- At this point, the dry lake will be under your control. Eventually you will have the ability to fill the lake. See Puzzle 10--The Lake below.

- Once you have Time Warp AND the Heathen Builder is hanging around his building competition, use Time Warp on someone and then do the competition.
- The Heathen Builder will convert and drop a necklace piece.

- You need to have destroyed the Hollow Totem when you will have control of the lake.
- After a rain storm (natural or godly power-made) while there are still puddles, use Tempest and the lake will fill with water.
- Then use Revive on the lake and the dead fish will come back to life.
- You now have a new food source.

- Zap the totem with lightning and send your best builders over and others to make about 4 people.
- You will need to use the lightning twice if you use average people.
- This will allow you to more easily access the hospital and train healers.

- Once the clothing hut is built, 3 dye jars will appear just above the farm.
- Drop 1 adult on the yellow dye and another adult on the red dye. They will take the dye to the pools.
- Once the water turns orange, the heathens will leave and you can send about 4 people to destroy the totem.
- You will need 3 loads of dye to destroy the totem if you use average people.

- Just send the Master Scientist to the board (see photo below), you will write out a proof, and the Heathen Scientist will start to think.
- When the light goes off over his head (takes hours), you will do this twice more.
- After 3 times the heathen will convert and drop a necklace piece.

- At each level of Spirituality purchased with tech points, you will be able to work on repairing the statue until it is finished. Thus this is a 3-part endeavor.

- After you have repaired the Mausoleum you will see a pan to the left of the door.
- Drop an adult on the pan and she will take it back to the area where the pot is located near the camp (see map).
- Drop an adult onto the pan and he will pan for gold and fill up the pot.
- The pot will take 3 pans of gold. You can tell how much gold is in the pot by clicking on it.
- Once the pot is full, drop an adult onto it and she will take it to the fire (obviously the fire needs to be lit).
- After a few minutes, the pot will be replaced by a gold ball.
- Drop an adult on the gold ball and he will bring the gold ball to the Blind Totem.
- The Heathen Chief's hideout will be exposed.

- After you solve the Sick Heathen, Hydroponic Farm, Heathen Scientist, and Heathen Builder puzzles, the converted purple mask will drop a piece of the necklace.
- Have a child bring these four pieces to the statue.
- Drop an adult on the 4 necklace pieces and he will repair it.
- Once the Blind Totem is fixed you will have access to the Heathen Chief's hangout.
- Drop an adult on the necklace and she will bring it to the chief and he will convert.