Life on the cut

You have a boat, a towpath, and time. This guide covers everything the game will let you do, in the order you'll probably want to do it. None of it is urgent. Nothing rots, nothing punishes you, and the crew keeps things ticking over whenever you're gone.

First steps

You start with 50 coins, three empty flower beds' worth of dug ground, and a satchel with a few seed packets. Open the satchel from the dock at the bottom of the screen, pick a seed, then click a spot on your plot to plant it.

Plants grow on real time, whether the game is open or not. When something's ready it perks up visibly. Click it to harvest: vegetables become produce you can sell from the satchel, and flowers become potted plants you can place anywhere as decoration or sell if the towpath's already full.

What grows

Every crop pays out at about the same rate per minute a bed is busy. That's on purpose: grow what you like looking at, not what a spreadsheet tells you to.

More beds cost coins, and each one costs more than the last. Dig them when the crew keeps running out of work, not before.

The crew works while you don't

Sorrel, Dilly, Bracken and Perry live here. Click them for a chat whenever you like. More usefully: when a plant ripens and you're not around, one of them harvests it for you, sells the produce, buys a fresh seed packet, and replants the bed.

Three honest rules govern this arrangement:

• They take wages. 15% of anything they sell on your behalf. Fair's fair.
• They pay for seeds from your tin. If your coins run out, they down tools and the ripe crop simply stands in the bed waiting for you. Nothing is ever lost.
• They slow down when you're away a long time. Each unattended replant cycle takes a little longer than the last, up to four times the normal speed at worst. One visit from you resets everything to full pace.

When you return after a while away, the crew presents a welcome basket showing everything that happened: what they harvested, what they sold, and what they took in wages.

Your collectibles move in

If you've collected pocket collectibles at Polkadot events, sign in and open the collectibles tab in the satchel. Each one maps to something real in the village, and the mapping never changes: the same collectible always becomes the same thing.

• Seed bundles add packets to your satchel.
• Decorations are placeable things for your towpath, some of them rare.
• Boat liveries are paint schemes. Open settings to repaint your narrowboat any time you like.
• Villagers join the crew and raise its working speed. A rare villager works harder than a common one, but nobody plays worse for not having one.

Claiming happens once per collectible and it's yours in the world from then on.

Decorating

Decor is just decor. Bollards, reed clumps, flowering bushes, fences and friends cost coins in the satchel's things tab, and they exist to make your stretch look like yours. They never affect the economy, and they never will. If someone's towpath looks wonderful, it's because they made it wonderful, not because they paid to win anything.

Your plot has room to sprawl: the grid runs well down the bank, so a proper cottage garden is on the cards if you keep at it.

Sharing and visiting

From settings, share your village. This publishes it so friends can moor up alongside: they see your garden, your boat, your decorations, exactly as you left them. Visits are read only. Nobody can move so much as a gnome.

The villages panel lists neighbors who have shared recently. Tap one to visit. While you're in someone's village, the chat panel connects you with whoever else is standing in that same village right now, and the conversation stays there.

Helpful tips

Marigolds are the fastest way to turn a few coins into slightly more coins when you're actively playing.

Before a long time away, plant the slow stuff and leave a healthy coin balance so the crew can afford seeds. They stop working the moment they can't pay for the next packet.

The decay slowdown only applies while you're gone. Popping in for thirty seconds resets the crew to full speed.

Ripe crops never spoil. If you come back to a garden of standing marrows and an empty tin, that's the game holding your harvest safely, not a punishment.

Claim villagers before a trip. Crew speed applies to everything they do while you're away.

Repainting the boat is free once you own a livery, so change with the seasons.

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