Strategy

There are many different ways of earning adequate fame to accomplish victory, but there are three main considerations in the strategy of every game: Aggression Level, Time Use, and Political Standing. The player must choose components from all 3 and manipulate these to their advantage.

Aggression

Hunter

The Hunter player embraces combat, fighting whatever enemies they can to reap rewards of the kill. Killing animals yields valuable items for both trading and donation in London. The player can carry countless weightless animal teeth for trading, and even barter with a beast master for the choice of a combat companion animal.

Tips

• A seasoned hunter will study combat mechanics to ensure that their explorer, weapon, and companions have complementing dice to maximize defense and potential attacks.
• Stock up on consumable weapons like bullets, and take advantage of any rare chance to buy a signature gun.

• Strong companions are priceless in combat, and a hunter will take care to promote their party members and maintain their health and loyalty.

Challenges

Each destroyed animal enemy group triggers a loss of 1 Standing. This may require gifting some items at villages to prevent affects of low standing. Combat can also be dangerous - if the player's group is defeated, the game ends there!

Pacifist

A Pacifist avoids combat at all costs. Without weapons or ammunition, a pacifist player will have more capacity for treasure and navigating tools. They will obtain more carry capacity by choosing pack animals over combat-oriented companions. They will take advantage of peaceful perks to save on costs and build up fame (with an artist, translator, trader, or missionary).

Tips

• Avoid enemy territory by checking nearby animal's aggro chances and never trekking straight into a beast. You can stop mid-walk if you see that an animal is approaching your party's marked route. This allows for some careful redirection to avoid being noticed by wildlife.
• Take care when exploring nests and graveyards, as these spawn a nearby enemy when looted.
• Stay stocked with items that help in avoiding combat. Fireworks will distract nearby enemies as long as they are not already aggroed. If an animal is aggroed, you can use a horn flute to put it to sleep for a number of days.
• It is possible to successfully run from an aggroed beast, if you don't allow your paths to cross. You can still safely stay in villages and rest locations with an aggroed animal following you. Check an animal to see how long it has until it loses its aggro.

Challenges

If all else fails and you are forced into combat, you must flee. This can potentially cost you treasure, health, sanity and even companions... but is still better than being slaughtered.

Time

Completionist

A Completionist takes the time to explore as much of the map as possible. Instead of racing to the golden pyramid, the explorer focuses on discovering more locations for exploration points and gathering exponentially more loot than competitors.

Tips

• Though finishing the map last will yield no place bonus, the player can more than make up for the loss with fame gained from trophies/treasures, especially since there's no time limit on expeditions.
• There are always far more treasures on any given map than there's carrying capacity for. Choose multiple pack animals to grant more capacity slots, and keep an animal handler to benefit all your animal's carrying room. Upgrade animals in London whenever possible to gain even more space.
• There are useful detours you can make to stash treasure. Missions and polar stations each have 3 stash slots, in which they will store items for free and automatically ship them to London for you. You can also revisit your ship, where you can drop off loot in its large cargo hold and rest aboard for free before continuing to explore.

Challenges

Looting shrines triggers often-debilitating disasters, as they typically have permanent and expanding reach on the map. They can sometimes even destroy locations, including your own ship. The player may be forced to abandon the expedition early to avoid losing stored treasures. When curses make terrain impassable, the player may even be forced use their hot air balloon to escape with what little they can when a curse corners the group.

The inevitable loss of standing by raiding all possible shrines makes villages a threat - the player will be followed, triggering natives to take action against you. If standing is -10, the player will no longer be able to utilize villages, and angry natives will continuously spawn. Giving away items to villagers in exchange for standing early in the expedition can help avoid this problem.

Speed Runner

The Speed Runner route prioritizes finding the golden pyramid first. This means the player will forgo exploring unnecessary locations in order to guarantee maximum place bonuses at the completion of each expedition.

Tips

• The Tim Timster companion is useful for this strategy, as he provides a percentage fame bonus at the end of every expedition based on your racing place. At maximum upgrade, you'll receive a hearty 20% extra fame.

• Choosing sanity-restoring items over resting whenever possible allows the player to travel much faster.

• If you find the pyramid early, remember that there's no extra placing bonus for how many days you beat competitors by. Consider exploring the area around the pyramid for a few days to get some extra loot before ending the expedition. Check how many days your competitors have left in their expedition by mousing over their faces on the progress bar. This can help you estimate just how much you can explore and still successfully end in first place.

Challenges

While your placing bonuses will be very helpful, it won't get you enough fame to beat the game. Keep in mind that you should still find treasure wherever possible so you don't finish an expedition empty-handed. Remember that the last three expeditions will require Moon Stones if the pyramid is unburied, so you'll still have to explore some shrines or tombs to find them and unlock your pyramid.

Political

Diplomat

The Diplomat carefully considers their actions based on the effects of Standing and Loyalty. By keeping in high standing with natives, the player can enjoy the luxury of staying in villages and is often offered a small gift (~3 consumable items) upon entering a village. A player with 2+ standing can also recruit or exchange 1 new companion at every village.

Tips

• Only loot tombs and dig for buried treasure to avoid the danger and obstacles that result from shrine curses.
• Ensure your companions retain high Loyalty by never resting overnight when below 30 Sanity. Doing this increases the likelihood of positive/peaceful events. A high-loyalty companion will also periodically present a small gift to the player.

Challenges

Diplomatic players must avoid disturbing shrines, statues, stockpiles, wildlife and idols to help retain good standing. This can make traversing a map more tedious and frustrating, as many locations must be bypassed. Finding enough treasure to stay ahead of competitors can be slow-going this way, and can sometimes even mean sacrificing place bonuses in the race.

In this strategy, you must avoid recruiting party members with ailments, and treat those who develop an ailment quickly. Disloyal, unhappy or even paranoid companions can trigger negative-standing events.

When staying overnight in a village with a standing of 7+, an event may occur in which a companion falls in love with the natives and asks to stay with them. If the player complies, the companion leaves the troupe permanently.

Outlaw

The Outlaw pays no mind to their standing, and instead loots based on convenience. An outlaw can traverse a map quickly and without remorse, easily filling their inventory with spoils to take back to London. An outlaw recognizes that high risk yields high reward, and conquering more enemies gives more spoils.

Tips

• Some quests can be exploited to obtain special items, which you can refuse to return to the quest-giver and instead use for yourself.

• Killing angry villagers allows the player to raid most of a village's inventory as reward. An outlaw often hunts vulnerable wildlife, which can earn the player dozens of teeth and many animal trophies to trade.

• An outlaw may go through companions quickly, exploiting their perks and ignoring there ailments. They stay ahead of issues of loyalty by exchanging unhappy companions for healthier recruits, or even dismissing companions when their negative effects outweigh their usefulness.

Challenges

Looting shrines always causes a curse, which often make much of the nearby terrain treacherous or even impossible to pass. Several curses even destroy surrounding locations, including the ship. It's not uncommon for a curse to even make it impossible to reach the golden pyramid. Carelessness can quickly kill the outlaw player.

An outlaw with very low standing can trigger the wrath of all nearby villagers, who then become enemies and chase the player. It's not uncommon to come across 3 or more parties of angry villagers on a map when this occurs, sometimes forcing the player into high-risk combat.

Losing or discarding companions means loss of their promotions. An outlaw may be forced to work with weaker, lower-level companions or none at all without caring for their health and loyalty.