Hopefully you’ve been keeping up with our Game of the Month coverage for My Time at Portia. This delightful sandbox crafting/life sim hit Steam Early Access late last month and has been winning fans ever since. In fact, interest in the game has grown so quickly that the game’s unfinished story hasn’t been able to keep up.
After a fair amount of gameplay, characters receive an in-game letter explaining that they have reached the current end of the storyline. This has left some players in a bit of a lurch for things to do until the next content update. Fortunately, we’ve assembled a list of personal projects and activities to keep players engaged (and busy) until the story continues.
Hoarders: My Time at Portia Edition
This first one should be a given. Harvesting resources in Portia is time and stamina intensive. Crafting commissions that progress the story often require materials that are either difficult to obtain or time consuming to produce. Now’s your chance to get a jump on both.
Buy (or craft) yourself a whole mess of metal storage boxes and then proceed to fill each and every one of them. Your best bet is to make the Hazardous Ruins a regular haunt and stockpile all the components you aren’t able to craft on your own. Get so much tempering liquid that you could rebuild the town in adobe bricks without batting an eye.
Harassing Higgins
Even after wresting the coveted top workshop title away from him, Higgins is still an intolerable jerk. Since you’ve got some extra time on your hands, why not make his life a living hell?
You’ll need to keep up with your daily Commerce Guild commissions during the story hiatus. Can’t have the other workshops moving in on your business. Since you’re at the guild hall bright and early each day anyway, make sure you challenge Higgins to spar first thing each morning.
After a solid thrashing his morale will already be pretty low. After you both grab your commissions, follow him back to his workshop and steal ingots from his furnace. If you’re caught he’ll try to fight you and you can smash him all over again. Hopefully, the story update lets him take out a restraining order.
Exploring the Peripheries
If you’ve been too busy crushing the competition and building relationships up until now, it’s high time you did some exploring. There are treasure chests “hidden” all over the city. All of which you can readily access at any time. You’ve just got to figure out where to jump.
The area surrounding the Hazardous Ruins is also a great place to climb and explore. Not only will you stumble upon more chests and resources, but the landscape gives some interesting clues about the old world.
With the completion of the bridge to Sandrock you’ll have access to a whole new area to traverse. The developers are slowly adding new content all the time so it’s worth checking in on each area to see if anything has changed, even after you think you’ve seen it all.
Mastering the Mines
Regardless of where the story goes from here it’s safe to assume you’re still going to need a ton of ore. Since you’ll be spending so much time in the Abandoned Ruins anyway, you might as well have some fun with it.
Buy a weekly pass for either and get your money’s worth. If you haven’t stumbled upon the secret room hidden under the elevator platform yet, now you know where to look. This is also a great time to stock up on data discs so you can unlock any new blueprints as soon as the research center gets them.
Portia Meet & Greet
The first year in Portia is a whirlwind of activity. Not only are you trying to build up your workshop into a world class establishment, but everyone is constantly asking for your help. It can be a little overwhelming for a new builder. So much so that you could easily be forgiven if you’ve largely been ignoring the people of Portia up until this point.
Now that you’re finally settled in though, you have no more excuses. Building relationships takes a considerable amount of time so don’t worry if most townsfolk still consider you a stranger even after you’ve been saving their city for the past year. Bunch of ingrates.
Before investing too much time in your new social life it’s a good idea to check the social tab and see what each potential friend brings to the table. Most shop keepers will offer you discounts once you’ve become buddies. Befriending the Civil Corps members pays off in combat perks. You’ll be spending a ridiculous amount of time bribing these folks to like you so make sure it’ll be worth it.
Earlier this month developer Pathea Games put out a call for freelance writers to pitch in and help create more NPC dialogue and side quests. Some new side quests were even introduced in the last Winter Festival Part 1 update. Combined with frequent hotfixes, patches, and planned updates, there is still plenty to keep players invested in My Time at Portia beyond the early access storyline.
My Time at Portia is our February 2018 Game of the Month. Be sure to check out the rest of our My Time at Portia coverage.
