We've tackled the tips around energy gain and management, which is one of the most important parts of the gameplay in Taonga, but now that's done, we can move on to other crucial new player tips that you might also find useful to know.

Spend Premium Gems on Crafting Queues

Taonga is very generous with its premium gems, allowing you to earn a sizeable of them through quests and such. However, you mustn’t spend your premium gems willy-nilly if you don’t fancy spending any real cash in the game… at least not yet. You should only spend Premium Gems to expand your crafting queues, specifically the Carpenter, Sun Dryer, and any other facilities you may need to craft a lot of stuff on, especially the ones with long crafting times.

Once you lost the services of the Merchant, you’ll also want to save up Premium Gems to rehire him from time to time. If you can really make full use of it a day’s service can really help you speed up many of the construction processes you may have in your farm.

Suleiman the Merchant

At a certain point in the game, Suleiman the Merchant will visit you on his colorful skiff and offer his services to you for free for a limited time. This is when you really want to take note! You should get him to help you find items that are hard to craft and you can do so by switching over to the Materials tab.

At the start of the game, you’ll need stuff like plates, buckets, and jugs that you may not be able to craft yet, and lots of planks and dry jute that would take ages to craft, provided that you have enough Jack Planes for the planks. I’d recommend you focus on getting him to find stuff that you can’t craft yet and if needed, some other stuff like the dry jute and planks. If there’s really nothing else, you can get him to find you some rare materials like Jack Planes and Grain Mix.

You’ll also want to make sure you’ve got the cash to pay him and always purchase the maximum number of items you can get, even if it’s more than what you need – trust me, you’ll need them all eventually.

The thing about Suleiman is that he can only provide his services every 2 hours, so you’ll want to make full use of this and check in every two hours. Once his service expires, you’ll have to pay him 300 Premium Gem to rehire him for a day, which isn’t much but I’d recommend you only rehire him when you have a lot of stuff you’d want him to find.

Fill Up Your Boat

Whenever you set off to some special island using your boat, make sure you return bringing as much stuff as you can. Fill it to the brim, literally! However, when deciding which items to bring, make sure to consider the resources you need to build your many pending structures. Say, your Potter needs 70 stones, then you’ll want to bring as many stones as you can. Note that, for some weird reason, 1 stone in your boat doesn’t translate into 1 stone back home. I’m not sure what’s the exact exchange rate is but I got 20 bamboo from a pack of 96 so you do the math.

Also, you’ll want to visit the Island of the Toru Kai Tangata Village at least once every day since there are repeatable daily quests there that you can do. You’ll get gifts containing rare materials in them in return, as well as the hazelnut you’ll need to make your pet chipmunk appear and follow you around in the game.

Use your Speed-Ups Sparingly

I’m sure most players would already know about this but Speed-Ups aren’t easily available and should be used sparingly. Although I would recommend using it early on to skip the hours of waiting time, especially for trees and cows, just so you can level up faster, I wouldn’t recommend using it to skip crop-growing times or anything below 1 hour. Even skipping an hour of waiting time seems like a waste since some trees can take up to 4 hours or more to bear fruit, but if it helps you to complete a quest (which will reward you with lots of energy and experience points) that much faster, then it might be worth it.

Read on and discover more tips in our Tips for New Players in Taonga - Part 3!