Despite being one of the coziest games to come out in 2024, Amber Isle does have a lot of areas where being a little more efficient, a little more cutthroat, and a little more 'gamer' can pay dividends. It is a shopkeeper simulator at heart, and capitalism can easily dig its claws into a game like this, encouraging some competitive behaviours.
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PostsWe've come up with a great list of early-game tips that will help you avoid mistakes we made, maximise your profits, and keep your enjoyment charts ever on the upward trend. From gaming the friendship system to becoming the best shopping destination for the Isle's Paleofolk, we've got tips for it all.
Upgrade Cheap Recipes
In Amber Isle, you will get better at crafting items as you craft them. A recipe's level can be viewed when on the crafting menu, and also the progress to the next level - the bar at the top of the item's picture will fill up with every craft.
Certain recipes are very, very cheap to make and, thus, can be easily levelled up. With higher levels come higher prices, meaning you can make quite a lot more money early on with just a little bit of grinding.
Great recipes for this method include:
Recipe
Category
Recipe
Woven Basket
Carpentry
Basic Wood x1
Seven-Seas Stencil
Artisan
Basic Stone x5
Three-Toed Tidy
Scribe
Basic Wood x1
Seed Sower
Gardener
Dirt x2
Samba Shakers
Musician
Basic Wood x4
Cookie Cutters
Chef
Basic Stone x2
Scratchy Stone
Stylist
Basic Stone x2
This list gives you a very cheap item of every profession to craft for incredibly cheap prices, which can be used to target most requests that you'll face during a store shift.
Focus On The Main Story Quests...
While you begin the game with quite an involved tutorial, the game quickly lets you get on with your own thing, opening up new areas and activities gradually. It is important, however, not to get distracted by these shiny new activities and to progress the story until you have unlocked some very key gameplay features.
Namely, we recommend focusing only on story quests and not going off-course until you have unlocked the first new area of the game, Woodbury Forest, and built your first home, which will be for Nellie. This will begin your quest to unlock new areas on the island, and you will be sent invitations to every Paleofolk you meet.
...Then Focus On Tool Upgrades
Once you've begun the game's true gameplay cycle in earnest, you'll quickly learn that each Paleofolk has their own list of quests to unlock and complete, for a wide range of rewards.
Probably the most important rewards to acquire are those that upgrade your four resource-gathering tools. Doing this will allow you to clear the way to new areas, collect vastly more resources than before, and thus level up your crafting and selling business considerably.
Don't Waste Inspiration
This tip is far more important in the early hours of the game when Inspiration is slow to acquire and prices seem very high. It's a good idea to only purchase crafting recipes for items that are explicitly required for quests you have or for items that are very easy to craft and can be made very profitable.
The reason for this is that new areas require very hefty sums of Inspiration to unlock. 'Wasting' it on crafting recipes (which are rarely crucial) means you'll be roadblocked for much longer when you could be playing with a larger island with more resources and more characters.
Always Accept Custom Orders
During a sales shift at your shop, you will very often be confronted by customers who wish to make a special order for you. These are very handy to take on for a few reasons: they're easy money, they're only ever made for items that you've unlocked, and completing an order gets you a nice and easy bonus to your friendship with the person who ordered it.
A key thing to note is that there is absolutely no downside to failing to fulfil an order. While you may think your friendship might take a hit or your sales might suffer, this is not the case. There is no reputation system in the game, and the only negative consequence is a snarky or sad comment from the Paleofolk in question.
This is the case whether you fail an order either by not making the item in time or by forgetting to open your shop on the order day.
How To Fast-Travel
In the early hours of the game, you're given a rather small area of the island to work with, meaning that travel isn't such a hassle. However, as you start unlocking new regions, you'll find running from place to place to be a huge pain. Fast-travel can help immensely in these cases.
To fast-travel, open your map and long-press the confirm button on one of the red pushpin icons on it. These are the fast-travel points, though they are not well-indicated by the game.
A late-game Paleofolk, Axel, who resides in Spearfield Swamp, will unlock new fast-travel points via his quests. These are denoted by orange pushpins rather than the usual red.
How To Build Friendship Incredibly Quickly
Building a friendship with the Paleofolk you invite to your island is very important. You get some fantastic rewards for doing so, ranging from powerful shop perks to unlocking crucial quests.
Getting close to a Paleofolk doesn't require a whole lot of effort - it will build quickly and passively just by serving them at the shop successfully with good deals and by talking to them when you're out and about. Giving them gifts can also help, especially if you know their likes and dislikes.
However, and incredibly helpful trick is to start a Hangout with the Paleofolk. They will follow you and gain a very large amount of friendship from any resource gathering or crafting you do while out in the various regions of Amber Isle. It takes only a few minutes to raise a Paleofolk's friendship from empty at level zero to full at level five when using this method.
If a character suddenly disappears while you're using this trick, this usually means they've been relocated to a quest starting location, so don't worry!
How To Unlock New Quests
With a frankly massive number of Paleofolk to invite to Amber Isle, with most of them having multiple quests to unlock, pursue, and complete, keeping track of them can be tricky. However, there is a very easy way to see exactly what a quest's unlock requirements are.
Head to the Paleofolk tab of your menu, and click on the Paleofolk whose quests you want to decipher.
If a box in the Quests section of a character's page is filled with a padlock, this means you can hover over it with your cursor to see exactly what you'll need to do to unlock the relevant quest. This will list any prerequisite quests to complete, Paleofolk to invite, times of day to hit, and whether or not you need to improve your friendship with the relevant character.
Specialist Vs. Generalist
The vast number of items you can create in Amber Isle is broken down into a number of profession categories, from Carpenter to Chef. It can be tempting, then, to try specialising in a specific category to maximise your earnings through unlockable passive bonuses to items from a particular category, or simply to roleplay as a specific type of shopkeeper.
Unfortunately, the game does not really reward that type of playstyle, and for the following reasons:
- Paleofolk come with rigid likes and dislikes: sticking to one or two categories will make it harder to get high prices out of all of your friends.
- Many quests require that you craft certain items. Being a generalist means you'll be closer to unlocking required items when they become required, rather than needing a vast and annoying investment of Inspiration very suddenly.
- Stocking your shop with a wide range of items will allow you to figure out Paleofolk preferences much easier.
- Crafting items of a wide range will allow you to hit more goals and obtain more Inspiration quickly.
As a side-tip to this, it's a very good idea to unlock a Small item and a Large item very early. These items can be requested by Paleofolk during a shop day even if you haven't unlocked them, so they're important to keep in stock, even in your Storage Box. A great early-game Small item is the Petite Planter (Gardener), and the Bronto Bin (Carpenter) is a good Large item to grab.
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