Westbound Guide – Time Management

Choosing to play Westbound without spending a single dollar makes developing your new western settlement a long and slow process. While you can check out my Resource Guide to learn how to procure the variety of goods necessary to complete quests and grow your town, a great deal of the process comes down to patience. That said, you can still fully enjoy Westbound by making the most of your time, and this guide can help.

I’ve developed a handy three-phase system that can help you properly divide your daily actions in Westbound. Below, you’ll find descriptions and ideal tasks to perform in the Active, Small Breaks, and Large Breaks phases of play.

Active

The Active phase takes place any time you are directly interacting with Westbound. Visiting friends’ towns, clearing out debris, collecting resources from your buildings, accepting and beginning quests: these are the tasks you should be focused on while you give Westbound your full attention.

On your commute, while you’re watching TV, or just any other time you aren’t busy, try to complete small, time-friendly tasks. Harvest your less demanding crops and trees, finish simple quests, and tidy your town up. This is the perfect time to quickly make some progress and earn some resources without getting bogged down waiting for hour-long projects to complete.

Small Breaks

In the Small Breaks phase, you want to focus on tasks that require just a few hours to complete. Since you can’t queue up actions for your settlers, leaving them to complete 10 minute projects when you know you won’t be able to play again for at least a couple of hours isn’t an optimal way to spend your time. This is the time to begin larger projects and complete quests.

While you’re in class, at the gym, or otherwise unavailable, this phase is perfect for harvesting your more rewarding trees, like the cherry or plum tree, and constructing quest-related buildings, such as houses and watchtowers. You can also spend this time opening chests and procuring iron, wood, and adobe from your production facilities. Try to keep all of your settlers active during this period.

Large Breaks

During the Large Breaks phase, you want to task your settlers with the most arduous of jobs. This is the best time to assign tasks that take anywhere from four to 12 hours, as you will be away from Westbound almost that entire time. Often the most rewarding phase, you can return to a town equipped with a variety of new buildings and resources without missing a beat.

This phase is perfect while you sleep or work. Try planting the most luxurious of crops as well as constructing large houses like the Mustache House. You can also use this long break to upgrade your production facilities, which is a great way to save yourself plenty of time in the future. Whatever you decide to do, make sure this time is spent on the longest projects. You might need to sleep, but you can keep your virtual settlers working all through the night!

Stay active in each of these three phases to create a bustling settlement in no time. To learn more about Westbound’s resources and how to collect them, check out my Resource Guide!