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This wiki describes Bressnath 0.187.0, the build of 25 September 2026; the store page still says Coming soon. The version is printed in the bottom-right corner of the title menu.

Bressnath is a settlement-builder set on the drowned Vreldsath fens. You refound a holding around its Holdfast, your villagers choose their own work, and what crawls out of the Sundered Places comes at your walls on a fixed clock. You win by finishing The Causeway. You lose when the Holdfast falls or the last villager dies.

GameplayBuilding, the day and the waves, orders, soldiers and every control. SettingsEvery row of the Options screen.

From launch into a run

1. The title menu offers New Game, Codex, Achievements, Options and Quit. Move with ↑↓ or Tab, choose with Enter, or click.
2. New Game opens New Holding. The seed field already holds a random number; type your own or press Roll a seed. The same seed always makes the same fen. There is no difficulty to choose.
3. Begin. The fen is generated around your Holdfast, with twelve villagers and empty stores. The clock starts at once.

The first minutes

1. Nobody takes orders about work. Villagers pick their own: an unfinished building first, then a badly damaged one, then whatever the holding is shortest of. You decide what stands where.
2. Build where the work is. A Lumber Camp sends its crew to the nearest woodland and back, so one among the trees pays in trips. Press B to step through what can be raised, or click a slot in the palette, then click the fen. At most three foundations can be open at once.
3. Houses make people. The holding grows by one villager every 420 ticks while there is free housing and at least 20 food in store. Hovels are the first homes.
4. The first wave comes at tick 1,200 (3:20 on the clock), at the first nightfall, and another every 640 ticks after it. A Watchtower or soldiers from a Barracks hold the line.
5. Unlocks follow what you do. Buildings open as you build, harvest, grow and explore; the palette shows the next step for a locked one and now buildable announces each new one. Every condition is written out in the in-game Codex and in Buildings here.

How a run ends

Finishing The Causeway wins at once: the run stops on that tick and the only button left is Back to menu. It needs a Fen Mine, 1,200 stone and 60 tools harvested and 25 villagers before it can be placed, then 400 wood, 800 stone, 120 iron, 60 tools and 36,000 work.

The run is lost when no Holdfast, Great Hall or Emberhall stands, or when no villager is left alive. There is no saving and loading of a run, and nothing carries over to the next one except the achievements you earned.