Stonewards Beginner Guide: Your First Run, Step by Step

What a run actually looks like

Stonewards is one loop, repeated under a clock. You leave a base camp, answer a distress call from a dwarven kingdom, and defend that stronghold through waves of monsters. Between each wave the game opens the mines. The studio’s own framing, from the Steam store page, is three verbs: dig, forge, defend.

The part that catches new players is that these are not separate activities. Time spent in the mine is time your crew is defending one dwarf short, and the ore you fail to bring back is the wall repair you cannot afford next wave. If the kingdom falls, the mission ends.

Phase one: the defend phase

The monsters have one objective — breach the stronghold and kill the King. You hold the walls and the gates, fall back when the outer defenses break, and use what you crafted.

Two things worth knowing before your first horn:

Ranged siege exists on your side. The Ballista and the Trebuchet both appear in the patch notes as upgradeable defenses (Hotfix 0.1.5 fixed the second Ballista damage upgrade showing a wrong value; 0.1.3 fixed Trebuchet projectiles failing to explode on ground hits). They defend the throne while you are underground.
Enemies no longer stall forever. Hotfix 0.1.8 added a first anti-stall measure: if combat stays at very low intensity for too long, enemies may disengage from the player and go back to attacking the Wall or the King. You cannot kite a wave into oblivion any more.

Phase two: the dig phase

When the wave ends, the clock starts. You drop into procedurally generated mines to gather metals and rare materials, and haul them back before the next attack.

Do not treat this as a break. Hotfix 0.1.7 explicitly rebalanced gold earned from digging upward, in the studio’s words so that digging would “reward noticeably more Gold and feel fairer compared to combat” — mining is not the chore phase, it is the economy. Details in the mining and gold guide.

Two mine details you will not be told in game:

Chests and a Chest Opener NPC exist. Hotfix 0.1.7 fixed chests being duplicated when given to the Chest Opener, which confirms both the chest loot layer and the NPC who handles it.
There is a ”?” room. Hotfix 0.1.8 adjusted the ”? room indicator so it no longer disappears before players have enough time to reach the room” — meaning special rooms are flagged, and the flag now stays up long enough to act on.

Phase three: the forge

Back inside, you spend resources to craft arrows, repair defenses and take randomised upgrades. This is where the roguelite layer lives: rings, tomes and stat upgrades that only last the run. The rings and tomes guide covers what each one does and how the studio has been tuning them.

The Blacksmith is the persistent side of it. Hotfix 0.1.5 raised the Blacksmith’s maximum level from 101 to 999 — a nine-fold extension that tells you the studio expects long-term progression well beyond a first evening.

Five mistakes that end early runs

Playing the Warrior because it looks like the safe pick. Both starting dwarves are fine, but the Miner is built around the phase that funds everything else. See the class breakdown.
Mining until the horn. You need travel time back. A dwarf caught underground when the wave lands is a hole in the line, and your crew will say so.
Buying a ring before repairing the wall. Upgrades are per-run; a breached wall ends the run.
Not knowing where the campfire is. Reviving a teammate means carrying the body to it. Learn its position on wave one, not on wave six — how reviving works.
Ignoring the Character Screen. Since Hotfix 0.1.6 it shows the missions required to unlock each character. Six of the eight dwarves are locked, and most players never reach the last two — the unlock rates show exactly how far the average run gets.

If the game makes you feel sick

This is a real and acknowledged issue, not a niche complaint. Stonewards renders with a deliberate low-resolution filter, and several players reported motion sickness from it on the Steam forum. The studio’s answer shipped in Hotfix 0.1.4: “Added a new optional setting to reduce the game’s low-resolution effect, which may help players experiencing motion sickness.” Turn it down in settings before you decide the game is not for you.

Where to go next

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