Trimps: From your first trap to your first fight
Switch to Build after buying a Trap, then use Check Traps when it finishes. Hire one Farmer, leave two Trimps available to breed, and research Battle. In our run, we waited for four residents before sending one to fight. That left the Farmer working and two Trimps breeding.
1. Collect food and wood, then complete the trap
Open the developer's browser version. Our fresh 5.10.1 run started with a food counter. We selected Gather and saw food rise at 1/s. After Chop appeared, we switched to wood and saw the manual food rate fall to zero. The Trap tooltip listed 10 food and 10 wood.
Buy one Trap. In our run the purchase took food from 22 to 12 and placed the trap in the queue. Wood was still coming in while we checked it. The queue still showed five seconds remaining after several seconds of chopping. Selecting Build started the countdown, stopped our manual wood income, and produced one completed trap.
Choose Check Traps (1). The trap was consumed and the population panel appeared with 1 / 10 residents and 0 / 5 employed. This is the point at which we could hire a Farmer. A beginner's question about the sparse opening supplied the starting problem.
2. Keep two residents free to breed
With quantity set to one, hire a Farmer. Our food dropped from 12 to 7 and the display showed +0.50 food/s with manual gathering off. The job panel now had four workspaces free. The number of workspaces refers to the job limit. Check the residents currently in town before deciding how many to hire. The developer explains the workspace limit in the Kongregate FAQ.
Repeat the build-and-check cycle for two more traps. At 2 / 10 with one Farmer, the panel showed no breeding rate. At 3 / 10 with that same Farmer, we saw 2 breeding and a positive rate. If food is short, use Gather until the Trap is affordable, then switch back to Build. The Farmer kept contributing food while we performed other manual tasks.
There is a real tradeoff when another job opens. Later, at four town residents, we hired one Lumberjack while Research was selected. Wood rose from 0 to +0.50/s and the count of breeding residents fell from 3 to 2. The food rate stayed +0.50/s. Use these readouts together when you decide whether the next job is worth the smaller breeding pool. An older player thread about hires failing despite available food illustrates why the resource balance alone can be misleading.
3. Research Battle, then check the town after sending one fighter
At three residents, Research and the Science panel appeared. We selected Research and saw +1 science/s. When the Battle upgrade became affordable, we selected it and the Fight control appeared. We let breeding bring the town population to four before clicking Fight once.
Our immediate readings changed from 4 to 3 town residents and from 3 to 2 breeding. Employment stayed at 1 / 5. The combat log recorded a Snimp defeat. While we continued observing with no additional trap or hire, town population returned to four. This route keeps the early Farmer contributing while the town replenishes. The run did not measure how long another device will take.
If the opening stalls
- A Trap is paid for but still queued. Switch your manual action to Build and check for a finished trap before trying Check Traps.
- The job panel has space but a hire will not go through. Check the selected quantity, displayed food cost and available residents. Return to +1 while diagnosing a bulk purchase.
- No breeding appears. Check the number of unemployed residents in town. With one Farmer our second catch left only one spare resident. The third catch supplied the second.
- Fight is missing or waiting for a resident. Check the Battle upgrade and the town count. The in-game advisor suggests another catch, or waiting when at least two unemployed Trimps can breed.
Test scope and related routes
We used normal controls on a fresh local browser save, recorded actual game screens and stopped after the first battle and the Lumberjack comparison. We selected Save. Our run covered the starting ten-resident cap. Housing purchases, a reload, later upgrades, offline production and phone gameplay remain untested. Resource rates are displayed checkpoints.
For a different early workforce economy, see the Kittens Game worker and research route. For choices by session style, return to the best incremental games guide.