dotAGE — surviving the midgame

dotAGE is a turn-based village builder wrapped around a fixed clock and four hostile Domains. The opening is well covered by the wiki's Beginner's Guide; the run usually ends somewhere in the middle, when the Dooms stop being survivable with one Peace Tent and a stockpile of berries. This guide is about that stretch: the protection arithmetic, the professional-labour bottleneck, the ailments that quietly add Power to the very Domain you are trying to beat, and the traps that eat a village between roughly day 100 and day 280. Written for v1.10.5d (15 September 2026).

The clock you are actually racing

The run is two years of four seasons, then an Apocalypse season. Season lengths change between years, which is why year 2 feels wrong if you plan it like year 1.

That is 135 days in year 1 and 145 in year 2 — 280 days of prophecy — before a 30-day Apocalypse. The wiki's Seasons page states 311 days or turns in total on Normal until the end of the Apocalypse.

Two consequences worth acting on:

• The year-2 winter is the long one (30 days, against 20 in year 1) and it lands immediately before

the Apocalypse. It is also the season where almost everything is Off-Season: the wiki's Winter list contains only the Onion Field, Medicinal Herb Field, Ice Maker and Olive Grove. Build your winter food buffer in year-1 Autumn, not in year-2 Winter.

• Crops and fruits replenish at the start of each season (in-game hint). Harvest timing matters more

than raw field count.

Protection is the only midgame currency

Every Domain accumulates Power; each has exactly one counter-currency. Producing the wrong one is dead weight, and producing the right one only matters in the quantities below.

Threat Level is set by Omens, by events, and — for the temperature Domains — by the season. The wiki's own definitions: Threat Level "determines the amount of Power generated during an Unknown Event or a Doom Event", and Power is the amount of Sickness, Fear, Cataclysm, Cold or Heat the Domain produces when that event fires. In-game hint: "All Omens rise the Threat of Domains."

Seasonal threat for the temperature Domains is published on the Domains page:

• Spring: 0 + Year (Year = 0 for the first four seasons, 1 for the next four).
• Summer: 1 + Year.
• Heat and Cold reset when the season switches to Spring or Autumn.
• One exception: if the Heat Domain's threat level is equal to 1 at the end of the first Spring, its

total threat level is capped at 1.

• Switching to Summer (both years) or to Spring (year 1) always triggers an Unknown Event immediately.
• During the Apocalypse, the temperature Domain's seasonal threat is set to 0.

The pass thresholds, per difficulty

These are the wiki's tables, reproduced as published. "Pass Event" and "Pass Doom" are the totals you need "if no other threat is generated before or during" the event.

Normal (100%)

Hard (150%)

Harder (200%)

The Normal column is internally consistent in a way worth knowing, because it tells you how much runway a protection building actually buys. For threat levels 1 through 6, the pass figure is exactly 1.5 × the Power the Domain banks in 6 days (an Event) or 8 days (a Doom):

• threat 3: 7/day × 6 days = 42 Power, pass at 63 (1.5 × 42).
• threat 6: 30/day × 6 days = 180 Power, pass at 270.
• threat 6 Doom: 30/day × 8 days = 240 Power, pass at 360.

The level-7 row does not fit that pattern — it lists 450 where the pattern gives 405, and 600 where it gives 540 — and the pattern does not carry to the Hard or Harder columns at all (Harder threat 1 asks 13, not the 18 the pattern would suggest). Treat the tables above as the numbers, and the pattern as a Normal-column rule of thumb.

There is also an Agepedia hint that reads: "The needed Protection above the Danger is three times the current Threat production." It measures a different quantity from the pass thresholds above and the wiki does not expand it, so take it as a nudge to build a margin rather than as a formula.

What protection buildings actually cost

The wiki lists the producers per counter-currency. Hope: Brothel, Festival, Garden, Park, Performer's Stall, Pub, Theater, Meeting Point, Wrestling Arena, Wrestling Ring, Burial Site, Shared Table, Relax Bench, Grave, Peace Tent, Animal Theater, Solace Buffet, Tissue Box, University of Psyche. Health: Doc House, Healer's Hut, Hospital, Remedy Rug, Healer's Cottage, Homeopath's Booth, Refreshments, Mender's Hut, Solace Buffet, Mender's Cottage, University of Life. Nature: Garden, Park, Altar, Greater Altar, Large Altar, Forest Shrine, Forest Temple, Refreshments, Water Shrine, Water Temple, Mountain Shrine, Mountain Temple, University of Physics. Cold: Pool, Puddle, Pond, Ice House, Cellar, Insulated Cellar, Public Baths, Oil Extractor, Fan, Large Fan, Huge Fan. Heat: Bonfire, Large Bonfire, Furnace, Hearth, Smeltery, Campfire, Large Campfire, Hot Pool, Cloakmaker, Cloakcraft Workshop, Public Baths, Lantern, Large Lantern, Scrub Fire, Scrub Pyre.

Only a few of those have published numbers, and one of them is the workhorse:

Peace Tent — costs 6 Wood + 4 Stone, takes 4 days to build, is worked by a Handyman, and must be built on Mountain. It converts 3 Hemp into 4 Hope per day, and separately converts 4 Hemp into 1 Leather. It also attracts Drunk events.

Run that against the thresholds and the midgame planning falls out:

A single Peace Tent is not a plan: at threat 6 a Doom wants 90 tent-days of Hope, which is four tents running for most of a season, plus the Hemp. And the Hemp is its own problem — a Forager produces 2 Hemp a day, while one Peace Tent eats 3, so one Forager does not feed one Peace Tent. The Hemp Processor is what closes the gap: a Farmer turns 1 Fruit into 2–7 Hemp (2 + up to 4 for each adjacent fruit maker, +2 more if a Dwelling is adjacent). Note also that Heat is a two-edged currency — the wiki's Heat page says it "makes Heat events harder to prevent, but protects against Cold" — so Furnaces and Smelteries (which produce 2 and 4 Heat per batch) are not free protection.

VIPs are the other cheap source. Bard 6 Hope/day, Hero 10 Hope/day, Jester 4, Sheriff 4, Idiot 3, Orange Cat 4 (and it needs no housing), Good Boy 4 Health/day, Wild Pip 4 Nature/day. The same event pool also hands out liabilities: Stranger 2 Fear/day, Serial Killer 2 Fear/day, Monster 4 Fear/day, Wandering Trader 1 Cataclysm/day, Grand Master 8 Fear/day.

Tools and days are the real labour bottleneck

Specialists are what turn mid-game production on, and every one of them costs days plus tools. Job training takes at least one turn and may cost tools; untraining is free from the Pips recap menu.

What they unlock, from each profession's page: Toolmaker → Workbench, Workshop, Stone Workbench, Stone Workshop. Thinker → Scriptorium, Retreat, Large Study, Shared Study. Watcher → Large Bonfire, Pool, Stone Well, Pond, Ice Cutting, Large Lantern, Relaxing Stand, Papyrus Cutter. Healer → Healer's Hut, Physician Table, Pharmacist's Stand, Bandage Desk, Mender's Hut, Fruit Infuser. Knifemaster → Papermaker, Tannery, Leatherworks, Performer's Stall, Festival. Gardener → Garden (Nature). Gravedigger → Burial Site (Hope). Miner → Iron Mine, Copper Mine, Quarry, Furnace, Metal Brickmaker. Smith → Smeltery, Toolsmith, Iron Toolsmith. Scholar → Library, School, University of Life / Psyche / Physics.

Three things follow:

1. Toolmaker, Thinker, Watcher and Healer cost one day and no resources — they are the cheapest

labour you will ever buy, and Toolmaker is upstream of everyone else.

1. Doctor is the most expensive hire in the game that isn't a Scholar: 3 Medicine on top of 3 days.

Price it before you promote a Bourgeoise.

1. Bourgeoise pips only work in blue-background specialised buildings and will not do Handyman work.

The wiki's Beginner's Guide mid-game note is blunt about the fix: "You can always remove classes so don't be afraid to make a lot of knowledge generators or resource collectors."

When every professional is busy, hold Ctrl while selecting a building to yank one off its current task (in-game hint), and Ctrl/hold-click an action to force it.

Research is a materials problem, not a time problem

Research cost per tier, by difficulty:

Books are the mid-game research bottleneck, and the chain is short enough to price exactly:

So one Book is 18 Wood of Paper (6 Paper × 3 Wood) before you count the Papermaker and Book Maker buildings — and a Scholar costs a Book each time. Note that both the Book Maker and the Brickmaker Lodge want to sit on Cobblestone and require a Cobblestone Path to a Dwelling, which is why mid-game infrastructure (paving, paths, Copper Bars for the two 4-Copper-Bar buildings) usually has to come before the research tier you actually want.

The Beginner's Guide's own tip: if a building on the research tree has a !, you have not unlocked all the resources needed to build it yet.

Bourgeoise, priced

• Commoners promote to Bourgeoise with Fabric.
• Bourgeoise refuse Simple Food, want their own housing (Cottage: 12 Wood + 4 Stone, 4 days, on

Cobblestone, Road 1), and will not work generic Handyman jobs unless you hold the Lending A Hand boon.

• Commoners can still eat the elaborate tier: the in-game hint reads "Commoners can still eat Middle

food, if needed". If you overbuild a Bourgeoise kitchen, the rest of the village can eat from it.

• Elaborate Food recipes: Meatball (Raw White Meat + Egg), Stew (Raw Red Meat + any Vegetable), Soft Bread

(Miller in a Bakery or Milky Bakery), Cheese (Milk, in a Dairy — unlocked by the Cows memory).

• The wiki's own end-game note is the cost comparison that matters here: "Feeding soft bread to

Bourgeoisie is less effective and more expensive than feeding them stew at a kitchen. As long as you have big game around, it is worth researching and building a big game hunter and kitchen."

Run the numbers before promoting: every Bourgeoise is a pip you can no longer use as a Handyman, on a fixed food input that no longer accepts berries.

The ailment death spiral, with the numbers

Ailments are not just lost labour — the Fear and Sickness ones are the Power of the Domain you are fighting, generated inside your own village. This is the mid-game loop that kills runs.

Read the Fear column as Power: eighteen Distressed pips is 18 Fear a day, which is more than a threat-4 Domain banks per day at Normal (13). The Fear chain is the dangerous one because it compounds and because the cures are culture buildings you may not have researched: Distressed is curable at a Park or Tissue Box, Terrified at a School, and Depressed — 3 Fear a day, cannot move, cannot work, forever — only at a Pub.

Also note the timing trap on pips: a new pip takes 3 days to settle, and if there is no room at the end of it they become Homeless. Pippins spend 4 days growing and eat like adults while they do it.

In-game hint, worth taking literally: "Contagious Pips are better cured right away." Each contagious pip is 1 Sickness/day forever with a 10% daily infection roll against everyone else.

Overpipulation: the soft cap, with actual numbers

Overpipulation starts — per the wiki's text — at 30 pips, and adds a numeric penalty to the Power of every active Domain. Only non-VIP adult pips count. Note that the wiki's Normal table starts at 35 with a 0 penalty, which does not match its own "begins at 30" sentence; the Harder table starts at 30.

On Harder the same table starts at 30 (penalty 1 from 31–35, 12 by the high 40s). Thirteen extra Power on every Domain is the same figure a Normal threat-4 Domain banks per day — at 70 pips you have effectively bought yourself another threat level of protection to pay for, permanently, plus a pip's worth of food and housing each. Also relevant: "The larger your village, the fiercer some events become" (in-game hint).

Building conditions quietly zero your output

Two structural notes from the official wiki: ranges are orthogonal only (diagonals count as distance 2 for building bonuses), and forests, mountains and water block building-trait range entirely — Fishers being the exception because they can swim. A mid-game village that has sprawled around a forest edge will have Unreachable buildings producing nothing, and Unreachable buildings do not count towards bonuses either (in-game hint). Snow is its own trap: it "reduces the output of any building on top of it by 1".

Ten traps that cost a midgame

1. Expanding past the border. Unreachable is silent — the building looks fine and produces nothing.

Pave and post signposts before you sprawl.

1. Ignoring the Wet ailment. It does nothing by itself, but the wiki's own FAQ says many strong

events require it. A Wet village is a loaded event trigger.

1. Leaving Burning or Poisoned buildings standing. Burning does 2 Heat a day and spreads to

neighbours; Poisoned adds 1 Sickness a day, poisons its workers, and spreads. One Water, one Antidote.

1. Planning year 2 like year 1. Summer is 10 days longer, Autumn 10 days shorter, Winter 10 days

longer, and Winter year 2 is immediately followed by the Apocalypse.

1. Letting a Domain past threat 7. Per the wiki's Events page, Deadly Events happen when a Domain is

above power level 7, and three consecutive bad outcomes will make the next event a Deadly Event.

1. Not building the cheap cures. Healer (1 day), Toolmaker (1 day), Thinker (1 day) and Watcher

(1 day) are the cheapest specialisations available and cover most of the mid-game cure buildings.

1. Feeding Bourgeoise with Soft Bread when a Kitchen and Stew turns one Raw Red Meat plus any

vegetable into the same meal class.

1. Promoting too early. A Bourgeoise stops being a generic worker, refuses Simple Food and needs a

Cottage. Promote when the elaborate food chain is already running, not before.

1. Skipping the Trust/Doubt the Domain decision. The wiki's Apocalypses page states that choice tells

you which of the five Apocalypses you are in — and each is strictly Hot or Cold. Building the wrong temperature chain wastes a whole mid-game.

1. Banking nothing. A threat-3 Event at Normal wants 63 protection; one Peace Tent produces 4 Hope a

day and also attracts Drunk events. Work out how many tent-days each Doom costs while you still have two seasons of slack.

What the midgame is preparing for

The final Apocalypse lasts 30 days after Winter of year 2 and is one of five, each tied to an Apocalypse Season. The wiki lists the events for four of them:

During the Apocalypse the temperature Domain's seasonal threat is set to 0, and Off-Season buildings stay Off-Season unless you hold the Apocalyptic Growth boon — so the mid-game goal is a village that can pass its Dooms without spending its whole workforce, and that can feed itself from stock for 30 days.

Sources

All figures above come from the official DotAGE Wiki (wiki.gg) and the developer's own patch notes, checked on 29 September 2026 against game version v1.10.5d (Steam news, 15 September 2026).

• https://dotage.wiki.gg/wiki/Beginner%27s_Guide — the wiki's own Early/Mid/End Game notes, tool training, path and range rules.
• https://dotage.wiki.gg/wiki/Seasons — season lengths, the 311-turn Normal total, the in-season building lists.
• https://dotage.wiki.gg/wiki/Difficulty_levels — threat tables and research-cost tables for every difficulty.
• https://dotage.wiki.gg/wiki/Domains — Threat Level and Power definitions, seasonal threat, the Apocalypse exception.
• https://dotage.wiki.gg/wiki/The_Prophecy and https://dotage.wiki.gg/wiki/Events — event types, warning windows, Dooms, Deadly Events.
• https://dotage.wiki.gg/wiki/Apocalypses — the five Apocalypses, their event lists and Hot/Cold seasons.
• https://dotage.wiki.gg/wiki/Ailments and https://dotage.wiki.gg/wiki/Conditions — every duration, daily output and cure cost used here.
• https://dotage.wiki.gg/wiki/Pips — classes, promotion, Overpipulation tables.
• https://dotage.wiki.gg/wiki/Jobs, /Scholar, /Knifemaster and the individual profession pages — training days and training costs.
• https://dotage.wiki.gg/wiki/Hope, /Health, /Nature, /Heat, /Cold, /Sickness, /Cataclysm — the per-currency producer lists.
• https://dotage.wiki.gg/wiki/VIPs and https://dotage.wiki.gg/wiki/Quirks — VIP daily outputs and quirk effects.
• https://dotage.wiki.gg/wiki/Peace_Tent, /Papermaker, /Book_Maker, /Smeltery, /Furnace, /Brickmaker_Lodge, /Seeds_Extractor, /Crude_Well, /Warehouse, /Cottage, /Tent, /Woodcutter_Hut, /Forager, /Hemp_Processor, /Herb_Picker, /Solace_Buffet, /Campfire — building costs, days and production ratios.
• https://dotage.wiki.gg/wiki/Terrain — terrain traits, including the Clearing/Cobblestone/Brick Paving hitpoint ladder.
• https://dotage.wiki.gg/wiki/Hints — the in-game Agepedia hints quoted above.
• https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/638510 — patch notes, checked through V 1.10.5d (15 September 2026). The 1.10.x patches touch event balance and new-content buildings; none of them changes the thresholds, season lengths, training costs or Overpipulation tables above.

Where the wiki has gaps, this guide says so rather than filling them. There is no published research generation rate per building, no complete building-cost table (Doc House, Hospital, School, Library, Kitchen, Bakery, Pub, Garden, Park, Festival and Brothel are all still red links), and the wiki's own Elders list stops before the newest elders added in 1.10.x. The wiki's Challenge-mode pages also contradict each other — Starting a New Story says the multiplier starts at 300% and rises 100% per mastery level, while Difficulty levels says 250% and 50% per level.