// Unofficial neighborhood guide
Welcome to Elderfield Guide
The suburb is not normal and neither is the farming. This guide covers what actually blocks players in the 1.0 release: getting the game to launch, keeping your save, finding where things are, and working out why the enemy just acted three times.
Official launch trailer
Start Here
Get the game running, protect your save, then learn which systems matter in your first week.
Walkthrough
Story routes, locked locations, puzzles and collectibles — grouped around where you are stuck.
Featured routeStone Tower WalkthroughFrom the first seal to the EmissaryFarm & Craft
The six systems that turn each day into money, materials, food and better gear.
Town Life
People, schedules, shops and calendar events — the part of Elderfield that will not wait for you.
Combat & Powers
How a turn resolves, what rituals cost, and which supernatural effects are worth carrying.
What Kind of Game Is This
Welcome to Elderfield is a cozy horror farming RPG developed by Chris Cote and published by Kwalee. It released on 10 September 2026 for Windows. Steam lists it under Adventure, Casual, Indie, RPG, Simulation and Strategy, it is single-player, and it has full controller support. The game ships with 51 Steam achievements and Steam Cloud.
The loop is familiar on purpose: farm, fish, mine, cook, befriend the neighbours, and open up new parts of town. What is not familiar is the pressure on top of it. Crops grow while something watches, the tax man comes around, curses stack on your character, and the town keeps reporting anomalous activity on the evening news.
For a new player, the practical consequence is that Elderfield rewards planning more than most games in the genre. You get roughly twenty minutes of real time per in-game day, the day rolls over at midnight whether you sleep or not, and a lot of what you own is finite. That is why this guide leads with the save file, the map and the combat rules rather than with a list of crops.
Common Questions
Why won't Welcome to Elderfield launch?
It is usually the runtime, the GPU choice on a laptop with two graphics chips, or a controller and overlay driver fighting for the window at startup. The troubleshooting page walks them in the order that fixes it most often.
Where is the save file stored?
Not inside the Steam install folder, which is exactly why reinstalling can look like it wiped your town. See save file location and backup for the folder and a routine you can run before every long session.
Why are my crops not growing?
Growth is counted in nights, not in days spent standing next to the plot, and a seed cannot be watered before it is planted. Day one also starts with the whole field covered in Ghost Tentacles, so the first hour is clearing rather than sowing — the farming guide covers the order.
Why do enemies act more than once per turn?
Some enemies are built with more than one action per round, and multi-hit skills resolve as separate hits rather than one larger number hitting once. Both are explained in the combat and AP guide.
Can I miss a festival?
Yes, and the calendar keeps moving. The headline festivals fall on a fixed day of each season, so a season you spend entirely underground is a festival you spent entirely underground. The festival guide lists the dates and what each one asks of you.
Is there a demo save migration?
The pre-release demo and the 1.0 release are separate builds, so treat a demo save as disposable. If you are still carrying one, back up your current 1.0 save first using the save file guide before you touch anything.