My Time at Portia Guide for Beginners

My Time at Portia (affiliate link) is a great game mixed with exploration, crafting, farming, and relationship building. It can be difficult to manage all these aspects at once. So, I've created a My Time at Portia (affiliate link) guide that should help you during the earlier stages of the game.

Click here to purchase My Time at Portia, I receive a small commission if you use my link.

Day 1 

After finishing creating your character, a cutscene follows showing your character arriving at Portia. Once off the boat, Presley will greet you. The game then introduces you to basic movement controls, which shouldn’t take long to get used to, depending on the platform on which you are playing. Follow Presley, and he will lead you to your Pa’s workshop. Read the letter from Pa, and the next day will then begin.

Day 2 

Make sure to press (A) to rise from your unrestful sleep. Head to the door and press the action button to leave.

Once outside, go to your mailbox and press the action button. It doesn’t provide much information except that you should expect a letter from Portia Time every 1^st of the month. Next on the mini-map on your right You can see the surrounding area as well as a yellow pointer. Move the camera so that the pointer is pointing up, and follow it into the little town.

Another conversation will begin, this time with Remington, who is with the Civil Corps. He explains how the ruins are maintained and that you will have to pay a weekly fee to enter them. Once you’ve finished speaking to Remington, on the mini-map, there is an orange circle with a star inside it. Go to that location to find Presley. Enter the Commerce guild.

First Quest 

Presley will strike up a conversation as soon as you enter; this will award you a +10 relationship with Presley and 100 XP. Once you're finished talking, leave the guild and leave the town the same way you came in. You will now start the Builders Test quest.

You need to craft a Simple Axe and a Pickaxe. The Simple Axe requires five pieces of wood and eight stones. The Pickaxe requires 8 pieces of wood and 5 pieces of stone. Since you do not have either tool, you have two options:

Head into town and purchase the materials, or collect both from small bushes and small stone outcroppings. The second option will not only award you the materials you need but also some XP. Outside your home, you should see some rocks on the ground sparkling. This means you can pick them up without using any tools.

You should also see some branches on the ground sparkling; picking these up will award you wood. Once you have 13 units of Wood and Stone, make your way back to your home and step up to the Worktable. The axes are on the second tab. Just select the Axe you want to craft, and your character will automatically craft the item if you have the materials.

Once you’ve crafted both axes, head back to the Commerce Guild and talk to Presley.

Stone Furnace 

Next up is a Stone Furnace which will be your first big project to craft. Head back to your home. In the grounds is platform with a pedestal. Go to the pedestal and press the action button. Use the right analogue stick to move to the next page. On the third page is the Stone Furnace. Press the left D-Pad button to select the stone furnace and a blueprint of the stone furnace will appear on the Assembly Station. 

To craft the stone furnace, you need to acquire 10 pieces of wood and one stone stool. This time around, use the Simple Axe by selecting it in the item bar (using the D-Pad) Once it has been selected, you can use X to chop. Find small trees, and you can use the Simple Axe to cut them down and receive a lot more Wood than you could by gathering. It should only take two trees to meet the requirement.

Next to your home, there are rocks just lying on the ground, not sparkling. You can now use your Pickaxe to mine the stone. You only need 10 stones to craft a Stone Stool. Once you have the stone, go back to the Worktable and go to the f^ifth tab. Scroll down, and you should be able to craft a stone stool.

How to Unlock My Time at Portia Cooking Set QuicklyFor a guide to get the cooking set click here.

Go back to the Assembly Station, select the wood in your item bar, and press X to place the required material. Do the same for the Stone Stool. Magically, the Stone Furnace will be crafted, and you can now pick up the Stone Furnace by pressing the action button. You should then have the Stone Furnace in your hand. When you move the platform onto your grounds. On the ground should appear a copy of the Furnace. Find somewhere you want to drop the Furnace and press X.

Click here to find out how to get the Cooking Set

Now head back to Presley. You will be awarded your builder’s license. 150 XP and 10 relationship points with Presley On the map, check for an orange icon with a star. Move to that location, and you should meet the Mayor. When you speak to him, you can give your workshop a name. Once registered and the workshop named, run back to Presley to finish the process. You were awarded 300 exp and 30 rep points.

He will then give you a long lecture on how the basic commissions and the rep point system work. In a nutshell, the more rep points you get, the higher your Workshop ranking. Leveling up your Workshop level brings rewards. If you complete more commissions at a higher level than your competitors, you’ll receive additional rewards at the end of the month.

To get commissions, you need to go to the notice board at the Commerce Guild and select a commission. Each commission has a rank, and the higher it is, the harder it will be. It will also include the requestor and the rewards. The first commission you’ll be given is to build a bridge to Amber Island.

Levelling Up

At this point, you should have leveled up. Press B to enter the inventory screen and RB to go to the next screen. To begin with, you can only pick the perks at the very top of each skill tree. But once you have invested 5 points into a skill tree, the next level opens up for you to select. My recommendation to you is to select one of the three Gather perks. Since your stamina is very low to begin with and you have no way of cooking meals to replenish your stamina, Anything to save on stamina loss will be useful. Going forward, if you level up, follow this guide.

House Repairs

On the topic of Stamina, your home has a few missing wooden flooring panels. It would be worth your time to extract 36 pieces of wood from the nearest trees. Then, once done, you can repair these holes. This results in no stamina loss from a bad night's sleep.

Amber Bridge

For this quest you will need to build three separate objects, 2 Wooden Bridge Heads and 1 Wooden Bridge Body. But before we can make a start on these, we need to build two new machines: a Grinder and a Civil Cutter. These will allow you to craft the required items needed for the bridge.

The base materials you need are 21 copper ore (12 for the civil cutter, 9 for the grinder), 50 stone (10 for the grinder, 40 for the civil cutter), and 2 old parts. All three of these materials can be mined at Abandoned Ruins 1. Head there now, regardless of the time.

The ruins can be found by entering the town and taking the left path past the cafe. You should see a dark cave. When you try to enter, it will ask you to pay 80 gols. Pay the fee and enter. The mining tutorial will begin by explaining how to mine.

Move forward so you exit the entrance and land on the cave floor. Look on the ground for areas that are orange. Aim at them with your trusty Pickaxe and attack them with the axe. You should start to dig through the ground and receive copper ore. Remember, you only need 21.

While mining, you may unearth Data Discs. Do not sell or drop these. They can be used to unlock more diagrams for better machines.

Once you have all the copper ore you need, Press the left trigger to open the relic scanner. Keep an eye out for yellow orbs. Once spotted, begin to dig in that direction. Once you uncover the orb, you may receive either a relic part, items, or possibly the old parts you need.

Once you have all the resources, head back to your workshop. Go to your workstation and craft two grinding stones. Go to your Stone furnace; first fill it up with wood as fuel, then smelt ten copper bars. If at this point you have very little stone and no stamina, head to bed. It's worth mounting your builder's certificate to the wall so you get a small bonus in stamina.

Day 3

When you wake up, leave your house and go to the mailbox. You'll receive a number of letters. The first is from the Civil Corps, which advises that you can pay them to take on commissions to get valuable resources. Antoine (a member of the guild) will advise that you can't receive any commissions during the weekend. Paulie will give you a commission to create three Copper Blades, which we will be able to do once we've built the Grinder and Cutter. And finally, from the Town Hall, they advise you that you have access to two ruins. But we will stick to the Abandoned Ruins for now.

Back to the Grind (er)

We still need stone, and we are actually going to acquire 60 pieces of stone; either take a walk to the Abandoned mines and only mine grayish rocks, or look for chunks of rock in the fields. Be warned: not all of the rocks in the field can be mined, as they will be too tough for your Pickaxe for now. Once you have 60 pieces of stone, head back to your workshop.

Find some trees and extract 10 pieces of wood. We are going to build a second stone furnace for convenience. Craft a Stone Stool at your worktable as before, and then build the stone furnace at the assembly platform.

Once you have all the base materials (50 pieces of stone, 21 copper ore, and 2 old parts), go to the Assembly Platform and select the Grinder. Once the diagram is on the platform, go to your worktable and tab all the way to the right. This last section will show you anything you can craft that will fullfil your mission. For the Grinder it will show the Grinding Stone. Craft 2 of these. Your Furnace(s) should have at least finished the 3 Copper Bars you need. Drop these onto the diagram and you've completed the Grinder.

Let's Be Civil (Cutter)

Next is the Civil Cutter. Just like before, go to your Assembly Platform and select the Civil Cutter. This time, you need 2 Copper Blades and 5 Stone Bricks. The Stone bricks require 8 pieces of Stone per quantity crafted. If you have two or more furnaces, set one of them to craft five Stone Bricks while the other crafts the remaining Copper Bars.

For the Copper blades, you need two Copper Bars and at least one Power Stone to power the machine up. You should have a few power stones from mining for Old Parts, but if not, they can be bought from the Tool shop in town.

Before moving on to building the bridge, now would be a great time to build two of the grinder, civil cutter and Stone Furnace

Day 4

No special events today; finish the Civil Cutter if you haven't already. And place it on your land. Unfortunately, this isn't the end of the preparation for building the bridge parts. There is only one more tool we need to craft: The Bronze Axe. The Bronze Axe can chop down bigger trees. The bigger trees drop hardwood, which is needed to build the Wooden Bridge Heads.

Your First Non-Story Commission

For the Bronze axe, you need a Simple Axe, three Bronze Bars, and an upgrade kit. First, make your way to Total Tools. Total Tools can be found by entering the town via the entrance by your workshop. Follow the path right all the way down to the plaza, which will be on your left.

The purchase price of an Upgrade Kit is around 240 gols, depending on the market price. If you've been following this guide exactly, you will only have a few Gols to your name. Head to the Commerce Guild and pick up a commission. The commissions you will receive will be slightly different each day. I would recommend picking up either a stone stool or a small chair commission. These are very quick to complete and shouldn't pose any difficulty. For stone stools, you only need 10 pieces of stone to craft them.

I would recommend loading your furnaces with orders for Bronze Bars. They require 4 Copper ores and 1 Tin ores. However, if you don't have enough ore, we will be mining later.

A small chair will be slightly more complicated. It requires two Wooden boards, which you can craft at the Civil Cutter using eight boards. But the Small Chair also requires three pieces of worn fur, which you can only get from either livestock or hunting animals. Go behind your Workshop and keep heading East until you drop off a small cliff. You should see multicolored Llamas. Using either axe, attack the llamas. They should drop one piece of worn fur per llama.

Once you have the necessary materials, craft either the stone stools or small chairs at the worktable. Next, you will need to find the guest giver, who will be highlighted on the map as a blue circle. When they are within your view, they will have a blue question mark above their head. Talk to them, and the very first option will be the commission. Select it. They should award you with some Gols, workshop reputation, and a boost to your relationship with them. Hopefully you will have enough for an Upgrade Kit, but if not, pick up another commission and repeat the steps above.

This would be a great time to explain that neither the guild nor the shops are open 24 hours a day. The Commerce Guild is open between 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. While Total Tools is 7:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. So if you run out of time today, sleep, and they will reopen.

Regardless of whether you buy the Upgrade Kit today or tomorrow, Check your inventory, and make sure you have 12 copper and 3 tin ores. If not, head to Abandoned Ruins #1 and mine for Copper and tin ores. Once you have the required materials, head home and use the Stone Furnaces to craft Bronze Bars overnight. Once they have started, head inside and sleep.

Day 5

Today you need to go buy the Upgrade Kit if you haven't already, and pickup the Bronze Bars from your furnaces. Then go to your worktable and craft your Bronze Axe. Now we can get back to making bridges. The base materials you need are as follows:

You can now chop down most trees; the trees with bigger trunks will drop hardwood. When you chop down a larger tree, it leaves a stump. This can also be safely chopped for more hardwood. The rest of the materials will need to be sourced from Abandoned Ruins #1.

Quick Detour

Once you've run out of stamina, you have acquired the needed resources, or the time is almost 16:30. We are going to take a quick detour. Check your inventory and make sure you have more than five data discs . Head to the Research Center on the East side of the town, adjacent to the plaza:

Once inside, speak to Petra, who will explain about data discs, which can be used to unlock new diagrams. Which you can construct on your Assembly Platform. Some of these diagrams will be improved versions of existing machines. Others will be completely new. The conversation will then end. Speak to her again, select the Data disc option, and give her five discs. You can give her more discs to speed up the process. Within a few days, they will post a new diagram. Once received, make sure to go the Research Center to give her more Data discs

By this point, you should have used up all your inventory space. You can afford to drop everything apart from tools, materials for your next build, data discs, relics, and any items that are 100 Gol.

Day 6

You should receive some mail today—a letter from Petra. She asks that if you find anything special in the ruins, bring it to her.

Now that you have the base materials, below are the materials you need to craft:

Day 7

Today you should receive two letters one from the town hall and the other from the Research Center. The town hall letter informs you of an important announcement at the fireside meeting, the Research Center letter lets you know that the results of the research will be received tomorrow.

Continue with crafting the materials for the bridges. Also, craft some Wooden storage boxes at the Worktable. They only require 20 pieces of wood and you can drop any materials in them for future use.

Near 19:00, head towards the Commerce Guild, and the Mayor will have an announcement. The announcement is about the building of the bridge and that, in the future, there will be commissions for the Dee-Dee transport system.

Day 8

Check the post again. You should have 3 letters. One from Dawa keeper of the Portia Tree Farm requesting 5 wooden boards. One from Town Hall, the annual fishing day takes place this Friday and Thursday. The last is from the Research Center, which should unlock a new diagram. The diagram will be one of four from the below:

• Civil Furnace
• Cooking Set
• Blender
• Fish Display

At this point, your Abandoned Ruins pass should expire tomorrow. So if you don't have much Gol, it would be a good time to spend as much time mining as possible. Especially if you don't have five data discs. Once you do, head to the Research Center to start the next research process.

By the end of today, you should have all three parts of the bridge. From your workshop, head South. Once you get to the river, head East. Until you come to the broken bridge. You should see a speech bubble with three dots. Interact with it to build the bridge. You'll need to do this three times to complete the bridge.

If you have time to spare, go to your civil cutter and craft five wooden boards for Dawa. We can turn these into him tomorrow.

Day 9

Check your inbox, you'll receive another letter from the Research Center to say they will take 2 days to uncover some research. Pick up the Wooden Boards from your Civil Cutter and head to the tree farm marked on the below map. Once you get there you will automatically initaite a conversation with Dawa to receive your reward, which you can spend on a weeks pass to the Abandoned Ruins.

My Time at Portia Guide for Beginners

You've learnt a lot in the past 9 days. These skills should take you very far in the game. I will cover relationships and any difficult parts in a future guide.