Nightingale Starting Biome: Should you choose Forest, Desert, or Swamp?

One of the first choices you’ll have in Nightingale is choosing a starting biome. Upon completing the tutorial, Puck will ask you to choose from one of three Nightingale starting biomes: the Forest, the Desert, and the Swamp. Here’s the characteristics of all three as well as the best Nightingale starting biome and why.

Which starting biome should you choose in Nightingale?

Without a doubt, I recommend choosing the Forest as your starting Realm in Nightingale. All three biomes are of course doable, but the Forest is definitely the best one and here is why.

The Desert

The Desert biome, while featuring plenty of flat land for building, actually ended up being the worst start for me. First off, in the Desert biome, your resources are extremely limited. There’s not many trees which you will need for Wood, and not many mineable rocks that you will need for Stone. Furthermore, the Desert is hot and as such you will constantly have to move into shade to combat the Heat debuff stacking on you which can be quite tedious.

The Swamp

The Swamp biome has more resources than the Desert, but also has a pretty tedious environmental factor that works against you. The water-based areas of the Swamp are actually disease ridden and will also give you a stacking dbeuff when in the water. This is probably the second-best overall choice, but seeing as the rewards in all three of these starter biomes are the same, it’s not worth dealing with disease for nothing.

The Forest

I recommend choosing the Forest biome as your starter Realm. The Forest is lush and full of trees for you to chop and rocks for you to mine. You also don’t have any tedious environmental debuffs like the Desert and Swamp other than rain which makes you Wet. You can easily negate this by finding shelter or hiding under the treeline.

Also, The Forest is absolutely beautiful, with immersive backdrops and landscapes that really make it worthwhile. Once again, all three biomes are possible, but I think you will have the best overall time in the Forest.

Keep in mind regardless of which starting biome you choose, future portals you open to new Realms can be of a different starting biome in Nightingale.