Ever Oasis is Nintendo’s latest role-playing action adventure game on the 3DS. It’s packed with adorable characters, an expanding town, a dangerous desert, and puzzling dungeons. As Chief, you’re tasked with developing your Oasis by attracting residents, building shops, and fighting the evil Chaos.

If you’re starting Ever Oasis and are looking for some pointers that aren’t in the tutorial, I got you covered. Follow these tips for smoother sailing in your journey to build your town and conquer the desert.

1. Wait before building a new Bloom Booth.

A new Bloom Booth — your town’s type of shop — is unlocked whenever a Seedling becomes a resident of the Oasis. Other races can live in your town, but they won’t be able to open their own shops.

If you’re doing a lot of adventuring and side-questing, you could be unlocking lots of Bloom Booths from all the Seedlings you run into. While it’s tempting to fill that empty spot on Main Street with the newest type of Bloom Booth, take a minute to look at what resources the shop requires. As Chief, you must keep Bloom Booths stocked with resources for their wares, so you need to be sure you have access to the resources before building the shop.

For example, say you unlock the Soup Booth and see it requires Fish Bones. You then look at that resource’s location and realize you haven’t discovered that place yet. Without a plentiful supply of Fish Bones, the Soup Booth would run out of stock and bring down the Oasis’s happiness gauge. So you decide to wait. Because you read this article. You’re welcome.

2. Trade. With. The. Merchants.

Bummed you don’t have access to enough Fish Bones for the Soup Booth yet? This tip could help with that. Merchants will appear in your Oasis or in other settlements, and they have a plethora of wares. You can choose to purchase items with dewadems or trade your own resources for his.

Merchants will often carry rare items from far away places, and they’ll normally trade you for common items you find in abundance close to the Oasis. Always check with merchants for crafting supplies and resources for Bloom Booths.

3. All enemies are easy to dodge.

Combat in Ever Oasis isn’t as easy as button-mashing, but it doesn’t require a ton of skill either. You have a Normal Attack, a Special Attack, and a Dodge Roll, and you unlock combos as you level up.

You’ll notice early on that you can’t move immediately after landing an attack, which can lead to being struck by an enemy. But keep in mind that all regular enemies throughout the world have a specific movement they make when they’re preparing to attack/ charge. Keep some distance when encountering a new enemy, and I promise you’ll learn their attack pattern in 30 seconds.

From then on, get in an attack while they’re “charging” their attack, get out of the way before the attack, and then get in another couple hits while they’re vulnerable. Most common enemies follow this attack pattern and/or have a weak spot that’s easy to determine. And honestly bosses’ patterns aren’t that much more difficult to pick up on.

Are there any Ever Oasis tips you’d add to this list? Let me know in the comments below!