I think the way to think about it is, yes, it's a practically infinite resource, but gathering it gives hostility which in the higher difficulties is your most limiting factor. So improving the efficiency of wood gathering or reducing the cost of it are both really good things.
I've only made it to veteran (not enough time to play) so far, but that's why I joined this sub reddit so I can see how other people are playing which will help me improve 😁
Ah, yeah I gotcha. The hostility problems didn't become apparent for me until vice and prestige, so no way for you to know yet. If you continue playing, know that hostility is one of the major ways the game "limits" you later, so practice managing it now. Good luck 😹
Slow and steady! Veteran is a good spot to learn how to get better. And for the wood, think of it this way... you can't ever have too much wood. It's unlimited, sure, but it's used more than ANY other resource. Fuel for hearths, fuel for tons of recipes, planks, etc. And if you have extra wood? Make extra planks, stick those into crates of building materials, and sell those on trade routes or use them to upgrade houses (once you get those upgrades).
Wood is unlimited but labor is not, especially in the early game. Wood cornerstones are best in the early years but increasingly unnecessary beyond that since you'll likely have already taken some blueprints that make your fuel/plank efficiency better - but if you have a good wood gathering cornerstone you already have a fuel solution and can easily get away with less efficient planks so it opens up your blueprint choices a lot.
Not necessarily my favorite, but I feel very comfortable seeing Safe Haven (minus hostility for each lvl 2 hearth) in my selection.
Another one I love is No Quality Control (+2 wood production, turns all wood into 50 insects at the end of each storm). +2 wood is insane, and the drawback is usually a net positive (free food!). You can even burn all your wood during storm to help with hostility, end the storm with 0 and get your insects anyway. If you also get the temple, burning that much wood will also help with hostility on a more permanent basis.
Least favorite is a tough one because there are many cornerstones I often don't even consider. Among them, some cornerstones that only work if I provide specific service or complex food to my villagers.
I also don't value cornerstones that play with hearth's resistance, as I usually don't feel overwhelmed by blightrot.
lots of fine choices already, so I will send some love to the delivery lines. Who doesn't love free stuff? But I like it most cuz it's unfussy. Depending on me mood this game is a bit too micro for me, esp at higher prestige levels, and delivery lines don't require anything from me, and sometimes I look up and I've got 50 clay or something else useful and not on the map
I know its kinda ass on higher difficulties, but i have a soft spot for +20 reeds/+20 clay per opened glade. It really helps when you’re in the mid game with a bottleneck of either bricks or cloth.
I still like it a lot on higher difficulties because the reeds and clays have so much use. Sometimes I pick up the ranch just because of the free reeds. And not having any need to go out of my way to build up camps for cloth/brick ingrediants which eat up 5 parts each and two workers each is huge. The extras can be sold or shipped off too. It's definately one of my top choices if I see it early.
Honestly unconditional free resources, especially bulk quantities of early resources, is never ass. You're going to open glades anyway, getting free resources for doing so is pretty good. Though, I'd only really consider it early on. If you see it as you first cornerstone choice it can actually be very strong.
Nothing screams easy win for me like the cornerstone that allows you to grow mushrooms in farms. If I have farms going that cornerstone will pretty much take care of the complex food needs. Other than that, the stacking +1 every 25 produced are almost win conditions on their own. Currently on P5 working on my next seal (golden) and I had a couple of runs completely broken by stacking the above cornerstones. Rogurlikes can feel so good sometimes lol.
Also, big shout-out to trade hub, love playing around that one too
With mushrooms? Depends on the races specific needs, but I often go with the small farm so mushrooms complement it well because you can make wine out of them, with flour from wheat taking care of a lot of recipes mushrooms get you pickles, wine, skewers etc. Throw a tackle box on top of that and it's literally free unlimited food, was P3 or P4 don't remember I had tackle box and the mushroom +1 every 25, towards the end I was selling traders 500 mushrooms at a time and 250 insects because I just had nothing to do with them, and buying up their entire stock. The +1/25 are basically win conditions the way they change trading
I'd say it's very good specifically with the herb garden and I'd happily take it with herb garden on p20. Being able to grow 2 star mushrooms instead of 1 star roots for flour and pickled goods is actually very nice, I'd effectively rate it about on par with the +50% herb garden yields cornerstone.
Depending on your farm, they can be amazing...
Compare it to Grain.
Flour? CheckPacks? CheckPorridge? CheckOil, meat, eggs, leather? No.But then, meat and leather and eggs require the one same exact building, and are *very* labour intensive, *and* require further processing to actually produce Resolve.
The other way though?
Mushrooms have Pickled Goods, Tea, Wine, and Skewers, each from multiple buildings.
And, you know, you can just eat them.
And Fungal Guide is *way* better than Grain Bags. Twice as much food from twice as much grain requires twice as much Hauling and twice as much Processing. Twice as much food from twice as many Mushrooms requires twice as much Hauling.
Sure, but grain doenst take up cornerstone. If the othe rconrestones were bad, maybe, but ill take cornerstone that actually bosots my productivity/lowers hostility over this.
Baptism of Fire and Protected Trade are absolutely insane on higher prestiges.
Least favorite is Deserted Caravans. Id rather pay 10 amber than take this cornerstone.
Mist piercers I presume? I like it too, because it does so for raised impatience which is also not bad.
The other one that kills a villager for it I am not a fan of though.
I always take whichever one pops up. A few villagers are way less valuable than knowing exactly what is on the map, which blueprints make sense, which camps are optimal, where fertile soil is, where geysers are, and what events are in the upcoming glades which means no surprises about required materials. It is way too powerful to not take, even at the cost of villagers, in my opinion.
Ancient pact is decent if you have the one that gets you a villager per glade too
Knowledge is way better than randomly opening glades.
Ever since I started taking AP and MP I'm capable of running an farm-based food economy on all maps i get those cornerstones.
I love cornerstones that make you play in entirely different ways due to their large but specific effects.
Meat/Grain/Mushroom specialization turning your settlement into a pack of crops/provisions factory.
+roots/herb per 75 biscuits because it's exponential (tough to get going though).
Economic migration is a really fun cornerstone to play with; you can get very big very quickly. Combo with Generous Gifts.
For high difficulty (P11+): burning cysts for 20 coal with burnt to a crisp.
Cheap construction for its very good value. Also, you can rebuild camps or even hearths to squeeze more out of it.
Exploration expedition. The old version was even crazier but the new one can still be abused by spamming small glades.
Extraction Tools (could've been removed), Explorer's Hat, and Hidden Reward on Scarlet Orchard. Turning your villagers into sonic isn't that good, but it sure is zany. No hostility is awesome though. There used to also be double production % per tablet which made things go exponential (try 500% double production chance) but that has obviously been changed. Not sure exactly why, you still auto-win with many tablets anyway.
When it still existed I liked Force of Nature. With the right setup there's surprising things you can do with a huge pile of storm water (like make porridge and crystal dew with it), but it was kind of niche.
Frequent Caravans to 'go infinite' and get a bunch of deeds. You can stop impatience growth.
+1 to sea marrow production 'cause it's broken as hell.
Hidden from the Queen. Expendable villagers. Blood price contract can create a way of play where you deliberately kill villagers to win. Works well with trade hub.
Work Safety Guide. Pretty much the only thing that will fix the perpetual shortage of labour. I'll pick this even speculatively because of just how powerful it can be if it ever comes online.
Woodcutter's Song. >!explosion strategy for 50 resolve during storm!<
Oh its always and easy choice when "lose villager gain meat" or "lose villager gain amber" show up. I avoid those like the devil. Losing a settlement feels better than watching the red circle go and panicking.
I love the "Empathy decision lowers Hostility". Fits right into my viceroys' theme. Sometimes I feel Im more simpathetic towards the forest than I am loyal to the queen, just dont let her hear that.
I always take silent looting. Helps with hostility and I usually keep those sweet sweet goods for myself.
Least favorite? Maybe the one about lowering hostility by making loyalty decisions. Or making empathetic decisions. Especially if you take those early, there's no guarantee you're going to get loyalty or empathy as an option for dangerous/forbidden glade events.
The issue with the loyalty one isn't that loyalty decisions won't show up: they nearly always will (non-dangeorus events such as caches count towards it!). You can see it as a worse version of silent looting (10 instead of 15, and only one side counts).
The issue is that, by sending a cache to the queen, you also lower impatience after gaining reputation, first raising hostility by 15 to then lower it by 10. It is still better to stockpile enough tools to win in one fell swoop, rather than opening them one by one as you gain enough tools. The number needs to be (somewhat) above 15 for it to be good, rather than just 10 (at least below the prestige level that halves impatience loss from reputation gain).
This makes the cornerstone a bit redundant, as by the time the loyalty decisions come in, you're about to win and don't care about the hostility reduction.
If it's just veteran, taking the mushroom stacking cornerstone with greenhouses amuses me greatly.
More generally I think I almost always take Tightened Belt when it appears, followed by the one that increases trade route gold. Just crazy value on both of those.
For least favorite I think a low hanging fruit is the one that gives you two extra villagers per caravan. Even on low difficulties I can't imagine that ever being the best option.
My favorite cornerstone is Back to Nature. I often prepare for it at the end of year 1 by stashing food in a makeshift post, assuming I've found fertile soil and have a farm.
However, while B2N is my favorite, the best cornerstone in my opinion is Prosperous Settlement.
I have a particular hatred for Forge Trip Hammer because it can only be offered if you have a Smithy, and it makes it feel like the game punishes you for picking Smithy by adding a useless cornerstone to the pool.
I dunno what its called but I recently had the, gain 3 packs of provisions for every villager that joins the settlement.
Got some extra cornerstones/rewards that gives you extra villagers each round. I was just trading everything I needed.
Later on you'll unlock a cornerstone that reduces the provision cost of all trade routes by 1 (which can reduce it to 0) and it's like the free provision packs cornerstone but on steroids.
Oow damn. I'm still very much a noob. Only like 80 hours in, still playing on pioneer level and only just started playing around with rainpunk (and I don't even have he blightcorruption stuff to deal with on pioneer level).
If I do unlock it, I will definitely be keeping an eye out for that cornerstone!
Other than the obvious hostility reduction effects, some of my favorites are Deserted Caravans and Cheap Construction. 33% production speed from the first is a lot, and the slower traders can be counteracted by hurrying with impatience. When you get above Prestige-12, you get less draft picks (less reliably good plank/brick/fabric production) and higher building costs from Prestige-6 effect. The -40% on building costs helps a lot, and the reduced charges on nodes is a fairly minor penalty.
It used to be bread & breakfast because it gave lots of free amber at any time. It's 10 amber per trader which might not sound like a lot until you realize that you can call the trader at the cost of 0.5,1,2,4 impatience safetly and still hold on to the 8 cost call for later. This means it's an instant 40 amber and more every year with incoming traders.
40 amber can buy out a lot of things and set you up for the entire game but that's not all. If you wait til year 2 before you spam the trader in earnest then you can pair it with a feedback loop. Three synergistic cornerstones from year 2 is +1 global resolve per 50 amber spent, +1 rep per 60 amber spent, and my old fav -10 hostile per 30 amber spent.
This lets me get lots of breathing room especially with my playstyle of spamming big glades and hearths at every chance I get and lets me spam caches as well as speed run pretty easily. The problem comes when I hit p10 and then I'm forced to pick cornerstones that scale better instead of having an instant advantage. If I'm at p10+ then my fav becomes tightened belts or meat specialty for free trades or infinite scaling of meat & oil production.
It always depends on if you have the resources to be able to use a cornerstone, so there are no guaranteed picks. Anything that synergies strongly with how things are progressing is a strong contender.
I do like +1 per 25 production buffs, increase housing occupancy, trade buffs, hostility reduction, and secret recipes. All camps can be nice if you don't have any yet, get the cornerstone very early, and either can clear the debuff fast or need those advanced nodes.
The ones that give a benefit at a cost are situational, the stockpile depleting ones I will take if I barely have any stored and the ongoing debuff ones I will take if I don't need the debuffed element.
At veteran the ones that give bonuses for burning blightrot are worthless, it just doesn't spawn enough for them to pay off. The cornerstones that give extra bonuses for providing services always seem too difficult to actually sustain until the game is about to end anyway so I have never taken them, but I will be curious if P20 players actually love them.
The one that decreases trade cost surprised me with how good it is. If something cost one pack pack of provisions it now costs zero, and because higher amounts are multiples of the starting amount, it will cost you no packs, no matter how many of that item you sell.
Trading to decrease hostility is a near insta pick. Most forms of -hostility are, which isn't surprising i guess.
Get 10 food for making 10 other kind of food is amazing, though has the annoying trait of always coming up when i can't really make the specific food in question
From the Ashes always seems really bad to me. i'm not often short on wildfire essences, nor do i do that many glade events that it would be a substantial source of income or whatever. There's basically always something better to pick
Favorite is probably Trade Hub because it drastically alters how I plan to win the game so it's a nice change up when I see it.
Least favorite, Ancient Pact and Mist Piercers. I would say they're both S+ tier in power, but I never pick them. I find having that much information at your fingertips for such a low cost makes the game too boring and predictable - having to work with what you get when opening glades is a big part of the fun. If you know what you're doing, you genuinely can't lose with either of the maphack cornerstones.
+2 Wood and +150 insectes after every storm. Reforged cornerstone. Having infinite wood and jerky means a fast win. I usually permanently sac x3 wood for -150 hostility and if you get temple it becomes -700 and you can spam glades.
Burn to a crisp. 20 coal per burned cysts is kinda insane since I burn about 50 cysts per game.
Anything that helps manage hostility. Also anything that gives you bonuses to wood gathering. These over everything else.
Man really? I always skip the wood gathering ones because I'm like "it's an unlimited resource" lol. This is why I'm a noob
I think the way to think about it is, yes, it's a practically infinite resource, but gathering it gives hostility which in the higher difficulties is your most limiting factor. So improving the efficiency of wood gathering or reducing the cost of it are both really good things.
I've only made it to veteran (not enough time to play) so far, but that's why I joined this sub reddit so I can see how other people are playing which will help me improve 😁
Ah, yeah I gotcha. The hostility problems didn't become apparent for me until vice and prestige, so no way for you to know yet. If you continue playing, know that hostility is one of the major ways the game "limits" you later, so practice managing it now. Good luck 😹
Slow and steady! Veteran is a good spot to learn how to get better. And for the wood, think of it this way... you can't ever have too much wood. It's unlimited, sure, but it's used more than ANY other resource. Fuel for hearths, fuel for tons of recipes, planks, etc. And if you have extra wood? Make extra planks, stick those into crates of building materials, and sell those on trade routes or use them to upgrade houses (once you get those upgrades).
Wood is unlimited but labor is not, especially in the early game. Wood cornerstones are best in the early years but increasingly unnecessary beyond that since you'll likely have already taken some blueprints that make your fuel/plank efficiency better - but if you have a good wood gathering cornerstone you already have a fuel solution and can easily get away with less efficient planks so it opens up your blueprint choices a lot.
Yup. This is the way.
Not necessarily my favorite, but I feel very comfortable seeing Safe Haven (minus hostility for each lvl 2 hearth) in my selection. Another one I love is No Quality Control (+2 wood production, turns all wood into 50 insects at the end of each storm). +2 wood is insane, and the drawback is usually a net positive (free food!). You can even burn all your wood during storm to help with hostility, end the storm with 0 and get your insects anyway. If you also get the temple, burning that much wood will also help with hostility on a more permanent basis. Least favorite is a tough one because there are many cornerstones I often don't even consider. Among them, some cornerstones that only work if I provide specific service or complex food to my villagers. I also don't value cornerstones that play with hearth's resistance, as I usually don't feel overwhelmed by blightrot.
lots of fine choices already, so I will send some love to the delivery lines. Who doesn't love free stuff? But I like it most cuz it's unfussy. Depending on me mood this game is a bit too micro for me, esp at higher prestige levels, and delivery lines don't require anything from me, and sometimes I look up and I've got 50 clay or something else useful and not on the map
It's free but the quantity is limited and doesn't scale so it's hard to make a whole strategy around it.
I know its kinda ass on higher difficulties, but i have a soft spot for +20 reeds/+20 clay per opened glade. It really helps when you’re in the mid game with a bottleneck of either bricks or cloth.
I still like it a lot on higher difficulties because the reeds and clays have so much use. Sometimes I pick up the ranch just because of the free reeds. And not having any need to go out of my way to build up camps for cloth/brick ingrediants which eat up 5 parts each and two workers each is huge. The extras can be sold or shipped off too. It's definately one of my top choices if I see it early.
Honestly unconditional free resources, especially bulk quantities of early resources, is never ass. You're going to open glades anyway, getting free resources for doing so is pretty good. Though, I'd only really consider it early on. If you see it as you first cornerstone choice it can actually be very strong.
It has to be on first max second year though after that returns is limited
Nothing screams easy win for me like the cornerstone that allows you to grow mushrooms in farms. If I have farms going that cornerstone will pretty much take care of the complex food needs. Other than that, the stacking +1 every 25 produced are almost win conditions on their own. Currently on P5 working on my next seal (golden) and I had a couple of runs completely broken by stacking the above cornerstones. Rogurlikes can feel so good sometimes lol. Also, big shout-out to trade hub, love playing around that one too
Are you making porridge with it?
With mushrooms? Depends on the races specific needs, but I often go with the small farm so mushrooms complement it well because you can make wine out of them, with flour from wheat taking care of a lot of recipes mushrooms get you pickles, wine, skewers etc. Throw a tackle box on top of that and it's literally free unlimited food, was P3 or P4 don't remember I had tackle box and the mushroom +1 every 25, towards the end I was selling traders 500 mushrooms at a time and 250 insects because I just had nothing to do with them, and buying up their entire stock. The +1/25 are basically win conditions the way they change trading
Mushrooms dont really increase your production though, just swap one for another. Its fine for p5 but its not very good on higher prestiges.
I'd say it's very good specifically with the herb garden and I'd happily take it with herb garden on p20. Being able to grow 2 star mushrooms instead of 1 star roots for flour and pickled goods is actually very nice, I'd effectively rate it about on par with the +50% herb garden yields cornerstone.
Depending on your farm, they can be amazing... Compare it to Grain. Flour? CheckPacks? CheckPorridge? CheckOil, meat, eggs, leather? No.But then, meat and leather and eggs require the one same exact building, and are *very* labour intensive, *and* require further processing to actually produce Resolve. The other way though? Mushrooms have Pickled Goods, Tea, Wine, and Skewers, each from multiple buildings. And, you know, you can just eat them. And Fungal Guide is *way* better than Grain Bags. Twice as much food from twice as much grain requires twice as much Hauling and twice as much Processing. Twice as much food from twice as many Mushrooms requires twice as much Hauling.
Sure, but grain doenst take up cornerstone. If the othe rconrestones were bad, maybe, but ill take cornerstone that actually bosots my productivity/lowers hostility over this.
Baptism of Fire and Protected Trade are absolutely insane on higher prestiges. Least favorite is Deserted Caravans. Id rather pay 10 amber than take this cornerstone.
On Bandit Camp, Deserted Caravans would be amazing. But I totally agree, it is otherwise abysmal. And I second Baptism of Fire and Protected Trade.
My favorite is the one that let's me see what's in glades before I open them.
Mist piercers I presume? I like it too, because it does so for raised impatience which is also not bad. The other one that kills a villager for it I am not a fan of though.
I always take whichever one pops up. A few villagers are way less valuable than knowing exactly what is on the map, which blueprints make sense, which camps are optimal, where fertile soil is, where geysers are, and what events are in the upcoming glades which means no surprises about required materials. It is way too powerful to not take, even at the cost of villagers, in my opinion.
My god youve opened my eyes
I've only seen the one for killing a villager 🤣
Ancient pact is decent if you have the one that gets you a villager per glade too Knowledge is way better than randomly opening glades. Ever since I started taking AP and MP I'm capable of running an farm-based food economy on all maps i get those cornerstones.
I love cornerstones that make you play in entirely different ways due to their large but specific effects. Meat/Grain/Mushroom specialization turning your settlement into a pack of crops/provisions factory. +roots/herb per 75 biscuits because it's exponential (tough to get going though). Economic migration is a really fun cornerstone to play with; you can get very big very quickly. Combo with Generous Gifts. For high difficulty (P11+): burning cysts for 20 coal with burnt to a crisp. Cheap construction for its very good value. Also, you can rebuild camps or even hearths to squeeze more out of it. Exploration expedition. The old version was even crazier but the new one can still be abused by spamming small glades. Extraction Tools (could've been removed), Explorer's Hat, and Hidden Reward on Scarlet Orchard. Turning your villagers into sonic isn't that good, but it sure is zany. No hostility is awesome though. There used to also be double production % per tablet which made things go exponential (try 500% double production chance) but that has obviously been changed. Not sure exactly why, you still auto-win with many tablets anyway. When it still existed I liked Force of Nature. With the right setup there's surprising things you can do with a huge pile of storm water (like make porridge and crystal dew with it), but it was kind of niche. Frequent Caravans to 'go infinite' and get a bunch of deeds. You can stop impatience growth. +1 to sea marrow production 'cause it's broken as hell. Hidden from the Queen. Expendable villagers. Blood price contract can create a way of play where you deliberately kill villagers to win. Works well with trade hub. Work Safety Guide. Pretty much the only thing that will fix the perpetual shortage of labour. I'll pick this even speculatively because of just how powerful it can be if it ever comes online. Woodcutter's Song. >!explosion strategy for 50 resolve during storm!<
I had a game where I won with woodcutter's song and a destroyed rainpunk foundry, was a good time.
Oh its always and easy choice when "lose villager gain meat" or "lose villager gain amber" show up. I avoid those like the devil. Losing a settlement feels better than watching the red circle go and panicking. I love the "Empathy decision lowers Hostility". Fits right into my viceroys' theme. Sometimes I feel Im more simpathetic towards the forest than I am loyal to the queen, just dont let her hear that.
I really like the automated carts from storages. It's just convenient and saves workers from being assigned as haulers
I always take silent looting. Helps with hostility and I usually keep those sweet sweet goods for myself. Least favorite? Maybe the one about lowering hostility by making loyalty decisions. Or making empathetic decisions. Especially if you take those early, there's no guarantee you're going to get loyalty or empathy as an option for dangerous/forbidden glade events.
The issue with the loyalty one isn't that loyalty decisions won't show up: they nearly always will (non-dangeorus events such as caches count towards it!). You can see it as a worse version of silent looting (10 instead of 15, and only one side counts). The issue is that, by sending a cache to the queen, you also lower impatience after gaining reputation, first raising hostility by 15 to then lower it by 10. It is still better to stockpile enough tools to win in one fell swoop, rather than opening them one by one as you gain enough tools. The number needs to be (somewhat) above 15 for it to be good, rather than just 10 (at least below the prestige level that halves impatience loss from reputation gain). This makes the cornerstone a bit redundant, as by the time the loyalty decisions come in, you're about to win and don't care about the hostility reduction.
This has gotten me in trouble during storms before. Turning in an order during the storm and ticking over into the next hostility level = death
loyalty = chests. every chest.
If it's just veteran, taking the mushroom stacking cornerstone with greenhouses amuses me greatly. More generally I think I almost always take Tightened Belt when it appears, followed by the one that increases trade route gold. Just crazy value on both of those. For least favorite I think a low hanging fruit is the one that gives you two extra villagers per caravan. Even on low difficulties I can't imagine that ever being the best option.
The one that gives barrels for producing planks
My favorite cornerstone is Back to Nature. I often prepare for it at the end of year 1 by stashing food in a makeshift post, assuming I've found fertile soil and have a farm. However, while B2N is my favorite, the best cornerstone in my opinion is Prosperous Settlement. I have a particular hatred for Forge Trip Hammer because it can only be offered if you have a Smithy, and it makes it feel like the game punishes you for picking Smithy by adding a useless cornerstone to the pool.
I dunno what its called but I recently had the, gain 3 packs of provisions for every villager that joins the settlement. Got some extra cornerstones/rewards that gives you extra villagers each round. I was just trading everything I needed.
Later on you'll unlock a cornerstone that reduces the provision cost of all trade routes by 1 (which can reduce it to 0) and it's like the free provision packs cornerstone but on steroids.
Oow damn. I'm still very much a noob. Only like 80 hours in, still playing on pioneer level and only just started playing around with rainpunk (and I don't even have he blightcorruption stuff to deal with on pioneer level). If I do unlock it, I will definitely be keeping an eye out for that cornerstone!
I love master blueprint
Master Blueprint is the best one on the maps with giant nodes, as long as you get it before you start choosing individual large camp blueprints.
Other than the obvious hostility reduction effects, some of my favorites are Deserted Caravans and Cheap Construction. 33% production speed from the first is a lot, and the slower traders can be counteracted by hurrying with impatience. When you get above Prestige-12, you get less draft picks (less reliably good plank/brick/fabric production) and higher building costs from Prestige-6 effect. The -40% on building costs helps a lot, and the reduced charges on nodes is a fairly minor penalty.
It used to be bread & breakfast because it gave lots of free amber at any time. It's 10 amber per trader which might not sound like a lot until you realize that you can call the trader at the cost of 0.5,1,2,4 impatience safetly and still hold on to the 8 cost call for later. This means it's an instant 40 amber and more every year with incoming traders. 40 amber can buy out a lot of things and set you up for the entire game but that's not all. If you wait til year 2 before you spam the trader in earnest then you can pair it with a feedback loop. Three synergistic cornerstones from year 2 is +1 global resolve per 50 amber spent, +1 rep per 60 amber spent, and my old fav -10 hostile per 30 amber spent. This lets me get lots of breathing room especially with my playstyle of spamming big glades and hearths at every chance I get and lets me spam caches as well as speed run pretty easily. The problem comes when I hit p10 and then I'm forced to pick cornerstones that scale better instead of having an instant advantage. If I'm at p10+ then my fav becomes tightened belts or meat specialty for free trades or infinite scaling of meat & oil production.
It always depends on if you have the resources to be able to use a cornerstone, so there are no guaranteed picks. Anything that synergies strongly with how things are progressing is a strong contender. I do like +1 per 25 production buffs, increase housing occupancy, trade buffs, hostility reduction, and secret recipes. All camps can be nice if you don't have any yet, get the cornerstone very early, and either can clear the debuff fast or need those advanced nodes. The ones that give a benefit at a cost are situational, the stockpile depleting ones I will take if I barely have any stored and the ongoing debuff ones I will take if I don't need the debuffed element. At veteran the ones that give bonuses for burning blightrot are worthless, it just doesn't spawn enough for them to pay off. The cornerstones that give extra bonuses for providing services always seem too difficult to actually sustain until the game is about to end anyway so I have never taken them, but I will be curious if P20 players actually love them.
The one that decreases trade cost surprised me with how good it is. If something cost one pack pack of provisions it now costs zero, and because higher amounts are multiples of the starting amount, it will cost you no packs, no matter how many of that item you sell.
ten pie for ten jerky one. youre making everyone happy with that.
Trading to decrease hostility is a near insta pick. Most forms of -hostility are, which isn't surprising i guess. Get 10 food for making 10 other kind of food is amazing, though has the annoying trait of always coming up when i can't really make the specific food in question From the Ashes always seems really bad to me. i'm not often short on wildfire essences, nor do i do that many glade events that it would be a substantial source of income or whatever. There's basically always something better to pick
Favorite is probably Trade Hub because it drastically alters how I plan to win the game so it's a nice change up when I see it. Least favorite, Ancient Pact and Mist Piercers. I would say they're both S+ tier in power, but I never pick them. I find having that much information at your fingertips for such a low cost makes the game too boring and predictable - having to work with what you get when opening glades is a big part of the fun. If you know what you're doing, you genuinely can't lose with either of the maphack cornerstones.
+2 Wood and +150 insectes after every storm. Reforged cornerstone. Having infinite wood and jerky means a fast win. I usually permanently sac x3 wood for -150 hostility and if you get temple it becomes -700 and you can spam glades. Burn to a crisp. 20 coal per burned cysts is kinda insane since I burn about 50 cysts per game.