How to Play Feed the Scorchpot

Feed the Scorchpot plays like a board game you cannot flip off the table. Each season you roll fate dice, lock the faces you want, spend leftover rerolls, form Marks, harvest every matching hex, then cook. Build, roll, harvest, cook, feed, then do it again with a hungrier landlord. The official demo trailer now lives on the Demo page if you want the voiced thirty-second version of that loop.

If you still need the contract explained, start with Getting Started. If you already know the buttons and keep starving in year six, skip ahead to Scoring Combos and Island Layout. For hangry years, open Tantrums. For the hunger slider, open Difficulty Modes.

Fate dice and Marks

A typical turn starts with three fate dice. You may keep any faces and reroll the rest, Yahtzee style, until the reroll budget is gone. You do not have to reroll the whole tray. Cherry-pick.

A Mark is the sum of two dice. Three dice named A, B, and C produce three Marks: A+B, A+C, and B+C. Those sums range from 2 to 12 and light every hex that shows the matching number. Roll 3, 4, and 5 and you harvest 7, 8, and 9. That example is the tutorial’s gift; later trays include odd dice, even dice, colored dice, and the joke die carved into six sixes. The dice Codex and dice tier list cover those mutations.

Because one Mark lights every copy of that number, clustering farms on a number you can actually produce is stronger than sprinkling one farm on every face of the probability curve. The Mark Planner lists which pairs create each total. The Dice Odds tool shows the three Marks for a tray you type in.

When to stop rolling

Rerolls are a resource. Early seasons you can afford to hunt a specific 10 because the quota is small. Late seasons, a mediocre harvest with a matching recipe beats a heroic hunt that leaves you with two dead Marks and no cook.

Stop rolling when:

• Two Marks already hit tiles you farmed.
• A third hunt would spend the last reroll on a 12 you never built.
• You are holding a consumable that adds a Mark anyway. Check shop tools before you gamble the tray.

Keep rolling when a single extra 6 would complete a 10 and 11 that both sit under triple-corner farms. That is the difference between a planned tray and superstition.

Harvest, then cook

Harvest triggers every marked hex and dumps ingredients into Fodder. Cooking spends the pile and applies recipes. You pick recipes that your current ingredients can legally pay for. A recipe that wants fish does nothing for a grain island. That is why you buy recipes that match the tiles you already own, not the most exciting name in the shop.

You usually have more than one season before the dragon eats everyone. That buffer is not an excuse to skip cooking. It is a chance to convert leftover food into ducats and to fix the board. The 20-Year Walkthrough explains how that buffer shrinks.

Years, ducats, and the shop

Survive the year and buildings print ducats. Leftover harvest can convert to gold too. Spend it on farms, upgrades, recipes, dice, and tools. The shop can be scorched for a year during a tantrum; if you see that warning, buy the recipe you need before the fire lands. Updates notes the in-game Codex added before launch so you can inspect these pieces without a wiki tab, but the wiki still ranks them.

Pressing your luck

You can finish the contract early for a better payoff, or stay longer while odds harden. Staying is a high-score hobby, not a beginner plan. New cooks should aim to see year twenty once before they chase screen-shaking numbers. Pet the dragon when the game lets you. It does not change the math. It does change whether you remember why you installed a cooking roguelike.

Next: Island Layout so the Marks you just learned have somewhere useful to land. Then Controls if you want the input list without the strategy lecture.