I wanted to get a picture of how most people go around in this game outside of missions.
Here's how I usually think of it.
I think of as "effective" exploration in A Valley Without Wind is that you get as much done per trip out in the world as possible.
It starts with the items I'm looking for. I think of these items as one of a few categories:
-Stash Supplies: These include upgrade stones, platforms, crates, lights, and other things you typically find in yellow stash rooms.
-Common Cave Items: These are things like granite, copper, quartz, and other items typically found in most caves.
-Blue Room Items: These include things like clay, consciousness shards, enchant containers and other items that are collected from ordinary blue rooms.
-Regional Surface Items: These are surface items that occur in specific regions such as plums, cherries, wood, and others.
-Regional Cave Items: These are various gems and such that are used to make spells. They tend to occur in specific regions and tend to be guarded by bosses.
-Secret Missions: These are missions hidden in the world that allow you to rescue NPCs and acquire buildings and spell materials.
-Unlocks: These are like achievements with purpose. Some unlocks require you to go to certain buildings or places to meet their criteria.
Stash Supplies, Common Cave Items, and Blue Room Items do not typically determine where I go. These are targets of opportunity that I take on the way to more important items, and usually only if I need them. These items are common enough that I only go out specifically to get them if I'm very low and need them immediately, which does happen occasionally but not too often.
I usually regard these as "secondary objectives".
Regional Cave Items, Regional Surface Items, Secret Missions, and Unlocks are generally what I go out specifically for and the serve as "destinations" for most of my trips. These are either region specific or, in the case of Secret Missions, are often very important and situational. Most of my trips end at these items, with more common items picked up along the way.
I usually regard these as "primary objectives".
I think of buildings as a few different categories:
-Small/Shacks: These are, well, shacks.
-Medium/Houses: These are houses and building of similar size.
-Large/Big Houses/Towers: Bigger houses, lava towers, and ice age buildings.
-Ruins: This tends to include Pyramids, and anything with the word "ruins" in the name.
-Windmills: Self-explanatory. These are found in Grasslands
I usually consider shacks to be very low priority. They maybe have one or two rooms, and maybe a stash room. I usually don't enter these unless I need a stash item immediately.
Houses and Large Buildings are usually what I go to for stash supplies and blue room items. They're fairly common and I tend to get enough stash supplies and blue room items from then on the way.
Still I usually only go into these if I'm low on a stash supply or a blue room item. I also don't usually go into non-hallway or stash rooms unless I need consciousness shards.
Ruins have "Maze Rooms" which are huge and take a long time to navigate. Because of this I usually don't enter them. The exception to this is when I need a lot of Enchant Containers or want to find a Puzzle Room, because these are the best places to find those.
I consider Windmills to be unique, as they seem to have the highest concentration of stash supplies of any building. If you run low on some stash supply and need a lot of them fast, these buildings are a godsend.
Anyway, that's usually how I handle running around outside of missions.
