Note - Feb. 4, 2021 - The sequel to My Time at Portia is under development! Check out My Time at Sandrock!!

My Time at Portia is a really great game, but it can be confusing. Certain parts of the game are intuitive while others are not.

I currently have around 400 hours played and there are many things I wish had known in the beginning!

These tips are mostly things I have learned through playing and others are ones I've found elsewhere.

I will update this guide as I learn / discover new things. If there are any tips you want added, please comment or shoot me a message and I'll make sure to link to your profile or guide!

I hope you find it helpful, whether you are a new player or a veteran!

You can increase your backpack size at any time by clicking on the row. The cost increases per row. There are THREE pages of inventory space - click the green arrow on the right side of the page. This works out to 120 slots!

The Sort All button is available when you open a Storage Box and is your best friend. Clicking it will put all the items in your inventory into Storage Boxes where that item already is. Ex.: Apple Slices from your bag will stack up on the single apple slice in the Box, so all end up there. This removes ALL the tedium of dealing with items.

When picking up items from the Delivery Box, they don’t move to your inventory until the animation completes. Opening a Storage Box will interrupt it and you get the rest lf the items once you close the window.

Loot stays on the ground if it does not fit in your bags.

Unless you need a ton of glass, sand is a pain. Just abandon it to keep more room in your inventory while ruin diving.



Name your Storage Boxes based on contents! You can access all of them from any Box. It doesn’t make a difference where the Box is located, inside your house or not.

The Helper's Storage Box is listed in the menu and it can be renamed.

Click the down arrow to the right of the Box name at the top of the screen. I've got ore, bars, individual Boxes for each of the Ruins, etc. See the Storage Box Names & Contents section below for a complete list of mine.

The left and right arrows in the dropdown menu allow you to cycle through your Boxes.

The Mysterious Man sells a Metal Storage but it is extremely expensive. Just make tons of wood ones until you can craft Metal.

The final Storage Box recipe - Safety Box - comes from donating items to the Museum. It holds 60 items.

Storage Box Upgrade
Rather than placing a larger Storage Box and manually transferring items, stand next to the box to upgrade while holding the new box. The context menu will allow you to upgrade it directly, but the original box doesn't return to your inventory.

NOTE: The mod TweakIt[www.nexusmods.com] has an option to automatically alphabetize your storage box list.


Machines will stack in your inventory and can be placed inside Storage Boxes. The contents of the machine will go into your backpack.

Planter boxes empty if stored in your backpack and you lose all growth progress.

To move Flooring Tiles singly, hit them twice with an axe.

The Vacuum Cleaner will pick up all machines and tiles in the area into your backpack.


Items come attached to mail. You have to select the Keep button to move them to your inventory.

If you don't complete a story quest or Higgins steals it, the quest will still complete, it may just take a while.

Some missions have objectives that say "Assemble and Install". If you have already made the item, the quest list only updates when the item is installed. Making multiples of the item (especially at the Assembly Station) can get very expensive very quick, so be careful!

As of 6/24/19, there is a bug with missions that begin by receiving a letter which notifies you that the commissions will be posted the next day. If the next day is Saturday or Sunday, the Commission Board is not available, so you cannot begin the mission. Let There Be Light[mytimeatportia.fandom.com] is one of these. There may be others, I am still researching the issue.


Commissions are the soul of this game. Live and breathe them!

You can only have one Commerce Commission and one Commerce Mission active at the same time.

The earlier you go to the Commission Board, the better. Higgins can take the best Commissions.

Build extra Dee Dee stops. Once you complete the quests for them, other spots will open but there isn't a quest for them, so you can place them when you wish. There are a total of 14.

There will be tons of commissions for Wooden Pillars! Keep the supplies on hand.


Make lots of Magnifying Glasses! The mini game can be extremely picky where you have to select the defect. You need the Glasses in your inventory to use them for the hint. You can farm the Lens in the ruins or from the from Pinecocks. Using a Magnifying Glass does not affect the outcome of the minigame or the rewards.


To receive new Blueprints for the Machines for regular use and missions, you must give Data Discs to Petra at the Research Center. Keep them in your Inventory to save yourself trips!

Blueprints for Assembly Station Level 1 require 5 Data Discs, Level 2 requires 10, and Level 3 cost 20.

The day after you give Petra the Data Discs, you will receive a mail to let you know how long the research will take. You can accelerate the research time by giving her more Data Discs.


The museum requires a variety of items. Once an item is donated, it cannot be removed.

The desk in the entryway is your record of how many items have been donated and where you acquire the items rewarded for your donations.

Once you have donated 30 items, you will receive the book for the Safety Box, which holds 60 items.

This guide by clabunny is extremely helpful if you wish to complete the museum's exhibits.

The Auto Assembly Station does not require you to have the needed items in your inventory. You can also queue up more than one item at a time.

The Handbook has three tabs. The bottom tab is a quick list of all the machines. Selecting the Check button will take you directly to the page for that machine.

Once you have the Auto Assembly Station, you can still place blueprints on the regular Station. The items needed to construct the project will show up in the quest portion of the machine recipes (the yellow exclamation point). You can easily see what is needed to create the item.

You can then retrieve the blueprint on the Assembly Station and begin it on the Auto Station once you've got all items to start the build. This makes it easier to know what exactly what you need!


Upgrades at A&G Construction can only complete if you have the items in your backpack.


Every house upgrade takes up more space on the farm.

Expansions add rooms to the house.

When the house expands, the items are stationary, so any placed on the floor will need to be shifted into the new spaces, if you desire.


The Material Storage is separate from your Storage Boxes. The contents are on the left pane and your inventory is on the right. It allows for multiple pages of contents by clicking the green arrow on the right.

When creating items in the Factory, it will display all the pieces needed to make the item in a tree fashion, with the final item at the top.

If you do not have enough of a resource in the Material Storage, there will be a red number below the item icon.

You can queue up items and add materials to the Factory storage inside and outside the Factory.

You can change out machines after they are placed in the Factory.

Upgrade your tools as soon as you can!

The Upgrade Kit is purchased from Total Tools.


You can exchange wood / stone for the other at A&G Construction. There is a cash register in the back next to where Gust sits.

Each day you can purchase various resources from the Clothing Store and Total Tools. As you unlock each Ruin, the ore contained there will be added for purchase.


The Tree Farm is accessible from the beginning of the game. You can enter and chop down the trees, but the quest line for delivery of wood has to be completed before you can place an order.

After completing The Panbat Infestation mission, you can no longer chop down the trees at the Tree Farm. Once you have completed the entire quest line, you can chop them again.

You can chop down all but the fruit trees in the tree farm.

The thicker the tree trunk, the more resources the tree will drop. You will need an upgraded axe to get hardwood from those trees.

Bird Nests and Honeycombs contain items. Click to open them.

Hardwood can be broken into regular wood at the Worktable.

Poplar wood comes from creepy looking trees.

Dried apples are cheap to make and are great stamina food, so plant lots of apple trees. You can also do the same for apricots.

Plant at least one Nitra, Zeolite, and Crystella trees as soon as you can.


Copper and sand can look nearly identical. In the picture, sand is on the left, copper is on the right.

Stones around the exterior wall and inside the town contain gems and marble. Some trees in town can be cut down.

Make Carbon Steel constantly. You will reach a point where creating items becomes very lucrative and it's needed for practically all the high profit items. I always keep three basic furnaces going making charcoal.

Your calendar will alert you when your Ruins access expires. You will see the message “The entry qualification for the Abandoned Ruins is about to expire!”

Smelting Titanium Bars requires 6 Crystals. The Church sells a Crystella Tree. Plant it early in the game.

Crystal nodes spawn on Amber Island and in the Haunted Cave. Others appear in the Collapsed Wasteland.

Leaving nodes to "grow" will net you more Crystals after mining them. The nodes can give Power Stones. If nodes get too large, you may not get Crystals at all.


To create the Enhanced Iron Sword, you will need 4 Animal Skeletons. This is a rare-ish drop from rats in WOW Industries / Hazardous Ruins, but they are also laying on the ground in Eufaula Desert.


The Clothing Store sells cloth items and pigments and Total Tools sells ore. There is a quantity limit per day, but it refreshes in the morning.

The Civil Corps will gather various items in exchange for gols. The cheapest cost requires the completion time to be the maximum amount.

At a few points, you will need a LOT of waterproof cloth for commissions. They require 10 fiber cloth each, so keep a skiver making it. You can purchase five per day at the Clothing Store.



At the top of your Worktable and machines is an exclamation point. If you have an item in place on the Assembly Station, the icon changes to the Station with the exclamation point in the upper left. Clicking this will list the items you currently need for missions and commissions.

The quantity of items required is the small red banner on top of the item. The number on the icon for the item is how many you have on hand, either in your inventory or storage.

When creating items, the components are removed from your inventory first. For example, you have 10 carbon steel bars to complete a commission, but you also need to provide steel frames, which require 4 bars. Once the frame is made, you need to get six more bars out of storage.


There are chests all over the main map. Many are accessible from the beginning. Others may require a mount and / or creative jumping to reach.

The is a great guide by Boboscus of treasure chests you can access at the beginning of the game and it is excellent.

Stone stools are a good way to make money early game. Keep a half stack or so of raw stone around in your inventory because you will need stone at weird times.

Fishing can be lucrative. You can buy worms from Sophie.

Raising and selling animals is very lucrative once you can grow wheat.


Church items have a limited quantity but they refresh every day. I have multiple grow spots, so it took a few days to get all the Irrigation Towers I needed.

Stores have a limited amount of gols each day and merchants are selective about what they will purchase.

Unless you build multiple blenders, making fertilizer can get tedious. Sophie sells it.

Don't go crazy making strengthened glass to sell. You will eventually need it for a couple quests (and getting tempering liquid can be annoying).

When making items to sell, wait until you have large quantities. Market prices fluctuate and you can check them at the stores. When they are high, sell your huge batch of items.

Some merchants take scavenged parts only, the Mysterious Man takes parts and gold.

Apples make great stamina food, so get drying racks and apple trees going as soon as you can. They will also drop in the Ruins Dungeons.

The Relic Detector can be upgraded after certain missions. The upgrades increase the number of items you can see and the distance to them. Purchase them as soon as you can!


Stamina food is a necessity for long trips. Dried Apples are easy to grow and can be made on the Drying Rack.

An empty backpack is essential.

Assembling relics with the Recovery Machine in your Workshop is not instantaneous.

Glass isn't worth the inventory space, but Stone can be turned into Stone Stools for experience and gols.


You can use the map to return to the entrance of the Ruins.No need to dig / fly your way out.

You can exit dungeons by returning to the entrance of the room you are in.

When you run a Ruin Dungeon, you will not fall asleep while inside it if the clock is at or past 3 a.m. The time spent in the Dungeon is static, no matter how long you take to finish.


Rolling is extremely helpful.

The bosses generally have a pattern in their attacks.

There are boxes around the edges of the arena for Chemical Dropout in the Hazardous Ruins. They can be broken open but you may roll or run into them, so destroy as you can.

You can change your skill trees by visiting Phyllis at the Clinic. The cost increases each time. If you want to focus on relationship building, dump your points in the Social tree.

You can beat much higher level combatants by rolling away so you don’t get hit.

There are skills to boost the training of mounts, but they are at the bottom of the Gather skill tree.

The Artisan skill is essential. It reduces the cost of materials to craft items at the Worktable.



The Home Panel allows you to increase your stats. Each upgrade to the House allows larger boosts to the stats. I add items as I receive them, there is no cap for overage, so the boost will immediately apply when the House is upgaded.

The Attack stat is common on Relics.

Best Brother sells the Mini-Bar which adds +7 to Defense. There are not many house items that are easily obtainable early game, so buy a Mini-Bar every day!

You can receive single-use food that increases stats from events and quests. Check it before you just stick it in your Storage Box.

There is no penalty to your stamina if you fall asleep outside the house at 3 a.m.

Commissions give reputation points. If you're focusing on someone in particular, they are a great way to build rep. The Civil Corp usually have at least 1 mission on the board every day.

Raising reputation with characters who have a family will raise reputation with the entire family.

Raising reputation with characters can raise reputation with their close friends, such as Albert and Gust or Mei and Erwa.


You can begin Dates early by heading to the location of the Date.

You can end Dates early.

The Seesaw and Doodle are easy ways to increase date happiness.

Special events will automatically cancel dates if they occur on the same day.

When ordering dinner at The Round Table, your date will tell you what they want when you start the order.

Events like Festivals will automatically cancel Dates but there is no penalty.


A list of the benefits for each marriage candidate can be found here[mytimeatportia.fandom.com].

If you want to marry Ginger, she is usually only out at night and is frequently with Gust. Otherwise, she is in the Mayor's house.

Marriage candidates have hearts in the social window.


Birthdays were added when the game came out of Early Access. You can load a game before they were added and it will prompt you to select one.

The Banquet Table book is very expensive. I just purchased one that is already made.

You can right click dishes in your inventory to add to the table and right click the table contents to return them to your inventory.

You can invite as many people as you want using invitations. My table was full so I could not sit down!

The Banquet is timed and you can end it early.

You do not have to be present at the Banquet.

Citizens with whom you have a good relationship will leave presents outside your Workshop. They are a variety of items, but you cannot tell who sent them to you.

Carolyn will let you put the stats from one piece of clothing onto another, so you can wear your favorite outfit without taking a hit to your stats.

Once you unlock a particular piece of clothing by looting it, Carolyn will offer it in her shop.


The Mysterious Man sells clothing that comes from quests. It can be purchased before completing the quest.

The Home Panel allows you to change what your Helpers are allowed to do. It also has a log that tracks their behavior.

Characters that become Helpers once married are Alice, Emily, Lucy, Nora, Sonia, Liuwa, Mint, Oaks,
Wuwa, and Xu.

To use Ack as a helper, you will need data chips to give him the ability to do things. These drop in all of the Ruins and some diligent diving will get them fairly quickly. You can sell extras.

Ack can cook dishes that many characters wish for, including some that require multiple steps, like Fruit Salad. You don't need the items in your inventory for him to cook them.

Ack has his own inventory for gardening, he does not use the Helper Storage Box to get seeds. You have to add them manually using the Add Seeds button above his inventory pane.

This menu is also a great way to see what you currently have planted, including trees.

You can place Lara anywhere on your farm. Ack will find her regardless.

Save one Rusty Iron Pipe. They come from Fishing and Ruin Diving.

Livestock
The Feather Duster pets multiple animals at once.

Ducks sell for slightly more than chickens.


Mounts
In addition to selling horses, McDonald rents them. These are extremely helpful for speeding up traveling.

Trapping llamas is extremely lucrative. Once they are fully trained, they sell for tons of money.

Cumin for catching llamas can be purchased from Sophie's Ranch. Lettuce is only available via Gardening. Grow a lot!

Taming llamas has a minigame. A golden circle appears around the button you must press. The circle contracts. Pressing the button when the circle is closest to the button indicator gives the most points to tame.

Your mount often falls behind while you sprint.

Django sells recipes. Sometimes you can buy a single one that has the name, otherwise you get a choice of three with a specific ingredient. It is helpful early game, but he will sell you recipes you may already have. You can only purchase one per day.

Drying racks are not made at the Assembly Station, they are furniture. These allow you to make Dried Apples and Apricots that restore Stamina.

When placing Apples on the Drying Rack, Aroma Apples are automatically selected. They give the same Stamina as regular Apples, so be cautious when drying them.


Using the cooking pot is not like other stations. You need the item in your hands to place it. If you place too many of an ingredient, it will ruin the recipe. Make sure you have ONLY the quantity of the item you need on your hotbar. You cannot make more than one recipe at a time,

You can breed Emperor fish by using two in the Fish Display.

You can only get Bug Eggs from Mr. Ladybugs. You can make Flour or buy it at the Ranch.

Be careful when using the Fish Displays. If you accidentally take one out, it resets the timer on breeding.

By request, here is a list of my Storage Box names and contents.

Note that when you pick up a Box to move OR empty, when you place it again, the order of the menu for Boxes changes. The new Box usually goes to the bottom but not always.


I have two Boxes outside the house, one by the gate next to the Worktable and the other by the Assembly Station.

Helper's Box - By Gate
Items for the Helpers to use - Power Stones and food for livestock, non-tree seeds, some wood

Stuff - By Assembly Station
Items actively carried or used - chainsaw, drill, eyeglasses, data discs, vacuum, Ore and Stone that don't fit in Ore box, items to sell, building parts of items for the Main Quest

Resources
Wood - All items from cut down trees except apples
Ore - Unrefined Ore, Stone
Bars - Refined Ore, Plates, Planks
Fabric - Finished fabric and materials
Building Mats - Products from the Cog tabs, items from machines used to create other items (gear, coil, pipe)

Consumables
Cooked Food - Edibles and bandages
Food Ingredients x2 - Meat, Flour, Herbs, etc.
Fish (Rod + Bait are included) - placed next to Fish Tanks

Relic Pieces
Ruins #1
Ruins #2
Desert Ruins
Marsh Ruins

Items
Weapons
Clothes
Furniture - Includes spare Storage Boxes, Assembled Relics, Items purchased with badges
Gifts - Purchased, crafted, and looted gifts that are not used in other categories
Machines - Machines not in use
Scavenged Parts - non-relic items from Ruins
Animal Bits - Items from animals (teeth, bones, etc.)
Badges - includes coins for Marsh Ruins and non-stat Inspection Rewards
Garden - Church purchases, King fruits / vegetables, Gathered flowers, tree seeds, poop
Tools - Trap Box, Paintbrush
Accessories - Equippable items that give stat boots

After you retrieve the AI system, there will be a big fight. After you defeat the Rogue Knight, he drops his sword on the ground. It is easy to miss so make sure you pick it up!

The Mysterious Man comes on the 27th and only stays until Day 1 of the next season.

The calendar lets you set notes. These will alert you on the day that you set them. I use one for the Mysterious Man to remind me on the days he is there.

The button in the lower left of the map lets you select what is shown on the map, such as stores and fishing spots.

The paint brush and paint roller have infinite use. There's no need to buy multiples.

You can run up and down the conveyor belt to the mine.

To take photos with another person, you have to select it through their menu.

The Darts minigame is the most efficient way to get Knight Badges. The rewards are desired by a lot of the citizens and they give a huge boost to reputation.

Group pictures after events require clicking a banner near the temporary bleachers or the crowd.

Links
The My Time at Portia wiki[mytimeatportia.fandom.com] is extremely helpful.

There is also a subreddit.

There are other excellent guides here on Steam so please check them out. :)