How to Restore Desolate Island in Terra Nil

Welcome to Terra Nil, the unique reverse city-building game that challenges you to bring a barren planet back to life. If you’re passionate about restoring desolate lands and reviving polluted oceans, this game is for you.

The first level, River Valley, teaches you the basics of the game mechanics. Once you complete it, you move on to the challenging task of restoring Desolate Island. If you feel like you need help, don’t worry—in this guide, you can learn all about how to restore Desolate Island in Terra Nil, step-by-step.

Terra Nil Desolate Island walkthrough

Restoring Land and Ocean

First, you have to purify the barren lands and polluted waters using toxin scrubbers. This is a must, as almost all structures can only be built on a clean surface. To use them, you have to build turbines on top of stone tiles, then place toxin scrubbers to clean dirty land and ocean tiles.

After clearing some barren lands, you should focus on recovering ocean tiles to unlock sandbank. Using sandbanks, you get to build structures in water. Try to recover 70-80% of the map, then you can start the next step, which is creating biomes.

Creating Biomes

In the Desolate Island level, you have to create four biomes: Tropical Forest, Coral Reef, Mangrove, and Beach. Before you start creating biomes, though, you have to use irrigators to add greenery to the lands. Once you have some green plots, follow these steps to create each biome in Desolate Island:

1. Mangroves

Build a Hydroponium on an irrigator near water to create Wetlands. Each Hydroponium only costs 25 resources to build. By creating Wetlands, you increase the temperature of the Desolate Island.

After creating Wetlands, you can use a Salinator to create Mangrove biomes in Terra Nil. Salinators increase the salinity of water and help grow mangrove trees.

2. Beach

You can create the Beach biome by building a Littarium on top of Toxic Scrubbers. That’s all you need to do to get Beaches in Terra Nil.

3. Tropical Forests

Tropical Forests can be built by creating Shadecloth Pillars near the cliffside. Green areas under Shadecloth turn into Tropical Forests.

4. Coral Reefs

Out of all biomes, Coral Reefs are definitely the hardest to build. To make Coral Reefs, you have to create a Monorail Node network first. Make sure one node is close to oceans and another next to an irrigator.

Build a Coral Lab on an irrigator and use the Monorail Node to move it into the ocean. You can move any Coral Lab within the range of a Monorail Node. Once the Coral Lab goes into the ocean, it creates Coral Reefs.

You have to reach 100% on all biomes to start the next stage for Desolate Island in Terra Nil.

How to find all animals in Desolate Island

Once all biomes are restored, wildlife begins to return to the Desolate Island. And after building an Animal Observatory, you can start looking for animals. Here are the minimum required conditions for each one:

• Tortoise: near 10 Beach tiles and on an island;
• Manta Ray: near 8 Ocean tiles, 6 Coral Reef tiles, and 3 River tiles;
• Parrot: near 20 tiles of Tropical forests with no nearby buildings;
• Flamingo: near 10 Beach and 10 Wetland tiles;
• Reef Shark: near 16 Coral Reef tiles, 4 Mangrove tiles, and 20°C temperature;
• Whale: near 20 Ocean tiles with no nearby land.

Related | Where to find the Beaver in Terra Nil

Recycling

After bringing back biomes and animals, you can now leave this area. However, before leaving, you move on to the last stage of restoring the Desolate Island: recycling all existing structures.

First, create an Airship and a Recycler Station to start the recycling process. After building the station, use Recycling Beacons to pick up all your buildings. This is the last step for clearing Desolate Island in Terra Nil.