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Suggestions / Shipwrecked on an island scenario (or more minimally: option for island start)

« on: September 11, 2024, 10:23:08 PM »

I enjoy a challenge and a goal, and so one of my favorite things to do in UnReal World is a variant of the punitive island challenge by Buoidda, see https://www.unrealworld.fi/forums/index.php?topic=5841.0 and the stories page at https://www.unrealworld.fi/forums/index.php?topic=5843.30.

As written it seems a bit too punitive for my tastes (mostly having to use a stone knife makes butchering very inefficient), but especially now with pausable tasks (which allows making boards with a stone axe, and therefore a paddle) it becomes a challenging but fairly dorable long-term quest to get back to the mainland. I think of it as being shipwrecked, and I mostly now think of UnReal world as the "getting shipwrecked people back home" game. You might consider making this into one of the pre-programmed scenarios. Not everyone is going to go looking for DIY challenges in the forums, and it would all be more convenient and standardized for people to compare experiences. It could be a selling point for the game, a really difficult scenario to test one's survival abilities, a Robinson Crusoe of the north.

Starting conditions could be:

- Injuries same as hurt, helpless, and afraid (adding frostbite to the injury mix would be a nice touch, if the season is right); the player got tossed around in the storm
- No clothes, only a knife; or maybe only very (50%+) worn cloth clothes; part of the challenge is having no fur/insulation; they got washed away into the ocean
- Starting on an island - I'd define "island" as between 8 and 16 tiles, outside any cultural area, not near the mainland
- Character has a long- (a year?) or perpetual-duration quest to go back to their home village that is in their culture area, this shows up as a quest destination on the map
- Starting point (i.e., the zoomed-in starting point) is standing on the shoreline. Maybe put a raft or punt or even just a log next to them for narrative consistency, how they managed to arrive without freezing/drowning; having those is not really a major advantage
- Maybe start at "Cold" temperature for some added realism that they just washed up on shore, especially if the chosen season is not summer

The narrative would be something like that their boat was caught in a storm and sunk, and they need to get home to their village. You could make it more dramatic by giving them some reason why they have to get back to their home village by a certain point in time, before they are pronounced dead, or their beloved will marry someone else, something like that.

That is a pretty "maximal" version of the scenario. Because the scenario is location-dependent, it seems to require inverting the character creation workflow, such that scenario-selection comes before location-selection. (The necessary logic being "If Shipwrecked Scenario, then enforce that the starting location is on an island"). Maybe then location selection for this scenario is automatic (i.e., skip location-selection entirely), or maybe they can re-roll the starting location as normal but the algorithm becomes that only locations on an island are chosen.

A more "minimal" version would be to just add a menu option to the location-selection dialog (in character-creation startup) to select an island. This doesn't give all the narrative structure, but it does make it easier to DIY the scenario. As it is, one has to either use separate software (Windows only), see https://www.unrealworld.fi/forums/index.php?topic=6072.msg16429 or re-reroll many times to land on an island. Being on an island ups the difficulty level and gives a different feel to the game without villages nearby, so it seems like a good option to offer players for use in any scenario.

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Bug reports / Reindeer and elk seem not very averse to thin ice (that kills them)

« on: September 11, 2024, 08:54:51 PM »

I'm doing an island challenge, started in winter. The island is medium, maybe around 15-20 land tiles. And "winter" of course starts in dead month, when the ice is still perilous. Throughout Dead and Winter three ungulates (two reindeer and an elk) have spawned on the island, and all three, seemingly within a day or two thereafter, wandered out onto thin ice and died. This was, of course, great for my character (free fur and meat, no chasing/trapping required). And of course I'm no expert on real life reindeer/elk; maybe lots of them do die in this manner. But just on general evolutionary principles it does seem like an extraordinary casualty rate; I would expect animals that evolved by the ice and the ocean to not fall in quite so readily. Maybe they should have a little more aversion to thin ice that can't support them programmed in? Other in-game animals also wander out on the sheet ice of course, but none are so heavy and so they usually don't break through.

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General Discussion / Re: Punitive island winter challenge

« on: September 11, 2024, 08:42:01 PM »

I've played variants of this multiple times, to the point that to me it is the main thing to do with UnReal World. To make tit feel kind of balanced (say, 75% odds of success) is to discard everything except a metal knife. It doubles meat yield, which makes a pretty big difference in not starving. An island in the 6-12 tiles range also makes things more feasible -- the game is basically "survive until an elk [or deer] shows up", and so you need to have an island where an elk eventually shows up. The scenario has become slightly different now that there is pausable crafting, which makes it possible to split boards from a log with a stone axe, make a paddle, and row to the mainland. But this seems well and good -- previously the options were swimming (not always possible) or waiting for someone (traders, woodsman) to show up with a metal axe, but that seemingly can take a year or more.

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Suggestions / Make high carpentry/textilecraft not the only path to "superior" quality items

« on: January 03, 2024, 08:25:15 PM »

It seems like there are certain items that are impossible or nearly impossible to obtain at higher qualities unless on is a skilled/master carpenter -- arrows and skis in particular. It seems like villages only have arrows in standard quality, and skis they don't have at all. This is also true of textilecraft -- yarn is only in villages in ordinary quality. AFAICT currently the only way to get fine/superior yarn is to make it oneself. As it is, it makes carpentry seem like of overvalued skill: it provides a unique path to certain items that can't be obtained otherwise, which is not true of other skills.

So if you have a grandmaster bowman or skiier, to fully exploit that skill, it seems like they also have to be a master carpenter (and for a bowman, also a skilled textilecrafter).

If one wants some perfect boards, one just has to find a (grand)master timbercrafter and give them a masterwork axe. It's not 100% easy, but it's easier than increasing the skill.

If you want perfect/masterwork almost anything else, you can find it somewhere in Driik or on a trader. The most I've ever seen foreign traders carry is fine arrows.

One suggestion would be to make higher-quality versions of arrows and yarn available in villages. And perhaps to make skis and ski sticks available at all for sale (including at higher qualities).

Another method would be to have companions make arrows/yarn/skis, and have potential companions tell you what their carpentry skill level is. This is on the dev map, but might be a further reason to prioritize.

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Suggestions / Re: Make it easier to find quests + add more quests

« on: December 28, 2023, 11:16:28 PM »

It is the case in the same village (other than these "personal problems" quests). However, that part of my feature request is to have this also be the case for nearby villages as well. In other words, if the NPC "knows" of the location of a nearby village (in response to "Are there any nearby villages?") then they are also able to tell the player that there is an active quest there.

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Suggestions / Make it easier to find quests + add more quests

« on: December 28, 2023, 07:25:31 AM »

After playing for a while, I decided I would like to do all of the quests, or as many of them as I can find. However it seems like finding a quest to do is often more time consuming than actually doing many of the quests.

If this post

https://www.unrealworld.fi/forums/index.php?topic=57.0

is correct in that every 15 days there is a quest that is triggered in a village, but it is not immediately clear which one, then perhaps make it somehow easier to figure out which village it is that has the active/open quest?

I'm thinking maybe a dialog option where you ask NPCs "Ask for gossip" or "Ask about troubles in the area". And the response -- if there is a village with an active quest nearby -- is something like "I hear that the village six miles northeast of here in 'Sausage heath' having some problems". Or maybe that can just be part of the response to "how's it going?".

Alternatively (or additionally), consider having the possibility of more than one open quest at a time rather than this "one every fifteen days" logic. It is just kind of . . . weird that one can walk/ski across miles and miles, discovering dozens of villages over a period of weeks, and everyone is like "We're doing fine, no problems here". Maybe like a fixed 5-10% chance of there being a quest on initial village generation there is a quest, something like that.

Secondly, maybe consider just adding more (and more complex, multi-stage) quests as part of game development? While one can I suppose make up challenges for oneself (island survival, explore everything, etc), it is sometimes nice to have (or at least be able to choose) more structure and narrative.

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Solved'n'fixed bug reports / [Fixed - 3.82] No more fine/superior blunt arrows

« on: December 17, 2023, 01:30:52 AM »

Previously it would be possible to create fine or superior blunt arrows with sufficient crafting skill. Since the arrows makeover, a highly skilled crafter gets the "You could have done better, but you can't make good out of bad" message when crafting blunt arrows, and all are standard quality. I presume this is because all slender tree trunks are of the same "standard" quality. Consider reinstating the ability to make fine/superior blunt arrows, or at a minimum removing that message.

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Bug reports / [3.82] Dogs end up inside walled village on arrival

« on: December 16, 2023, 06:43:50 AM »

On arriving at a new walled village, I was outside the walls (as usual), but my two dogs were inside the village walls. Seems like they should spawn outside with the player? This was on the first visit to the village if that makes a difference.

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Bug reports / Punts on Dogs (or other pack animals)

« on: December 23, 2021, 06:18:52 AM »

I'm thinking a punt should be too large for a dog to carry, yet they can. Even a bull I can't really imagine carrying a punt.

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Gameplay questions / Re: Capture dog in the wild?

« on: December 15, 2021, 06:44:16 AM »

Just found a dog in one of my deadfall bear traps, with a fire and fox bones next to it. Seems like an NPC hunter found a fox in my fox trap that was in the same place; cooked it; while he was doing that his dog got entrapped; and then he took off, leaving his dog in the trap! Nice guy. (I set the dog loose).

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Stories / Re: Island challenge stories

« on: August 19, 2021, 09:35:05 PM »

I did a variant of this. Essentially I did Nekot's challenge; got to a mountain, saw that I was outside a cultural region and on a peninsula with no villages; and shortly thereafter decided that staying zoomed-in all the time was excessively tedious, so I just decided to not explore and see if I could survive the winter without villages. The story I had in mind was that I was exiled for a year. More of a peninsula challenge, but that's not so different from a large island. I just made it to midwinter, but this character is now well-equipped enough that, absent doing something stupid, there's no reason he won't survive winter. The main turning points were:

Spoiler: show

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Suggestions / Re: Reinstate leather cord for arrow-making (3.70 beta 3)

« on: August 07, 2021, 04:37:26 PM »

Also a suggestion for this forum would be to increase the posting limit just a little bit. I have another suggestion but can't post it as a new topic because I've "reached my posting limit" with this one post here today; the message does not say when I would be able to post again. I will give it here as a reply just in case I forget to come back.

Topic: Heather as tanning material

According to Wikipedia's page on heather,[1] "Formerly heather was used to . . . tan leather". So, how about adding it to "tanning material" along with animal fat and birch bark? For characters that are just starting out or scraping by or doing The Challenge, this would allow them to use heather for tanning and roast/eat the animal fat.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calluna#Uses

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Suggestions / Reinstate leather cord for arrow-making (3.70 beta 3)

« on: August 07, 2021, 04:27:34 PM »

With the introduction of yarn, only "yarn" is suitable material for making arrows. At least from what I can find quickly, it seems like animal sinew was most frequently used, at least by American Indians. Here's the state archaeologist of Iowa: "Points were attached to the arrow shaft with a variety of methods. Most frequently, the arrow shaft would have a slit cut into the end to accept the point. Sinew would then be wrapped around the shaft to pinch the slit closed".[1] Not that yarn is wrong -- other parts of that Iowa page make clear that plants were sometimes used for bowstrings, and so why not arrows as well -- but rather that it should be possible to make an all-animal-product arrow.

This is relevant for gameplay since I'm doing "The Challenge", and so in that scenario starting in winter with no access to villages there's just no way to make an arrow anymore (wild nettle is all wilted).

[2] https://www.unrealworld.fi/forums/index.php?topic=901.0

[1] https://archaeology.uiowa.edu/american-indian-archery-technology-0

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Not bugs / Re: [not a bug] Unfindable "Cliff" Quest Treasure

« on: June 06, 2021, 09:50:41 PM »

Thanks Plotinus! My initial reading was "oh this will be a cliff tile", because after all that's what he says, but then other posters made it seem like sometimes it was on a mountain or hill, and I certainly wasn't expecting there to be a cliff all by itself in the middle of a forest! Sure does blend in. Anyway, curiosity satisfied.

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Not bugs / [not a bug] Unfindable "Cliff" Quest Treasure

« on: June 05, 2021, 07:03:42 PM »

I've read all the posts on here on reddit on this quest (including one person who screenshotted what a "ravine" looks like, so I have a sense of what I'm looking for). I spent about a month in-game time searching, and the region in question only has about 7-8 hill or mountain tiles that would have cliffs in them, and I cannot find it. I know there was a map maintenance issue that may or may not have removed it sometimes (so that's why I'm posting here under "bugs"). And I guess this quest treasure perhaps an NPC can carry away (so maybe not finding it sometimes is supposed to be part of the game), but just uploading if it's worth investigating. I'm also at this point curious, like "did I miss it in all that time I spent searching" so if someone does find it, feel free to tell me where it is. Savegame: https://morris.cloud/files/CHAEGHAL.zip

Messages - Modest Grouse