Messages

106

Bug reports / Aggressive adventurer attacks bird in my trap

« on: April 05, 2023, 02:39:39 PM »

Sorry for this being a bit rambling, but I'm trying to provide as much context as possible...

It's midnight late autumn, so visibility is zero, i.e. I can't see what's in the tile next to me. I've just woken up and tried to move out to the overmap to continue work on my future farm fields, but can't due to local activity. I drew the conclusion that a bird probably has been caught in one of my "bird" traps and moves to investigate, and I eventually find that there is indeed a bird caught by trying to move into it, but I can't attack it as I can't see it, so I try to light a fire (I don't have any torches). While trying to do so, an adventurer known to roam the area shows up in the distance (by the virtue of NPCs wearing light vests), disappears, and then reappears angry, so I abort my last attempt to light a fire and retreats. He then move up to the trap and kills the bird, immediately after which he calms down. I approach, greets him, and pick up the bird carcass (lit by his light vest).

I don't think NPCs on non hostile terms with the PC should steal catches from traps by killing animals caught in them (he didn't steal it strictly, as he had several turns to pick up the carcass before I reached him, but didn't do so, but still).

107

Gameplay questions / Re: Master Fisherman can't catch no fish!

« on: April 05, 2023, 08:39:06 AM »

As @Privateer said, the fishing difficulty has been increased, and bait seems to be almost required now (which makes real world sense). Also note that bait is used up even if you fail to catch something (larger bait is nibbled upon, while smaller ones, such as bird fat, is lost in a single attempt).

108

Gameplay questions / Re: How to turn"fistfuls" into "bunches"

« on: April 04, 2023, 08:48:43 AM »

I expect those to be intended to mean the same thing. Have you tried to talk to him and offer 60 fistfuls of the leaves (of whatever the requested plant is, of course)?

As far as I've seen all such quests have been for leaves, and those can just be picked even when immature. Mature plants can be harvested and then have to be "threshed" to extract the useful parts from them. Apart from this typically yielding more than just picking, it also tends to provide additional parts of the plants, and thus is the better option when available (which it isn't when the quest is given before the plants have matured).

109

Development News / Re: Animal droppings - an indicator and a fertilizer

« on: April 01, 2023, 05:20:41 PM »

@Dmytro Ankudinov: Don't be surprised if said huge bear (or adventurer, for that matter) takes offense at your throwing crap at it though...

I do agree it seems unlikely it matters if enemies get infected wounds or not, as either you or them gets killed long before that, except under unusual circumstances that aren't worth the effort to cater for.

110

Solved'n'fixed bug reports / [Fixed - persist in 3.80beta]Questionable NPC fire location selection

« on: April 01, 2023, 04:52:00 PM »

My character is currently preparing fields, and an adventurer (known to be in the vicinity) starts a fire on a tile fairly recently prepared for agriculture (don't know if the ash had disappeared yet or not).

This is not in itself a problem as nothing has been planted, but would be if I wanted to plant something on that tile as it delays the time until it becomes available. It also suggests NPCs might not care if the tile had been planted, which would definitely be more annoying.

111

Bug reports / Nettles aren't identified as to whether they're mature or immature

« on: March 29, 2023, 05:15:21 PM »

After harvesting the nettles in an area I ended up with two stacks that had exactly the same description. One of them could be threshed (leaving stems that could be retted), and the other one couldn't (both of them could be retted directly with no warning to issued when trying to ret them).

Edit:
Corrected report by removing a problem that wasn't (apart from me not paying attention).

Edit 2:
Tested to ret mature nettles: No indication that the player might want to thresh them first.

112

Development News / Re: Still forging the Blacksmith NPC code

« on: March 28, 2023, 08:05:16 PM »

A couple of thoughts about complications (you've probably thought about them already, but it probably doesn't hurt to bring them up).
- What to do with a shifty player customer that either doesn't return to pick up goods within a reasonable amount of time, or just keeps showing up with insufficient goods (or willingness) to pay?
I'd say the blacksmith should probably sell the goods to someone else if the player is too sluggish to pay for the goods (with a fairly generous time limit). It also ought to reduce the standing of the player either with the village or with the blacksmith (or both) so efforts to improve the relations would be needed before the blacksmith is willing to take the risk of dealing with that customer again.
- There should probably be a limit as to how much a character can order at any one time. After all, crafting things take time, carries a risk (even a trustworthy player may run into a njerpezit war band and not return from that encounter), and the blacksmith should probably spend most of his efforts on serving the community. However, there's a gaming aspect in that players probably will find it rather tedious to trek across the whole world to place orders for a single item when picking up the previous one, so it would be useful if players would be able to increase the number of items that can be on order (but not finished) at any one time with successive return business. I probably wouldn't take on a new order for an item if I've finished an order but the customer hasn't payed for it yet.

113

Bug reports / Failure to learn plant properties fully at the maximum skill level

« on: March 20, 2023, 05:09:52 PM »

I've got a fairly recent (½ a year or so) Islander character who's managed to gain a 100 skill in Herblore, but still fails to fully identify Bog Beans.
When I reached 100 I reasoned that it might be a matter of reaching 100 on a check for a different plant after having checked the Bog Bean leaves, so I continued trying to identify it, and eventually "increased" the Herblore skill (a + sign by the still (of course) 100 Herblore skill, but still no full identification. I then went on to only test on the Bog Beans, and just reached a new level "increase", but I still get "There is still more to learn." at the bottom of the description.

It can be noted that there are descriptions for eating it and applying it topically, so it might be either a case of a complete description that somehow gets incorrectly described as incomplete, or a case of a the maximum skill roll still somehow failing consistently.

I believe earlier characters have been able to identify it fully, although Bog Beans are somewhat uncommon, so some characters may not have encountered it (or possibly have had it fully identified due to the cultural background).

Edit:
New character (7 strong wolf pack invading homestead vicinity ended previous one) reaching 100 in Herblore and fails to identify Yarrow completely (or at least the screen states there's more to learn). However, bog beans are claimed to be identified completely for this character (a Kaumolainen this time).

This character hasn't yet "increased" the skill while at 100. I'll continue until it does using Yarrow only. I don't expect it to change the situation, though.

114

Suggestions / Re: Fixing fishing nets

« on: March 19, 2023, 08:53:03 AM »

It seems net maintenance is a significant part of real life net fishing. Remove sea weed and other things tangled into it, mending holes, etc., making net fishing more of an effort than just set net and then pick it up later "for free".

115

Suggestions / Re: Villager exploit fixes

« on: March 10, 2023, 04:58:48 PM »

I agree companions shouldn't just accept constant abuse, but the player planning of murdering the companion is, in my opinion, the exception and will get away with murdering the victim with proper planning anyway. Thus, I think it's more important to make sure honest mistakes don't escalate out of control than murderous intent being punished when these two cases are balanced against each other.

It can be noted that in the game mechanics, arrows do go astray, while blows never hit a an unintended target (they may miss, but not hit someone else instead), but "hit again" can take a lot of hits to finally kill a target, especially if you're trying to use blunt attacks to the head to preserve the skin, so it's easy for the player to mentally doze off a little. An optional warning message when an attack is made at a friendly target may allow for an immediate anger reaction from a melee attack, as those are never accidental from the game mechanic perspective.

In the "squirrel hunter" case I would probably use telepathy, i.e. have the companion know whether it was targeted or not to account for various clues the game can't really capture. It can still be abused by murderers, though, as you'd then aim at the ground on the other side of the companion (and it's certainly possible for a companion to move in front of the player when practicing archery if "pick up and then shoot" is used, rather than manually picking up the arrow first).

116

Suggestions / Re: Villager exploit fixes

« on: March 09, 2023, 05:33:32 PM »

Just be careful not to make companions overly aggressive when hit. Accidents happen, especially with missile weapons, but there have also been accidents where you spam "attack again" and you missed that the target was dead and a dog (or companion) moved to that tile, and you don't want your robber hunting posse to devolve into a free for all when everyone is fighting against everyone else.

117

Development News / Re: Blacksmith NPCs and ordering their products

« on: March 04, 2023, 09:44:35 AM »

This sounds like an excellent addition.

I've got a couple of follow on comments/questions:
1. Like Ezhe, I'd definitely like to see the ability to commission repairs eventually.

2. How will quality be handled in the process?

One approach would be to always produce standard quality items, in which case the blacksmith would be a help to get started with the basics, but irrelevant once that level has been reached.

Another approach would be to give blacksmiths skill levels so they can produce items of up to a certain quality in each category (e.g. fine tools, decent swords. fine knives, decent axes), where you'd order the quality you want (or rather, can afford).
In this case the player would want to eventually hunt down the rich settlements where masterwork level smiths reside to compose their sets of masterwork items.

A third alternative, which I'd definitely recommend against, would be to have the blacksmith make a quality roll to see what you happened to get. I think that would be bad, as a craftsman with self respect would make new attempt until the result is satisfactory (and the price should reflect how much extra work it is to produce higher quality items).

118

Not bugs / Re: Cant plant crops in autumn

« on: March 03, 2023, 01:58:55 PM »

This is most likely not a bug:

Different plants have different growth periods, and they don't line up with month boundaries (plants don't know or care about the human invention of months). In fact, withering time isn't fixed, but varies from location to location, so you may encounter some withered plants in one place, while finding others of the same species a little distance away that is just withering (and the same goes with maturing). In addition to that, you can't plant when the soil is too cold, both in the spring and in the autumn, although attempting to do that results in a different message.

The wiki has a page (https://www.unrealworld.fi/wiki/index.php?title=Plants) containing information on when different plants can be planted, although it hasn't been updated to cover flax, and so presumably doesn't cover any changes that may have been done to other plants since then, so the information should probably be taken with a grain of salt.
Again, the month during which plants wither is a wide span around a non specified "target" time with some randomness added on top of that. Also, I'm not sure how close to withering you can plant new crops: it may be that planting can't be done for some time before withering is complete. If you're harvesting autumn planted crops (to ensure the crop starts to grow immediately in spring, you always have some time to harvest and replant (a couple of weeks for Rye, I think) using the seeds gained from the harvest (assuming you thresh it promptly, of course). I assume it's possible to be extremely unlucky and have cold weather get in the way, but the growth season is sufficient.

119

Suggestions / Re: Unconscious and Unable To Walk fatigue

« on: March 01, 2023, 09:27:01 AM »

It's unusual for a character to lose consciousness due to shock alone (my character was particularly sensitive to it), with the dominant cause being accruing a combined penalty to over 100 with an injury. A character with 90 fatigue and 20 injury would wake up with a penalty of 110 and remain unable to move until 10 points of fatigue had been worn off, which is rather boring (but happens a lot when tanning elk hides...). (I ignored encumbrance in the example above).

I don't think there's a need for any extra penalties for being hit in the head to the point of blacking out, as blacking out usually means death anyway. Separate concussion effects due to being hit in the head are not unreasonable, however.

120

Bug reports / Re: Too much cold

« on: March 01, 2023, 09:16:58 AM »

It's tricky to get hold of enough quality clothing to deal with the coldest of winter days (when the temperature scale is at the bottom). You can't make all of it yourself, as you currently can't make wool clothes to complement the fur items.
As indicated above, there is a temperature indicator as part of the weather information at the top left of the screen. While that doesn't give you any exact measurements, I'd expect the very bottom to indicate somewhere around -40 Celsius.

The reason women tire slower than hunters is that they lug around less gear, and so have less encumbrance, which is the main factor that determines how fast a character tires.