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Re: Footwraps needed
There's a consensus that our characters are in need of something to fend off the cold when the warm, woolen, gloves/mittens/socks are not available. It was suggested that our characters should be able to fashion simple footwraps and the like from our woolen scraps.

Yeah, footwraps are so simple that they can be made easily. I think they could be added, and I’ll see about the possibilities. People have also used dried hay in their shoes to keep the feet warmer – that would be more authentic, but more costly to add.

April 28, 2020, 03:58:45 PM
1
How to Trap for Pleasure and Profit; A Rough Guide This is a rough guide to trapping as well as is ongoing. Game mechanics are known to changes often and so does player knowledge base. As such I will be adding and editing as I go to improve the guide and keep it up to date. This guide doesn’t rely on trading, nets or fishing rods or even active hunting or murdering NPCs. This is how to survive on trapping alone. I would suggest as starting off as a trapper in Summer as the shovel is so much better than the wooden shovel.

The biggest thing about trapping is where you call your territory. The best spots are near lakes and rivers, they act as natural barriers and drive prey into the traps. The best location is tucked against a series of lakes, connected with land bridges.

There are 3 traps that is best for the early game. The most useful is the Light Lever Trap. It only costs a slender trunk, 2 branches and a stone. You will need a knife as well. It catches birds, hares, pine martens, polecats, foxes, weasels and probably more that I am forgetting.

The next is the Paw Board Trap which only costs a board. You will need an axe and knife. It catches Foxes; regular and arctic. It is cheap to make, unwanted ones can be traded or burnt. Foxes bring in 4-8lbs of meat and a valuable fur.

Finally, the Pit Trap. Most labour intensive and well as costs 3 slender trunks, 10 branches, 10 spruce twigs and you will need to dig a pit first with a shovel. This catches all the big game: bears, elk, reindeer, seals, wolves and boars.

Once you have found a location you are happy with, near a series of almost connected lakes or near a river, build yourself a shelter and a raft with paddle. Stack the raft with slender trunks, branches and twigs and stones. Paddle up and down your shelter square, building lever traps along the shoreline. I would suggest leaving 3-5 spaces between each trap. A good lake trap line will bring in many mallards and ducks. Great for early game food. Do this to all the shore fronts nearby. Check them every day or twice. You can get kills stolen from traps by foxes and goshawks. Use your raft to easily paddle to check them, plus you will scare lake and river birds into your traps.

Once you have a day’s food or two, start building your paw board traps. They will work without bait but not as well. The best location, I have found is open mires and ground tiles to snag foxes. It is easy to check all your traps without moving. I tend to place 7-10 in a rough circle and if I don’t have enough to bait them, I put one bait in the middle, at least as a draw to the trapping area. These should be checked once every 3-5 days.

Now the big earners, the pit traps. If you are near interconnecting lakes with land bridges, you have hit the gold mine. In the little ground between the two lakes, dig a few pit holes and make the traps. Place the fences so anything coming this way would follow the coast and fall into one of your pits. If you don’t have interconnecting lakes, just build one from the riverbank or lake bank out. I tend to do pit traps every 3 tiles. The only herd animals are reindeer, pigs and wolves and even if you catch all the herd then the meat or fur would spoil before you could process all 5-10 animals. I rather lessen the work and grab only 3 animals. I dig about 7 pit traps out, fence it and then leave it, checking as often I do for fox traps.

You can bait with berries, vegetables and meat. Early game when I do not have a sauna, if I get an early big game like elk and cannot eat it all, I only cook what I can eat, and the spoiled raw meat goes into fox traps.  Elk love turnips and will happily go into pit traps for one. Berries will drive birds into your lever traps. A smart trapper will set up their lever traps around or on a berry bush to draw game to it. Foxes like meat, they act like dogs and will not take spoiled cooked meat.

Seal trapping is more of a novelty than anything  is actually a great way to get early loot. You can trap seals in trap pits and big dead fall traps. The dead fall traps are worth setting up on skerries if you see seals in the area. Trap pits work too but needs to be dug in ground right on the shore.

To live as a Seal Trapper, all you need is a raft with some rope, logs and slender trunks and you can check the east coast tile by tile and live off of seals. I found I can trade 5-6 regular grey seal furs for a bag of salt, which you can then salt 210lb of meat with. In fall you can just dry the meat or if you have a smokehouse built you can smoke the meat. You get 20-175lb of meat depending on the size of the seal and type. Ringed seals are smaller than grey. It very much an active pastime but well worth it actually.

There is also living bait traps. There are people who use bought animals such as sheep as living bait, tying them to a tree and making a double ring of traps around the animal in order to tempt lynxes, wolves and bears into traps. I figure why risk your sheep when a smoked elk cut would do the same. Once a trap has triggered and the animal is dead, animals and NPCs can walk over them so with a wolf pack, the third wolf would get the sheep.

There are of course other traps in the game, the simplest is the snare. It costs 3ft of cord. I rarely use these as require cordage, which early game I rarely have and later game, when I have cordage to spare, I am onto trap pits and have lever traps already set up.

Small and big deadfall traps cost more than light lever traps and require tying equipment. The small deadfall traps may catch badgers and gluttons but they are rare. I usually set these around cellars and dog feeding zones to stop scavengers such as them and foxes. Big dead fall traps catch what small dead falls do and lynxes and wolves which are rare once again. I would use them if I see tracks of those around or see them on the map but I wouldn’t make them otherwise as if they are triggered, they often kill the animal outright meaning you only have a few days to recover the bodies versus  up to a week in Pitfalls. You can use withes for these which lower the "cost" of building.

Heavy Dead Fall Bear Traps catch the same animals as Pitfalls but doesn’t need a hole. They do work with fences as well.  They do require tying equipment which makes them for mid game or working on over winter when the ground is too frozen to dig.

There is some ritual based things you can do regarding traps. When you bait a Bear Dead Fall Trap, do so naked to increase your chances to get a bear in it. Fox traps should be baited in the evening to increase chances. Another one is to leave fox traps in a doorway so women walk over them. (Anyone tested if female player characters count?) For snaring hares, wear mittens preferably woolen ones to increase chances.

I stress that this is a rough guide; you might find that you do better with snares or maybe deadfalls but I  just wanted to provide a little guidance to trapping and how to live off it.

Good luck and happy trapping.



June 20, 2020, 06:17:27 PM
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[Spoilers] Which bow is best? Aiming to resolve confusion around bows There's a regular debate around the bow accuracy stat on the wiki, and it left me wondering... Are shortbows really more accurate than Northern Bows? What's going on here?

So, having recently found myself with extra time on my hands thanks to the global pandemic, I fired up ghidra and spent some time decompiling UnReal World 3.62 to see what's really going on.

Decompiling code isn't exactly straightforward; one gets the instructions executed by the CPU, not the original source code, so there's a lot of piecing things together and sleuthing required. But I think I've managed to get to the bottom of this particular open question, and Sami has been extremely kind in letting me share my results.

Before I get into spoilers, I want to point out that the in-game manual on missile combat gives an accurate description that appears to be confirmed by code:

Quote from: Missile Combat
Success at firing an arrow or throwing a weapon depends on the applicable weapon skill. This is a common combat rule and missile attacks are no exception, but your performance only determines the initial quality of the shot/throw, ie. how much your aiming is off and how accurately you manage to send your missile on its course. The worse your performance the wider the cone of spread is possible, so it's not always guaranteed that a good shot/throw will result in a good strike at exact location of impact. Even a minor deviation from the intended trajectory will accumulate over distance. Any shot/throw is bound to hit better at close range, and the further the target, the more precision is required. Should your missile miss the original target or  even fly completely wild, it can still hit something else on its course - unfortunately this could be also your own dog.

Quote from: Ranged Target
A target that is being attacked by a missile weapon can't choose any conscious defense maneuver as in melee combat, but moving targets can still avoid getting hit. This defense possibility for moving targets is automated and it doesn't matter if the target is aware of the attack or not. A target is considered moving if it is actively running, flying, escaping etc. from one location to another, but also when it's making fast movements in its place like when engaged in a fight. The faster the target is moving the better chance it has to make it out of the way or to make a lucky movement in its place and unintentionally dodge the missile. This is based on the target's actual mobility and manner of moving, so if the target is slowed down due to physical penalties or for whatever reason, its chances to avoid missile attacks are lowered accordingly. Naturally, it's not only the target's speed that matters but the missile velocity as well. It's easier for any moving target to make it out of the way of low-velocity missiles, but very fast animals will be challenging to hit even with bow and arrow - and exceedingly challenging if they are both fast and small.

So straight up, the game tells you the important factors involved are:
  • Your missile skill, which determines the accuracy cone
  • Distance to target, which determines how much aiming errors can accumulate
  • Size of target, which determines what you need to hit
  • Mobility and activity of target, which determines their chance of getting out of the way
  • Missile velocity, which reduces the chance of a target dodging

None of this mentions "weapon accuracy", and Sami has confirmed in a PM to me that:

Quote from: Sami
If the bow accuracy would really be radically different between bows it surely would have been mentioned in the game information.

So I can confidently say that the accuracy figure on the wiki is extremely misleading. It does mean something, but you are almost certainly never going to encounter that in the game. Read the spoiler section below if you really want to know, and also have a little more bow mechanics revealed.

Spoiler: show


Every item in the game has an 'accuracy' figure, it's a measure of how un-aerodynamic the object itself is. Arrows and javelins have the lowest number (1), whereas plants and articles of clothing can have numbers in the hundreds. Items with lower numbers are more accurate when used as a missile. So if, in desperation, you were to throw your actual bow at an opponent, you could make a more precise throw with a Northern Bow ('accuracy' 5) than a heavy crossbow ('accuracy' 10).

To be clear, unless you are throwing the bow itself, this 'accuracy' value has no effect.

Your weapon skill, and the item quality (of both bow and arrow) all appear to contribute to tightening the cone of spread, with poor quality items making it especially hard to shoot straight. There is also a velocity calculation which is determined by the square of the bow's piercing/point stat, plus a constant (which appears to be the same for all bows). Higher powered bows (such as the longbow and Northern bow) will shoot higher velocity missiles, resulting in more damage on impact, and reducing the time a target has to get out of the way.

I presume, but have not confirmed, that higher velocity missiles also means missed shots will travel father, and are more likely to break on impact.

I have not checked to see if a bow's weight has any relevance on missile velocity. My gut feeling says it does not, but I do not have evidence to support that. Nor have I checked to see if the bows have different shooting speeds.



Many thanks again to Sami for not only an incredible game that's brought me much joy throughout the years, but also for his understanding and support when I decided to dig further into its mysteries!

~ Teellox

July 21, 2020, 04:49:27 AM
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Re: [Spoilers] Which bow is best? Aiming to resolve confusion around bows
> I have not checked to see if a bow's weight has any relevance on missile velocity. My gut feeling says it does not, but I do not have evidence to support that. Nor have I checked to see if the bows have different shooting speeds.

If you verify this, you'll be my hero forever  ;D

I was back in the decompiler earlier today, and look another glance at the missile code now that I'm more familiar with ghidra. I couldn't find anything that referenced the weight of the bow, so it's looking increasingly unlikely that it makes a difference.

This does mean that the hunting bow is the odd one out. It's not as powerful as the longbow, but it weighs the same and costs more.

Admittedly there are many layers to the combat code, so it's entirely possible hunting bows might be special-cased somewhere, but if it is I've yet to find it.

August 04, 2020, 10:01:41 AM
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Re: Who were "Njerpez" ? This might be a bit of a disappointment, but here are a few words from the very person who crafted the word "Njerpez" and drafted their place and role in the UnReal World;

1. As far as I know, the name is just a pseudo-word, chosen for the way it sounds to a Finnish-speaking person. (Of course there probably always are sub-conscious influences I'm not aware of myself.) Without meaning anything specific it just sounds "foreign". It should be noted that the same principle applies to all the other cultural names in UnReal World - most of them are pseudo words chosen to sound like a words which could've existed in ancient Finnish language.

2. Although UnReal World is based on Iron Age Finland (roughly 800 AD - 1200 AD), we deliberately chose to make a phantasy world resembling historical Finland. That way we have some artistic freedom, and not all the details need to be 100% accurate. Just like the world map is not real Finland, so the tribes and cultures are loose adaptations. Especially the Njerpez. They are somewhat based on Russian cultures.

Historically speaking, there is the 1323 AD treaty defining a border between Swedish Kingdom and Novgorod Republic. That border runs through the area which was home to Finnic tribes. So, a lot simplified, around the turn of 1200 - 1300 AD the land mass now known as Finland saw the Swedish Kingdom expanding from the West, and Novgorod expanding from the South-East.

One fictional inspiration for the world of UnReal World has been an alternative history; how would late 1200 AD Finland have looked like, if the Swedish invasion didn't take place? In that case, probably, there still would've been some sort of Novgorod expansion. And not just Novgorod expansion, but probably also Finnic tribes launching (counter)raids into Novgorod territory. Or, actually this Finnic - Novgorod warfare probably is also historically accurate, but only fragmentary documents remain.

EDIT:

Quote
The Njerps are, after all, crazed nutjobs, rather than a normal culture.

I must say that personally I'm a little bit sad about that. I mean, I feel that it would be great if we had all the cultures of UnReal World more detailed and behaving in more realistic and complex way, with multiple layers in their behavioural patterns and repertoire. But that is a huge task which would require a lot of AI programming, and the main focus has been developing the simulation of nature and animals.

August 09, 2020, 08:56:29 AM
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Re: [Spoilers] Which bow is best? Aiming to resolve confusion around bows
Can anyone provide more information regarding arrow speed in game?  Is it affected by character stats or just the bow type used?

As far as I can tell, it looks like it's just the bow type, projectile aerodynamics, and projectile weight.

Bow accuracy is clearly linked to character skill and item quality. I believe that character stats determine how easily it is to raise a given skill (shown with the '*'s next to the skill in question). It certainly determines skill boosts during character creation.

Quote from: Dr.Hossa
What is the difference in the performance of a juniper bow compared to a shortbow, since they have the same "impact"?

My understanding is that since the juniper bow/primitive bow uses the 'common' skill to construct, putting a limit on its quality. Whereas the short bow uses carpentry and allows for more quality materials, so you could potentially self-craft a fine or masterwork shortbow, as well as it being good for training carpentry in general.

As always, take everything with a bag of salt; while the missile code is where I've spent the most time, I can hardly say I've traced all of it.

August 16, 2020, 06:51:47 AM
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Re: Modding limitations? Hey Sloomingbla! Welcome to the forums!

In my experience with decompiling URW and modding in general, Sami has been super supportive and chill. When I did a deep-dive to find out how missile dynamics worked the other month, Sami was 100% cool with me posting my findings, which I'm very grateful for.

Quote
I wanted to know, what is it that stops people from creating their own custom creatures, cultures, in game balance and the like? Is it entirely hidden to the users, and if so what could possibly make it so hidden?

URW has a famously long development history, and is written in C/C++. The code has evolved over time, and you can see this in things like the item and recipe definitions, which can be easily modded. However many aspects of the game are still hard-coded in, with cultures and animals being part of this. Modifying those is hard, not because of any intentional efforts to make it hard, but just because that would normally be done in source code, rather than in configuration.

Being in C/C++ has an extra layer of challenge, as it doesn't decompile anywhere near as easy as, say, C#, which is what Unity games are written in. Modifying code for something like Rimworld of Kerbal Space Program is relatively straightforward, not only because the decompiler preserves most or all of the original names, but also because tools like Harmony exist to make the process easier.

Having said that, it doesn't mean that more advanced mods to URW can't be done, just that they're not going to be as straightforward as you might expect. NIght's Character Menu, for example, has identified a lot of values in the internal data structures, for example.

If you are looking at making binary edits or using code injection, do check in with Sami first. Not only is it polite, he's also genuinely lovely. :)

~ T

August 16, 2020, 08:30:34 AM
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Re: Modding limitations? As you claim to be a game dev, then the easiest course to get the game you want is to create your own. With unity, godot or even unreal engine available for free you can make your own open or closed source game fairly quickly, one person could have a proof of concept game within a month and an alpha test version within a year.

If you are young enough to want to work in game dev then you would also have something to add to a CV. I am well past have to work but I am creating my own version of urw, with a different name, not in Finland and using nothing from the urw code or assets, just for the pleasure of doing it and playing it. I am not even sure if I will release it, maybe the source will be open on gitlab, but maybe it will never get finished as I have so many other projects on the go.

August 22, 2020, 11:23:21 AM
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Re: "The Challenge" Beginning of Dead Month

Day 1 67% injured, unable to stand.

Destroyed my items, decided to head west and veer south around trees. I set myself to stealth mode to train my stealth up while travelling. I am in a spruce mire, so i gather some rocks and some cloudberries, one of the only berries that are worth gathering at this time of year for thirst (you can stay abundant on them if you gather enough). lingonberries normally wouldn't be worth it because they take a long time to gather and don't provide much liquid in exchange, but because i'm gathering fatigue by crawling around, I do gather them when my fatigue is over 10% because i need to waste time anyway to defatigue myself. I also gather one of each kind of unknown mushroom so that I can practice identifying them. Whenever I get cool, I look for a tree trunk and light it, then stay by it until I'm warm again, gathering branches, making a stone knife, making torches. I pay attention to the terrain, when I reach a lichenous pine forest, i abandon the southwest direction to go in a circle around the edge of the lichenous pine forest and am rewarded by finding a hill, which i also go around the edge of, but no mountains this time. This won't always pay off but it will more often than not. I resume the southwest heading. When evening hits, I keep going, looking for a fallen tree trunk, then light it on fire and eat some lingonberries so my stomach will be full and I can sleep the full night long instead of waking up from hunger every few hours.

Day 2 62% injured, unable to stand.

I continue southwest. My method of carefully exploring near lichenous pine forests pays off and I reach a mountain. I peek on the peak and discover I'm near north eastern Sartola. Since I can't use the F6 map I don't know in which direction I'm near it but I'm going to keep heading southwest. However, I can see another mountain two tiles north of me, so I'm going to zoom back in and check out that first, because I'd really like to find some water and I can't see any from here, even though it's late morning, so this is as good as the visibility is going to get. I don't see any water from the other mountain either, so back south to the first and then continuing southwest. Found another mountain. If I go northwest one tile and then straight north I1ll hit a small lake. I'll stay there tonight and then come back. There's another mountain to the west of me, but I want to heal my wounds a bit. I find a log near the lake and push it onto the ice to break it, then pull it back. I heal my wounds, light the fire, get some sleep. I wake up in the middle of the night in the rain so i do a little rock fishing. No fish.

Day 3 57% injured, unable to stand.

I head back to the mountain, look up but I can't see anything new so time to head due west to the next mountain. From the next mountain i can see another lake one tile northwest and a bunch of tiles north so i'm going to head to that for the night. each tile is 64 little squares wide so i just count how many times i go left and if i hit 128 (2 tiles) then i start going right again instead.

Day 4 53% injured, unable to stand.

I didn't make it to the lake before i fell asleep so i continue towards the lake. It wasn't very far away. Went back to the mountain, still can't see any new mountains, still north east of sartola, so I go back to my southwest pattern. I'm cold and exhausted and it's evening so light a log and go to sleep but unfortunately wake up at midnight vigorous, so I light a torch and continue on. By the small hours, I'm bitterly cold so I light another tree trunk. This is the problem with travelling at night.  I wait by the fire until I'm tired and then sleep the rest of the night.

Day 5 48% injured, finally I can stand. 12% starvation

Now that I can stay this is going to go better. I'll have to waste less time recovering because walking isn't tiring like crawling. I'm not too worried about the starvation, after 4 fulls days I'm 12% starved so that's about 3% starvation per day. I can survive another month and it won't take me that long to find a village. I do have to hurry because it's only going to get colder but for now I can light a fire whenever i get cold and still have lots of time for walking. Next month I won't be able to walk 20 steps without going from hot to numbingly cold. This means no more berry gathering. I have about 7lb of berries and I'm only going to eat them if I go multiple days without finding water and am in danger of dying of thirst, or if they start to go stale. I happened upon another mountain. There's another mountain southwest of here, 6 tiles west, more tiles than that to the south so I'm going to head for that. From this mountain there's another mountain to the west, just one tile south. And from here the are some mountains to the south. North west of those mountains is a small lake where i'll camp tonight.

Day 6 45% injured, 15% starved

Heading back to the mountain, now that it's morning I can see another mountain to the south, 6 tiles to the east, so heading that way now. And from there, there's one directly southeast a few tiles away. Still "near northern sartola" I'm really curious if i'm heading in the right direction or not but bouncing between mountains is the safest way to go. The next mountain is 8 tiles west and 14 tiles south which is going to be harder not to lose my count and i might overshoot it or something but if I don't make it there'll always be another mountain. I made it there safely and now there's one just one tile south and a long way to the west and it's near a lake! I'm spending the night at the lake and then continuing on tomorrow.

Day 7 41% injured, 16% starved

No fish at the lake, healed my injuries, heading back to the mountains. There are a few mountains in a row. From here, if I had northwest until I hit the water and then west until I hit the hill and then go northwest one more tile I should hit another mountain but if I don't hit the water where I expect to then I just need to follow along the coast and I'll still hit the mountain. And now it says I'm in north eastern Sartola. I don't see any roads yet but it's only a matter of time.  If I go to the southeast edge of these hills and then go straight south, then follow the lake counterclockwise until just before I reach the hill and then go straight south again, I'll reach the next mountain. I must have miscalculated because I never found this lake but sooner or later I'll find something. I found a thicket! I checked all four sides in case there was a road or other village-like tile near it but there wasn't. it was a long shot, groves are often near villages but thickets are random. I have come to a lake. I'm pretty sure it's not the one I was aiming for. I'm going to explroe around it. I drop 3 spruce twigs near the shore so that i don't go around in circles if I go all the way around. I spend the night at the shore

Day 8 38% injured, 19% starved

I'll continue this another day.

August 23, 2020, 09:28:29 PM
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Re: Who were "Njerpez" ?
Quote
But what was the real name of the tribe that come in focus and around what year was it?

I'm sorry if my previous reply was too unclear. Here comes a clarified reply:

Q: What was the real name of the tribe?
A: Novgorod Russians

Q: Around what year was it?
A: 1000 AD - 1200 AD

It is true that I'm not a Historian M.A. But I did study some folkloristics at the University. Naturally, that doesn't mean that I would be an unquestioned source of the ultimate truth. As always in science, we need further references, and we need to back our claims by evidence and we need to question the evidence, and we need to provide our sources etc etc. Honouring those principles I gave a few links in my previous reply. Especially this wikipedia article. Sure, again we can say that wikipedia is not a fully reliable source. But that article has further references, so if you are interested you can dig further and read books, or the original sources like Novgorod First Chronicle.

Naturally, all of this can be questioned, as counterarguments are a crucial part of scientific thinking. One counterargument provided in an earlier comment was:

Quote
5. They could not have been russians because on the one hand side there also must have been swedes, which are not been found and on the other hand side the etymological reference does not fit, because the referring tribe is on the wrong side of the map.

It is very likely that I fail to understand the argument correctly. From my point of view the premises of that argument are somewhat vague. I'll provide a more detailed examination:

- the game takes place in a fantasy world which is inspired by real history. I fail to understand the argument that "if there are russians there also mut have been swedes". The only way I can understand this argument would lead to including the whole world in UnReal World, like "if you include tribe X, you must also include the other tribes which had interaction with X, and after that you also need to include further tribes which had interaction with them, and their neighbours also and then the tribes living near them and so and so on". But the answer is that no, we don't need to. In a fantasy game world we can choose what to include, where to focus and what to leave outside the game world.

- Also, I'm not so sure about the "swedes have not been found in UnReal World" part. The swedes are included in Foreign Traders.

- "the etymological reference does not fit, because the referring tribe is on the wrong side of the map" leaves me rather puzzled. As stated earlier, the word "Njerpez" is my own invention, a pseudo word. So there isn't that much of etymology to the word. It is just onomatopoeia in action. Also, the UnReal World map is not an accurate copy of real world map, so directions and dimensions could well be altered because of fantasy. But, funnily enough, in the case of Njerpez the geographical reference is accurate. Just like in the real history, seen from the viewpoint of Finnic tribes the Njerpez / The Novgorod Russians come from South-East. But, the thing is, that as a person who drafted this fantasy world, and the locations of the tribes, my brain is probably too stuck with the way I see it, so I'm having hard time wrapping my mind around some alternative way of seeing how "this or that tribe is on the wrong side of the map". I'll be happy to broaden my perspectives if provided a clear explanation which a half-educated mountain man like me can understand.

August 24, 2020, 07:20:51 AM
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anything