Messages

76

Suggestions / Re: Working with water in winter

« on: May 05, 2023, 09:34:00 AM »

Even a grandmaster will have a variability in how long things take. There are always room for unforeseen circumstances, such as a pesky wasp buzzing about, a misplaced tool, a sudden urge to relieve yourself, hidden defects in the materials, etc. There's also the possibility that the spirits are helpful so everything go perfectly, with no need to adjust anything after the initial placement, etc.

77

Gameplay questions / Re: Has persistence hunting been made more difficult?

« on: May 05, 2023, 09:24:42 AM »

You can still wear down animals with more speed and stamina than the PC provided you can pin them against an obstacle and get them to run back and forth along it, such as e.g. along a river (as few UrW animals swim voluntarily, unlike real world ones). However, you can easily find that a single slip up may result in them escaping to either side and leave you in the dust.

78

Suggestions / Re: Where is the robber gang seems too awkward to complete

« on: May 04, 2023, 09:17:49 AM »

I don't think I've found bear/wolf tracks on the world map in conjunction with the injured adventurer quest more than very occasionally.

The robber quest is very tedious since you have to visit every tile in the area, and even if you zoom in on every tile you may still miss both them and their tracks (the only quest worse is the animal in forest cover one). Traveling through every tile on foot ought to work as the robbers should home in on you, but it takes an enormous amount of player time to do that.

I believe you have the standard low chance to find human tracks on the overland map, but that chance is so low that it's not useful as a method of finding them, just a potential small bonus.

I agree there is a need for additional indications of their presence, such as blood scapes (as suggested), or seeing smoke/fire in the distance. Footprints in an area around the target would help as well. A smaller target circle might be another alternative.

79

Gameplay questions / Re: Has persistence hunting been made more difficult?

« on: May 04, 2023, 08:58:36 AM »

I've seen waist deep snow. I'm unsure if I've seen deeper than that, but can't rule out chest deep being possible.

The introduction of snow effects on animals and the introduction of crust makes major differences to animal endurance.

Snow now affects animals, so elk and reindeer tire very much faster in deep snow, and it seems to get worse the thicker the crust is. At the same time, a sufficient crust now makes it possible for the player character to ski without losing stamina.

I very recently gave up on trying to chase a glutton with my fast (7 km/h) character during "spring" (thigh deep snow still, I think) due to it recovering stamina completely even though I didn't lose its tracks more than very marginally, while elks and reindeer are fairly easy to hunt down in open terrain while skiing. They can shake off my player when getting into spruce terrain and have their tracks get into a mess of older tracks. I've found badgers to be very easy to tire out (both with and without snow), with the main problem being to track them (so open terrain is a great advantage).

Slower characters have a harder time and they require more luck when it comes to the prey movement (a straight line will allow the animals to recover stamina while moving), but with meandering and walking in circles it's still possible to hunt elks and reindeer down. However, even slow characters have been able to catch elks and reindeer, but the failure rate is higher (you can (ab)use the system to try to zoom in on the map close enough to an animal to hurt it with a javelin or arrow: with a bit of luck you're able to cripple them, which makes a rather significant difference to the difficulty of tiring them. Using arrows should be possible even at fairly large distances, although the hit rate will be fairly low. I haven't used broadheads, but I guess that would improve your chances of bleeding the prey out).

I'd say the Calle character definitely is on the poor side when it comes to tracking, although it matters less during the winter, but losing the track means losing time that the prey can use to recover stamina, and it means any spruce terrain is a gamble. 4 mph should be about 6 km/h, which I consider to be a fast character, so I'd be happy with that speed on a character of mine (I consider 4 km/h and less to be slow, and 5 km/h to be about average).

80

Suggestions / Re: Transport sea or land, carry not based on weight

« on: May 02, 2023, 11:53:10 PM »

As far as I understand the inflated carrying capacity is a work around for the inability to pull logs after a water craft rather than loading them onto it. If realistic carrying capacities were used you wouldn't be able to use rivers to move logs (well, you might load one or so onto a raft).

81

Gameplay questions / Re: WEATHELORE CAN INCREASE!

« on: May 02, 2023, 05:03:59 PM »

I carry a snare for fatigue recovery activities when I don't have anything productive to do. It doesn't sky rocket the trapping skill, though, but there is a trickle improvement.

Weatherlore can be used to determine whether to set up a rain shelter for the night while traveling, as well as to determine whether is seems like a bad idea to venture out in the middle of the winter if you haven't gotten hold of enough clothing items to deal with the coldest periods. It can also be used to try to determine whether you should try to cross frozen bodies of water during spring, assuming you don't want to risk getting caught on the other side after a day of intense melting.

I do agree with Tinker that means of improving the ability to light fires would be welcome, though, whether through skill or technology.

82

Suggestions / Re: The UrW Anti-RSI Campaign group. ARSI, for short.

« on: May 02, 2023, 09:14:20 AM »

I can give you one situation where you do want to smash ice repeatedly: Trying to reach a dead elk that went through the ice, but the ice starts to make cracking sounds even when you're crawling towards it. In that situation you can fetch a punt and smash your way through the ice to reach the carcass, haul it up into the punt, and smash your way back to shore.
Another case is when net fishing while the ice appears (or continue to net fish after the ice has appeared), as well as smashing your way to the shore if you're out traveling as the ice appears.

83

Gameplay questions / Re: WEATHELORE CAN INCREASE!

« on: May 02, 2023, 09:07:48 AM »

Yes, it can. I've had several characters who'd reached 100% (they lived a fair number of years). My standard routine is to use Weatherlore every time my character eats (and Herb Lore as well, until reaching 100%), apart from the very early game where I'm spending all available time trying to get food in one way or another.

You can also improve dodge by dodging a lot (but reaching 100% is a lot of work using cheesy techniques.

84

Gameplay questions / Re: [Spoilers?] Bird Thief Quest question

« on: April 30, 2023, 09:16:50 AM »

My experience is that it's bad for you to reveal yourself, so I've refrained from doing that. As far as I can tell, all that happens is that the perpetrator gets a low esteem of you, but there's no indication anything else happens, so just keeping it vague seems to be better.

One might have hoped that the perpetrator would have seen it as a lesson to be learnt from, but he acts like most criminals, i.e. blames those catching them rather than their own behavior. Thus, he acts in a realistic manner.

85

Gameplay questions / Re: Has persistence hunting been made more difficult?

« on: April 30, 2023, 09:11:12 AM »

I used to never run, but have shifted to selective sprints. I track prey walking to keep them bolting, and once they have gone from slightly fatigued to fatigued I run as soon as I see them again to get them to bolt as quickly as possible, giving them less time to recover. Once they start to run I stop.

Tracking in spruce terrain is a pain, and there's a high risk of losing prey that only requires a little bit more before they're breathless because you can't find the continuation of their tracks or their tracks just merge with a mess of older tracks, and when you finally do manage to find them again (if you do), they've recovered.
Being persistent when chasing prey is important, but you also need to know when to give up (or at least that you should have given up some time ago) because your character is too tired to realistically be able to catch the prey before falling asleep, or it's getting too dark to track the prey. One option is to leave a map marker and then return to try to find your prey again the next day, as animals tend to stay in the general area of some time.

A fast character is definitely a lot better at persistence hunting than a slow one, but it still isn't impossible for slow characters to succeed. A really annoying thing is when the prey's walking speed is higher than that of your character and the tired prey starts to walk in a straight line, without diverting into loops and whatever, so they recover while getting away from you. Fortunately, all prey isn't that savvy.

86

Suggestions / 3.80 (beta) Change trade item preferences

« on: April 29, 2023, 05:02:47 PM »

I don't think it's version dependent, but I've now had a lot of trade transactions where the person I try to trade with suggest trade of the clothes/armor off my character's back, as well as the weapons and tools carried, rather than the inventory of fur carried, which makes the option to ask for what the character wants in trade to be of rather limited use.

I believe the algorithm ought to resort to worn and wielded items only when carried items won't be sufficient, and select trade goods and (lower quality) duplicate items first, as that's likely what you're actually interested in trading.

87

Gameplay questions / Re: Nettle Harvesting

« on: April 29, 2023, 09:13:17 AM »

Yes. Threshing nettles now gives you both leaves and stems. The stems can then be soaked. Note that the game doesn't mark immature and mature harvested nettles differently, so try to thresh whatever you've collected and only then soak the stems as well as the unthreshable plants.

88

Gameplay questions / Re: Having trouble with trapping.

« on: April 29, 2023, 09:10:44 AM »

Yes, rock throwing uses the Club skill. Throwing other weapons is supposed to use the corresponding weapon skill, although I've never investigated if you can train the Sword skill by throwing swords (spear throwing is a "legitimate" weapon attack, and I've done that to hurt animals).
I suspect throwing non weapon objects would be using the Club skill. It could use the general skill, but that would give you a bit too good a chance to hit (I believe the general skill is fixed at about 50%.

However, I didn't throw the rock. Once the elk is totally exhausted I catch up with it and whack it in the head with the rock using melee attacks (i.e. I aim for the head, but many blows end up landing elsewhere until it goes unconscious, at which time the hits are guaranteed to hit the intended target).

The reason for using a rock is that it causes the least damage to the skin. Also, throwing rocks at birds can occasionally knock one out so you can run up to it and kill it. That's been a (meager) supplement for many of my starting characters. This means the Club skill is useful to train. When I get further I mainly switch to a javelin and then to a spear (using blunt attacks in melee against non hostile opponents in order to preserve the skin. It also doesn't hurt that killing the target that way requires more attacks, and thus more training).

89

Development News / Re: Version 3.80 (beta) released

« on: April 28, 2023, 09:59:23 AM »

I'm not aware of mud being used to any extent back then (and there). It seems to more of a tropical thing, when you're not (as) concerned with trying to keep warm and thus trying to use at least somewhat insulating walls. I'm not an archeologist, though.

90

Gameplay questions / Re: Injured Adventurer

« on: April 28, 2023, 09:48:43 AM »

It seems on of your problems is that you don't (yet) recognize what heath looks like. If you look at your first image, I believe the tile about 7 tiles to the east is heath (trees on a yellowish ground cover).

In the same image you have a lake, and to the west of the lake you have a couple of hills with three tiles of heath surrounding them.