Messages

16

Bug reports / Re: "unpaid" status gets stuck

« on: July 29, 2019, 01:22:52 PM »

Hi Sami,

I was trying to think of what exactly triggered it but nothing comes to mind. I can rule out your three ideas though, I only very rarely save scum and wasn't doing it at the time, I don't think the game has ever crashed on me and I wasn't force quitting either. It hasn't happened to me again so far but I'll try to pay more attention when it does.

I have since come back to a village where this happed and the item in question (it was a sickle) was there on the ground with the unpaid marker, I picked it up again and dropped it but nothing changed. I also tried buying it from them but this time they didn't even charge me for it (as in, they didn't believe I had anything of them in my inventory when I talked to them), I think it might be because when it happened originally I wanted to leave and they ran after me to demand payment, so I just told them to take the item back - at the time it wasn't in my inventory of course but there on the ground where I had left it. Oddly enough, when I now intentionally try to leave with it in my inventory, they still recognize it and come running again. Also when I try to just give it to them (deliver items) they recognize it as not being mine and refuse.

17

Bug reports / Re: exploit: running while skiing

« on: July 27, 2019, 09:31:18 PM »

Ok then, didn't see it on the list.

18

Bug reports / exploit: running while skiing

« on: July 27, 2019, 12:32:02 PM »

The game does not normally allow this but if you switch to running mode and then put on your skis you can in fact run while skiing. This gives you the speed bonuses of both skiing and running, so you're faster than if you would just run normally without skis. It's very tempting to use this to get away from robbers or warriors - just quickly take off your skis as the encounter begins, switch to running and then put them on again. I achieve a speed of about 15km/h in the snow albeit briefly.

19

Bug reports / "unpaid" status gets stuck

« on: July 26, 2019, 05:06:30 PM »

This happened several times to me by now, when I pick up items in a village and then drop them again, sometimes the (unpaid) marker gets stuck - the item on the ground will still be marked with (unpaid). This isn't just a cosmetic issue, villagers actually still believe I have the item(s) in question on me and want me to pay. When I leave, they run after me and get mad. I can tell them to take the item(s) back but I lose reputation with that village. Since that in turn appears to ruin trading prices, this is affects my gameplay quite a bit - the village effectively becomes "unusable" in terms of trade for a long time until the rep resets. Alternatively I can try buying the items and then buying them back but this of course only works if I have enough items available for trade and the villager doesn't decide to keep them after the transaction.

I have tried picking up the item again, walking around, waiting a bit and then putting it town again but it didn't help. The item will be marked as unpaid forever, though after they yell at me and I tell them to take it back they stop holding me responsible for having it on me at least. So far I couldn't determine the exact pattern when this happens and when it doesn't.

edit: when noticing it before leaving the village it's also possible to go to a villager and simply hand them the "unpaid" items back to at least avoid the rep loss. This still isn't ideal though because it moves the item(s) into that villagers inventory away from the village's general store of items.

20

Bug reports / Re: Dog leash disappeared

« on: July 26, 2019, 04:59:19 PM »

When making camp I tied my dog to a tree, spent the next day fishing just a few meters away then as I wanted to leave I noticed that the rope had disappeared. Normally it's on the same tile as the tree you tied the dog to but this time it was just gone.

The dog is still shown as being "tied in place". Tried cutting down the tree but no change. Tried applying a different rope but it just tells me the dog is already leashed. Looks like I have no way to untie the dog so I'm just gonna lose it...

Three things...
1. Is this with the latest version 3.52?
2. You spent the next day just few meters away,  so you didn't zoom out from the area at all? (This may be important detail)
3. zip up the character folder and send it over to me. I'll fix the save for you - and try to reproduce.

1: yes, it's the latest version - I have it on Steam, which always keeps it up to date.
2: it's been a while, but I'm still like 95% sure that all I did was fish for a whole day and then rest, next day I wanted to leave but found the rope gone.
3: The character has since died and I don't have the save folder any more. Thanks a lot for the offer though

Btw, this seems to happen only very rarely. I've been playing a few hundred hours by now (not all of this time with dogs of course) and this fortunately happened only once.

21

Bug reports / Re: Dog leash disappeared

« on: July 13, 2019, 11:15:00 PM »

There was nothing on the tile, there was just the tree before I cut it down. Neither when I looked at it nor tried to pick anything up from it there was anything there. Even when I stepped right on it after cutting down the tree it was just empty.

I'm sure it was that tree that I tied the dog to, and regardless it wasn't anywhere in the surrounding area either. Leash just went poof.

22

Bug reports / Re: Dog leash disappeared

« on: July 13, 2019, 06:58:42 PM »

Sorry to hear your problem. Though there is no bug here.

You have to 'pick' the leash from remote tile. try ';' key standing at tree and pick tree direction.

I know how it works I've been doing it hundreds of times. Like I said, the leash just disappeared so there was nothing to pick up.

23

Bug reports / Dog leash disappeared

« on: July 13, 2019, 04:32:41 PM »

When making camp I tied my dog to a tree, spent the next day fishing just a few meters away then as I wanted to leave I noticed that the rope had disappeared. Normally it's on the same tile as the tree you tied the dog to but this time it was just gone.

The dog is still shown as being "tied in place". Tried cutting down the tree but no change. Tried applying a different rope but it just tells me the dog is already leashed. Looks like I have no way to untie the dog so I'm just gonna lose it...

24

Suggestions / Re: Improved trading system

« on: July 04, 2019, 02:08:19 PM »

Thanks for all your input on this, but I don't see how life in the early middle ages having been "inconvenient" has to mean that trading in URW today needs to suck. You can perfectly well realize a primitive bartering system in a way that doesn't make you want to plant your face into your keyboard on a regular basis and still have it be realistic. I'm not talking about changing the basic idea behind it, like I said it's perfectly fine, just the interface has been done horribly wrong. By the way - we do also get precise information about item's weights and their condition in form of a bar.... I'm not aware of there having been any precision scales around at that time, so how come that's okay but information about an item's value wouldn't be? The exact weight (down to fractions of pounds...) wouldn't even be available to you *at all* as a real person in this setting, but the value of items would be.

If your character should learn values of items first before you as the player see it I suppose that's fine, but this is a lot of extra effort for something that I believe wouldn't add much depth to the game. Dynamic prices would be along the same line as haggling (again, you are just modifying static base values that still need to be there), and I agree it would be awesome but it's not a critical issue, just a bonus for when trading is actually properly usable with the current, static prices. It's just icing on the cake.

If informing the player about values is out of the question for whatever reason, we need at least a trading screen that informs us about how far the current offer's value balance is off of a fair trade. Do it with a scale or thumbs up / down if you have to because you don't want numbers for some reason but convey it somehow. And please for the love of the spirits allow offers to be adjusted without having to start over every time. This alone would already go a long way to making it properly usable and fun.

25

Suggestions / Re: Improved trading system

« on: July 03, 2019, 01:27:37 PM »

UrW isn't geared towards min/maxing, so spreadsheet activities are really a waste of time. It doesn't really matter if you can squeeze out every squirrel pelt's worth of value from every trade, because it doesn't take very long before wealth ceases to be an issue.

Completely disagree. Survival is the name of the game and it's hardcore, death is final and there are no reloads. I don't care if in the late game you can afford to flush your wealth down the toilet. Early and mid game you have to maximize your chances of survival and yes that also includes being efficient with your resources. If you are talking about realism (as you do later in your post) then please also mention that there is no way you would waste anything in an actual survival situation in real life. You need to *get* to the late game where you're filthy rich and that alone is reason enough to do trading properly.
Also, let's make this another rule of thumb: if a game tells you "It doesn't matter that this is extremely inconvenient because if you just ignore it and play as you normally wouldn't play then it's not much of an issue" then the game is also badly designed. A good, fun game allows you to play how you like within the boundaries of the game's setting and doesn't penalize you for not doing what you subjectively believe "makes sense". Doing that is just a lazy cop-out of investing the time and effort to do a mechanic properly. Just as I have the right to be more efficient with my finances in real life than other people are, I have the same right to play URW efficiently.

I'm not saying the interface can't be improved, only that it's not vitally important.

When you have to spend hours to deal with an inconvenience that only exists because the interface is done badly, then yes it kinda is vitally important.

It doesn't make sense from a realism point of view to walk into a town and ask a random inhabitant for a list of goods sold by every other inhabitant in the town as well as its stores, and have that poor bugger act delivery boy for you.

Or you could look at it this way: the game just removes the tedium of actually looking for that person who is responsible for trading, and for other people who are willing to trade what they currently have on them, getting the information, going to pick up the items and wrapping up the deal - yourself. You don't have to interpret it like the poor poor NPCs have to do all the work for the lazy player. Another aspect of a good, fun game is that it abstracts away the tedious and inconvenient aspects without compromising it's setting (which is perfectly possible in this case). Forcing the player to do endlessly repeating, tedious actions just to satisfy an again, subjective sense of realism, is just absurd.

It can also be noted that the value of items really should differ depending on the individual (and village) you trade with, so prices shouldn't be fixed if realism is the primary driver. However, it would be rather tedious to find the individual who need a new slightly used axe (especially the one who needs it the most, and thus is prepared to pay the most), then the one who needs a new spear, while nobody has a need for a spectacle helm. Thus, the trade system has to balance realism and tedium against gameplay.

Agree with that last sentence. Somehow this doesn't fit to the rest of your post though...?
Anyway, in the first part what you are talking about is haggling. Haggling is a nice bonus which many games chose to implement and it's fun if done properly (for example it should include a separate skill and/or a charisma stat). I don't think it's necessary for URW. In any case, haggling is built on top of a trading system where every item does in fact have a fixed price - so your business partner can say "what you offer is worth slightly less than what this is worth but I will accept it regardless because I like you, or because you are very convincing or whatever." And like I said, these fixed values obviously already exist in the game at least somewhere on code level, otherwise you just can't have a trading system at all. In code, things need to be precise, you can't have an item be worth one-ISH squirrel fur or something like that. Items have a value, when you offer that value or more, the trade is accepted and that's it. I just want that information to be available to the player.

26

Suggestions / Improved trading system

« on: July 03, 2019, 11:29:35 AM »

Hi there.

I've recently been getting into URW again after a rather long pause and there's something that cosistently bugs me, it has from the beginning but for some reason I forgot to mention it in my first forum post where I already gave some feedback.
I've been a gamer a very long time and I'm sorry to say that URW's trading system is probably the worst I have ever seen in any game. I don't mean to be rude, it's just a fact. This is not because there is no currency and it's purely barter based, that part is completely fine - it's all about the interface, the usability and accessability. I'll list the reasons point by point.

1. At no point anywhere does the game ever actually inform you about the trading values of items. The only way you can know is indirectly by "faking" a trade, i.e. offering or taking the item in question and then adding / removing reference items step by step until the trade is accepted, at which point you have the value of the item in terms of the number of reference items (say, arrows). Even then, you still can't be 100% sure if that value is correct, it may be worth a non-whole number of arrows... so then you have to take a lesser value item, like staves, and repeat the process. Needless to say this is slow and tedious and of course you have to then write down what you learned so you even remember. I have a rule of thumb: if you feel the need to make a spreadsheet for a game, then the game is badly designed. The larger the spreadsheet, the worse it is. I have one such spreadsheet for URW that lists values of items in terms of arrows, staves, turnips or meat cuts plus quality modifiers etc. Can you guess how many hours that took to compile that could (and should) have spent actually playing the game instead? Just because the game doesn't list these values anywhere? It doesn't matter that there's no currency, just use squirrel furs as basis, which I believe was commonplace back then, or some other item, I don't care. And those values HAVE to exist at least somewhere on code level otherwise the system wouldn't work at all.

2. Closely tied to nr.1 like I mentioned, you always need to slowly add (or remove) items step by step in a transaction until it is accepted, ideally in as small steps as possible if you don't want to just give loads of your stuff away for free (keep in mind any "gifts" like this if trades aren't balanced add up, your character is going to trade many times). Unless of course, you have the values noted down and can do the math ahead of time... and that's a prime example of something the game should take care of for you.

3. There is no way to just remove one or a few items from an offer you have made, you always have to start over from scratch! This is outrageous, especially when combined with the previous points. How can you even design such a thing in your mind let alone have it be like this or something similar since the early 90s (I assume)? I just don't get it.

4. If you want to know (and of course you will want to know) what items a village has available for trade, you need to go through every single house and look at every single floor tile - and then remember the items of interest in your head, or pick them up and move them to a separate spot. For every single village. Even then, you don't have the information about what any villagers have in their personal inventory that they are willing to trade. Also of course, the "items of interest" can and will change over time. You're not always going to be interested in a woodsman's axe for example, so when you look for something else you need go through everything again? Why not just be able to talk to a villager and say "I'd like to trade" at which point you get a list of all the items that village (and any villagers in it) has available?

What I would like to see is a trading system similar like the ones in Gothic or Morrowind for example, they did both a very good job with that. It doesn't matter that those were AAA that didn't care much about realism like URW does, none of what I mentioned had anything to do with realism, it's purely interface convenience. We need something like a screen with three lists: your inventory, the village's (or other person's) inventory and the list of items that should change owners. At the bottom, show the current value balance - how many more items need to be offered by either side to make it fair, and an indication whether the trade will be accepted as is or not. Of course you need to be able to add or remove items at any time *without* being forced to start over from scratch and the values of items have to be listed somewhere.

I really like this game, I much appreciate its realism and attention to detail, I spent nearly 200 hours with it until now even though my "ancestors" list keeps getting longer... While I can think of several things that could be improved, I believe the trading system should be at the top of the list. It's something that consistently annoys me quite a bit and needlessly so if only the interface was done a bit better. At the absolute bare minimum, we need to be informed about the values of items.

Anyway, just my two cents.
Best regards.

27

General Discussion / Re: Some new player's feedback

« on: August 02, 2018, 11:49:43 AM »

I mean, if there was a small message in the message log, we could still get players complaining "I didn't pay attention to that humble small message, I'd like the game to tell me in big red letters on top of the map screen that things are soon getting dangerous!". Or, if the early warning messages were more attention-catching, I'd guess some players would be complaining "I'd like to have a config option to switch off these annoying spammy messages!"

Config options are never a bad idea imo, they tend to make everyone happy. Anyway, getting messages that are easily missed is very different from getting no messages at all. I too wished in my OP for freezing messages to be more intrusive, but I would admit that the unsafe ice is a much bigger problem - because in the first case at least I do have the information, it's just that I as the player can easily make the mistake of not paying attention, which I can fix by getting to know the game better. In the unsafe ice case there is no such option unless I avoid ice altogether in all but the coldest months.
I suppose there will always be people who complain - there was one in this thread too who thinks clearer communication would be "hand holding" - but don't you at least want to communicate life or death matters in a way that grabs the player's attention, if nothing else - considering that there is no reloading option at all if the player does die? Even when animals enter your field of view this happens, and that's in most cases far from being life or death. What's the logic behind this? It might be a bear that might try to kill you? You might be starving and desperate to hunt an animal? Well doesn't the same logic apply to freezing to death and unsafe ice because they're just as life-threatening?

(And, again, we can still think that the system now is that the game tells you as soon as the character notices that the ice is becoming unsafe. The game can't tell you before the character notices that. You are told the moment your character spots the marks of the dangerous thawing. How could the game send you a message about a think your character is not aware of?)

But the thing is, my character most likely would be aware of the risk factors in reality. He would see the snow / ice thawing, feel the temperature to be above freezing, take note of the whole weather situation, remember the development of the past days / weeks and yes he'd also have the oppurtunity to check the ice thickness (which I know is not a feature in the game yet). He'd also have the whole body feeling of actually being on the ice. I as the player am sitting in a comfortable modern apartment at my computer, while the character I'm playing is a Finnish iron age tribesman out in the wilderness who's a lot more in touch with nature than I could ever be wouldn't he know this sort of thing? Unless the weather really suddenly turns a lot in a very short time I suppose. It could be skill dependent too.

Well, but I agree there could be more player-initiated means to check the ice. Maybe in some future version weatherlore or some other skill could be used to evaluate the ice thickness. I think that would be a realistic way, and leaving the decision up to the player.

Yes, I think that would solve the problem. In fact it would probably be the ideal solution. Until this system is fleshed out, you could make what you wrote earlier part of the tutorial and also write it down in the encyclopedia somewhere:

The ice thickness is tracked hour by hour, millimetre by millimetre. And in real life it also is so that after a freezing cold night the ice can be safe early in the morning, but becomes dangerous after noon, as they day gets warmer. These are things that the game can't so easily tell you beforehand, so we just have to assume that players pay special attention always when moving on ice, especially in autumn and springtime.

If you make it clear to the player somehow that travelling on ice when zoomed out does not mean it's completely safe even when the game doesn't force you to zoom in immediately, then you have eliminated the possible miscommunication. If players ignore it, that at least would be on them, not on you.

28

General Discussion / Re: Some new player's feedback

« on: July 31, 2018, 10:07:42 AM »

I actually think the ice breaking, and the freezing without clothing, are good examples of the game working as intended.  You were the one who chose to walk out on the ice, despite the weather and time of year... do you think in real life, a message would pop up telling you not to do so?  As Erkka said, this sort of thing does happen in real life.  and as for wandering about nude... Just put your clothes on and pay attention to your coldness rating this game does not hold your hand, and I like it that way.

No of course I wouldn't get messages like that in real life. In real life I would have all my senses (and hopefully a working brain  ) at my disposal to make a much more qualified judgement about something like this. You don't have this in a video game. The messages are exactly my point, you rely on this way of communication not just in this game but in gaming in general. You rely on them because you don't have all the information you would have in reality. I don't feel the biting cold that would make me put on clothes before freezing to death and I don't see the thawing that occurs and makes ice unsafe. When the game tells you in one situation it's not safe to do something but allows the same action in another, you of course logically assume that it's safe. It's the messages that create the whole problem with the unsafe ice in the first place. If on the wilderness map it would work the exact same way as when zoomed in, i.e. there would be no messages at all, the player could never assume that it's safe. Not saying I want it to be like this - it wouldn't make much sense because one step on the wilderness is a whole 100m instead of just 2m.

I'm not sure about drinking bogwater in this time period.  For one thing, there were far less sources of pollution than now.  There weren't as many strains of bacteria in a place like Finland either.   An ancient iron age person would also be immune to giardia and many other forms of illness, from having drank unsterilized water their entire life.  However.... would it still be safe to drink from a bog?  I'm not sure. 

Well I'm no biologist but I do know that even the most hostile places on earth - which Finland is not a member of - are home to microorganisms, this is where the danger comes from when drinking water in the wilderness. It's not about pollution so the timeframe doesn't matter. Fresh water streams in the wilderness are of course used by animals as well, who frequently defecate into them, so besides bacteria like e. coli or salmonella, and microsporidia like giardia you're also at risk to catch parasites like tapeworms. Anything that could live inside a wild animal basically. I admit I don't know exactly how the ancient tribes actually dealt with this problem, but it must have already existed back then. I find it very hard to believe that they were all just immune to it and just us modern humans now suddenly are vulnerable to them.

Finally, I disagree with you about the heating/heat retention abilities of wood saunas, but I agree that I think you should have to keep the smoke going for the whole time of the meat-smoking process.  Of course, you are already perfectly able to do so if you wish to roleplay ... and I often do.

You really believe that three sticks and two pieces of firewood will keep a cabin at sauna temperatures for several days...? Sorry but I call BS on that

29

General Discussion / Re: Some new player's feedback

« on: July 24, 2018, 06:14:57 PM »

> Most obvious to me is the ability to drink seawater. Everyone knows you can't quench your thirst with that, it would only make it worse.

Surprisingly enough, this is not actually true.  The Baltic Sea, particularly in the Gulf of Finland and the Gulf of Bothnia (i.e., coastal Finland) is much less salty than the rest of the ocean.  There's so much river water flowing into the sea that it dilutes out the seawater substantially.  So you get freshwater fish living happily, and it is in fact drinkable.

Wow, I did not know that! Thanks for clarifying.

Welcome aboard, and thanks for the feedback Flibbo!

  A death that I think was complete BS, if I can't trust the ice please tell me from the start in the wilderness map, like it usually happens, and not after I'm halfway across just to death-troll me.

Well, things went like that because when you started crossing the lake the ice was still thick enough to be trusted. And only got weaker when you got that message telling so. That means that the game had no way of warning you the moment you stepped on the ice - at that very moment the ice was ok, and the game can't predict how many hours you are going to spend walking on the ice and how the weather will be during those hours.

The ice thickness is tracked hour by hour, millimetre by millimetre. And in real life it also is so that after a freezing cold night the ice can be safe early in the morning, but becomes dangerous after noon, as they day gets warmer. These are things that the game can't so easily tell you beforehand, so we just have to assume that players pay special attention always when moving on ice, especially in autumn and springtime.

Also, when crossing thin ice the same rules apply in the game as in real life; go crawling, as your weight gets spread on larger surface and you won't fall through that easily. And have a knife wielded, for in case the ice breaks you have greater changes of pulling yourself back to solid ice if you can trust your knife into the ice instead of desperately trying to grab slippery ice with your bare hands.

In real life Finland a few people drown because of this kind of reasons, every year. Sure, we can call it complete BS, but then I think it is more like a way the world works, and the game simulates the same BS 

I understand and of course I do not take issue with the realism part, but with the game's communication to the player. The point is, that when crossing ice is risky, the game doesn't let you do it in the wilderness map, which is good but it means that when the game does let you do it, of course you think that it's perfectly safe. I'm not convinced that there's no way to prevent it suddenly changing half-way across. You could for example do a check of how the situation would develop in the next 24 hours (or longer) and if during any of that time it would become risky, the game would stop you even if it's safe right now. Maybe communicate with a message like "you don't believe the season is safe for travelling on ice" or something like that. Of course this wouldn't prevent anything if the player runs in circles on the ice but you'd catch like 99% of the cases.
Of course now I know how the game works and will be more careful, but I'm pretty sure almost all new players would fall for this trap and you can imagine how frustrating this is.

30

Stories / The Njerpez Stalker

« on: July 23, 2018, 12:00:00 PM »

Heikki, the 16 year old Kaumolais kid who left his home village one early spring in search of adventure and a home of his own, spent his first several months roaming the wilderness of several different cultures and in between, trading and making friends, while at the same time scouting for a suitable location to build his very own log cabin. Once the summer neared its end and it started to get a little colder, he picked a patch of coniferous forest on an elongated island between the two arms of a river fork. It was long and hard work but eventually he finished his cabin in time for the winter and also managed to hunt enough game to last him through and even had some surplus for trading.

His first winter was comfortable and peaceful, until one day he left his cabin to check his traps. One paw-board fox trapped appeared to have been triggered but there was no animal in sight. Once he got closer he suddenly realized it had in fact not been triggered but disassembled... by someone else... as he slowly turned his head, he jolted at the sight of Njerpez warrior in a full suit of lamellar armor wielding a spear and cursing at him. Grabbing his shortsword and shield, a fight ensued which seemed evenly matched at first. Heikki only took a few hits from his opponent's spear which didn't do much against his own mail armor. He himself got a few good hits in but struggled to overcome the warrior's superior lamellar armor. After this went on for a bit, the warrior lost his grip on his spear, which Heikki immediately took advantage of and grabbed it. This however, only made the warrior switch to his broad knife instead, which apparently he was even better at than with the spear. Regardless, the warrior was wounded and after just a short while he turned and fled, which Heikki was happy with since he was wounded himself so after his enemy was out of sight he retreated back to his cabin to treat his wounds.

Once he was almost finished cleaning his wounds he was startled to see that same warrior again who was standing just outside the cabin window. Interrupting what he did, Heikki immediately grabbed his weapons again and rushed outside to confront the villain in a second fight. This one fortunately proved to be easier, as the warrior was still struggling with his wounds which he appeared to not have tended at all. He fled again and not wanting to risk more grievous injury, in light of the warrior appearing to be more proficient with his broad knife than Heikki was with his own shortsword, he again let him escape.

Days passed, maybe weeks. Heikki thought he had seen the last of this warrior, but he was wrong. One day, in late winter when the snow and ice was beginning to thaw, he was walking across the riverbed thinking about what tasks next to do when he was surprised to see his enemy of two fights yet again - wielding a hunting bow and swearing and cursing at him. Heikki rushed in and confronted him a melee engagement before he got the chance to shoot, prompting him to pull his broad knife again, which he then wielded very proficiently. Heikki took hit after hit, against which even his fine mail habergeon did not prove entirely effective. He himself only managed to deal a serious wound to his opponent's knee and a couple of minor ones to his arms. Exhaustion started to overwhelm Heikki, he stumbled and fell, lost the grip on his shortsword struggling against the pain as he realized his very life was in the greatest danger it had ever been. He started to doubt the quality of his weapon which had proven so inferior relative to the Njerpez's simple broad knife. In a desperate attempt to improve his odds, he therefore drew his own broad knife - one that was masterfully crafted and of much higher quality than the one used against him, and Heikki had so far only used for hunting. He started to imitate his opponent's strikes, stabbing at his torso in several quick movements. To his surprise, these strikes did manage to get through a couple of times and the Njerpez, swearing and cursing turned to flee yet again for a third time, which Heikki allowed, knowing that he was in no shape to continue fighting.

He was riddled with stab wounds, most of them fortunately superficial but a couple serious ones. He even took two wounds to his neck, which miraculously missed any major blood vessels. The fine mail habergeon he was so proud to have acquired was severely damaged and almost useless. The pain made it almost impossible to travel but he managed to get to a friendly village and the local sage was kind enough to offer his expertise in treating the wounds. One of the first things Heikki did after this was trading away his shortsword, which despite its fine quality he found unreliable to such a degree it almost cost him his life. He would use his broad knife for now, until he could trade for a more superior weapon.

The winter ended and he started to prepare the soil behind his cabin for planting. The wounds were still not fully healed but well on the way and his life started to normalize again. However... Heikki knows that the Njerpez is still out there, probably out for revenge, after such a proud warrior was beaten back three times. Heikki can only hope, and pray to all the gods he knows, that he would survive the next encounter as well.