Messages

1

Suggestions / Re: Falling suggestion.

« on: July 09, 2019, 10:12:41 AM »

I expect the raising to be abstracted away, so a falling climber automatically picks himself up, a poor skier does so as well, contributing to the fatigue build up, and characters would occasionally trip on roots or slip on ice and automatically pick themselves up without it being show explicitly.

For climbing I don't see any issues with having to rise explicitly, as you don't do that all the time, but having to do so while traveling would be rather annoying.

2

Bug reports / Re: "you think you saw something move in the distance"

« on: July 05, 2019, 03:00:22 PM »

What about cancelling the waking up if the message would have been the visual one when sleeping indoors? After all, walls ought to reduce the awareness of what's going on outside (and would provide a small bonus in the form of uninterrupted sleep for sleeping inside).
A shelter would logically fall in between sleeping outside and sleeping inside (50% of the "see" messages ignored, with the remaining ones still present?).

3

Suggestions / Re: Improved trading system

« on: July 03, 2019, 12:11:24 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.

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

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.

4

Gameplay questions / Re: Autumn planting

« on: June 30, 2019, 12:30:06 AM »

Yes.

Planting too late for Barley to be harvested in the autumn will cause it to grow and be possible to harvest the next year. "Proper" autumn planting would mean sowing it as early as possible (may not be feasible every year if the thawing is late, but it always works if it was autumn planted, "properly" or not), harvest it in autumn and promptly thresh it and then plant using the seeds recovered (or use seeds left over from the previous harvest, which allows you to delay the threshing until winter when cold and darkness makes it hard to work away from the homestead). There should be a window of a couple of weeks or so for the most finicky crop (which I think is barley).

I typically harvest what's ripe every day during the ripening period and then immediately sow on the harvested tiles.

5

Gameplay questions / Re: Autumn planting

« on: June 29, 2019, 03:27:43 PM »

"Autumn" planting is species dependent. Any plant that withers before it's ripe for harvest sprouts anew the next spring (possibly while still covered by snow and with the ground still frozen), but once the time for withering sets in it's too late to sow that plant. Withering time varies significantly between plants, and some have a fairly short window between harvest and withering. The Wiki describes when plants can be sown, sprout, harvested (assuming planted early enough), and wither (as well as flowering for some plants).

The current imperfect model has you prepare the field once and it will then be usable throughout your character's life with no degradation. Real life slash-and-burn farming depletes the soil in a few years (3-5?), at which time the field is abandoned and a new field is prepared. Continued use of the field results in gradually decreasing yields. Also, I expect real life usage to require some kind of soil preparation annually, although that process would differ from the initial one. On top of that, I expect you'd also have to remove weeds during the growing season.

6

Development News / Re: Craftable birch-bark items and associated ponderings

« on: June 28, 2019, 11:19:40 AM »

Any quest of the type "bring me volume X of resource Y" would be problematic in that there is no chance a character would be able to actually collect the resource within a reasonable quest duration, but rather would be a request for something the player may have available, and so would be reasonable only for mid to late game players.

It would be rather annoying for a new player to be asked for impossible things and thus have to turn the quest down, and at the same time have to wait for a new quest cool down before a new one was offered. I'm not saying that kind of quest is a bad idea, as it is a good one, but that it would need some care in the implementation so the quests would only be offered to players "known" to at least have the possibility to deliver (someone who doesn't farm shouldn't be requested to deliver seeds, new characters and characters with insufficient skill shouldn't be asked for skin, etc.).

7

Bug reports / Re: Bug/Exploit?

« on: June 28, 2019, 09:57:37 AM »

It's a general quirk with crafting. If something needs a single kind of item, trace amounts of a better quality causes the whole lot to be "rounded up" one step. This differs from the case when multiple types of items are used.

8

Gameplay questions / Re: How long in game?

« on: June 18, 2019, 05:11:48 PM »

Yes, at least roughly. The log ('L') time stamps entries.

9

Development News / Re: Craftable birch-bark items and associated ponderings

« on: June 15, 2019, 06:53:24 PM »

I believe the logic behind player made clothing being capped at decent quality is that higher quality items would require a considerably larger work investment, and the current system supports interruption/resumption of only a few tasks, so higher quality items would need support for working on the items for several days.

10

Gameplay questions / Re: Craft question

« on: June 15, 2019, 03:38:42 PM »

A broad knife is the preferred tool for hide working, and so this tool provides a greater benefit than other knives of the same quality. I'd expect the difference to be approximately one quality level, so a Masterworks knife of a different kind being about equal to a Fine broad knife.
You can experiment by having both a Masterworks "other" knife and a Fine broad knife in your inventory when skinning a carcass, observe the text to see which one the game selects, drop and pick the knives up such that they end up in the reverse order in your inventory, and then observe which one is selected for another skinning task. If the same knife is selected in both tasks that's the "better" one, and different ones are used they're equally good.

If I remember correctly, a Fine broad knife is sufficient to be able to make Superior hides, while a Fine knife of other types fails the equipment test. However, I may remember incorrectly and that's for Decent knives, but anyway, a Broad knife can be of one quality level lower than other types to allow for the same best result.

Thus, I'd expect a Masterworks broad knife to add an extra bonus to your success roll over a Fine one, which matters a fair bit when the chances are so low.

11

Suggestions / Re: Wound treatment suggestion

« on: June 15, 2019, 10:50:30 AM »

I've had bleeding stop on its own without treatment both on my characters and on dogs and companions (and a lot of cases on enemies and prey). I think it's safe to clean wounds prone to reopening if you know the blood staunching incantation and apply it immediately unless you're almost completely out of blood, but without it and being seriously low on blood I don't take the risk (when in a somewhat better shape I make sure to have suitable blood stemming herbs on hand).

12

Gameplay questions / Re: Craft question

« on: June 15, 2019, 10:43:56 AM »

My experience indicates that a 100% skill, zero encumbrance, top quality materials, and top quality tools still only produces top quality results somewhere in the range of 1/4-1/7 of the attempts, although I think there may be modifiers that increase the chances for some actions. Some tanning stages seem to be more prone to retain the quality of the skin than others.

13

Suggestions / Re: Wound treatment suggestion

« on: June 14, 2019, 11:22:08 PM »

I don't think so. It's never happened to me, anyway.

14

Development News / Re: Craftable birch-bark items and associated ponderings

« on: June 14, 2019, 03:28:13 PM »

Nice additions.

The only downside I can see to have footwear wear out is that it would be rather pointless to put in the effort to try to hunt down Masterworks quality (or even Fine) ones, as they'd wear out and you'd be back to the ones you can craft yourself. It's bad enough when the only "wear" is battle/injury damage...

15

Suggestions / Re: Wound treatment suggestion

« on: June 14, 2019, 11:34:38 AM »

You can treat wounds once per day (or twice, of you consider cleaning and dressing to be two attempts). However, once a treatment attempt has resulted in the best treatment state you can achieve, further treatments can at best succeed in not making it worse, and often result in a worse state, so the only benefit from further treatment is meta gaming by training the Physician skill.

Wounds can kill you through bleeding, but if that is staunched (through treatment or on its own) it will eventually heal completely on its own. Poison can kill you, but I don't believe disease can, currently. If you've suffered severe blood loss treatment can be dangerous, as it can reopen the wound to cause it to start to bleed again.

The current wound model is definitely fairly basic, and I believe the dev page mentions expansions to it, at least in the form of scars.

The most basic improvement to the current model would probably be to let the effects of treatment fade back to a basic "natural" level so you're encouraged (beyond training) to clean and re-dress wounds regularly. From there it could expand to include worsening effects and negative effects from the lack of treatment.