Messages

271

Gameplay questions / Re: Can the player character be killed in one shot?

« on: April 13, 2021, 11:44:51 PM »

As Matti-patti said, you can insta-kill enemies, and the rules aren't different for the player and the enemies. In practice it doesn't really matter whether your character dies instantly or gets knocked unconscious and an enemy finishes you off while unconscious, though.

I remember on character being lost after firing shot after shot at a Nerp, missing everyone, and then have him firing a single arrow back, blood welling up from the chest, and everything go dark.
Another character failed to hit a wolf with a javelin throw (at 75% effective skill), miss a spear attack (same skill), and then a dodge (again, roughly same skill), get bitten in the arm and faint from pain, never to wake up again (while the still leashed dog obviously didn't manage to prevent death).
The first injury above was probably lethal, while the second one definitely wasn't (the second character had had a history of fainting when getting injured, including being hauled away by robbers with a whole posse of companions on the scene, still there when the character returned with the fight continuing where it was broken off).

272

Suggestions / Re: Repairing sneak system.

« on: April 10, 2021, 12:00:47 AM »

Many social birds issue warnings about predators that may be considered threatening. Corvids (i.e. crows and their relatives) can do it, seagulls can do it, etc.

273

Suggestions / Re: Repairing sneak system.

« on: April 09, 2021, 12:02:13 AM »

I tried to make it clear the status ought to be what the character would think the status was, rather than telepathic knowledge of the actual status ("seems to notice", "assumed status"), so I think we're in agreement.

274

Development News / Re: The Moon and The Crust

« on: April 08, 2021, 10:25:53 AM »

As you say, there's a significant difference between the presence of snow and the absence of it during the dark parts of the year. While you can't see anything when it's pitch black regardless of the presence of snow, its presence when there is some light has quite an effect. A full moon over snow provides a fair bit of visibility, while a low sun over snow is blinding (snow blindness is a thing).

However, around the summer solstice it's possible to see fairly well during midnight without a moon because the sky is so bright. During the winter, snow can't make up for the pitch black sky, only compensate a little for the long dark hours.

275

Suggestions / Re: Repairing sneak system.

« on: April 08, 2021, 10:16:11 AM »

The current system is a simplification. While I don't think it would be that hard to have the game keep track of whether each individual animal is aware of your presence, providing a UI feedback of it would be tricky. One effect of the simplification is that you've got an indicator telling you whether you're undetected or not, which is useful, but not realistic. With a relation with each individual animal you can't have a unified indication, but would have to examine each animal of interest to judge whether it seems to notice you or not. Unlike real life, where that feedback is automatically fed to your brain from your sensory organs, you'd have to somehow query the game for it. One tedious way would be to look at the creatures of interest every turn, another might be to mark an animal as being of interest and have its assumed status displayed where the current sneaking status is, while a third might be to have different animal symbols or symbol modifiers to indicate their perceived state.

But yes, a more advanced system that's not annoyingly key/click intensive would be more immersive.

276

Gameplay questions / Re: How do I ski

« on: April 07, 2021, 10:14:08 AM »

Note, though, that skiing drains fatigue regardless of skill (high skill means lesser, but not zero drain), which means hunting during the winter is currently a fair bit harder than during the snow less seasons (an on top of that you need to encumber yourself with heavy clothing...).
As noted, you can't "run" with skis (apart from an exploit), and skiing isn't faster than walking currently.
Skiing is probably the easiest skill to improve, though, so you'll probably be at 100% after the first winter.

I assume you've seen this, but it's easy to forget to re-equip the ski stick after having performed activities, so you actually walk around on skis, gaining no benefit from them (and it doesn't help that the feedback indicating your state doesn't update when you equip them, but only after having moved a tile).

277

Gameplay questions / Re: How much should I run during a hunt, and how make game go where I want.

« on: April 04, 2021, 11:56:34 PM »

1. As little as possible, yes. I run when the game has accumulated visible amount of fatigue and stop as soon as I get it to run. The purpose of that is to keep the animal to run as much as possible while keeping yourself at as low a fatigue as possible. How much you can run without losing speed (which will affect walking speed as well when you stop running) heavily depends on encumbrance. With a high encumbrance (e.g. from very protective armor) you can lose speed in just 10 (2 meter) tiles.
2. Not really. If you can get in between the animal and the forest when you start your hunting you have a chance of getting it to run away from you, but they can take off in just about any direction.
3. Zooming in and out takes a lot of time. At a guess it's in the order of 5 minutes. but can easily be a lot more. You can see that if you try to do any of the area scanning quests in that you can't cover very much of the area in a day if you walk from tile to tile on the overmap and then zoom in and out on each tile (looking both ways when zoomed in).

278

Gameplay questions / Re: How to quickly change weapons?

« on: April 03, 2021, 09:00:39 PM »

The only way to speed up equipping a weapon from the inventory is to drop the current weapon (and remember to pick it up once the fight is over). You can fire arrows without explicitly equipping them first, but it still takes the same time and adds the risk that the target (or someone else) has moved so it's no longer a good idea to fire (such as e.g. your leashed dog moving in the way), so the safest way is to equip the arrow explicitly first.

279

General Discussion / Re: Taking on a Njerpez w/ a dog

« on: April 02, 2021, 11:12:04 PM »

I've never fought a Njerp with a dog, but I have fought quite a few Njerps (and robbers). One very important thing to keep in mind that just because one is a pushover, the next one doesn't have to be. Some are very difficult to deal with.

The problem with a dog companion is that it may attack from behind while you attack the Njerp from the front, and you can't defend against attacks you can't see coming...

Njerp + dog should normally be less of a threat than two Njerps, though.

Also, dogs don't have armor, so a lucky hit can kill it with a single stroke (Njerps have done that to a number of my characters' dogs...).

Finally, UrW fights are dangerous. A single lucky hit to the eyes can easily end a character.

280

Gameplay questions / Re: "Hear a thud"

« on: April 02, 2021, 12:05:54 AM »

A bird of prey bringing down another bird can cause a thud on water.

281

Solved'n'fixed bug reports / Re: Why did the villagers become hostile?

« on: March 31, 2021, 12:11:45 AM »

If you start a fire adjacent to an existing fire you almost always succeed, and the same should go for embers. In contrast, if you're unlucky, you may spend hours trying to light a fire in your fireplace (when there are no embers in it).

Embers shouldn't normally result in a fire, as you typically have to blow on them both to get them to increase to fire level, and to get through the ash that would insulate the new fuel from the embers if you just place it on top of the ash covering the embers.

282

Gameplay questions / Re: Trapping advice

« on: March 31, 2021, 12:07:07 AM »

I enclose my farming area in a fence with a few traps (so, technically a trap fence). Inside that I had a complete line of smaller traps, and I'm actually converting those smaller traps into pit traps.

I'm also enclosing the homestead with a complete array of pit or bear traps.

283

Gameplay questions / Re: Trapping advice

« on: March 30, 2021, 07:52:58 PM »

JP_Finn describes how it works in reality. The UrW logic is somewhat different, as pawboards can catch animals that just step on that tile. In your case you left the diagonals open, and I would expect animals to frequently walk around the traps to get to the center, assuming they want to go to the center.

I get animals in empty snares, small deadfalls, and pawboards because I use them to keep animals out of my farm plot area, not actually to trap animals. It's not a lot, but it happens.

When I actually try to catch animals, I make trap lines of something like 5 traps, ideally with trees along the line to make it longer. In that case I also bait each trap with bait I believe the intended prey is interested in. As has been noted in another thread, that kind of trap line doesn't work in real life, because the traps aren't directly beside each other, so it depends on how much you want to game the game in the game (couldn't resist the pun).

284

Gameplay questions / Re: Cellar mechanics

« on: March 26, 2021, 10:36:54 AM »

I've had a bear smash a fence while it was trapped in a bear or pit trap, and I suspect they would smash fences to get to you while angry if there is no (apparently) open way to reach you.

I surround my homestead with a line of bear or pit traps on all sides except the rapids. Their primary purpose is to keep dangerous critters out, not to catch animals. I think it might work to set up a double line of fences, although I haven't tried.

285

Gameplay questions / Re: Cellar mechanics

« on: March 25, 2021, 11:22:58 PM »

Yes, as JP_Finn said, unless it's silently changed, bears can open doors. That was a rather nasty surprise...