Messages

901

Gameplay questions / Re: Tips for agriculture?

« on: March 09, 2019, 10:49:57 PM »

I use more "modern" field agriculture, which means I remove all trees in the farming area and prepare the soil in square tiles. This part of the clearing is performed during the first winter (I start my characters in "spring"). This part also contains preparing for the burning by cutting and placing branches so they're ready to be set on fire.

My plots are 9*9, and I place branches on every second row, so I set fire at one row, and by the time I've set fire to the last tile the first one has burned out, so I can then go back to prepare the soil there. Depending on the RNG, I can generally prepare 2-3 rows per day (preparation includes having food for the two months it takes to prepare all of my rather extensive farming area). Once I've prepared the soil in the pre prepared tiles, I place branches on the rows in between (using stacks of branches prepared in advance) and then do a second pass to take care of those.
If you don't remove trees the fires can set trees on fire, which may potentially connect lines of branches so that more is burned than you had intended. It's worth noting that lighting a fire in a tile adjacent to a tile on fire is a lot easier than to set fire on an isolated tile (I think it never fails), which is a reason to go for lines or rectangles of branches.


I plant seeds as soon as I can, so the seed selection for plots depends on the order in which they're prepared. Check the wiki on to see which seeds can be planted in which months. Turnips are good beginners crops as they are large and give a good yield even with a poor skill. In addition to that, you can get two crops per year out of them if the frost isn't late in departing. Also note that different crops wither at different times (again, check the wiki).

Also note that you need a mod to make clothing out of your agriculture, as the vanilla game only provides food.

There are basically three kinds of crops: cereal (rye and barley), veggies (turnips, peas, broad beans [I may have missed something]), and spices, plus seeds. What you can make depends on whether you use vanilla or a mod (I use the Njerp Cooking Mod).

I start with turnips, rye/barley (barley is actually more nutritious, but has lower yield), and hemp and/or nettles, and gradually replace turnips with broad beans (peas are inferior to broad beans for everything), and change to yarrow for spicing eventually (it's a fair bit of work to collect the seeds, and a bit messy to grow them as you have to forego flowers to get seeds, and the yield is fairly poor as they're small).

902

Suggestions / Re: I feel like the game is in serious need of late-game snowballing.

« on: March 09, 2019, 10:27:48 AM »

I believe the suggestion contradicts itself: So, you've got all the riches you can dream of, and things get boring, so instead of chasing after those elusive items you want, you just want to buy them so you can sit around and be completely bored? Trying to get equipment is one of the few challenges remaining when basic survival has been taken care of.
As noted, after a certain point cost is almost completely irrelevant, but regardless, a villager who does blacksmithing on the side is unlikely to be capable of producing high quality gear of any type: the items will be adequate, but probably not better than that, and metal armor would definitely not be something they could produce.
It can also be noted that Iron Age Finland was dirt poor, so you wouldn't find a lot of riches in villages, and certainly not a lot of high quality gear (the game is probably overly generous in that regard from a realism point of view).

Human companions of a more permanent nature is not something that's trivial to implement, although I believe it's in the long term plans to at least make it possible to get a spouse. However, there's a lot of game infrastructure that's needed for permanent companions to make sense.

It can also be noted that a good reason to hire companions temporarily is a certain quest that's tricky to perform alone...

But yes, the game currently runs of of challenges once basic survival has been ensured and a homestead has been built.

903

Gameplay questions / Re: What are some good early game barter items?

« on: March 09, 2019, 09:56:13 AM »

I'm generally trying to go along the self sufficiency route with trading limited to items that can't be produced, and on that path the meat from the first big kill is useful. You can't eat all that meat anyway before it goes bad, so I tend to roast it and haul it to the nearest village to trade for some essential item(s). The same goes for further kills until I get the resources (a "sauna" and cords) to preserve the meat for my own character's use (I know you can use a real sauna in a village to smoke meat, but I've never done that).

Killing Njerps is dangerous, but definitely lucrative. If you've got a fast character it can be done comparatively safely, provided the Njerp doesn't have ranged weapons, while a slower character will take a significant risk. Also note that rocks can be used to pelt a slower enemy once the bugger has been worn down by exhaustion. In fact, when an enemy is breathless, you can lead them around and then go back and pick up the used rocks to throw them again. I generally don't use more than 3 javelins, 2 of which are thrown and the third being used as an emergency spear, while a decent pile of rocks are used for the bulk of the task, but mind the load so the enemy doesn't get a chance to catch up!

904

Suggestions / Re: Territorial wolves

« on: March 07, 2019, 11:33:42 AM »

Does wolf urine actually smell strong enough for humans to detect it? I would have expected it to smell as much as dog urine, which isn't readily apparent (while you can see it during winter, you can also see the paw prints...).

As far as I understand, wolves have large territories, so they may well be 10 kilometers or more away from you even if you're inside their territory. New packs form from time to time, and they try to set up their own territories, preferably without getting into any fights with established packs. Killing off a pack will leave its old territory open for claim by new or established packs, so there is a dynamism involved. In addition to this, young, typically male, wolves are expelled from their flocks to roam as solitary wolves looking for a mate to start a new pack with, and these wolves tend to roam far and wide.

905

General Discussion / Re: Watchdogs just watched...

« on: March 06, 2019, 08:48:48 PM »

Njerps are odd in that dogs don't react to them unless they aggro. With a lynx they'd at least pester you with barking interrupts...

I had a case where a Njerp triggered a number of my bear traps (i.e. disarming, not stumbling into them), and my character went into stealth mode and restored them. I saw something "out of the corner of my eye", and when done I saw that the bugger had passed by just a few tiles from my character, without detecting my character, and without the dog reacting. My character did eventually eliminate the bugger by the cabins, though (I think he'd stolen a number of weapons by that time).

906

Gameplay questions / Re: Bait order relevancy, various questions

« on: March 01, 2019, 09:27:15 AM »

I've tried multi baiting, and bait has been eaten. However, I haven't checked stack order, and there aren't any tools available to determine whether the prey was drawn to the trap by the bait or whether it stumbled into the trap and then ate the bait as it was available.

I've had bears eat fish (if I recall correctly: I've baited with fish in bear traps, at least, and I thing some was eaten) and meat, but I don't think I've tried berries.

907

Gameplay questions / Re: Bait order relevancy, various questions

« on: February 28, 2019, 09:59:01 PM »

As mentioned, bear pipe and mother pipe are amphetamine analogues. It's listed on the wiki plants page.

Stacking is based on being the "same", which means they'll go stale at the same time if stacked. If you split the stack (storing it in different places), I believe the decay rolls are made separately for the stacks. This indicates that preserved meat does not follow the same decay mechanism as fresh food does. However, fish does only stack to a limited extent even during winter, when fresh meat stacks readily.

There were bugs surrounding wounded adventurers that have since been fixed, so it should be possible for an adventurer to have healed up sufficiently for the quest not to be available any longer if it's taken you some time to encounter the adventurer (rather than having a quest for an adventurer who wasn't sufficiently injured, and thus kept running around in a way that made it impossible to catch him to actually get the quest). The adventurer shouldn't give you the quest if he's going to be mobile before the quest timer expires.

You can bait bear traps with berries like any other traps, so I assume the question is rather whether berries are valid bait for bears?

908

General Discussion / Re: The currious case of Robbers

« on: February 27, 2019, 08:04:18 AM »

@Tom H: It's trivially simple to avoid getting killed by robbers: just yield. They'll take your valuable stuff and tell you to run. Sure, it stings, but you can definitely save your hide (you may presumably be unlucky enough to be robbed in the coldest of winters, lose your best clothes, and then freeze to death because you fail to make a fire, but you need to be very unlucky for that).

Also, it's rather unusual to die from robber encounters. Even if you kill some of them, they just beat you severely and then dump you somewhere (after taking your stuff, of course). Now, dragging yourself back to your homestead with one or more broken limbs and then wait for them to heal is no fun, but generally not life threatening. It's also possible to receive a fatal blow in any fight, including against robbers.

In terms or mortal danger, though, robbers are well below wolves, bears, or Njerps on the scale.

909

Gameplay questions / Re: Bird bait

« on: February 26, 2019, 05:40:51 PM »

Placing berries in a suitable trap is useful for catching birds. I've had grain "harvested" in my farm plots, presumably by birds, but I've never tried (or at least not succeeded in) using seeds as bait.

Once I've had a small predator (don't remember which of the rat icon ones it was) enter a trap and eat a spoiled mushroom (it wasn't spoiled when I baited the trap). My character saw it as it happened while working on something nearby, including seeing the animal eat the mushroom (and yes, it was an edible one). However, that's the only time mushrooms have been used successfully.

910

Bug reports / Bird Thief does not know location of new quester

« on: February 26, 2019, 10:18:46 AM »

A rather minor issue:

I've performed a Bird Thief quest fairly recently (about 3 quests ago or so). As I came to a village looking for a new quest I was allowed to ask for the location of Apro, and also was informed that Matti needed help. I located an unknown villager approximately where Apro should be, said I was looking for Apro, asked how he was, and told him he deserved being punished for stealing birds (without revealing who'd put the hex on him). Neither on the first, nor on subsequent attempts did he recognize Matti had a quest (nor allowed me to ask for Matti's location, but that's typically available only after being informed Matti has a quest for you).

As mentioned, it's a very minor inconsistency, as there's no shortage of other people to guide me to Matti, but the bird thief ought to know of the village's quest.

911

Gameplay questions / Re: Spoiler! Quest related

« on: February 25, 2019, 09:12:51 AM »

I believe the quest description states silver, and so assume it actually means silver. It took me quite some time to hunt down a silver item, searching both caravans and villages, but they can exist in both of those types of locations.

I don't hide the above under a spoiler since the thread title says it's spoilerish.

912

Suggestions / Re: Universal size in URW

« on: February 22, 2019, 08:57:13 AM »

Different size of wearables mean increase in number of items.

So when we had a stack of 3 linen shirts, for example, which is one line of item.
 Now we have 3 different lines of 1 (small/medium/large) linen shirts.

Which put heavy, heavy demand on cell/map item storage.

I say no change to this. Let sleeping dog lie~

Doesn't actually make much of a difference in practice, because virtually all of the clothing items you bring back from fights are worn to different levels so they don't stack anyway.

However, I agree it's a change that should be a fair bit down on the priority list (placing it for implementation around 2050 or so).

913

Suggestions / Re: Super Mario...

« on: February 19, 2019, 03:00:30 PM »

I believe tiles are 2*2 meters, which means the larger tiles in the world are 100 * 100 meters (i.e. one hectare).

914

Gameplay questions / Re: Raspberry Pi compatibility?

« on: February 14, 2019, 07:51:45 PM »

I didn't think a Raspberry Pi had an Intel compatible processor, but rather something like an ARM? If that's the case, the Linux PC binaries won't work, as UrW is compiled, not a written as a script using e.g. Java.

915

General Discussion / Re: The currious case of Robbers

« on: February 14, 2019, 10:11:19 AM »

I had a case with my previous character where the character was attacking a robber band (as part of a robber quest) with a significant number of henchmen. One robber managed to hit my character with an arrow, resulting in immediate feinting (the character fainted a lot, eventually fatally). Despite not even being physically reachable (a henchman was blocking the only access tile) my character was carried away and dumped. Stupidly, I had the character return to the robber location (I think some spare gear was picked up on the way), zoomed in to the same tile, and everyone was frozen in the locations they were in when my character fainted. The fighting resumed, and that fight was eventually won. This happened before the bug that prevented you from ordering henchmen to attack targets was fixed.

However, if you approached the site of the battle zoomed in, it might be that the fight resumed while you were moving towards the area (although I think you ought to have heard sounds of fighting when approaching), with the dogs eliminating the remaining robbers.

The number of robbers seems to be random in the range 3-6. I had a case of more than that once (9?), but I think I managed to draw in a second robber band in an ongoing fight at that time (this happened when far too many robber bands were spawned, but that bug has since been fixed).

Anyway, this is a curious case...