Topics

1

Bug reports / Game freezes, lost all companions on reload

« on: September 06, 2023, 05:55:16 AM »

As the title suggests, the game froze while entering a water tile from the world map on my punt to come ashore. The game froze in the loading screen. I let it sit for five minutes, but it remained frozen. I closed it out, and when I reloaded, I was far away from that spot, still on land, but my three cattle laden with all my possessions, three dogs, and two companions had all vanished.

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Suggestions / Combat Skill, Companion Tracking, & Returning Companions

« on: September 05, 2023, 01:30:23 PM »

I'd like to suggest a separate Combat skill be added to better reflect character's composure in battle. It should increase very rapidly with fighting, and should mostly exist to better differentiate between civilians, novice fighters, and veterans. Essentially, a hunter may possess great skill with a bow, stalking prey that won't fight back, but if suddenly thrust into a life and death struggle against several seasoned Njerpez warriors, he may suddenly find himself quite unnerved. But if he's then been through several encounters--especially if successful--he will likely go into his next fight with far more confidence. The impact of this skill wouldn't be too overly significant--weapon and defense skills should still remain paramount--and as I mentioned, it should increase quickly. This will make it more important to find adventurers and seasoned fighters if for instance you are planning on chasing down some robbers or sacking a Njerpez raiding camp. As an aside, I also would suggest making tracking a useful skill for companions when chasing wildlife, making seasoned hunters more useful if you're hiring them to help you hunt.

Next, I would like to suggest that companions be more likely to be willing to 're-enlist' with you immediately (or sooner than they would otherwise) if your pay greatly exceeds their expectations. I think it creates greater immersion when I keep the same companions around for my various tasks. If I've led them on a successful raid of a Njerpez camp, for instance, and their efforts were rewarded with a great deal of loot, they'll likely trust me for future, lucrative expeditions. But if I was stingy in rewarding them, they'll likely be more inclined to look for work elsewhere, and may take a long time to be willing to work with me again. It would also be nice if when they left me in the wilderness they might indicate which village they will be heading toward should I wish to recruit them again in the future.

3

Suggestions / Herblore Quest Reward

« on: September 04, 2023, 01:11:28 PM »

It's rather slow to grind up herblore, and also doesn't make much sense. Sitting and pondering an unknown leaf every day for a year shouldn't make you suddenly much wiser when it comes to the mushroom you later find. I think it would make more sense if herblore were taught to the PC by sages and foresters as a reward for performing quests, or even occasionally in exchange for goods.

4

Suggestions / Double Check Before Attacking Allies/Pets

« on: December 20, 2022, 10:38:49 AM »

Could there be a togglable setting (default set to on) to ask before going through on an attack on followers/pets (the same kind of yes/no when it asks if you want to enter water)? Obviously for some people they may wish to do this often enough to not be bothered with it asking every time, hence the toggle. However, I often accidentally mistarget a friend or pet in combat, which is very frustrating with a permadeath game.

5

Suggestions / Creating Settlements

« on: May 31, 2021, 12:50:53 AM »

My number one desire for UrW right now would be the ability to found your own settlement. I enjoy outfitting my recruits with gear, but it's always disheartening when they finish their term of service and then vanish into the wilderness, never to be seen again (or be totally unwilling to rejoin me, even if I do find them). Having folk you could outfit and keep around (as they also develop in skill over time, too) would be great. It would also provide more late game content, as after I've outfitted myself in all masterwork gear, with a nice cabin and endless miles of trap fences I always run out of goals beyond raiding the Njerperz until I get unlucky and die.

My proposal for implementation:

In order to invite someone to your settlement, you first have to have a spare habitation flagged as available. So you'd need to construct homes for new immigrants. Then you'd have to find someone willing to move there and ask them to join your settlement. For this, there would need to be a more complex system defining each NPC's demeanor and place in society. Their relationships, personality, personal wealth, and occupation (shopkeeper, nobility, landed/unlanded farmer, so on), and a much broader range of skills would all need to be tracked.

Each NPC would have an assigned value between 0-100 indicating their reticence to move. Randomized within a range depending on personality, and then adjusted based off their age (younger people are more likely to be adventurous and take chances on a new place), skill (individuals with lesser skill will be more likely to seek opportunity elsewhere), personal wealth (a wealthy shopkeeper would be loathe to leave their thriving business, and his firstborn would also be unlikely to abandon the opportunity to inherit that wealth), and relationships (someone with a spouse who does not wish to move will be less likely to do so, or even if their family is willing, they may require a larger habitation). This personal score for each NPC will then be checked against what you're offering. This will be determined by your settlement's overall wealth, as well as the value of the property you are offering (a tiny yurt won't be nearly as enticing as a large, furnished cabin, for instance), how distant the settlement is (depending on personality; a homebody who values family is less likely to move a long distance than someone who is naturally adventurous), how many people are already living there (a town might be wealthy, but if there's already a large population there will be less opportunity for anyone freshly arriving), as well as town policies. A settlement's wealth can be increased by having walls, agricultural fields, livestock, certain communal buildings (public sauna, perhaps a temple, shops, a feast hall, etc), sufficient food stores, accessible water routes (e.g., on the coast or next to a river that leads to a coast for trading purposes), and well equipped warriors to protect it.

Of course, having a wealthy settlement is a double edged sword, as it will also attract the attention of others. While coastal or river adjacent villages are advantageous for trading and agricultural purposes, they will also be accessible to a new villain, "foreign raiders," who can arrive unexpectedly by boat during the late spring and summer. You can pay them off to go raid elsewhere, or fight them. You might receive some warnings a few days or weeks out that there are raiders in the vicinity, if you are in town or visiting nearby villages, but beware if you're out adventuring elsewhere for long periods, as you might come home to a smoldering wreck.

If you have a settlement within the cultural boundaries of a group, or within a certain distance from one of their cities, they will demand annual taxes, and may ask you to provide troops for campaigns. Failing to do so, or coming up short in either troops or taxes, will reduce your reputation with them, as will attacking anyone they are friendly with. If your reputation is reduced enough, they may request you cede control of the town, or else organize a campaign against you. Their demands will obviously increase with the wealth of your settlement.

Wherever you are, you may come afoul of common bandits or Njerperz, but your odds increase significantly the further you are from any cultural boundaries, especially from the Njerperz. This way, there's no truly "safe" place to set up a settlement, as there will always be someone who will covet your accruing wealth and want it for their own.

As for your townfolk, once they have moved in, you can try to assign jobs for them, which they may choose to accept based off their skills and personality (a brave man may be willing to be a warrior even without strong combat skills, but a coward will not), current duties (if you already have someone tagged as a hunter and hide processor, they will not have time to also be a fisherman), as well as access to the necessary utilities for the job (for instance, you may not have sufficient farmland to assign a new farmer, or have the tools they need to perform their job, such as shovels, sickles, and seeds).

Townfolk will also have their own desires. For instance, an unwed man may at some point request leave to travel to neighboring villages to find a possible bride to bring back, if they do not find anyone suitable in the village. A very religious person may grow increasingly unhappy if your town has reached a certain size and still does not have a temple, or if its temple is too small and unworthy. A village woman may desire for there to be some sheep to sheer for wool, or more warriors to protect them. A warrior may wish for better gear, or a larger house. And so on.

As the founder of the township, you can determine certain basic policies. For instance, it could be a free town, where everyone can do as they please, owing nothing, but can be bargained with to assist with various tasks if they're willing to (provide lumber in exchange for X payment, with less payment requested depending on their personality, skills, and overall happiness). Or you may require a certain amount of labor per year from your occupants. The more you demand, the less happy they will be, naturally. People will also be less likely to move somewhere where the taxes are onerous. However, as your settlement grows, it may be inevitable, as you will require more warriors to defend it than you could hope to feed on your own, so you will need your farmers, fishermen, and hunters to provide some portion of their labor.

Maybe this all goes well beyond the scope of UrW, but I think it would add so much more depth to the game. There would be a much more personal connection with the people who populate the world, as well as more ambitious long term goals available to pursue, that can just as easily be ignored by those from whom it holds no interest.

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Solved'n'fixed bug reports / [Fixed - fix effective in 3.72] Pyro Ally

« on: May 05, 2021, 11:01:51 PM »

I asked my ally to set a fire and he looked all around the completely clear area... and did so on top of my tanning hide. Allies should check for this first before deciding on a perfect spot to set a flame.

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Suggestions / Black Smiths and Armor Sizes

« on: April 30, 2021, 09:02:25 PM »

I'd like to see metal armor divided into small, medium, and large. Every character would be separated into each category based off their weight and height. Wearing armor other than your size will give a penalty. You would need to visit a blacksmith and pay to have a piece of armor adjusted to a different size. Blacksmiths could also be commissioned to make specific pieces of armor (or metal weapons) for a little more than if you just traded for that same piece normally, and would take a few days to complete (longer for bigger/more complicated pieces). They could also repair your damaged metal armor, too.

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Suggestions / Friendly Fire

« on: April 29, 2021, 03:03:02 AM »

The rate of friendly fire is far too high. If my small dog pops in front of me as I shoot my bow (masterwork, with 97 skill), without fail it always hits it. How can I not shoot over it? I can understand if two people are in active combat, and your ally is between you and the target, that more often than not you will hit them without significant skill. However, with enough skill you might be able to wait and choose your shot when it opens. What I would suggest, is two-fold. First, mitigating factors should make it easier to shoot past an ally. For instance, in the example I gave, it should be very easy to shoot past my small dog at a charging bear. But it should increase in challenge with more distance, the larger the size of your ally, the smaller the size of your target, and made significantly more difficult if your ally is engaged in combat rather than just standing or running/walking (since in the frenzy of action, they will be moving unexpectedly, but if they are just standing it is easier to judge your shot to miss them). The second "fix" I propose is that if you shoot at a target with an ally in the shot's direct path, should you fail your roll and would otherwise hit them, a second roll should be made. If you succeed the roll, you will not fire at all, and will instead lose the action with the message: "You are unable to find a clear shot." It should be based primarily off of your weapon skill and eyesight, with either speed, dex, or agi playing a smaller role to simulate your ability to act during the appropriate window of opportunity, and the challenge of the roll should increase/decrease based off of all the criteria I mentioned before (distance, size of targets, in/out of combat).

So in my initial example, say I am shooting at a bear 14 spaces away, with my small dog on a leash directly in front of me. It should be moderately challenging based off the distance, but due to the relative size of the targets (small dog versus large bear), and the proximity of the dog to me (directly adjacent), it would require an abysmal roll to miss and hit my dog. If I did fail that roll, however, I would then get a second roll heavily based off my skill and eyesight to check whether I pull back my shot to avoid hitting my beloved pet.

This would also help with hired allies. As it is, I either avoid hiring anyone who has a bow, or endeavor to first take it away from them, because they more often than not end up riddling myself, my animals, and my other allies with arrows if I don't.

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Suggestions / Adventurer Gear

« on: April 27, 2021, 11:54:44 PM »

Adventurer's should generally start off with more armor. I frequently meet them strutting around half-naked. For instance, I just spoke to one wearing nothing but a cloak.

10

Suggestions / Fix Robbers

« on: March 27, 2019, 09:59:42 PM »

Currently it's really hard for me to enjoy playing URW due to the way robbers are implemented. If you get knocked out in any fashion, you're auto-looted and transported from the fight, regardless of circumstances. Knock-outs shouldn't result in auto-forfeits if you still have companions/animals active. On my last play through, for instance, I tracked down some bandits with two companions, two dogs, and a large cow. I one shot the first with my bow, and quickly killed the second. We had the third robber surrounded by all five of us, with multiple major injuries on him and none of us so much as bruised. He managed to land a lucky blow that did no actual damage through my full metal armor, but caused sufficient pain to knock me out, resulting in waking up with all my gear/animals gone. Suffice to say I find it a tad doubtful that one under-equipped and badly injured robber managed to kill both dogs and both companions--all of whom were at full health--before I could wake up from the pain blackout, which should have only lasted a tick or two. It's unrealistic and makes those fights far worse than an entire village of Njerperz.

I would suggest one of two ways for robber encounters to be fixed in a way that feels fair and immersive:

• The fight should continue to resolve, and you should only be "robbed" if/when hostilities cease without any non-routed "friendlies" by the PC's unconscious body.
• A "bind" action should be implemented into the game (and made available to the PC, too). This uses the unarmed skill and requires a rope or cord. This takes several minutes to complete (more or less depending on your unarmed skill), during which the victim cannot take an action, however, it will be automatically interrupted by a successful attack. Once bound, the victim can be looted, and must unbind themselves taking ~30 minutes, or be unbound by someone else. If successfully bound by robbers, they will act as they do now: bonk you over the head, loot your gear, dump you in the woods. However, if you have aggro pets/companions active, they will (ideally) prevent this from happening until the robbers have dealt with them too. The added benefit of this is that it enables the PC to become a robber as well, allowing a (potentially) non-lethal way of disabling and looting NPCs.