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Choose the starting Culture based on skills Here is a short commentary/guide to the starting cultures, based on the simple analysis of the starting skill bonuses/maluses. This should help any beginner looking to make things smoother for themselves.. or harder, if masochistic :)

  • Reemi, Sarto, Kaumo and Kiesse are quite versatile tribes, with bonuses far outweighing the maluses. Good choice for beginners, especially if the right tribe is chosen for a specific play style (eg, choose Sarto for agriculture-related characters, Kaumo for warriors and active hunters, Reemi for trappers and Kiesse for the prototypical woodsman.)
  • Owls have many maluses (which reduces their versatility in using multiple weapons and wood/construction stuff, but also fishing), but are probably the best active hunters (Kaumo is easier to play overall but takes more grinding to raise some important skills). This is your bow-sniper character, able to track down quickly the prey, kill it and produce high-quality hides, as well as identify useful herbs.
  • Seal tribes are not as bad as you would think from their -4. They are the best spear-users, club-users, fishers and "shamans". Their stealth bonus is also good. They make fun (and reality-appropriate) seal-hunters if you don't go the easy way (eg, traps): sneak up, throw your javelin/spear and club to death. I enjoyed playing as one.
  • Driik seem very "poor", but they have the best sword, shield and crossbow bonuses. Most other tribes have maluses there, or at best a zero. They might make for interesting atypical characters.
  • Islanders are the best weather predictors.. which is sadly useless (maybe for some quests? not sure). They can only swim, fish and carve wooden objects better than default, and have plenty of important maluses. More "carpentry" options (eg, fishbone carvery?) might make them more appealing in the future.
  • Kuikka are essentially lesser Owl that can fish very well (like Islanders and Seal-tribe), and carve wooden objects decently. Never got interested in playing as one.
  • Koivulanen.. these are weird. They have good Agriculture, like the Sarto, and also small tracking&trapping bonuses. They have a bonus to the least used weapon, the flail. That's it - however, they also lack significant maluses. Herblore & Physician only. So they make for the real average man, which can be interesting for the expert player.



Source of the above: the ini_skills.txt shipped with the game. I uploaded it on the wiki for easy consultation.

I found the actual file a bit hard to read - a table works much better. Also, I prefer a bonus/malus view (eg, difference compared to the default) instead of the absolute numbers.

It would be great to also have a table for attribute bonuses.. what we have was found empirically a long time ago and I'm not sure how accurate it is.

I find, however, that when planning a character I care more about the skills than the attributes, since I'm a heavy roller to get high values (or I even correct the attributes manually, if I can't be bothered to roll). So it doesn't affect me overmuch.

(URW version 3.4)

August 28, 2017, 04:00:35 PM
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Re: Rauko The woodsman rewards Rauko with knowledge of a secret treasure in a cave.



On the way to search for the treasure, Rauko explores a cave and makes some interesting finds.
He's sure this is not far enough away to be the one described by the woodsman.
The spirits must be generous!


March 14, 2018, 10:25:18 PM
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Re: Rauko Rauko wonders what treasure might be waiting at his destination, if he can find it.
After a long search, he finds the mountain cave and enters cautiously...



It is a treasure of worth beyond his wildest dreams!
More wealth than several of his home villages would possess has come into his hands.
The spear immediately becomes his most prized possession, he is almost under a spell
when gazing upon it's beautiful workmanship.

Rauko stays in the cave for a few days and makes it a place of refuge when needed.

March 17, 2018, 03:02:05 PM
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Re: Rauko Two weeks pass...

He leaves much of his heavy gear at a point on the riverbank, and travels downstream to the
north-east and finds the sea. He paddles along the coast to the west, then the east. He finds
no settlements, and nothing but hunger as his food runs out and he has no luck fishing with
only his prized spear.

Starving, he returns to where he left his gear. Next day he manages to kill a hare in a rather
unusual manner.


March 20, 2018, 10:57:23 PM
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Skill Training Guide One of the things I've been working on more lately is more consistent skill training, so I thought I'd write up a bit about how to train up skills and how difficult they are.  The general rule is that you can gain at most three percentage points every day, and the day rolls over at about 8:00 AM.  Skills with more stars next to them will be easier to train up, depending on your stats and the stats that help with that skill.

Craft & Lore skills

Agriculture - Train up through planting seeds.  Affects the yields of grown plants.  Difficult to deliberately skill train.
Building - Train up through building things.  Affects the speed of building.  Difficult to deliberately skill train.
Cookery - Train through cooking more difficult recipes.  Roasting meat won't do much, more complex recipes are more likely to train.  Somewhat useful; will affect the trade value of cooked food.
Herblore - Keep unknown plants, mushrooms, and berries in your inventory and use herblore on them every hour or so.  Trains pretty rapidly with a few items to train with.  Useful for identifying edible and medicinal plants.
Fishing - Train through fishing with a tool, pole, or nets.  Difficult to deliberately skill train, but net fishing is probably most effective.
Hideworking - Training with small game is most effective, since they tan faster and each hide gives you the same number of possible skill ups regardless of side.  Very useful for getting higher quality clothing and cords.
Timbercraft - Training with board making is most effective.  Not hugely useful, but affects the speed of timberwork and quality of boards.
Physician - Train by treating minor injuries.  Climbing trees is a reasonable way to get minor but not threatening injuries.  Frostbites from running naked in the winter work OK too.  Can now treat animals and companions as well, which might be a less dangerous way to train it.
Trapping - Can be trained by resetting traps repeatedly.  Very useful for those who want to trap; increases the chance of game entering the trap.
Tracking - Train by following a game trail and repeatedly using the tracking skill to check the direction of the tracks.  Quite useful for active hunting.
Weatherlore - I have literally never seen this skill increase, and I use it every morning.
Carpentry - Train by making crafted goods like shortbows or paddles.  Difficult to train, but quite useful for higher quality items.

Physical skills
Skiing - Just ski.  During the winter I ski around checking trap lines to train this.  Quite useful for winter travel.
Stealth - Walk around in stealth mode.  Seems to train faster when there are animals nearby.  Useful for active hunting and combat.
Climbing - Climbing fences or small cliffs trains this safely and quickly.  Useful at very high skills for climbing trees safely for better views.
Swimming - Swim along the shoreline in the summer.  Trains fairly quickly.  Not commonly used, but can save your life in some situations.

Combat skills
Difficult to train up safely.  Throwing or shooting weapons will train, but often takes hundreds of throws to get a skillup.  Dodge, unarmed, and shield are very difficult to train.

Any other suggestions?  I generally spend time on actively training herblore, skiing, stealth, climbing, club, trapping, and tracking. 

March 31, 2018, 09:34:29 PM
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He was in my cabin! The following is a story of Ossi.

It was my first winter alone since I escaped from my Njerpez captors.  You see, I had cleared their camp earlier in the spring and used it as my homestead, remaking two of their buildings into my own cabin.  My homestead was then a central camp with my cabin and sauna with a pine mire to the north and east, all surrounded by spruce mire.  I had ringed my homestead and border of the spruce mire with a contiguous trap fence and staked trap pits.  In the months between then and mid-winter, I had explored and become friendly with local villagers: trading for many goods I needed, helping them with chores, traveling between regions, and even finding a bird thief. 

In those travels, I had encountered numerous Njerpez warriors wandering the forests, especially near my homestead.  More so even than I had ever heard of.  I had had numerous encounters, and almost perished a few times.  Because of this, I often wore my best armor and was armed as I traveled around the forests near my homestead.

One morning near mid-winter, I checked my trap fence and found a lone small wolf caught in a pit.  I killed, skinned, and butchered the animal, offering up a gift to the spirits for this bounty.  I set the meat to dry and tanned the fur.  I came back and picked up the rinsed winter wolf fur and took it into my cabin to finish at my table.  I had a decent fur at the end, was weary and moderately fatigued, and it was evening.  So I decided to add the fur to my sleeping pallet and rest.  I decided not to re-kindle the fire that night and was about to lay down on my furs against a cold winter night ...when I heard my door open

Confused, I was about to look to my door when I was hit from behind and felt something break in my thoraxI turned and I was being attacked by a Njerpez Warrior holding a mace! He was in my cabin!  He had apparently scaled my fence, snuck across my homestead, rushed into my cabin, and attacked me, all in the darkness of the night as I was finishing a fur.  I wasn't wearing armor and had no weapons, so I grabbed a handaxe nearby and fought the intruder.

I had little hope of succeeding against this enemy with my fatigue and wound, but I struck back against his blow to my shoulder and luckily hit him in the abdomen, which wound began to bleed.  I think he was shocked that his first strike didn't knock me unconscious and I was fighting back.  After that, I chopped my axe against his skull and he dropped dead.  I was stunned at my survival! 

I gathered my weapons quickly, searched my homestead in the darkness, and found this intruder was alone.  I was left with a major fracture in my thorax, a dead Njerpez next to my sleeping pallet, and bloody gore marring my peaceful cabin.  I felt as if my home was violated.  If there was only some way to secure my cabin or bar the door.  I don't feel as safe as I did before this invasion.  It is a blessing I was awake.  One more moment, and I would have lied down and the Njerpez warrior would have found me asleep.  I am truly lucky.


Note: In all my years of playing URW, I've never encountered so many solo Njerpez warriors in such a small geographical region.  They've given me a fairly steady stream of goods for trade.  But I've also never had a Njerpez invade my cabin directly.  I've found them in tiles adjacent to various characters' cabins, but this is the first time I've ever had this type of experience.  It scared me to death.  I was literally shaking by being surprised by a Njerpez in my own cabin.  I was sure my time invested into this character was about to be flushed down the tube, but was genuinely happy to survive.  I also wonder if it would be possible to bar a door in a building.  This would require the invader to break down the door with an axe to get in, but would give some defense against home invaders.

April 16, 2018, 10:45:35 AM
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quality of life For new players:

Since the UI can be a bit unwieldy at times, here's some things I learned:

-----
The combination of using NUMPAD+ and the TAB key is really useful to drop, equip, dress/undress/haul certain items without having to scroll through your stuff.
NUMPAD+ = select everything
SPACE = confirm
TAB = activate filter
-----

Examples:

TAB+'f' selects all food, so it is very useful to dump all the food into the cellar. TAB+'f', NUMPAD+ and SPACE do a great job here.

If I want to cook those 259 elk cuts, what I do is
press 'd' (to drop)
press NUMPAD+ (to select everything)
press TAB 'f'
press NUMPAD- (to unselect everything)
press SPACE (Now I will drop everything that is not food)
When roasting my cuts I can now use 'r' to repeat, and if I am only carrying raw meat, the process is really fast.

I do the same for tanning stuff, drop everything except hides, press 'g' to get my knife (and some fat) from the pile at my feet, and I am ready to go with 0 penalties

I do the same when trading in a village sometimes, when I drop everything I don't want to sell. I undress all clothing via SHIFT+T, TAB 'a', NUMPAD+, SPACE. Now I can let the villagers choose "which items they actually want", and I can also carry more.

-----

The game takes materials from the ground. When crafting it is useful to first drop everything (NUMPAD+, SPACE), and then pick up some critical materials that cannot be used from the ground (like food or cords).

-----

When cooking (or drying food) it is useful to build the cellar right next to the shelter. This way I can make a fire next to the cellar and cook while standing on the cellar. The food is prepared "inside" the cellar. If the fire is really small, the food won't burn and will be stored in the cellar without the need to move it there.

-----

About drying food: On my first couple of games I didn't know that clothing can be used to make cords. Linen, wool, leather, and fur clothing can be transformed into cords. One cord can take 19 cuts.

-----

Food preservation: Food on companions spoils more slowly. Shift+'g' can be used in the overland map, so whenever I am hungry, I can take some meat from my companion instead of carrying the food myself. (Also useful for trading.)



 

June 03, 2018, 09:29:00 PM
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barry the bull, why you should get at least 1 bull. left my cabin this morning, gathering stones for the paths on my homestead (when finished, i'll Screenshot that to for y'all to see)

anyway, this picture is why you should get a bull, when doing large building projects.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/oja3tfkufi3izwx/barry.jpg

June 05, 2018, 01:24:33 AM
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[Diary entry] Skiing and tracking I guess we haven't seen any lynx related dev's diary entries here at the new forums. The old forums surely had some. So, how about a little picture story from the real world adventures of unreal world developer - with a lynx involved.

I went skiing the other day, and the ski trip then turned into a tracking exercise. Soon after entering the forest I spotted some lynx tracks, but our paths then departed as I went about my own trails.


Later, when returning home, strange curly tracks caught my attention - and sparkled my tracking instinct. I guessed that this might be the same lynx now dragging its kill, and had to confirm the theory.


I scouted the area, found lots of hare tracks, and then the lynx tracks which eventually turned into sneaking tracks as it approached the location.


The hare's last dance with the lynx went to many directions until finally the place where it ended was found, with some hair and (not too old) bloodscape.


There, the lynx had dragged its kill to a more peaceful location for eating it. That was some twenty meters away, among thick young spruce trees. Not much was left of the hare, but a few hairy bits on the snow.


Afterwards, I had to search for my backpack for half an hour as I had left it somewhere on the snow in excitement. I enjoyed the day and I hope you enjoyed this first, but hopefully not the last lynx related diary entry at these new forums.

March 07, 2019, 08:50:45 PM
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Who let the dogs out... Let's try to make a return with development news then. It's taken some browsing of the code and decoding hazy written notes to find the path which I was following prior to fracturing my arm, and the sick leave that followed. But now also my to-do memory has recovered to great extent and there are snippets of upcoming features to present.

Dogs... NPC dogs... Village dogs... Dogs to better protect the NPCs... that's what I had started to code, and that's what is now to be continued.

Village dogs are now released out of their pens, and they roam freely at the village area. This allows village dogs to truly protect the village from possible threats and intruders. Village dogs are also improved in their watch dog behavior, and unfamiliar visitors are now greeted with alarm barks and by coming close by to sniff and check them. Village dogs may seem intimidating for strangers but this behavior is gradually toned down when you become more familiar with the village.

...to be continued -- there are a few more dog things coming up..

March 21, 2019, 02:53:06 PM
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anything