Messages

16

Suggestions / Rain + about to drop + no shelter = ARGH

« on: November 05, 2017, 04:41:19 PM »

If you need to stop for the night while it's raining and you miscalculate the length of time to build a shelter, it becomes an extremely irritating process of repeatedly collapsing unconscious, then waking a few minutes later because of the rain, then trying to set up your shelter, then collapsing again, then waking up again, over and over and over.  And you can't do anything about it at that point.  Perhaps having rain wake you at weary instead of exhausted would be a good compromise.  At least then it wouldn't take you a dozen or more cycles of build-collapse-wake-build.

17

Suggestions / Re: Repairing nets

« on: November 05, 2017, 04:34:19 PM »

A good way to balance it would be to allow for the creation of fish weirs, which would essentially be water-based traps similar to any other land-based trap.  They're historically accurate, too.

18

Gameplay questions / Re: Short Questions/Quick Answers

« on: November 01, 2017, 03:35:06 PM »

Thanks for clarifying how healing works.  I bandaged the arm, visited a shaman, and then left it alone.  It only took a week and a half or so to get it healed enough to use it, then another few weeks to get it healed completely.  I spent my time trapping birds and fishing.  I traded the loot from the bandits for some decent armour and then, since I'd spent a lot of points on weapon skills, decided to head for Njerp territory.  I stumbled across a Njerp village in broad daylight and the next thing I knew I was running for my life through heavy woods with every man, woman, and child on my heels and arrows whizzing past me.  What RNG taketh away, the RNG also occasionally giveth.  I ended up finding trees arranged so that I could occupy a little nook which covered my back and they could only come at me two at a time with not enough room to snipe me with bows.

By the time I was finished I'd grabbed a fallen enemy's fine mace and the bodies of nearly the entire tribe were heaped around me.  When I finally recovered my stamina and emerged from my little hidey-hole, there was just a single Njerp child left who made the poor life decision of picking up a rock when he saw me.  Turns out you don't need paper to beat rock; a big, heavy mace works just fine.

I now own an entire ex-Njerp village and all its varied contents.  Anyone in the market for some scimitars?

19

Gameplay questions / Re: Bow accuracy

« on: October 30, 2017, 09:45:58 AM »

Perhaps there could be the possibility of an aimed shot, then?  Taking a turn or two to steady your shot on an unmoving target should greatly increase accuracy, and probably more accurately reflect the reality of bow hunting with a devastating first shot which, if it fails to bring down the prey, then turns into a long and grueling pursuit.  I haven't done any bow hunting myself, but I've accompanied someone who does.  The only exception to his one-shot-one-kill technique is bear hunting, where he uses a broadhead arrow, then uses his Russian wolfhounds to force the bear to run so it tears itself up inside on the arrow and eventually dies of internal bleeding.

20

Gameplay questions / Re: Short Questions/Quick Answers

« on: October 30, 2017, 07:50:47 AM »

After more than a dozen tries, I was finally able to wedge myself into some trees where they could only come at me two at a time, but not before they'd crippled my right arm from behind.  I managed to kill all five of them with a left-handed hand axe (I started with a rough one, but snatched up a normal quality one from the first one I killed), but now I'm stuck trying to play the early game with a crippled right arm and a low physician skill.  I'm debating whether or not to abandon the game.  The wound keeps bleeding when I try to tend it, and I've come close to bleeding out a couple of times.  I've already gone through most of the bandits' clothes bandaging all my wounds, and it'll probably be summer by the time I manage to get the arm healed enough to use it.  Spending day after day fishing and setting light lever traps because I can't do anything else isn't much fun.

21

Gameplay questions / Re: Short Questions/Quick Answers

« on: October 29, 2017, 11:48:06 AM »

Now that I have some experience in URW, I've been trying more challenging starting conditions.  The Robbers start is really starting to piss me off.  I understand that you're more likely to start the game with weapons you're better skilled with, which makes sense, but is it deliberately inverted for certain starts?  I've now done eight Robbers starts, which seems like a statistically significant number, and in every single one I've started the game with weapons with which I am completely unskilled.  It doesn't seem statistically likely that this can be just the RNG.  I've tried switching around which weapons I'm trained in, but no matter which I pick, I always start with a different set of weapons -- none of which I'm trained to use.  In the latest game, out of frustration and curiosity I created a character with maximum skills in every weapon class except knives and axes... and the only things I started out with were a knife and an axe.

Am I just cursed by the RNG, or does the Robber start deliberately give you terrible weapons?

22

Gameplay questions / Re: Bow accuracy

« on: October 28, 2017, 01:56:55 PM »

I can't find it now on his mess of a website, but that figure I got originally from Bernard Cornwell, well known for his exhaustively-researched historical fiction.

23

Gameplay questions / Bow accuracy

« on: October 28, 2017, 08:08:00 AM »

I have 90 skill in bows, 0% encumberance, masterwork longbow, and fine arrows -- and I still miss birds more often than I hit at a range of one full screen.  English longbowmen could routinely hit something the size of a playing card from 200 yards.  I understand that these characters are hunter-trappers and fishermen, not professionally trained warriors, but missing more than half your shots at a range of 30 or 40 yards seems unrealistically inaccurate.

24

Off-topic / Re: Kalevala in prose

« on: October 26, 2017, 12:24:56 PM »

The Story of Kullervo sounds remarkably like Völundarkviða (The Lay of Volund).

25

Gameplay questions / Re: Short Questions/Quick Answers

« on: October 24, 2017, 01:10:04 PM »

Is there any way to make more than one serving of porridge at a time?  I have an entire cauldron, but it doesn't seem to be possible to prepare multiple batches unless I have multiple cauldrons.

26

Off-topic / Re: Other roguelikes

« on: October 21, 2017, 10:47:45 AM »

C:DDA has an absolutely massive crafting system, with living entirely in the woods and surviving off only what you can scavenge there a completely viable strategy -- with the added challenge of having a zombified grizzly tear through your yurt in the middle of the night and biting off your head like a meat lollipop.

27

Off-topic / Re: Other roguelikes

« on: October 21, 2017, 02:48:42 AM »

I'm really surprised there are no other C:DDA players here, since it's the game which is most like URW.

28

Modding / Re: Every Part of the Animal

« on: October 20, 2017, 09:57:06 AM »

Okay, thanks, I'll have a look at it.

29

Modding / Every Part of the Animal

« on: October 19, 2017, 02:21:44 AM »

I've been trying to make an "Every Part of the Animal" mod which would allow the harvesting of bones (small and large), blood, and gutpile from butchering (depending on physician skill -- it's not that unrealistic for butchery skills to translate to medical skills and vice versa), as an initial step to creating uses for it.  (Bones can be ground for bonemeal for fertilizer, small bones used for jewelry and charms, large bones used for weapons and armour; blood used to make blood sausage; gutpiles used as bait.)

I've been looking through all the material on modding, and I don't see any way to do this.  Is this baked into the code and therefore impossible to mod?

30

Off-topic / Re: Other roguelikes

« on: October 19, 2017, 01:12:07 AM »

I tried The Long Dark in early access because I thought it would scratch my post-apocalyptic itch, but didn't like it.  Too much hopping from fire to fire, spending most of your time playing it safe and keeping warm, not enough time ransacking abandoned cars and old cabins.  In the real world, hunter-gathers spend about two hours a day on survival.  The busy-work stuff that most so-called "survival" games force you to do against unrealistic countdown timers is irritating to me.  Just plunk me somewhere with no time limits and tell me to survive and I'll be happy as a pig in shit.  It's why I enjoy playing URW; if I want to take a day off to go exploring or hunt squirrels or find out where this river leads, I can, and the trap line and fishing nets can wait until tomorrow.