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In short, players are heavily rewarded for playing on PvE servers, whilst a lot of people feel there is little reason to play on Defiance unless there is an active PvP engagement occurring. This is super unhealthy for the PvP community, and if changes aren’t made, the population on Defiance will eventually die. Some of the reasons people frequently choose to play on Freedom rather than Defiance include: More frequent rites, and therefore more sleep bonus. There are a lot more rite casts on Freedom than on Defiance due to the higher population and more concentrated number of Vynora priests. Risk free crafting. Risk free hunting. Items you make can be sold for silver, whereas on Defiance people are more likely to provide items for free. Ease of crossing between Defiance and Freedom. Instead of the Chaos/Freedom isles relationship; where you must sail between servers (which is a risk in itself), portals currently allow you to cross at a moment’s notice in order to respond to PvP. The Path of Knowledge level 11 ability which grants 25% bonus skill gain. This is unattainable on Defiance. Essentially, playing on Freedom just makes a lot of sense for the individual, but if everyone does the same, this has a negative impact on the PvP community. Usually high difficulty is rewarded in Wurm, as it should be, which is why I suggest adding incentives to play on PvP rather than removing features from Freedom: Hunting should ALWAYS be good on PvP. Right now it is terrible, particularly in the south. Spawns should be crazy high. Starter zones could be spared so new players don’t get overwhelmed. Rites could have halved requirements on PvP, and scale with number of active priests in that religion. (Or a timed cooldown, half requirements on PvP might still mean more casts on Freedom). Looting battle camps could give 1 hr sleep bonus to all in local. Valrei missions: If the Defiance server rewards are as the same on Freedom it’d make no sense, as there’s no risk to completing Valrei missions on Freedom. On Defiance, these missions should be more frequent, they should encourage going into enemy lands, and they should give lots of sleep bonus and other rewards for all participants. (My suggestion is keep Valrei missions the same as they currently are on Freedom, but buff the rewards on PvP. Note that this DOES NOT mean adding moon metals or similar to the PvP Valrei rewards.) Exclusive skins that can only be acquired on the PvP server. These could be gained through Valrei missions, HoTA rewards, or maybe as rewards for having high battle rank. These skins could be transferable to the Freedom servers to allow people to show off their pvp-gotten-gains. Some sort of penalty to using a PvP portal, a timed CR nerf or similar. Increased skill gain? Nothing as drastic as Epic, but instead a 10% bonus to all skillgain. These are just some ideas thrown out there as examples, as there are plenty of other ways to increase incentive. Feel free to add more suggestions, like, comment, subscribe, etc. It should also be noted that this thread links up with this one here:

make it slower

I know there has been a lot of discussion about people exploiting this, or how we should track them and ban them, but it's a little bit more complicated than this. When this potential exploit was shared with us, we compared top channelling skills across all servers. We found there to be a range between the average and highest, but not high enough to pinpoint using the reported exploit. Our logging tools did not record links between priests, and as such, we had no historical information to go by either. With all this, it is impossible to identify any abuses from merely working with links to grind channelling as it previously worked. As such, we're not going to ban the highest channelling players as we do not have the evidence backing any such ban, and have zero evidence that the current priests selling goods benefitted in any such way. So to answer your questions: 1) There is no evidence suggesting any priests abused this bug; please refrain accusing any priest who sells items on the market of abusing it. 2) There were no significant outliers in our collection of data based on channelling skill at the time of the patch. 3) We will not be taking action as we are more likely to ban innocent players who used links than anyone exploiting.

So I was talking to some friends of mine about the follower benefits of Libila, and I realized that a huge part of the follower bonus is the use of Mycelium. However, Mycelium isn't allowed on Freedom and I'm curious as to why. I imagine it would not be hard to limit mycelium only to a deeds border, as well as only allowing Mayors or Co-Mayors to cast it on the deed. To my knowledge grass is more aggressive then Mycelium without HOTS influence. For proof of this you can look at Rifts as the Mycelium tiles spawned by them are eaten up by the grass in a matter of days. If people are worried about not having to eat while standing on the tiles, they could turn down the max amount of nutrition to keep it under 90. With these in place, I can't find a reason that Mycelium would be overpowered or being able to be used for Griefing.

Where I am standing is a remnant of the natural rock level.

The V-Files: Sleep Powder Scandal A lot of mail filters through the Valerie desk yearly, if each letter was a forum PM it’d be a whole 15! And yet, for some reason, this particular piece of mail caught my eye. The title was bold, and jumped out instantly. “GMs DEALING SLEEP POWDER AND CREATING ARTIFICIAL DEMAND ON NEW SERVER” The full letter will not be released, however I will lay out all the evidence I have gathered during my investigation. I promise you, this scandal goes across clusters which is why it belongs as a V-File. Nowhere is safe. This post is being written from memory, for reasons that will be clear later. Evidence - Missions. Where are they? On the Southern Freedom Isles, you can complete missions for the gods on Valrei. These missions will award you some sleep bonus when they are completed, making them a constant source of sleep bonus if you can take part in them. Many players use these in order to keep topped up, as is expected and intended. However, they are currently completely disabled on the Northern Freedom Isles, depriving many players of missions they could use to get some of that valuable sleep bonus for their early game grinds. This does seem fairly innocent to start with, maybe the devs just didn’t want missions to spawn and not be completed? Players have asked the GM and Dev team on a consistent basis why they are disabled, but we never get an answer that satisfies on any level. When this source of sleep bonus is deprived, people get antsy. They get desperate. And we will explore this fact. Evidence - Trader tax reports After deciding to research the idea of sleep powder and its consumption being controlled by the staff, I decided to pull some strings with players I know to access the trader tax reports on the new servers. The six current traders have reported very low sales of sleep powder since launch, with one trader even selling a number in the single digits. I cannot give exact numbers due to the game rules, but the five other traders reported a number below 20. At this point, I felt the information could have been solid. New players don’t know the benefit of sleep powder, and old players probably didn’t feel the need to get sleep powders. PvP players probably wanted to start getting deeds prepped and towers chained, so just put the idea to the back of their minds. However for the sake of good journalism, I decided to press forward and ask some players questions relating to their trader use and buying habits. The case went somewhat cold here. Some players were happy to discuss the amounts of powder they bought, while others decided to pretend to be statues regardless of how many emotes I did to them. The players who did answer revealed that there was a lot more sleep powder bought than was reported by traders, but there’s always the chance these players are lying to make a fool out of me. And while it was a case for suspicion, the basis I had to question others was unsteady. Things would not stay cold for long. Due to my questioning, a significant breakthrough happened. Evidence - Dodgy dealings During my questioning of random players I found out word made it to someone who had a significant testimony for me. In the interest of the safety of this player, I have decided to not release their name. The testimony is as follows: “I have witnessed a GM I do not know dealing with a player buying sleep powder. It seemed the player was handing the GM coins, and the GM handed them back sacks of sleep powder from the trader, who was very clearly in on the deal. In the satchels it looked like maybe...150 sacks of sleep powder? It was hard to see, the GM modified the server time to obscure the deal as it went down.The GM vanished a few seconds after they seemed done, and the player then got on his horse and rode away. I followed from a distance, and they logged out inside a small shack I noted the location of.” 150 sleep powder is major news, at a whole 4.5kg in weight that translates into roughly 3 gold in cluster value. It begs the question, why is this being kept a secret? Is there a greater idea in play? It was clear where this was leading me. I asked the player for the location of the shack, and after greasing their palms, I had a location to head to. Evidence - The shack An artist's rendition of the shack. After a long ride to the location marked on my map, known on the Melody map as “Broccoli Hills” I finally found the shack. It was very small and nondescript from the outside, but the inside blew away any expectations I could have had. While some items seemed uninteresting, like the large stash of wheat, wheat flour, stills and ovens, tucked away in a small corner were my two smoking guns. A pile of unfinished sleep powder, guarded by a small squadron of boy statues. I knew with this evidence I had a real case to present to the playerbase, so I quickly nabbed a handful of the unfinished sleep powders and a sketch of one of the boy statues before I ran out of there like a new player after fighting a pheasant. But my work wasn’t even close to done. There is only one person I know with the mind to decorate an area with boy statues, and I knew exactly where to find him. Interrogation - Fabricant An oddball even by Wurm standards, his official VEN description mentions he’ll often be found playing in the dirt, complaining at rifts, starting new projects to never be finished or even worshiping Boars. I knew that speaking to him at all was going to be a challenge, and even harder to get solid, coherent answers. On the way to a public slaying, I managed to stop him and ask him the first thing that came to mind. “Do you have any idea about the sleep powder creation shack on the Northern Freedom Isles?” The reply was not what I was expecting. "What", he then immediately farted in my direction and then danced away with a bear corpse he seemed to pull from nowhere. In some cultures, dancing can be used as a form of communication. I'm not sure if Fabricant was trying to tell me something by performing a waltz with a bear corpse. Could it have been a hint? Maybe a confession? I wasn't sure. Given the failure to get new information, I knew I didn't have time to learn the intricacies of the tango. I felt I needed to return to the shack, and gather evidence of Fabricants involvement to squeeze out some extra information. Finale Upon returning to the Melody server to examine the shack yet again, it was missing. I initially thought I was in the wrong location, but upon further examination this was definitely the spot. The slopes, the landscape, everything matched perfectly. The only evidence left of the shack was the indentations on the ground from the weight of the boy statues. Wasting no time, I decided I needed to rush home, feeling uneasy at the thought of being caught snooping around. I thought I saw a white name flashing my local tab, and doors opening and closing. The thought of someone being around me didn’t cross my mind, until I realised in my own house, the evidence was now missing. This was no ordinary theft, as items like supremes weren’t taken. This is a warning to you all. There are higher forces trying to hide this information from you all, starving us all of our valuable sleep bonus. This goes all the way to the top. If I have any new developments, you’ll be sure to hear of them.

UPDATE POST It was a complicated weekend and, more than once, I was on the edge of quitting the game. And that was not because I didn't liked it any more, but the opposite - I got to like it so much, that it started to turn in some sort of addiction and it ended up taking more and more of my time (up to an average of four hours per day as I previously said) and masking me miss out on real life activities. However, after discussing with a few people and thinking it thoroughly I believe I managed to pinpoint the problem which was that I was spending too much of my time doing chores and not having enough time left to work on my projects, which made me feel frustrated and want to spend extra time so I can also see some progress. And now, with the problem identified, I can start to think at solutions to reduce / minimize the time spent on chores and increase the share of my playtime available for projects; and here's the point where I'd need your advice helping me identify possible chores and suggest me which ones I could/should drop. So, here's the list I have far now: 1) Repairs - checking if things need repairing every day so they don't go *poof* can be very time consuming, even on a small deed like mine, but I figured out that if they're high enough quality (think about 20-30ql) they should be safe for at least one week, so I could turn this chore from a daily one to a weekly one. So the plan is to improve any item that I craft to about 20-30 ql then maintain them at that level, and only do maintenance work once per week. 2) Meditation - the level 11 reward from Path of Knowledge (25% passive gain on all skills) sounds awesome, but trying to stick in as many meditation ticks as possible (especially after the first five) can easily become a huge burden, so I really think that for a casual player like me not aiming for that, but just be happy with the Path of Love rewards and never try to meditate above the first five ticks, might be wiser. So the plan is to stick with the Path of Love and only do the first five meditation of a day. That is still under debate. 3) Cooking (which includes gathering cooking ingredients - meat via fishing/hunting and veggies via farming/foraging) - everyone says that cooking (especially at high level) can be very rewarding and I'm sure that's very true for people with a lot of playtime, but in my case, especially since I'd have the Refresh ability from the Path of Love meditation path, I really think it might be wiser to ignore the whole food part of the game (at least for the time being). So the plan is to ignore (at least for the time being) the whole food part of the game (cooking, hunting, fishing, foraging, farming - for food items at least) and just count on the Refresh ability. That is still under debate. 4) Animal husbandry - that's actually one of the things I really like in WURM, but it is also rather time consuming and since I live on a tiny island, I honestly can hardly justify the time investment for some horses I would probably never use much, so I really think that for my particular case, it might be way wiser to stop doing it and just keep a couple of horses, brand them, care for them and don't worry about getting traited ones (at lest for the time being). So the plan is to ignore (at least for the time being) the whole animal husbandry part of the game and just keep a couple of random horses eventually with a nice name and color combination. That is still under debate. 5) Resources hoarding (mainly via rummaging / foraging / botanizing) - spending some time every day rummaging / foraging / botanizing sounded like an awesome plan early on in order to gather resources, since it gave me access to a variety of them (iron, rock - which I would both miss otherwise since I don't have a mine yet, cotton, wemp, vegetables, sprouts, healing cover ingredients, etc), not to mention the change to start getting those elusive coins once the king's coffers would be replenished. However, I now feel that it is too time consuming and I should better spend that time focusing on gathering the exact resources I need instead of going on this hoarding approach - like if I need some wood, cut a couple of trees, if I need some iron, mine some ores, if I need some wemp and cotton, keep some fields planted. So the plan is to replace my daily rummaging / foraging / botanizing with targeted resource gathering (at least for the time being). That is still under debate. So... what do you guys think about my ideas? Good? Bad? Comments? Criticism? Observations? Looking forward for your answers... please help...

Maybe MR took it back to definace via the red tunnel?

I have been saying this for YEARS! Also a note on the eating thing, if people are annoyed that it means a lib follower doesnt have to leave to eat... You just have to remember that it doesnt give CCFP. Pizzas and some other foods will fill that in the first bite, as well as giving affinities. Mycelium wont give either of those. It shouldnt either.

Channeling if you're casting non-stop will be the exact same speed as other skills that don't use coc. Not to mention as retro said, they didn't track links so there was no way to know who was using the legit amount of links and who was using the exploit to have more than the intended cap of links. [2020-04-18] [02:51:33] Channeling increased by 0.0153 to 62.4381 [2020-04-24] [23:37:47] Channeling increased by 0.0012 to 89.8618 thats what 6 days of grinding with 6 links+kingdom title looks like, doing 7 links at 60 8 links at 70 got you nonstop casting even without the kingdom title it wasnt until you get 80 channeling and swapped to lurker that you'd need to stop for favor/sacc occasionally, and channeling doesn't use fatigue so if 3 people were sharing an account and grinding 24/7 it'd be way higher if anything the people on north freedom didn't grind very well coz none of them were 80+ in the 2 weeks or so they had to grind lmao

Currently when you try to harvest from anything in season that has been "infected" by mycellium if you click the harvest option nothing happens and no error message is given. Mycellium is sort of like the physical indicator of Horde of the Summoned kingdom influence. It is meant to be an infection that is nothing but beneficial to blacklighters but a plague to other kingdoms. If you are a blacklighter, there should be no downsides and only benefits to having it making you want to spread it everywhere. However it is impossible to harvest anything in it even for blacklighters which makes it unwanted for a forester like me due to the fact that it renders huge portions of orchards completely unusable. This also applied to harvesting things like mixed grass and flowers which is less important but still should be doable in my opinion. Before you say that this is justified due to Libila being anti-nature or something, just remember that fruit trees have a huge role in Alchemy which is very much associated with Libila. I also think that there should never be any reason for a blacklighter to want to get rid of mycellium. I think it makes sense for Libila to allow her followers to have a blessing which allows them the ability to harvest what they need from infected lands while rendering it a wasteland that needs to be cleansed to whitelighters.

Really nice post! The plan of improving things will absolutely aid in the sense of decay. If it's a major issue/distraction to what you want to achieve, you may want to look in to underground housing as things in houses in caves decay even slower. You probably already know that no structure on deed with over 30 days of upkeep will take decay damage, but I'll mention it anyway. The meditation confusion between Knowledge and Love is a moot point in my personal opinion. Sure, 25% extra skill gain may seem like a great boon. And it is, do not get me wrong! But getting to 70 meditation will take you a long, long time. For a casual(-ish) player, Love is perfect. With the refresh at level 4, you practically negate the need for cooked food (beyond affinity meals, when those start to become cheaper) since you can starve once and still stay over 70 nutrition (which means no skill gain penalty). And you won't need more than that if you play two hours per day. Adding on to that, level 7 of the path of Love is optimal for your pens to keep your trusty steeds fed without having to worry too much about starvation. Don't get me wrong, the animals can still pack it and force you to re-do it, but it should be a relatively rare occurrence. Continuing to build on the point of Refresh vs Cooking, as I mentioned earlier, I wouldn't bother too much about it unless you really like to do that kind of a thing. If you decide to not pursue it, though, it may be worth looking in to purchasing a Small/Large Magic Chest (paid items, caution) at a point in the future to keep heavy and affinity-specific meals for a long time without decay - otherwise, it's not very worth to purchase specific affinity foods. Building on a small mention in your first post about clay not being on your initial island - this is something you can remedy as a player with the player transmutation system. It's going to be quite pricey starting out, but should settle down to a few silvers over the span of a year or two, hopefully. https://www.wurmpedia.com/index.php/Transmutation_liquid_(Feature) --- Adding on my personal notes, I would sincerely encourage you to keep up with the foraging / botanizing / killing creatures for fight skill / burying corpses. Even if you don't get the rare window of opportunity often that provides the coins, it's a free amount of extra coppers and silvers that will make a difference over time for little extra effort if you're doing it in passing. Something else you can do, if coins is something you look to accumulate without paying real life currency for them, which is selling items to your token. Be very careful with this though, once sold, even we GM cannot get the item back, and we will not intervene except in exceptional circumstances. You sell the item you have activated by right-clicking the token and selecting "Sell". It's a paltry amount of coin you get, and it is 1 iron coin + 1 iron per 10 QL of the item you are selling. You will be capped to a low amount of money that you can sell per time frame (sorry, it's late and I don't recall specifics), and it's quite click intensive. It's up to each and every one to decide if it's worth it. I personally admire the discipline to stick to a fixed number of hours per day and budgeting it towards things you enjoy, and I hope you manage to maintain it. I wish I had your fortitude in setting limits the decade ago I personally joined, but here we are today with a recent relatively large landmark of my own; [00:16:38] You have played 701 days, 13 hours and 19 minutes. Yeah. Not getting that time back. Wurm is an expansive and extremely open-world game. I sincerely admire people that can find their little niche and stick to it, just doing what they enjoy. Thank you for providing this perspective on the game, it's truly a valuable thing to get insight into how someone fresh to the game views the world we aim to provide. Even though it has its ups and downs, I hope you will enjoy your stay. Best of luck, and happy travels. J

My concern is less that they didn't ban people but more that it sounds like the entire channeling nerf crusade was perpetrated on a lie. If no one was exploiting then the problem is simply that they didn't like the rate at which players were gaining channeling. Fine, say that upfront. Don't make excuses, rile up the community then go "oh no exploits we just felt like nerfing something and not being up front with why". Again, I could be totally off but that is how I end up feeling after all is said and done. if this was meant for someone else, forgive me. Continue.

There are people who were not able to abuse priest linking who are also already dominating the market. It only gave the select few who abused it a few days at most compared to those who did not. I originally was in the camp crying for roll backs, but in the grand scheme of things, it did not give that much of a head start compared to those who grinded their channeling legitimately.

Cavemannn's Smithing Services! Smithing Tools and Prices: Contact me in game for Smithing services (/tell Cavemannn <Message>) Contact me on Discord for Smithing : salmqn -----ALL PRICES NEGOTIABLE----- If your item turns Rare / Supreme / Fantastic - They're sent back for no extra cost! If your item is getting improved, The cost can be lower depending on quality of your item... Example, 70ql pickaxe improved to 90ql, this would be 90ql price - 70ql price I don't currently offer steel items / imps, but if you supply the steel we can work something out If you are interested in enchanted tools check my spreadsheet below, I'm not offering custom casts but I am starting to stock enchanted items. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14kryJNGi-EU8zKBpyOzwgfyq1k-qv4iZ-BD3N377iFE/edit?usp=sharing BLACKSMITHING PRICES (PER TOOL) 80ql items - 0.40s 90ql items - 1s 95ql items - 2.5s 96ql items - 3.5s 97ql items - 5.0s 98ql items - 8s 99ql items - 13.0s CHAIN ARMOUR SMITHING PRICES (PER SET) 60ql chain set - 1s 70ql chain set - 3s 80ql chain set - 5s 85ql chain set - 6.5s

I get it. Things aren't supposed to work a certain way. Changes have to be made. Yada, yada, yada... I'm just sick and tired of it. Everything is an exploit now. Someone finds a halfway decent method to skill something and ban, nerf, hotfix, can't have the players having any fun. Ya'll taken away being able to sell anything for money on the game (not that I have sold anything for money. You can check that) Keep making arbitrary changes to priests b/c not working as intended when it's been there for years. (No I never made a priest armada for unlimited favor. Can check that to in logs or where ever) Everything lately is to work with Steam. It's nice to go be nostalgic on new servers. Oh this reminds me of being a newbie... But what have we actually gotten that is new. The interface lift is nice but that was more to update the game so it didn't look 2000ish to steam players. What skills? Last big skill updated was fishing in 2018. Not something meant for steam but... what I am about to say may be blaspheme, I hate the fishing changes. So leaving me with that bad taste in my mouth everything gets ramped towards steam. Jackel was a neat idea but I was burned out at that point and missed it. What have we actually gotten in the last couple of years? Just let me sit in my yard and be a crotchety player that yells at everyone get off my lawn. Stop arbitrarily deciding things. Maybe put out something new and fun instead of taking away all the fun. For what little it is worth, my two cents, Merumbra

ORIGINAL POST Hey everybody! I hesitated quite a lot before starting this post because I'm well aware that there's hardly any reason why anyone else would be interested about my play style, about my adventures or about my progress. Yet, in the end I decided to do it anyway, just because I wanted to show other (new) players that there are a lot of different ways you can play this amazing game and to encourage them to have the courage to choose the path that suits them best (whatever that would be), even if it a less walked one. There are tons of approaches you can choose from when it comes about Wurm, but there's not a single one that you absolutely must follow. Some background info and early decisions 1. Being such a complex and awesome game, Wurm can easily become addictive and since I always try to maintain a healthy balance between the different aspects of my life and stay in control of my time, I decided early on that it's very important for me to set a hard limit for my game time. And, in the end, I decided to settle for 60 hours of game time per month, so an average of two hours per day (sure, some days it can be more, some days it can be less, what's important though is to not go over the limit by the end of the month), which, I think, puts me right in the "casual, yet somehow dedicated player" category. 2. I did purchased the new player bundle with two months of premium time and five silver coins for €11.99 and I have to say that it is a really well thought deal which I would recommend any one, since the five silvers are more than enough to allow you to set your initial deed (presuming you stay within a decent size). For the future, I will only pay for my premium subscription and not buy any silver coins, since because of my low upkeep, I should be able to easily pay it with the money I'd get from selling my sleeping powder. Jury is still on if, when my initial two months of premium time will expire, I should continue to pay month by month and not commit too much on a new game or go full in, make a large, one year purchase, and enjoy quite a hefty discount (€5.99 instead of €7.99 per month). 3. I decided to stick with a 21x23 (483 tiles) size for my deed, without a guard, for a couple of reasons. One was that the setup cost was lower than five silvers which were included in the initial package (exact price was 4s 83c, which include three months of upkeep) and the second one was that it kept monthly upkeep cost to one silver, which is the minimum cost anyway (any deed smaller than this would still cost one silver, so there wouldn't be any savings and basically no reason for going smaller). Also, while there was definitely a temptation to go bigger, I couldn't really justify the extra costs, since 483 tiles is plenty of space for as a single person, and as a casual player I actually doubt I'd even have time to take care of a bigger deed anyway. 4. I made sure that I understood (and accepted) that there are a lot of people willing to invest much more in Wurm than me, both in terms of time and money and there's no way I could even dream to compete with them. That's why I decided to not even try to compare myself with anyone else, but just focus on my little place and on my personal progress, both done at a pace I'm comfortable with and that's what I recommend you all. It may look like snail speed to some people, but, guess what... it's not important what they think, but what suits us and what brings us enjoyment. My deed (where things start to get weird) I decided that, despite the many inherent disadvantages, I'd really to have a little private island all for myself... ideally I wanted an island to match as close as possible my desired deed size (about 500 tiles) - not too big (because I wanted to keep in control both my costs and my required time to maintain it), not too small, with at least some rock layer (essential) and, ideally, also with some clay (optional)... found a few amazing ones, but I was beaten to them on the land race grab race, so I could only congratulate their owners and keep searching. And just when I was about to give up, I managed to find my little paradise... it's not perfect, it's not what I wished for... it's (much) smaller than i hoped, it doesn't have any clay, but hey, it's mine and despite all its flaws I really love it! It has some rock layer, although not very much, but I'll try to see if I can raise at least a few extra tiles out of water with concrete (crazy much, isn't it? hahaha). It is located on the border between K10 and K11 on the Melody server (not the bigger island there which belongs to my neighbor, but the really tiny one - basically just a dot on the map - south west of it) and here's the first deed planner export of it (I wish that I would have taken one on day one, but I didn't knew about this feature until later on, when some heavy digging/rock revealing already took place): https://warlander.github.io/DeedPlanner-3-web/?map=https%3A%2F%2Fpastebin.com%2FzxG79GU3 My play style (where things get really weird) While I definitely don't recommend this play style to other people, I decided to set some extra challenges for myself: first of all I dropped all the starting tools and started from scratch, then (and that's the really crazy part) I also decided to never use any enchants, runes or items that I haven't gathered, crafted and improved myself. Talking about the distribution of my play time, I realized (only after it became a burden that almost made me quit the game) that they key to manage to make any progress as a casual player with limited play time is to try to minimize the time spent on daily chores as much as possible (I wrote a bit more about this here) and not spread your resources too thin, but instead try to focus them on one mini-project at a time (I wrote a bit more about this here). What I have achieved so far (updated) This list will always be updated with all (or at least my most noticeable) achievements: - took my time and found a place that I really love for my first deed - made a set of basic tools, including flint and steel (which was the last one) to replace the starting ones that I dropped on day one - made 1x1 shed, with a bed inside, so I can start getting sleep bonus - joined a religion (so I can enjoy follower bonuses), made an altar, and leveled my faith to 30 - made a meditation rug, meditated to level 20 (so I can start the CDs), joined Path of Love (so I can start the CDs) and already reached level five (which means I can refresh myself now) - got to 21 body control (so I can ride horses) and to 23 body strength (so I can load items) - made a large cart and a row boat so I can move freely across the map (still in the plan to add some rafts to them for extra storage, but I just started with that) - made a FSB and about ten BSBs to store my mats (started to sort them based on ql already) - made a forge (although not having a mine yet, and still rummaging for my iron) - made a larder and filled it with some snowballs (not many though, because of time constraints) to help a bit with food conservation - got myself a couple of horses, started to breed them and I now have some foals and waiting to start the second generation - started a really small farming plot for cotton and wemp (not vegetables because I plan to relay on the Refresh ability from the meditation path) - improved my items as much as I was able to based on my mats ql (that was about 18ql for wood items, about 9 ql for stone items and, please don't laugh, about 3 ql for iron items) and I plan to improve them all to 20+ - and most of all worked on terraforming my deed - I exposed all the rock above the ground and now I'm working with dredging dirt from below water on the additional tiles, to see if I find tiles where I'll can potentially rise the rock level above water with concrete Characteristics and relevant skills (updated) Characteristics: - Mind: 20.18 --- Mind logic: 24.26 --- Mind speed: 19.94 - Soul: 14.60 --- Soul depth: 21.95 --- Soul strength: 20.05 - Body: 22.58 --- Body strength: 23.39 --- Body stamina: 22.56 --- Body control: 21.92 Skills: - Prospecting: 14.14 - Climbing: 29.03 - Mining: 13.39 - Digging: 69.51 - Smithing --- Blacksmithing: 19.03 - Tailoring --- Leatherworking: 16.23 Nature: 30.57 --- Gardening: 22.84 --- Foraging: 36.91 --- Botanizing: 22.74 --- Forestry: 16.91 --- Farming: 14.64 --- Meditating: 36.94 --- Animal husbandry: 35.00 - Miscellaneous items: 37.70 --- Shovel: 44.28 --- Pickaxe: 15.14 --- Repairing: 26.24 --- Sickle: 14.49 --- Hammer: 13.47 - Axes: 12.45 --- Hatchet: 12.78 - Woodcutting: 20.11 - Carpentry: 40.82 --- Fine carpentry: 22.36 --- Ship building: 13.94 Deed plan (updated) Deed plan: https://warlander.github.io/DeedPlanner-3-web/?map=https%3A%2F%2Fpastebin.com%2FbGdecawN Current projects (updated) 1. build enough BSBs so I can have one for every 10 ql range (0 to 9.99 ql, 10.00 to 19.99, and so on 'till 90.00 to 99.99), then some more for my dirt and sand 2. build a second large cart and fill it with seven rafts to work as a mobile "large chest" 3. level my woodcutting to at least 25 (which will be kinda slow since with only a rowboat I can only cut and haul home three trees at a time) and gather a reasonable supply of 25+ ql logs, so I'll can start improving my wood items up to 25 ql (and then have to worry about reimping 'till they drop to 20ql) 4. level my mining to 25 (which again will be kinda slow since with only a rowboat I can only haul 40 shards home at a time) and gather a reasonable supply of 25+ ql rock shards and iron lumps, so I'll can start improving my metal and masonry items up to 25 ql (and then have to worry about reimping 'till they drop to 20ql) 5. improve all my items up to 25 ql (which, again, will probably take quite a lot of time since my skills are really low) 6. finish dredging the edges of my island, so I can see exactly what tiles I'll can raise out of water with concrete later on 7. raise the NW corner of my deed above water level Final thoughts Although I know there won't be many (if any) interested in my diary, I'll keep updating this at least once per month for as long as I'll keep playing. Comments, constructive criticism and advises are more than welcome!

(picture soon i been lazy, sorry) What is HOTSNPVPPHD? Horde of the Summoned New Player versus Player Players Housing Development. It's a free pre-built and stocked housing area (2 individuals per house) with the necessary items to help get started quickly such as forges, bulk storage bins, and beds. We're aiming to encourage new players on the Northern islands (Harmony, Melody, Cadence) to come over and try out Defiance and PvP. If you are currently on the northern islands, and want to try PvPing, send me a private message with some basic information about yourself (name, discord, experience, time zone, pvp experience, any past kingdom history, what interests you). We have a portal right outside the house ready for use. If you are enjoying it, you can always create your own house too! Note: You do not have to commit full time to living here on Defiance, we're happy to have you hop between the PvE server and Defiance. Why try Defiance? You have a chance to gain permanent affinities from killing enemies and always gain a temporary timed affinity. One affinity = 10% skillgain in that skill. You gain karma for each kill. Defiance is a full loot system, and you gain easily acquire valuables off players. There's no cooldown between transferring between Defiance and the other islands. You can come over and PvP when needed. A unique different perspective on the game. See how to work together in a large kingdom. Daily PvP, both large and small skirmishes. What do you need? A forum account Discord Working microphone Helps to speak English, but we have some Russian players Contribute in some way. While we want to have new players, we can't provide with everything. A good village requires everyone to contribute in some way - smithing, crafting, farming, breeding Again, if you're interested, send me a PM on the forums!

Thank you a lot! Both for the nice words of encouragement and for the very good advises. I'm on already on PoL level 5 (three days away of level 6), so looks like I'm well set with this and I should prolly stick with that and forget that PoK even exists - it is awesome, but probably not for a casual player like me. I am willing to buy my premium with RL$ every month and my deeds upkeep is only 2s per month (together), so by selling the sleep powder I won't need much more to cover it, so I will prolly not waste my limited time on the selling to token thing, but maybe I should follow your advice and keep doing my foraging/botanizing, especially they're some of my highest skills already. And yeah, that was my intention when I started this thread... not to brag about anything (because, to be honest, there's nothing to brag with in the first place) or draw attention (although I do enjoy it if it happens - hahaha), but mainly to present a different perspective and show other new players like me that there is more than one way the game can be played, or, as I like to say about sandboxes, there are tons of things you can do, but (almost) nothing you have to do.

If cheaters got an 11 day advantage then suspend them for 11 days. They can return after their unfair head start had been leveled.

Unfortunately the "thief" are alloud to bash the fence down Hope you get your horse back

Congrats on the cast. This is worth every penny my friends.

In any case, Lib followers have to deal with some other downsides anyway. Including a taming nerf (is this still the case?) and the fact that bushes/trees on myc do not bear fruit. Somoene who decides to follow Lib on pve should absolutely be able to use myc. There's not exactly much upside to being Lib without it.

Remember you can surface mine to -24 depth. Might be worth the effort if you want it to look clean and neat.

Creation ql is fine, please CoD Uriziel

the way i see it is the market is RUINed, wipe ALL priests and delete all enchanted item or put back the long standing ways and let everyone use the "exploit" goes and plays dual universe and forgets about this crappy game

+1 more yes sth zan please more anything but grey horses n unicorns we have hundreds

mycelium dissapear on freedom since it's not within a libila based kingdom, have nothing to do with grass eating it away, it just wither on it's own. While the idea might not be that bad, it's begging to be abused and as such will be a big NO from me.

k just got the word from 'he who shall not be named' (harry potter reference haha) If you use 3d mod it basically replaces the vanilla usage of what can have stuff on it, so you need to add the item to properties file for it to work. If you use GMtool on the item in game you should get the templateid but if you haven't edited properties file of deco mod then its templateid is 6712

Except it literally isn't 'clear', and the people you're whining about may very well people who grinded using linking by default. You have zero evidence beyond the fact that you feel like these people exploited. The gm's checked, compared channeling skills, and watched people grind the skill actively while investigating the bug and determined that there's not enough evidence to conclude it was abused (as seen in retro's post), and that there were no huge outliers in channel skill to hint that it was abused in such a way. It's still allowed, yes; they just nerfed the hell out of it. Only favor above 20 is used up from batteries, and any links past the first 2 apply a scaling % penalty to channeling skillgain- basically, nerfing the exact thing they disliked which was using a horde of batteries to spam grind channeling. Channling with the maximum allowed number of links was still more than enough to grind the skill crazily high (4 links at 30 skill, for example). Again, the exploit was not actually the issue- the issue was that the method of grinding was deemed too efficient (many links to spam spells- even abiding by the regular limit). But yes, it's absolutely on them for not having changed this BEFORE the new server was up, but that's likely since it's something that never came up in the talks about grinding the skill and something they hadn't considered until they realized how people were grinding the skill. Definitely agree the situation has been handled poorly, but also the community reaction has been absolutely dumb (just look at this thread lol; people screaming about exploiters when the reality is that barely anyone exploited). I hate the fact that I'm the one doing more clarification than even retro here- and I only managed to do that because i poked the devs on discord and managed to figure out why they were doing things in a particular way. Getting answers for stuff like this is like pulling teeth sometimes.

If there was no evidence of any abuse why the nerf to linking at all claiming it was due to this being exploited? Just fix the bug and call it good.

I am a very happy customer who not only saved money on the price of a shaker but also got some great support in working out what my actual problem was and fixing it. I had been unable to mine this wall: Error message: That doesn't make much sense with what I am trying to do, but that weird slope may have been causing the problem. By collapsing that entrance tile, we were able to mine out that wall and make sure the slope was more even before mining the entrance again.

So that's how I got 52 channeling on mclavin

While I agree that streams of the new servers would be interesting, it wouldn't showcase "what can be done" as the vast majority of players simply aren't there yet. I think the stream would be a whole lot of wandering around looking at 2x2 houses with no roofs or tents surrounded by wooden fencing. That said, given Retro's comments that these streams should not be on a boosted/unnatural account (I agree with this), what would be your idea of how it would be done? Do we chain Retro to a new server until he has a toon that can ride a fairly quick horse and not be eaten by every troll he encounters? Does he make a boosted account that doesn't fit with the natural server progression?

+1 to all this and Katrat's thread and yesss!!! New skills plz!

5s

1

Thank you for your input Spolmit. You are of course talking about Mystic Highlands. I used to watch quite a bit of Valiance's streams back in the day. I really love what you guys have going on over there! As for the stream, you can see the export of it here:

Here's the way I see it... Initially with this game you had Rolf and Notch. Eventually Notch of course left leaving almost everything being Rolf. Gradually more help would be brought in but it was Rolf in charge. Rolf broke a lot of things, especially when he was by himself. Cave bugs would mine in ways that messed up caves. Horses would escape pens, etc. He promised things like bridge which took pretty much 10 years from initial mention to actual implementation. A lot of obvious bugs were never fixed during this time period as well. Player deities started showing up causing an imbalance of the game. WU came out causing a lot of the player base to leave for that. Just a lot of mistakes, in my opinion, were made throughout the longest part of history of this game. Fast forward and Rolf sells CCAB. Now we have a team of players answering to another company. The experience of this team is kind of unknown but giving the benefit of the doubt at this point, it's at least a different group. However, as a result this group has been working on "fixing" a lot of the mistakes made when Rolf was in charge. The real problem I see here is this game has some fundamental flaws from gameplay issues to bugs and exploits. I get wanting new and shiny stuff but I think there needs to be a balance with that. Fix bugs as well as add new ideas. Unfortunately, with the new ideas, not everyone's going to like it (for example, the fishing) and no matter what, someone's going to complain. Simply put, it's not easy being a developer, especially in a 15+ year old game.

Some of my favourite shots of my deed, Shadow Veil Sanctum on Release aaaaaand the dungeons err inn

@KelodyNo one says developers has to answer all suggestions and instantly and be on our every call. But they could be more active in the Suggestions section and a bit more talk to us about important changes before they make them. I know games where developers were doing everything community wished for and it wasn't good either. Something in between would be amazing.

My horses are still very unhappy with this update

Could you CoD Shovel 19.37 QL - BoTD 86 - 35c to Kingsponge ^.^

Hi, I don't want to bear the bad news, but it can't be denied that Ind is very laggy since yesterday, and I am pretty sure it started since it was move, I ruled out my internet connection to be an issue and many other people on the server chat are complaining.

Best friends, adventuring in the night

I loved the clouds swirling around Valrei above my deed this evening ❤️ Celestial Seaport, Independence

pls new players come to Dead_Server#11! I need slaves to dig dirt for me. Also you get to see cool buildings that are all locked away from you because i would never trust you anyway. Oh and also you will never run into people ever because theres 12 players on in a 8x8km map. But please join!! I'm totally not in denial that everything i worked for is slowly but surely being thrown into a bin because the new administration is moving the game towards a more open and casual approach.

I have noticed there are some people interested in etymology, so here I am posting this gem I recently found (a whole site - The Virtual Museum of Surveying is very interesting): http://www.surveyhistory.org/how_the_road_got_its_name1.htm

There is a xenophobic bunch based just outside of the Grand Steppe (Independence) who constructed a low stone wall around an area roughly 100x100 in size around their 3 small deeds located on the main road. The construction of this fence perimeter is completely off-deed and blocked off/destroyed a new and unmapped public road that we created a few months ago. You also can not see their deed from any corner of this stone wall. Recently, a passer-by told me that they were using me as a scapegoat, accusing me of killing off animals around their "territory" even though I no longer live in the Grand Steppe and were using this argument as a way to justify the construction of that eye-sore of a stone wall. I personally don't like it when people build massive walls around areas off-deed (eg: Private hunting grounds, giant tree farms, etc). It's almost as bad as people fencing around clay deposits and locking it up. It's land-grabbing in it's simplest form. Even if it's not maintained and starts decaying, it still destroys the landscape and beauty of the area and makes all other neighboring deeds look ugly and displaced around it.