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Impromptu Christmas dinner with Bunnbunnnn, Chefpeewee, Drogos, Tuxi, Madnath and the horse version of Madnath. We had some delicious Christmas cake and horse Madnath had some freshly foraged rice.

There's no secret that the population of the NFI is on a constant and rather step decline, caused mostly by the abysmal retention among new and casual players. And that's mostly because both devs and veteran players are rather disconnect from the realities of the life of a new and casual player. Now, obviously, I don't have the arrogance to pretend that I can speak for all new or casual players, but being a steam summer kid myself, I can definitely talk about the challenges and struggled that I have encountered. F2P trap That's a struggle I haven't encountered personally, because I realized from the very early on that, although money are always tight when you're a high school student working part time, time can be even a scarcer commodity. But I have to say that I saw more than a fair share of people quitting in frustration over this and not only that, but they also gave a bad publicity to the game in the process (check steam reviews and you'll see that this is one of the most common problems). I know that it is possible to earn enough coins to finance your game expenses and I even met a few people that manage to finance large deeds and multiple characters this way. But while it is definitely possible for high skilled and experienced people who know what they're doing and who amass very large play times, it is close to impossible for a new and casual player that is just starting the game. Yet, the game is advertised in such a way that it lets the people think that it is possible, which makes it feel almost like a scam when they realized it really isn't the case. What I'd do instead would be to try to have a much more transparent approach about the F2P limitations and focus on the fact that the game can actually be very cheap to play with premium cost potentially going to less than 6 bucks a month. Really, just be honest about it. Wurm is not F2P game, but a subscription based game, with a F2P demo. In this regards, Wurm is exactly like WoW - it has a unlimited time demo, capped at a relative low level, and it also allows you to pay your subscription with ingame currency via wow tokens. Yet I never ever heard Blizzard advertise WoW as a F2P game, because, honestly it isn't one. Just like Wurm isn't one. Time spent which chores (maintenance) From very early on, I started to categorize all my actions as either projects or chores. And the truth is that while projects are generally fun because they offer you a sense of accomplishment, the chores are boring and tedious and they can generate a lot of frustration. Now, if you're someone playing four, six or even eight hours a day, that is not a huge issue because the chores end up taking a relatively small percentage of your playtime - you spend an hour when you log in tending your fields, grooming your horses, milking your cows, sheering your sheeps, preparing meals and repairing the odd things that took some damage over night then you can move on with your projects (grinding, building, terraforming or whatever). And in the few days when I was able to play over four hours a day it really didn't felt that bad. On the other hand, if you're a casual player playing one, maximum two hours per day, you can easily end up seeing how most of your time is wasted with all these chores and you're left with almost no time for projects, logging out without any sense of progress whatsoever. Sandbox vs themepark I love sandbox games, that gives you the freedom to choose your own patch, but in Wurm's case I really feel that the new players are left in a complete fog. I mean there are quite a few tutorials covering one's first few days in game and the progress during those days seems almost obvious... get access to clay and iron, terraform a little piece of land, make yourself a small house, get an animal or two, find a source of food (foraging or farming) and water, build a cart or maybe a boat, level your skills a bit (and boy early on they do skill fast), reach some nice milestone (being able to lead a cart, ride a horse, load items, etc). As a side note, in regards to previous point in my list, please note that all these fall under the projects category. And I really think that the devs actually did a rather good job streamlining the brand new player's experience, so the first few days in a new player's life are actually quite interesting and rewarding, so I personally doubt that the drop rate during those few days / before subscribing / before deeding is (much) higher than in most other MMOs. But, after that, you pretty much hit a wall. Things stop being intuitive. Skills start growing up much slower once you pass level 30. Milestones (like hitting 30 ML to get an extra action or 30 BS to stop being a leacher on dragon fights) seem to be miles away (pun intended). Chores start to demand a bigger and bigger share of your time. And you generally start having the feel that you're completely lost, that you're moving in circles and that you're making no meaningful progress whatsoever. Theoretically, missions and journal goals should help with this, but they're so random and they lack even the most remote notion of synergy, that they actually don't help at all. If you manage to push through this phase, things eventually start to get better once you move past level 50 in some/most skills, not only because at that point things start to get easier, but also because you manage to better understand how things work out, so you can eventually feel that you're making progresses once again. But the problem is that this phase could last quite a lot when you're a casual player, who's only able too put only one or two hours a day (and I know it, because I'm still there despite almost reaching 20 days of /playtime). And I'm almost willing to bet that most new and/or casual players that quit, quit during this phase (when their main skills are between 30 and 50). And, to be honest, I have to admit that this phase was the one that almost got me too (and I'm not entirely out of the woods yet). Needing a major in WURM to understand it I don't mind the steep learning curve and the fact that one must befriend Wurmpedia from her early days, and I honestly think that it's fair for the people that take the time to optimize their actions and play the min-max game to have the edge over the over players. But when mechanics are so circumvoluted that you have to do completely counterintuitive things, many times not even mentioned in Wurmpedia, but known only by veterans, people using third party tools (like grinder) or, even worse, people that reverse engineered WU code, then I really think that it stops feeling right. Like (and that's a very basic example) I wouldn't mind if people using the right rock type and the right pickaxe ql would get a 10%, 20% or even 50% bonus to their skill gains. But when if you mine marble at 10 skill or iron at 70 skill (just because you need them) you gain (almost) no skill gain, things stop feeling right. Like, honestly, a casual player's approach is pretty much that they should be able to do what they want to do and expect that their skills will eventually (slowly) grow over time. The problem is that in many cases they're effectively put on a halt because they didn't picked the right rock or crops type or because they didn't matched their tool QL with their action difficulty. The community Finally the community. It is marketed as one of the strongest assets of Wurm. And, up to a point, it really is a nice community, much more mature and less toxic than many other communities (not saying there are no bad apples, but they're much more rare than in other places). Yet, while not toxic, it is not very vibrant or helpful either. Actually (and I apologize if this offends any one) it feels like one of the most self centered communities in any of the games that I played, where pretty much everyone (again with a few exceptions) is only focusing on their actions and are hardly interested in what the other people are doing. I had days when I was logged for hours, with 100+ other people on my server, yet complete radio silence on the freedom chat. I had days when I was logged for hours, with 10+ people in my FL online and none of them even messaging me to ask a basic thing like how was my day (and that under the conditions that in a typical day I take care to contact everyone and ask about there whereabouts). In half a year I was never invited to do a group activity (like a group hunt or exploration or whatsoever); the only invitations I ever got was to join or at least visit someone's deed to see what a great job they did (obviously, very few of those people, ever thought on visiting my deed or check what my progress was). In Entropia Universe (which nowadays I only play for a couple of hours per week) on Christmas I sent about 10 gifts and I received abut the same amount; in WURM I also sent about 10 gifts and I received back none. So yeah, my feeling is that the community is far from toxic, but also far from friendly (as least on the public channels - maybe the things are different in the "inner" circles of friends and alliances) and at many times you can feel like you're playing a single player game and you can't stop asking yourself why still play WO and pay a monthly subscription and not stick with WU if you're still playing all by yourself. Later added because of some comments: I am a social player. I founded a rather large local alliance in the early days of Melody, which I only left when I moved out on another area of the map. I tried to found a second alliance (promoting it on forum and server chat). I am always active on my server's chat and I have a fair share of people in my friends list (and even in my discord's list) who I always message and try to talk with. And for most days, I get a reasonable response rate on both server chat and friends PMs. Yet, it hardly happens for things to come from the other people, and I eventually grow tired of trying to make these virtual relations work, when I see that the other people don't put any effort into it. And no, I don't think I have unrealistic expectations or anything, since in most other games that I played, the moment when I was logging in I was having a chain of PMs. I apologize if I offended anyone. It was definitely not my goal. I just wanted to give you the perspective of a new and casual player. I'm neither arrogant or smart enough to say that I have solutions, but I just wanted to let you know what were the problems that I faced, because I got the sense that this is a rather missing feedback. For myself I don't know if I'll be here in the new year or not (still working on my new year resolutions and debating if I should invest more time in Wurm or not), but if I'll quit, it will be for a mix of these reasons...

I'm dreaming of a White Dragon Just like the ones I used to know Where the tree tops glisten And children listen To hear slaying at N13 I said, I'm dreaming of a White Dragon With every Dragon blood of blacksmithing May your days be merry and bright So long as you arrive on time Edit: I was gonna sing this whole post, but turns out i'm tone deaf and mixing in much-needed instruments was gonna be a bit much, but there's a link to my attempt anyway

Chicken coops were a fun idea, until we found out that they're absolute rubbish. Chicken lay eggs of 99 QL if just kept around and feeding them mixed grass. That's the way it's always been and I'm not questioning it, just as much as water is always perfect... it's 100 QL, there's no tile in the world where water is worse than anywhere else. The milk coming out of any udder, be it cow, sheep, or bison, it's always milk just as nature intended it to be... milk is 100 QL. Now why are eggs suddenly only the QL of the coop? That doesn't make no clucking sense. Coops can house just so many hens, as their QL permits 1 chicken every 10 QL... how does that make sense? I think eggs should be 99 QL and the coop QL should lower food and water consumption similar to something like a Wind of Ages enchant, whereas unenchanted water/lumps/or other resource has a 12 seconds imping timer, with a 100 strength enchant it's only 6 seconds. With rare, supreme, and fantastic reduces it by another chunk. Hens in coops eat and drink so bloody much, and them popping out is such a desaster, I've long given up on using them. RIP this feature. And the egg QL capped with the coop is just another farce. I'd say, 10 chicken per coop, food/water usage as horrid as it is right now at 1 QL, but reduced at higher quality levels, as well as rare state. Please. And the point that chicken in coop creatures don't count toward deed creatures is pointless, just keep 'em off-deed. Plus, you don't have any problems because they all pop out after 2 days, because they gobble up a fortune. But Ulvi, you haven't given us cold hard numbers for your claims. Right, as if the staff has ever given us any cold hard numbers for their nerfs. I don't even have to cough at imbues at runes, do I?

Krampus is back at it again. Help me get rid of this menace once and for all. Dec 26th 7pm EST

+volume rune on the chest and backpacks (-size rune) inside.

Excellent job! We shall be there.

One can't ignore the surreal challenge and turmoil 2020 has been to each other, family, friends, and humanity across the globe. That said, it is upon us to celebrate the magic and joy of the holiday with even more fervor and intent. Focusing on the beautiful within us to elevate the human experience. May the holidays bring you endless laughter, joy and celebration with those you care about, robust health, and the strength to overcome and live purposefully your best self. May this extend far into the year to follow. With warmth, Bloodscythe

When buying affinity from Marks Store, it should give a player choice between 5 random affinities. That way we still have a game of chance AND a decent chance for a good affinity. As far as useless skills go: Remove the ones that do absolutely nothing, then maybe use those freed up slots in the skill library for a revamp of others, like weaponsmithing. For skills that only apply to PVP, put in some code that adds or removes them based on what server you are using. We already have other things that change when crossing between PvE and PvP, so why not these skills? Another way to handle it would be to have the skill set default to PvE based skills and in profile, the player could choose to enable the few PvP only skills, while still on PvE, for the chance at affinities on PvE that would help when in PvP. But personally I'd be inclined to only have those available when on a PvP server, using marks there. If you think about it, spending 10k for random affy and getting warhammer is the same as getting a message "sorry, no affinity for you, you big fat loser - oh thanks for the 10k marks.. haha!!"

Welcome to Harvestmoon Lagoon! We have been running since 2012, helping new and old users find a fun and active home with a great community of players. What we can offer you: A massive area to explore and experience with 5 deeds connected together. Your own Free area of land or vacant house with no strings attached. No taxes. No hassle. An active community of helpful players across many different time zones. Public Mines with Plently of Ore Free Food from our Pizza Tavern Forges, Weapons, Tools and Mats! Alot of Farmland with Plently of Animals We also have 3 Spirit Guards so monsters are a thing of the past 😉 How to Join The Mayor of the village is called "Ultradude" Contact him with the following command: /tell Ultradude Tell him you want to join the village. Another way is to just reply to this topic and ask to join the village here instead. Places of Interest Pizza Tavern Blacksmith Harvestmoon Temple Trophy Lighthouse Horse Season Small Section of Farmland Video Tour Check out a mini tour of the village in video form to get more info and see more sights before coming over.

NECRO CANT PRETEND HE DIDN'T SEE THIS POST! HE IS THE WORST GUY EVER HES SO BAD HE DOESNT EVEN PLAY THIS GAME HE IS JUST A KJ PHONY WE HATE HIM S.H.A.M.E HE'S A MONSTER AND NEEDS TO BE STOPPED...

I heard there have been some competitions in the past where players could compete to create game content like textures or game objects. As I'm sure most Wurmians are creative people I think it would be great if there could be some of these competitions on a regular basis. I was thinking about creating textures for decorative items like amphora's or easter eggs (are there easter eggs in Wurm?). Also very nice as collectable items for people. Or let us have player made paintings to hang in your cottage or castle. Something you could run on a regular basis.

This Boxing Day it's time for us to box boxed Boxer to claim Boxer's Boxer. Boxer is boxed at N12, boxed boxing deed is called I Deed It Again, which is also where we'll releasing him from his box to box him. As for when Boxer will be unboxed into the pen box for boxing, refer to this time. Boxer's Boxer will not be the only thing rolled; all of Boxer's boxed goodies that we box outta him will be boxed up and rolled. Be early, or you'll be box outta luck! EDIT: FIXED TIMER

As the title, would it be possible to have the ignore system cover all chat tabs?

noted

This is the exact issue. CA help has constantly devolved into discussions on mechanics that aren't even related to the original question because it's being regularly steered off topic by specific players. As a result, questions are getting missed that are legitimate questions, not just hashing out opinions on some obscure mechanic. It's often excused that the discussion is somehow related to the original question, but in reality it's well beyond the scope of questions being asked.

5s

I like that one that shows up when you've gotten stuck with a ship inside a house, that's my favourite one

4s

As much as i love Magranon and my deed is named after him, i spent most of my time on PvE as a Fo priest. The simple reason is the utility. Fo has so many useful spells to allow you to enjoy playing it as a main priest AND is the only one capable of mining as well as digging. Which makes it the perfect utility builder priest. Even as a main priest i was rarely hindered in my deed building works because i was Fo.

Bought my priest Jaira an awesome outfit from Arno last night.

Runes will become more available once rifts start on NFI. For now, a backpack with satchels inside will create a lot more space. I know some people use quivers in theirs.

@EkcinYep is an hour later than the usual time to allow some extra time for folks to finish up their holiday.

Sounds like a worthy adversary for my silver sledgehammer! I'll see you there

Thanks, shall come too. Just for confirmation: It is 8pm GMT (20:00 UTC) not 7pm like usually on Release?

Imagine this: player A is ignoring player B, but but player B is not ignoring player A. Player A asks a question in CA Help and B replies correctly to this question. Everyone else sees the correct reply and see no reason to answer. Player A does not see the reply and perceives this as being ignored..

All sent, except the fishing net that was, sadly, missing. Have updated stock to reflect your purchase!

For the purposes of avoiding too much conflict on this, I ask once again: What purpose or benefit does my having an Affinity in Mind give? Or other people with Affinities in Body or Soul? I've asked multiple times on CA HELP, and was always told, by both CA and normal players, that they do nothing, their skill scores are functionally meaningless. Is this correct, or is there some benefit to having my Mind skill go up 10% faster?

Me! Shoot me a dm and I will follow it up

Have you ever wanted to make a nice road with curves and stuff and then fence it? Yeah you really can't do that on the corners. Idea is to add a way to build diagonal fences, walls and floors. Imagine the possibilities! Buildings could be placed in many different ways, you could build more detailed houses and castles. Possibilities that this would give could be huge. Diagonal bridges maybe? You name it. I would be really happy to see something like that in Wurm. Here how it would work: You would plan a wall, fence etc. by selecting two tile corners on the same tile, simple as that! Well maybe not that simple, you would have to code a new mechanic to select things in the world but i guess its doable right? What do y'all think about this idea?

Lately it seems the help channel is overrun with discussions on game mechanics that veer terribly far off topic from the original question. Global freedom channel doesn't seem the appropriate place to have discussions on mechanics as a multitude of other things are discussed and the conversations can get muddled that way. Is it possible for a new channel to be created where players can ask questions on game mechanics then discuss/debate them to their heart's content without flooding help chat resulting in actual questions being missed? Thank you for your consideration.

I mean, it’s still literally not worth the effort to forage instead of sinking the same amount of time you spent foraging to farm and garden. Cocoa beans, Nettles, Nutmeg and Sassafrass are the only unique items from foraging/botanizing. Nettles/Nutmeg/Sassa have almost no valie. They have unique affinity numbers for cooking food and can help you add a tiny bit extra to pizza durations- but considering you can already hit 16+ hours with a relatively simple pizza, and you can always asjust other ingredients to hit affinities, there aint much worth. Cocoa beans on the other hand are used to make rum (though you can spam a different ingredient to raise quantity, problem is that the beans dump the quality) and rum isn’t even worth bothering with as an alcohol except for aesthetics/fun Likwise, the ONLY recipe thay uses dairy food making also needs TWO cocoa beans per. Otherwise, you need to spam creation which has awful experience rates due to the 66% skillgain penalty on creation tasks. Even then, cooking chocolate milk doesn’t grant a whole lot- you’ll need hundreds of cocoa beans and cocoa beans fall into the most general category for foraging so even with 20 skill its a pain to grab lots of, though multiitems help it a bit you’re still looking at spending days doing nothing but foraging just to grind a useless skill (two actually lol). To note, dairy foodmaking has no real value above 33, as product quality for most dfm recipes use 3x skill, and even then the quality isn’t a gamebreaker when cooking with low quality dfm items. The desire is purely for the titles. So yeah, definitely disagreed. The only “value” these skills have come from extremely niche uses for their unique resources that have no real purpose being unique to begin with, and the sunken loss by people who, for some reason, decided to grind then despite them being slower and more attention requiring skills to grind than gardening or farming lol

A small modification to my suggestion: can rare and supreme Christmas trees have no decay? C'mon if someone wants a shiny tree in their house all year long, why not? I just made a supreme Christmas tree - it is funny because it is my first ever item that I crafted, and it went supreme. I put it on the merchant because hell I am not going to let it decay.

Maybe it's just me, but I've always found it a bit distasteful when people are complaining or asking for an explanation about not getting additional free rewards. It's one thing if it's a promised feature or something advertised, but in this case it just looks like plain entitlement, particularly when we just received christmas gifts, and there are special christmas mob events going on...

Happy Holidays!

A cozy evening inside at Lorewood.

Fo! The weakest god, who will one day be buffed for PvE as deserved!

Looks fun! See you there

Woop! Im coming Krampo!

Oh, missed this one! Will try ofc to attend.

Merry Christmas Wurmians.

The Misty Valleys of Release...

Impressive graphic, highly styled, still recovering from the fun neon blast of the last one. I like the variety/creativity. though miss many of these, I applaud you finding and public hosting them. fun is had. I hope i'll make this one, hadn't been in wurm for a few. what better way to hail the chaotic of 2020 closure and promise into the new year by hollering Dragon DRAGON Dragon!!

like half the skills in the game are useless placeholders with 1 or 2 "uses" that are so incredibly niche that there's no point actually counting them though

I've not actually seen politics on global for years, though it has been on alliance before. It may be more of a "new cluster" issue, but I see no reason for censorship. If you hear an opinion you dislike, don't engage and move on. If you know someone will just spout drivel why bother with them? It's not "fracturing the community" it's more "choosing who you engage with".

I love the ideal of a priest being able to make and sale(mailable) spell scrolls. Makes paper more valuable, lets players not have to wait for a priest to come to them.

My hat goes off to you Angelklaine; you've survived the gauntlet so to speak. It's a very different way to play wurm, but I always found it rewarding in its own way. There is a lot of potentially good content that could be added to priests; especially "household" spells for QoL. You could easily just have papyrus making as your inscription skill which opens a rather delightful possibility of giving priests different ways of using existing skills.

[10:40:38] You successfully attach the rune to the saddle sacks. [10:40:53] A small rune created from resources on Jackal and infused with the spirit of Magranon. It can be attached to any item and will increase size (5%) and increase vehicle speed (5%).