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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...

For everyone attending today, be sure to pick yourself up a special drink courtesy of Nine and bob

I truly think most of what you've said can be fixed by not having your own deed, but joining a village. There are always villages looking for players. Villages give you: 1) PEOPLE. People to hunt with. People to share "chores" with. People to chat with. 2) Resources. You want to make something? There's a good chance someone in your village has the resources needed to make it, saving you hours gathering. 3) Shared costs. You don't have to worry about making the 1-2 silvers a month to pay your deed. Quite often the deed holder pays it, or it's split among the village. 4) Knowledge. The more minds the better. I'm what many would call a "hardcore" player. I'm here daily, and often logged in for 10+ hours a day (mind you, I'm not always here. I log in, do things IRL, go to the store, cook dinner, clean the house, do laundry, even *gasps* do my RL work). I have a good sized deed, bigger than many, smaller than many, but I didn't start out that way. I started sharing a deed. Then after a year or so I had my own SMALL deed, Then it grew.. and grew... and grew... I have no idea where this perception of you have to have it all right away came from. Same with skills. I have 99.6 farming on my main. Not once did I ever grow what some numbers cruncher said I should grow. I have 97 carpentry. I got there by making and imping what I needed, when I needed it. I won't say I don't grind, because quite often a project IS a grind. I just refuse to stand and do something JUST for skill. There is always a purpose behind it. I wanted to work on blacksmithing: I made 50 horseshoes, imped them so my priest could enchant them, so I could sell them. I used the highest quality tools, because simply put, it's easier. Yea, skill gain isn't as good, but I don't care to sit and pull out my hair just for tad higher number on the charts somewhere. Bottom line is, if you're not having fun, or you're stressing over it, it's not gonna work. Do something that does work for you. *edited to add* Those in my alliance on Indy still think of me as a "newer" player, so I haven't been around as long as many.

Chores: When I was a few months into this game, I found myself doing the usual repetitive daily things, tending and replanting crops, grooming horses etc. Most people do - we fall into a routine of repetition. One day, my brother asked me what I was going to do that day, maybe he asked me if I'd like to do something with him or visit somewhere else in Wurm, I don't recall now. I do remember that I responded "I have to do my chores first." My brother gave me some advice, which I've tried to keep in mind since: "If you call it a 'chore', don't do it." he said... "Do something else instead. It's a game." If we do the same thing each day, it needs to be because we personally get something out of repeating our actions. Wurm is such a vast, rich and deep game, it's quite possible to have an unique and surprising experience every day.

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

Nice turn out tonight, almost 300 in local at the time of slay!

Stanlee should get a title of Event Master or something, because...we all know why.

You're out having a cheeky time with the boys when suddenly you see something in the grass ahead. It's animal tracks. 'omg omg omg, guys-guys-gusy' you exclaim in excitement. You majestically mouse over the grass and fondly click your mouse to track. [19:03:33] Tracking increased by 0.08008135 to 69.1337420 [19:03:33] Hunting increased by 1 to 2 [19:03:33] The tracks lead in front of you to the right or something, idk You and your merried men dance a little jig through the forest, tracking the ... tracks, until off in the distance you spot... As your hunting skill increases you begin finding tougher and tougher foes, reaping greater and greater treasures. Thank you for listening to my Ted Talk. It gives hermits a reason to get into combat. It's a more enjoyable way of training tracking. It gates content behind a skill. It promotes exploration. The skill is easy to build off and add to. Just add new kinds of discoverable creatures.

As always, thank you for the exciting slaying. 240 players in local at peak(!), a terrifying lag spike just as combat began, and it was a bit touch and go when Boxer's relatives showed up. Glad everyone got out safely!

Just give him his purple dragon and digging imbues and call it a day. No titles needed.

I don't like the idea of having people on my server, but I do like having people in my chat or my cluster so I can interact as and when I choose without it being forced upon me against my will. When the server gets "too full" (10 or more players for a xan sized server =p) I get anxious and worried about the "natural" area around me being destroyed (like when you live in the woods IRL and someone buys the lot next to you, cuts down all the trees, and builds a house on the property line so theyre looking through your kitchen window). Smaller populations mean more natural terrain, more nice places to roam and hunt, less contention over resources, and less conflicts over borders or wanting to turn an orchard between local deeds into a recreation of the Madmax wasteland. My dream has long been to have my own server that is part and parcel of the main cluster but has border permissions so I can grant access to only those I choose. I'd gladly pay the "tier" cost to cover all operating costs and a markup on such an instance, especially if there were an option to collect taxes on upkeep from those I allowed to settle on the instance to help offset costs. It would be great because loners could be loners, but those who want elaborate villages and alliances could really structure their server accordingly and it would be far more clear to people looking to join a server just what sort of experience they were opting into rather than it all being a hit or miss hodgepodge of if you happen to find the right experience before your angry neighbor chases you off their lawn by releasing their pack of 20 champ hellhounds because you cut down the trees in their perimeter.

Devs are aware and working on it.

Thanks again guys, as usual was fun! First time in a long while I had the lag freeze when the fight started, and it was treading through molasses getting away at the end, but well worth it to once again see a FG (and his relatives)

I'll throw in 70ql shields for Cat's weapons

That's a lot of beef!

We have orange, lemon, blueberry, raspberry, etc,etc. with all these already in game, wouldnt it be nice to have orange blossom honey - helps with healing , or ( ) lemon bloom honey - temp stamina boost, or ( ) blueberry blue honey - temp masonry skill, or ( ) lavenderwood sweet honey oleanderwood bliss honey - temp boost to strength, or ( ) These are of course ideas. Being a real life beekeeper, I know there are literally 1000’s of kinds of hiney throughout the world. Since wonderful Wurm already has this stuff ingame, it may not be too hard to add someday. I just think and know theres a lot more to honey other than what we have atm. Either way it would be nice to just simply have different kinds. Also can we add some Langstroth beehives, Top Bar , natural log hives Please remove the dancing hives. Anyway, thanks for reading! I hope people add to this idea. Nipo

Maybe tie it in to the Newbie buff?

A good idea Platyna and a good choice of title. For many people, impalongs. labyrinths or unique hunts are the glue that sticks Wurm together with the community. I understand the view of Stanlee but I think he underestimates the contribution that he and other people make towards Wurm. If he is against a title for himself, what about a special tabard (or cloak!!!!) for someone who puts together a community event that is advertised through the forum?

Correct. According to the wiki "A 0.03 kg piece of source salt gives 30 karma when eaten." So, 0.10 kg would be 100 Karma. Y'all Northern folk are crazy if you're paying 1 silver per karma, lol.

From the server border, me and my priests wish you all a very wet christmas!

yep, this is the usual time we do them. Extra time was given yesterday to consider those who may have had xmas plans. Boxing day being a holiday in the UK.

Community is the reason I still play. PvE is quite boring when alone, may as well spin up a WU server on my PC if I never see anyone.

Is very important to me. It always matter to me, if there are a lot of deeds on the way, when I travel across Xanadu. It is important if we have bigger communities, and how many of them we have. If we have people to trade, to talk. If i can travel across the land and meet new people, rather than being all alone for many hours, sometimes many days of traveling. Of course, most players, most of the time works alone on own stuff, but what's the point if we're the only ones to see and use it?

Thanks for the fun everyone!

Purchased a set of 80ql steel plate. Thanks for the great armor!!

Loginserver seems to be down. https://status.wurmonline.com/

Love it! Could it work like a bit like archaeology? where you track different tiles over a larger distance to find a "hidden den of creature type" Then you would have a choice (depending on the difficulty of the creature) to disturb the den and fight it / charm / tame or call in friends for the harder ones before disturbing, the den would stay "active" for x amount of hours before de spawning, sometimes you would find a empty den and maybe sometimes could find a double spawn? But love your idea, would a great use for the tracking skill.

1) Join a village and forget about doing chores. 2) Stop feeling that the game is pushing you to struggle for those milestones that you talk about. Play the game exactly how you like it. I will never reach 30 ML, yet in other ways I am one of the most succesful players on the Northern servers.

I have no real issues storing my fragments in normal chests. The decay is negligable. Contact me ingame and I will make you a few backpacks for easier fragment storage. That should free up some space in the MC.

All the person wants is actual ignore that works and gives you the ability to fully deny somebody's existence in any text form from the chat tabs, not that much really. I can point a finger at who he wants to not see, and it aligns with few other if not many other.. but lets keep the xmas spirits.. and *hic* keep spirting as we were.. Snipe is too easy to abuse solo+prem alts/team/alliance/group being in-game or from irc/discord/etc.. the more players you have the easier it gets, the more details you know about how it works the easier it gets to abuse it and troll people.

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.

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parent characteristic skills and affinities should be completely removed or made it so that if you have an affinity in the parent skill - it affects the skill gain for all the other skills governed by that parent skill. the way it is now is just simply useless. I have 7 or 8 affinities distributed within my Body Mind Soul skills. What do i get out of them? can any dev explain that to me? as far as i know i get nothing in return, so why are those even there?

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.

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?

This needs to be the next Wurm shirt.

Happy Holidays Blood! Hope you're doing well.

Yay! This is back again!!

Wishing you all this and so much more goodness. (((( hugs))))

Well, I was riding through the desert on a horse with NO name.... Oh, wait a minute, that may not have been me. I know I heard it somewhere though...

Did you look up?

don't you know that there's no girls on the interwebs? geez

Well done, your documentation is superb.

Change your game folder to where your Steam copy is installed. Default location: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Wurm Online\gamedata Or if you have a custom location (like I do), do something like: E:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Wurm Online\gamedata

probs also related to

The issue with horse colors is that they're traits, and are weighted. You might have a black silver male and a black silver female breed a black silver foal - however the new traits are lowest in the order so if by some chance it rolls something like black or gold as well, it will have both color traits black and black silver or gold and black silver, but since black or gold are higher priority traits, the horse will be black or gold despite having that black silver trait. Before someone goes trigger happy removing the chance of multiple color traits - its the only way you can "down" breed a rarer color (it rolls the rarer color but fails the dominant one) A grey horse is the absence of any color trait, so a grey foal from 2 black silver parents just means you were likely to have a black silver foal but failed

So, I have finally seen some females pass their rare coats. Out of 25 cases, 3 have now passed their rare coat. That is 12 %, still a far cry from the expected 33 %. I will keep counting. EDIT: For anyone reading this later, I now have counted 50 births. Out of 50, 10 females passed their rare coats = 20 %. These 50 were both mated with "old color" coats and new rare coats. They were never mated with their own coat color, and never with grey stallions. It's definitely more likely that they pass if they are mated with another rare coat, and I now mate them exclusively with rare coat stallions. Looks like this increases the chance of them passing their coat from less than 10 % to over 20 %.

I'm so pissed off at this game I'm ready to quit. I can't see any situation ever in a game or in real life why you are given the ability to attack your horse/mount while riding it. I finally breed me a 5 speed horse and I spend a few days getting/selling mats to get silver to buy some high QL shoes and saddle from vendor up the road. I get those and I'm doing great and run very far away from my deed and start fighting mobs for a few hours and having a blast. Then 6 hours later I'm starting to make my way home and there is a wolf in my way, so I decide lets kill him for maybe a pelt and then be on my way. It seems I wasn't paying attention or didn't click on the wolf enough times to select him but I click the 2nd icon on the action bar which is attack and quickly figure out I'm attacking my horse with my large maul. I quickly get off my horse, but my bags are too full to move away from him while getting hit by a wolf. I drop everything, start running away from my horse, but then while it looks like I'm pretty far away I see a death blow from my maul hit my horse. I'm like WTF. This all happened in seconds and I didn't have enough time in a panic to figure out how to do this. Then I just stare at the wolf like, wtf just happened. So now my 5 speed horse that took a month to breed is dead. I'm stuck out in the middle of "I have no clue where" (which isn't so bad with a 5 speed horse) and mobs every where that can kill me. So now I feel like I'm in a Quit The Game mode, because now I have to empty my bags, figure out where I am (good luck with that) and try to make it home. I shouldn't be in this situation. Again....what sense does it make to have ability to start fighting the mount your riding on. Why is that even an option? I couldn't sleep at all last night because I've put so much time and it's kind of my when I get home routine my mind couldn't accept the fact I want to quit and lost somewhere in this virtual world, but feel psychologically connected. I don't think I'll log in again, because I don't know how I'm going to get back to my deed and don't want to put hours into figuring this out when I feel this should have never ever happened. I know people will say I should have paid attention and you should have done this or that, but if you're cool with that game mechanic then good for you. I don't want to suicide because I have some rare silver I got from fighting and a bunch of high end tools on me I'm not wanting to loose. I'm at a loss and probably the end of the road for me with Wurm. EDIT: This was also posted in Suggestions hoping they fix this issue for other players.

C'mon folks. If you are going to bother to downvote someone else's idea, which in this case, doesn't affect you in the slightest, at least have the common courtesy to type something more than a -1 and give an actual reason why you think that something that would display or not display one someone else's client end ONLY affects you and is a bad idea.