Nyct

Rope is fantastic newbie tool. I guess you are worried they could, god forbid, take away some wild breedable animals from you that you used to hoard in such ridiculous numbers that noone could even dream of starting a farm unless they paid you? Because I see no justified reason to be upset about new players getting rope. I for one am soo glad for this change. I restarted in Wurm several times over the years and despite loving the game, eventually burned out. I cant care less about getting better shield honestly, but I always wanted to start a farm/ranch and rope used to be such a pain in the ass to get. Remember having to grow wemp before I could even dream of any, dont remember being able to get wemp from foraging/botanizing like nowadays on Xanadu. Just seeds. And even after I managed to get that rope, there were just so little domestic animals spawning in the world due to established hoarders, that I was just wasting my time hoping to not have to pay someone for greedily abusing animal limit. Another time we settled on a beautiful island, but realized too late getting anything there is actually impossible. Fast forward getting back to Wurm, trying Xanadu with a friend. Rope made me instantly go "whoa, yes please, best change ever". By the time we found a lovely place to settle, we amassed quite a nice little farm and its growing steadily, while we still live in a cave until we completely terrarform the area. It helps that Xanadu is really overcrowded with fauna left and right. He already subbed to Wurm and I feel very motivated to do it aswell, because this time around I feel like Im able to accomplish what I always wanted. Besides, rope is fun, who cares if you are slower riding a cow, it is fun experience. Sometimes its good to have a fun you know...not just sit on your deed obsessing over quality and efficiency of everything you make or do. Or lets say you are fresh in wurm, completely alone..why not get a dog to keep you company? If that inspires newbies to stay on their own, figure things out themselves and not feel completely lonely doing it, I am happy for it. And why? Because I dont find rushing to join a village the optimal experience for starting out in Wurm personally. Frankly, I find it rather boring, it loses the charm of figuring the survival part of Wurm and building up everything from zero up. Which is the most satisfying part of it. Obviously, this is just one opinion, from someone new and not new at all at the same time. Edit: Also I dont see how anyone can, by mistake, steal your horses/animals if you have them secured, as you should. If you dont, well, let me be harsh and say..your fault for not taking care of that. Unless some major change happened in a last year or so when it comes to deeds and pens that I might not know about.

Living in a village isnt nearly half as much fun as nomad life lived on your own. At least in my humble opinion. Freedom to do anything anywhere instead of being told where to settle, what to do and when is light years difference for me. Veteran players around forums are quick to jump in and point you to village instead of giving helpful tips on how to survive on your own if you wish so. Now dont take it wrong way, its perfectly understandable, because most of them are owners of settlements and its somehow logical they want to fill them up and help new players "inside of their territory borders" to maybe gain permanent residents. Noone likes them empty. Conclusion would be that if you are all about community and working together with others, village might be your thing. But if freedom, unrestricted creativity, challenge, adventure and more exploration is your thing, dont let others scare you just because you are new. You dont need fighting skill or any other skill to survive. I for once love starting over. Its more adventurous and challenging that way. You really dont need any particular skill to be on your own, apart from caution and awarness. Pretty much the only thing you need to keep in mind is how much you carry around, the less you carry the faster you are. Try not to encumber yourself, beacause youll be running a lot and thats pretty much the only rule: RUN. Most monsters in Wurm are easy to outrun and even those that are not are easy to outrun on cobblestone roads, because they increase your speed. So yes, try to stay on a roads. Another option and my favorite is walking along the shore. Theres plenty of sea in wurm, on most servers you can walk along the whole continent like that. Reason is that apart from bears, no other animal can enter water (unless it changed lately, dont think so). Not that long ago I manage to get 3 bears chasing me thanks to me being blind, it took me some minutes of swimming till I reached land(someone cornered the shore with settlement) to get rid of them but I came out without scratch. Its actually fun and I dont remember last time I died. So the most important thing you should keep in mind is your stamina, because it determines how long you can run, or swim. You cant regenerate stamina while in water or while moving, so every once in a while spend a few seconds standing on the ground to regen and keep yor stamina full at all times. And dont swim too far from shore, you will drown if your stamina drops to zero. It wont happen fast..just at first you have no idea how far you can swim safely, later it will become non-issue. Also if you have to swim around steep mountain or settlement that has shore fenced keep your eye on any tile that is above water and flat enough so you can regen stamina there along the way (you can even regen in shallow water if ground is flat). And keep drinking water every once in a while as oyu walk, because stamina regeneration slows down if youre thirsty. Hunger will fast away a lot of times before it becomes issue so dont be worried about that at first. One other benefit of shore-walking is that its easy to remember the way back where you died if that happens. Its by far the easiest way to navigate through world. You can stil stray away from shore to look around, just keep it close. When you find a place to settle, mine is the easiest "safe shelter" to make first so you can safely logout. Just start a mine and seal it with a door and logout inside( monsters can spawn inside of caves too but chance is pretty much nonexistant in such a small space)., Or you can logout in water as its much safer then in a middle of the forest. Another tip is to use maps to decide where to go. http://wurmtools.com/maps/ and http://forum.wurmonline.com/index.php?/topic/59431-quick-server-guide/. There you have terrain maps of all servers and player-made maps of them also with settlements names. There is more to say, but this is pretty much all you need in the beginning. Its not nearly as hard as it might seem for the first time. I learned these things as a noob myself and I find it th best way to learn a bit of survival.

edit: Im sorry this turned out so long, but I had awful lot on my mind considering Wurm, because it has special place in my heart. Id like to offer different viewpoint, from someone who isnt exactly veteran player, but always returning one. Because this might very possibly be my last return. Im definitely avid fan of Wurm for at least last 2-3 years, greatly appreciating what wurm offers, even though I tend to play for few months followed by few months long break. I tend to get drained by certain not very polished game mechanics and in need of break every so often, but I always stay informed and following Wurms progress. I also tend to really enjoy starting from scratch and feeling helpless aware of that awful lot of work I need to do to establish myself in the wilderness. Thus I never got to the point of tending to huge chunk of land and/or owning/managing a village, it just doesnt appeal to me. Though I was part of one..I never really enjoyed it. What I love about wurm is freedom and nomad life, exploration and sense of wonder...whenever I stumble upon decaying house or village, lonely animals escaping abandoned pens, leftovers of previous "generations". I once settled under a very steep cliff trying to preserve ruined nature by replanting whole area. On my trip for sprouts Ive found this beautiful abandoned village on a top of that cliff, hidden under the trees bathing in sunset . Truly magical. Thats what is wurm about for me. Though Im also VERY avid gamer and deeply interested in sanboxes, thus I dont live under delusional impression that Wurm is one and only game of its kind under the sun, becase it isnt. They function just like Wurm, with small dedicated nad tight-knitted playerbases and no PR. They might not offer every single thing Wurm offers just as much as Wurm doesnt have every unique functionality they offer. But that doesnt make either of them less impressive, enjoyable and sandboxy. This unique snowflake Wurm syndrome should go away and instead be replaced with reality, it really hurts the game. The problem why many Wurmians think this way is because in its core Wurm is very accessible and casual game, easy to get into and enjoy the simple beauty of living in a middle of a peaceful forest. The only hard part about Wurm is necessary time investment and patience. The older you are, the more patience you usually have. The time investment is also very flexible and relative, there is nothing to compete for (unless you live with 5 other people on pvp server and even there its doubtful), no sense of time pressure. Yet to be unique crafter, or owner of sky-reaching mansion, you indeed need a time investment..the difference is, that this time investment can consist of 5 years playing 1 month a year and nothing will change, no goal will be conquered by that time by others, because there is none, only your own. These are reasons why Wurm often appeals to people that arent really gamers in that usual sense(older people, mothers, also lonely or socially not that brave people, intelligent and thoughtful people seeking new ways to experience world around and so on..rarely you would stumble upon youngster that came straight from CoD for any other reason than to laugh or struggle for a few days), though sense of adventure, freedom and alternative life truly interests them, apart from that usual gaming hurr durr around majority of games...like hate, immaturity, raw competitions, sense of constant time pressure. Wurm lacks these aspects, also thanks to this kind of playerbase is Wurm this calm, friendly, inviting and mature. I have bad taste in my mouth for saying this, but it truly feels like theyre preying on specifically these people, because theyre willing to accept any severe change just because theyre truly dedicated, valuing theyre TIME investment into the game (which they quite possibly might not have infinite amount at their disposal) and not willing to look for alternatives and another time investment elsewhere. Any other game out there that would have introduced such pricing changes in this state of development, without very good and thorough explanations with real reasoning and showcase of major planned improvements of the game, would end its journey right there. Im truly sorry to be this honest, but Im putting my rose-colored glasses aside to see that Wurm is game that considers itself in a released state ever since graphics and animations were improved while still lacking models, polish, stability, littered with problems, god-awful performance, lacking coding and list goes on. And even then it was laughable statement, because game was long paid for and thus considered released by all. All these downsides were always acceptable, because the game wasnt striving to compete with games it cant compete with...whether it comes down to polish, gameplay or (especially) price. Dev team seemed more down to earth than they do now. I trully appreciate the mount of work put into new animations and models, that Wurm so severely lacked. Its a big step for Wurm, but small step for other competitors and it doesnt justify that bloated increase in value they expect to be reasonable. In the end I fear to admit that it might have done more bad than good. Ill give you a short example of my current experience... Several months ago we used to play very actively with partner without any major performance issues, sure occassional crashes and/or lags were ever-present, but I was more or less used to it. Just before the major graphics patch we slowly stopped playing over time, got distracted by other things. But we still wanted to test the changes, now time has come and we rushed to get into it again, explore what has changed and what was left of our birch forest and home..really motivated and anxious. Well, to put it shortly, we couldnt. The performance became borderline awful and unplayable for both of us. Nothing changed about my hardware in a slightest way, I tried clear new installation java, toning down settings greatly. I couldnt get through choppines, stuttering...slow, tedious and awful 5-8 fps performance and numerous crashes. Needles to say I have zero problem playing current games on high settings. And needless to say my parther had a same problem on recently bought laptop. We left awfully dissappointed after hour of trying. Yes, they might patch it and they might not. Im no begginner around here or idealist when it comes to Wurm team, I know how slow and unreliable their development and promises are. I learned not to take anything for granted. Its actually one thing that always bothered me about Wurm, especially with awful lot of experiences from other mmos, but I tried to stay away from it, focusing on enjoyment of the game itself. Its how out of touch they are with their playerbase. There was barely ever any information about whats going on, whats new and whats planned. Until they started tumblr, when the severe situation of site and forums down required it, there was just void and occasional brief forum post. And no, you dont need team of 50 people and community managers to stay in touch with 600 people and 8 percent of them roaming the forums, dont tell me that.Even smaller teams than Wurms one is can do that and are doing it. To me its just a cheap excuse for lack of care. But to each his own, if you believe otherwise. Staying in touch with players is matter of passion and interest, not money. Now Rolf functions as some kind of "gray eminence" noone really knows what to expect from. People often question this mysterious shadowy figure and his decisions ingame or on the forums, but there is never any response, just silence. Just gazilions of questions about his intentions, motivations,"what with pvp", future, improvements or features promised years ago hanging everywhere unheard and unanswered..Whenever there is some obscure report of this gray eminence answering someone on Irc or even meeting with few veteran players on gathering, it sounds like tabloid news report about suspicious group of drunk individuals spotting Bigfoot. But jokes aside, this is is how I feel about the main driving force behind Wurm and its not a good impression.Not for any future newcommer especially. Because they will greatly evaluate what they see and how it compares to competitors and/or price vs enjoyment value and customers services where there are none. Just because it might not affect 100 or less stable vets that want to carry on regardless, it might affect those 1000+ possible future players that will be driven away. Stubborn arguments like "dont play, or pay if you dont like" wont help this game grow in any way, shape or form and until you even as players realize this, Wurm will never step out of its diapers. Unconditional catering to devs doesnt help either, reasonable criticism when its needed does. You either want the game to grow or stagnate and die out. Wurm is designed with social aspects in mind, it functions as an mmo and its supposed to. Interactions between players are major part of Wurm, whether its in pve or pvp. You cant take that out and sell the game as singleplayer. And because you cant and you apparently want the game to grow and function for years to come, you cant tell others to go. You need them, you need the game to have steady income and steady playerbase that is either growing or at least capable of covering losses with new blood to cover expenses of running and developing mmo game. Driving them away and being stubborn achieves none of these requirements. At this time time, Im also playing Eve. Also after few months break. The game has superior graphics, content, polish ,more than superior and especially functional pvp, awful lot of options, regular patches, fixes, dev blogs, youtube videos, guides, tons of overwhelming amount of information about everything that is happening or will happen, that I dont even have time or will to read. Count in actual real customer service, events and rewards for loyalty (found tons of unique items to redeem after few months break, including expensive special edition ships). And is cheaper. And I dont even pay for it, because I can afford plex through gameplay. So where is the reason to put up with Wurm?