Erlindur

My only objection is in the use of this argument. Freedomers get something, so epic players must get something too. Well, lets make a poll on freedom if they actually want or care about this something. If it turns out that freedomers couldn't care less about transferring to epic, then lets forget the whole story. Don't get me wrong. If life on epic feels that bad for so many people, then there must be a formula to transfer out. But lets call it that. It is not that freedom gets something out of it.

I doubt freedomers asked for any of this either. I believe that the whole change is implemented as a way to revitalize epic. The problem that I see in this thread is that lots of epic players want to get out of epic and relocate in freedom. It feels like a mass migration of epic refugees to freedom. As far as I'm concerned, do come in, bring your skills, your items even your chickens if you want. What troubles me is how this is going to revitalize epic? If you leave, then we have an empty cluster, maybe used as weekend resort for bored freedomers and that in rare occasions since you will have to organize it in advance to find someone there.

+1 and I claim Manouri as the feta byproduct with protected designation of origin of NW (or center-west if we follow mission locations) Xanadu.

Averages do not say anything. What could help is direct comparisons of the whiniest toons about the matter, both in freedom and in epic, with toons of similar playtime and overall skill orientation (if possible) from the other side.

Item: Workbench Skill: Fine Carpentry Attributes: Can be planted/secured, locked with large padlock, loaded with cart or better, normal decay rates apply for items within. Permissions: Location (deed) rules apply for the workbench. If locked, item permissions are typical with the addition of a “Use” flag. Capacity: Acts as a simple container with anyone with the right permissions able to place/remove tools in it. The maximum number of tools it can hold is workbench Quality/10. Description: Anyone allowed, has the Use option in the right click menu if s/he stands near it. Upon Use, a toolbelt-like window opens, with the appropriate size and filled with the tools in the toolbox. The window is location sensitive. If you move away from range, it disappears (just like a container inventory). The tools in the workbench-belt can be examined, repaired(?), activated (as if they are in your inventory) and dragged (or right click→add) to the crafting window. Wish-list: Reduced decay for pelts/whetstones. If I can place a bucket/small barrel of water in there, then the active tool is the water in it. I will still have to refill it manually. Place appropriate graphic models on the workbench, depending on what is inside. It could be a nice exercise on placing items on furniture. Edit: on abandoned workbenches, damage can deactivate tool-slots, according to effective QL, till the workbench is destroyed and the remaining tools drop to the floor.

The video suggests that it has a cooldown like foraging. Finite items is a reward for old players and any new ones (a year or so after it is introduced) will find archeology as a moot skill, while infinite simply favors farming. Drop a deed where old deeds were and farm it every day. Don't get me wrong. I love it. I simply want to know how they balance it.

Finite or infinite items? Would someone (max skill and gear) be able to clear out a location (given enough time there) for everyone else or would anyone that digs there may find something?

To gamble or not of course. The skills I consider important right now for my toon, I have grind them or still grinding them and I hardly ever fail (in creating, imping is another story altogether). I get better every day in them. I have the game you want already. I also have the option of building a caravel on the side, while semi-afking, through gambling. It is a plus not a minus. What do you want? Your skill is X, the ql of the material you try to place is Y, calculated time of placement is Z? For me is boring. Why? Because I like gambling in this case. I chose it. I like having good and bad days. Otherwise I would simply calculate my estimated time of crafting and allocate the required game time. No, "nice, I had a good day" or "it is not my day" sums at the end. You know, things that make this a game, not a factory job. Edit: Now that I think of it, your high level skills are like your profession while your low ones are like hobbies. You want effectiveness on the first ones, you simply play with the others.

Because that way there is a choice. Your game is half the game wurm is right now.

You keep saying that and I wonder if you have actually understand the mechanics involved. It is not simple RNG here. Let me give you an example. Right now I build a caravel. For no reason other than decoration of my harbor, so it is not something I’m in a hurry to complete. My shipbuilding is a bit low for that kind of job, so I get a lot of fails placing parts. If my shipbuilding was higher, I would get considerably less fails, since my skill level is directly tied to that chance percentage. I made the choice to start working on it now, instead of grinding shipbuilding first (making lots of easier ships first, ships I have no use for). I traded deterministic grinding for gambling as you call it. I made that choice, not the game. Right now, I’m placing deck boards. The deck boards are of a bit low quality as well. Why? I had a stock of 35-40ql logs I wanted to get rid off. The boards averaged at around 29ql. Their low ql is one of the reasons I get so many fails as well, because their quality is also tied to that same chance percentage. I could use better quality logs, discard the low quality boards I produce and only work with the best materials. I would get way less number of fails that way. I traded quantity of mats (all the low ql trees, logs and boards I may get and have to discard) for gambling. Again, my choice, the game didn’t force me to do that. Why that choice? Because I’m not in a hurry to finish and pressing a key every now and then is ideal for semi-afking while doing some other things like watching a movie. I don’t care about fails. If you do, get better in your crafting and use higher quality mats and tools. That simple. Wurm has one of the best balance of RNG use I’ve seen in a game, with multiple ways to affect your chances. Even though I hate to admit, sometimes RNG in Wurm can drive you nuts (yes, meditation, I'm looking at you ).

While I love a detailed guide to fine tune the settings, wouldn't be nice if along with the default settings, the client would provide a low and a high settings profile? Not everyone is comfortable playing with the settings and I think that the default setup is a bit unfair to the new client. A new player trying to check the game should be able to go to high fast and enjoy it. First impressions do count.

I don't have a problem with tree collision, I kind of like it to tell you the truth. The only issue that comes to mind right now is this. I have several trees in the place I keep my animals. The annoying thing about this setup, is that since they don't care about trees, I very often find them inside those trees, especially my oaks and olives. That is a real problem with small animals like foals and sheep. Till now I could go into trees as well and find them. Are they going to hide from me for as long as they like now? Can we get a simple tree avoidance system on their movements, at least till we got a better route algorithm? Nothing fancy, something like checking the 3 approaching tiles in the movement direction (if (x,y) is the tile you are and you have to go to (x,y+1) check (x-1,y+1), (x,y+1), (x+1, y+1) and prefer (if possible) the ones without trees). You can even expand it to prefer tree tiles with smaller trees if there is no other path (like preferring to go through a lemon tree over an oak).

Why not simply having the meditation refresh tick only affect the nutrition level (taking it to 99%) and leaving the food bar as it is (as empty as it was before). That way you get some benefit and you can still eat affinity food. Or if you feed yourself through meditation, you can eat all the junk you want for food and then go to 99% nutrition with a successful meditation.

I hope this doesn't mean that they take double damage now

Have you tried to disable stuff like shades and reflections?

The problem is consistent in my client. It appears that the trees inside the shadowmap area render with their normal winter models and what is outside falls back to some default tree model.

From my experience with an alt a few weeks back, the best way for a new toon to feed itself is to ignore the CA help, avoid hitting the lore button and only stick to the recipes they get by default in the recipe book. They are the only ones with low enough difficulty to start raising cooking skills and get some better ql food. And this is a problem. It adds lots of unnecessary frustration on new players. If you think about it, after the cooking update, cooking is one of the most complex systems in game. It is wrong to throw new players on it, completely unguided. It simply drives them away. The new tutorial must address the issue in detail.

+1

Who is stopping you to make your own open "survival" WU server and play as much as you want? If the game you desire for is so wonderful and fulfilling, then people will flock to join. Problem solved. I don't know, maybe there are already some existing servers to meet your requirements and reset every couple of months.

I don't know but I had some experiments with my alt and it feels like cooking is broken for new players. I did some foraging/botanizing and tried to feed myself cooking in my bowl. I ended up making several breakfasts and the food bar went up extremely slowly. For example eating a full pumpkin+meat+oregano breakfast moved the food bar from 71% to 80% and I think that was my best performance. Other breakfasts gave 1% or something. On top of that, even the simplest combinations have way over 20 difficulty so HFC didn't move either. Maybe there is an optimal way of starting to level up your cooking but to tell you the truth I gave up and stopped trying. Do you expect a newbie trying more to figure it out? Ah and if you wonder how come a newbie decided to make bread out of the sudden, it was simply lore asking for it. If you are a bit unlucky, lore directs you to bread casserole.

I'm not sure but maybe we have something so changed that it becomes broken for new players. For my first year in game I was almost exclusively fed myself with the simple pumpkin+meat meal. It was lousy on nutrition but I never had a problem filling my food bar. I tried the same meal with an alt and ate the ql1 meal. The food bar barely moved after finishing the whole meal. Maybe the cooking update chanced stuff in a way that makes it impossible for a new player to feed himself. Or maybe there is some other very low ql food a newbie can make and at least fill the food bar. If there is such a food then it would be nice to have him prepare it in the tutorial and all people in CA_Help know about it.

If I remember right, a new character can get free, 50 nutrition food from an NPC at the starter town for as long as his newbie buffs are on. I think that would solve the newguy's problem for at least a few days and give him a chance to try some other things. Too bad most of us have forgotten about our noob days in Wurm.

IMO, the main problem with animal tree collision is this You see, player tree collision could be entirely client side. Since the client knows about where trees are, it could handle it entirely on its own. Sure some exchange and checking could be in server side but it would be entirely for security reasons. Animal collision can only be server side and it will have to include path-finding. I would really hate the extra load of running a path finding algorithm for every single mob in xanadu. It will do wonders for our lag Alternative though, you could only go to path finding only when the mob goes into chase (or aggressive) mode. So, all mobs roam through trees all over the server as they do now but as soon as they enter aggressive mode (as in chasing players or entering combat), they will have the same limitations as we have. The server load for only mobs in combat mode would probably be minimal. PS. love this olive tree model.

I'm not saying it is useless, I say that it is not really needed. It is a nice quality of life improvement item but if the hassle of replacing pages becomes a burden, people will neglect them and abandon them. But besides the convenient “what is on harvest today” functionality we all like, there is more work in it that goes to waste to veterans. Take today's lemon report. It contains nice info, not for you and me but for a newbie. “OK, I have a lemon, now what? What is its use?” Sure he can ask at CA but a new player cannot simply ask about every little thing he encounters. The report fills this void. It is used for cooking, making drinks and has alchemical properties. “OK I will try it in cooking and maybe later I will check about alchemy. Nice, the game has alchemy, didn't know that”. Such a use goes to waste as things are now. Sure there is no skill requirements to build one but look at it from a complete noob's perspective. First it doesn't even know this thing exist. Then, think about all the little items you used to make your almanac but the average newbie doesn't not even know their existence and function. You know lots of noobs running around with pens and paper presses? That could be a problem. I can see the need to make it a container (code wise) or else you would need a new separate object entry for every (filled) almanac. On the other hand, I fail to see any reason not to consider it as a new type of container that would be able to put into a merchant with all its contents.

I think that the almanac is a case of a long needed item but with an implementation that went a bit wrong. Lets start with the basics. Who is this item for? Yeah, it is a novelty and I guess that every Wurmian has one by now and updates regularly, but for how long? Experienced players doesn't really need it. People know when harvest seasons start, even medium forestry skill levels give the ability to see if something is harvestable with a simple mouseover and there is always someone notifying chat channels about what is in season. The almanac is not for us. It is a newbie item. Harvest seasons and information about the game is something that can help him getting to know what is what and what it is for. In that context, we need to expand it to cover info on crops and other stuff like the trees, herbs etc. It could be a new player's guide to wurm's nature skills. A cheap medium ql almanac could be invaluable in a newbie's hands. We could start putting them to merchants near starter towns and even have a small market traffic with them. The main problem in that target audience for the almanac is price and familiarity. There must be cheap low ql almanacs newbies can afford but first they must become familiar with their existence and use. If they don't know what it is they will never buy it. So, lets introduce a starter item named “worn almanac” that every new toon gets. It could be a full almanac but it will decay rather fast (even in inventory). I think that the desired lifetime for that object could be roughly the same with the starter buffs they get. So they will have it for a couple of weeks, both learning about the game and familiarizing themselves with almanac's usefulness. When they expire, they will probably buy a better one or try to build their own. So, after I provided my reasoning, let me go back to the topic of this thread, decay of pages. If there is a market for almanacs, then they should decay to keep some demand up. And we could probably use different levels of decay. Almanacs should decay faster in the inventory. It makes sense (and keeps a market for different ql of almanacs alive). Carry a book with you whenever you go and compare it with the same book somewhere in your house. Even placed somewhere in your deed, they should decay at normal rate though. But that is still a nuisance for older players. After a while they will simply get tired of replacing decayed pages. Well, we already have their proper place. Make bookshelves proper containers and let us store them in there (along with any future books we get). A book in a bookshelf should take no damage (or greatly reduced decay). So, I can have my high ql almanac in there for every day reference and even care to update it with better ql reports. PS. I would also like to place an almanac in my guest house (something like a small inn) so please have a permission setting for the bookshelf that allows someone to read the almanac in there without being able to take it.