Thorinoakshield

I'll most likely be there, but just as imper; nothing else. Thorin

Ajala, what are you doing with a picture of me? 🤨 As for those beasts, I doubt they're from a rift. However, there's this rift scout event that fires randomly and would spawn certain rift monsters. I can't remember how the full event was, but I think that over time the more dangerous rift beings may spawn if the first party isn't destroyed in time. So it may be you encountered that. Thorin

Keep in mind that you need to be a follower of the religion a colossus resembles if you want to build those. Only the "Soldier" or "Guardian" one can be build by anyone. Also keep in mind that depending at which one you will build, you will need metal sheets made of silver or gold. And since metal sheets can't be improved, you will need someone with high JS using high ql resources to create them. Thorin

In case you can't connect, there's always this page to see if a server is up or not: https://status.wurmonline.com/ Thorin

Just got word today that the tunnel is accessable for traffic again. Therefore status of the canal can be changed to open. If all goes well - and knowing Qd, it will - it will be accessable for all boats after the weekend. Thanks for the update, Qd and thanks for all the work done in there. This also means this topic can be closed. Thorin

Is that salted or sweeted popcorn, Ajala? If it's salted, can I have some please? Thorin

QD has been away from the game due to a very busy RL. It's something that happens to all of us from time to time and is nothing to worry about; as knowing him I'm quite certain he will complete the project. All it takes is a little patience from the community; which I think isn't that hard to do, isn't it? I mean, considering he did all done so far by himself, with no help of the community at all and only some minor help from some of his alliance members - and not even me - in about 8-12 months; what are a few more weeks extra or being forced to sail through either Fogshore Canal or Darq Canal and the T&T and sail a few hours longer as usual? Knowing from personal experience how tiring it can be to do such a huge project all alone, I think a bit more respect for Qd and some more patience because of his absence should be the least one can have. As for the rest: You're the one making drama out of this. It was mentioned it may take some time, it took a bit longer as expected because people have a personal live next to WO, so a bit more patience would have been apreciated. As for your suggestion that a GM would be able to name someone to conclude a project: That's not the job of a GM, nor any staff member. The only one who's got a right to do is is the project leader. So my suggestion is you wait until Qd's back and talk to him in game about being an assistant; or you wait for him to return to finish the project. Or you simply wait for the deed to drop and finish it yourself. Thorin

Since everything is moved to the new map now; see this thread; this one may as well be closed to avoid any confusion. Thorin

This may open up some opportunities for my future zoo. *Makes notes about adding 1 male troll named Shrek, 1 female troll named Fabiola, 1 donkey named....... 🤔 ...... Donkey and one female dragon to be bred with the donkey* Thorin

For the record, I'm not participating in this reconstruction. The owner of the Maes Knoll deed is, so if anyone wants to help, or has questions contact him ingame. Thorin

Starting Sunday 04 - 04 and for about the next 2-3 weeks all entrances to the Maes Knoll canal are closed for reconstruction. How long this will last depends at the time the people working at this have on hand. So hopefully it's just 2 weeks and not 3. I'll keep y'all informed about the progress. Thorin

With all due respect, but looking at this `bug`-report, I can only conclude that some people are a bit overreacting. I do understand that not everyone may like this joke; but at least keep in mind that we got dev's who actually *are doing something*! There are plenty of online games where nothing is done at all. Or; like I have experienced twice; a post at an official forum announcing that due to a hardware crash, all skills were re-rolled up to Februari 30th. Perhaps those complaining in the "bug"-report would like to see that message popping up next year? I'm quite certain a lot of ###### will hit the fan after that one. Or do you prefer nothing is done at all? I'm quite certain a lot will complain about the dev's doing "nothing ever". Thorin

That's up to you. But personally I'd change the area of attack the moment the AI decides to defend what you're attacking. While headwounds do have its effect, so does having a medium wound at an arm or leg. So switching area's of attack is always useful; both in PvP and PvE. The reason why I wrote a more general advice, is because it's that what a lot of players even don't know. Too often I've seen players with 50-ish FS heading into a rift fight wearing plate and being on foot; just to discover they barely can't get out of the way when being bashed and having "only" 1kg of cotton on them as they thought plate would protect them from all damage. Too often I've seen new players asking about the best armour or best weapon; while they're basically starting out with good gear. If players want to master combat in this game, they need to start mastering the basics: use gear that suits your needs, not what seems to best, make sure you got your supports (cotton, healing covers, farmer's salve, TENT!) with you and don't be ashamed to call for help (guards or other players) or to run away. But most important, be unpredictable. The AI will calculate where you may place your next attack and where it will place the next attack. If you keep following the same pattern over and over again, you may as well turn auto-combat on and wait for victory or defeat. If you're manually fighting, however, you may switch to a spot one didn't think about. So, using your question; of course you can keep bashing the head of that monster you're attacking. But the AI will defend that part and all you achieve is banging at something that doesn't get damaged; just to break through the defences once in a while. If you, however, switch to attacking the undefended legs, you got a huge chance to wound your opponent there. Which means your chance at a victory is a little bit closer. Thorin

To start with: This is not the place to discuss if naming and shaming is the right thing to do or not. So please move that discussion to another topic. As for the starting post: I seem to remember something similar happened a while ago at the Lunar Order Academy. Knowing some players who were around at that time, I'll ask around as that may as well show the name of a possible alt and / or original player name. Thorin

Hope your horse stayed alive this time, @Katrat?? Thorin

[starts wall of text] I don't have a nice training video, but here's what I've learned over the past (6) years: 1) Don't use the auto fight option. Switch to manual, as you may be able to defend and attack better; 2) Get yourself a height advantage. Not just by moving to higher ground, but also from horseback. Riding L-carts or Wagons does give you that advantage, but also give you an increased difficulty, so avoid fighting from those until you're at the higher ranks. A good way to check is to attack something from a L-cart and see what colour the arrows showing what you are attacking at the oponent are. Green means you will most certainly hit; white means you may hit or miss in the same rate, orange means you may occasionally hit and read means you will miss most of the time. 3a) Don't call the guards until you really have to. Guards - both the tower guards as the spirit guards - give you a reduced FS gain compaired to solo-ing a monster. Therefore it's better to postpone calling out to them, as to immediately call out on them while you may be able to defeat that monster you're facing. 3b) Related: Running away is not a sign of cowardice, but a sign of common sense. Running away from a monster means you may gain some distance to enter a safe area, to heal up and to get into the fight again. There's no need to fight 'til the end, if you know that end is more likely coming for you earlier as it is for the monster. Considering only Trolls (afaik) are able to regenerate, healing yourself up gives you that edge you may need early on. 3c) Also related: travel light. Especially early on. If that means you need to drop ###### because you're under attack, drop it. After that monster is defeated you can pick is up anyway. But when the monster defeats you, you're left with almost nothing. Which is a lot worse if you can't remember where you got killed in the first place. 4) If you have one, drop your tent, then try to lure the monster away from it. You got 3 optional spawn points in this game; your tent, a starter town (or multiple at some servers) and your deed (if you have one). USE them. Drop that tent, lure the monster away from it if you think you can't defeat or outrun it and try to kill it. If you got killed, you will spawn nearby and with some luck close enough to get the items of your corpse, without agro-ing that monster. 5) Don't ditch the starter gear for something better. This may be a controversial one for some players, because of the "higher qlis better" mindset, but it doesn't always work like that. Each and every new player start out with a nice 50ql longsword, a nice shield and 50ql leather armour. While 50ql doesn't seem much, it's basically just as good as 70+ ql items made by players because as a new player you got no skill at all in the use of it anyway. More important, when you - as a new player - die, all starter items are on you the moment you respawn. Which means you will respawn near your tent, on deed or in a starter town (depending at which option you choose) with your full gear and full health. Which also means that you're able to attack that monster again, without having to worry you will loose your gear. Now, imagine you're a new player who's bought that 90ql rare huge axe with all those high 90 - 100 enchants on it, as well as 90ql Drake armour with Web-armour or AoSP at it and you got killed in the middle of nowhere by a bull and you can't remember where...... I'm certain a player stumbling over your remains 4 days later will be very, very happy. Another reason why it's controversial: When this game was released, players started with no weapons and armour at all. Later that got changed to being equipped with a 10ql small wooden shield and a 10ql (I think it was) short sword. With the current equipment new players are a lot safer as they used to be. 6) As for gear: Stay away from plate until you got at least 40 body strength. Plate offers more or less the best damage reduction, but it's so heavy you almost need an engine in it to move forward. Not to mention, because you can't move fast, your dodging is terrible A lot of players are still using Studded Armour, even at higher levels and the reason for that is that studded is one of the best armour types for both offence and defence. Studded armour has a better defence vs both piercing and slashing damage compared to leather and is certainly better when being confronted with the blunt damage troll clubs do. Drake is basically Studded Armour on steroids, but it's expensive. (Dragon) Scale armour is plate on steroids, but expensive too. Don't buy these two, unless you intend to play this game for a long time. Chain mail armour has the best defence vs both piercing and slashing damage - which is done by almost any monster - however, when fighting a troll you will end up with lots of bruises. 7) Make sure you always have some cotton (strings or pieces of cloth), healing covers and farmer's salve with you. Those three items are able to heal you up, but also can turn a severe wound into a light or medium one. Which means your chances to survival are a lot better 8 ) As mentioned earlier, in manual fight you're able to choose where to attack your opponent, as well as where to defend. And this is most likely the only spot ingame where a left handed player has an advantage over a right handed player considering you can use your right hand to pick the numbers from the number pad, or the cursor keys to move. The combat tab shows you where your oponent is planning to attack you; meaning you can use the number pad of your key board to defend yourself into that direction. Using the number pad, you can also choose from one of the 9 options where to attack your oponent. 5 is the default setting, meaning attacking the body of that monster. 1, 2 & 3 are the lower parts of the monster 7, 8, & 9 are the top parts of the monster, including its head; 4 & 6 are the left and right side of the monster. Leaves the "0" (zero); which is meant to focus; which will give you a small edge if you increase it during the fight. What I usually do in a fight is picking a spot to attack; i.e. left arm; and move 3 positions clock wise or counter clock wise over the number pad to switch my point of attack. For instance:5 (starting position; 4 (left arm), 9 (right shoulder / upper arm), 2 (lower body / crotch?), 0 to focus, 7 (left shoulder / upper arm), 1 (left leg / foot - and breaking the pattern; 0 to focus; 8 (head), 4 (left arm - 6 step pattern); 2 (lower body / crotch - to break the pattern again and going into counter clock wise order) Usually by then the monster is dead; unless it's a tougher one like a champion or one having a certain condition. What I don't do, is using the special attacks. Those consume lots of stamina; which you will need if the fight is going on a longer time. 9) Then we have fighting stances; The game got 3 different stances, all having it's (dis)advantages. For "sword (or maul, axe) and board", using defensive or normal fighting stance works best. The shield will add a bit more defence and resistance to you anyway, however you won't hit as often in defensive stance as you would in normal or agressive stance. In agressive stance you will hit most often, but you are also more vunerable to being hit by the monster. It's not something I would reccommend to new players. However, it works quite well when using a L-maul, huge axe or 2 handed sword. 10) The easiest way to train FS is by using your starter longsword and cut down trees. It works to get your FS up to 20-ish skill, while also training your longsword skill. If you intend to use another weapon later, use that one instead. No need to skill longsword and swords (parent skill), when you are going to use a Large Maul later. Another way to train FS is to create yourself a training dummy and release your agression at that one. Just keep in mind you need to repair and imp that dummy every once in a while. 11) Last but not least: Choice of weapons. Like in all games, each weapon has its (dis-)advantages. Small weapons swing fastest, but do smallest damage; normal weapons have an average swing time and do average damage, while large or 2 handed weapons do most damage but swing slowest. On top of that the swing rate is also depending at the kind of weapon, meaning swords are faster as axes, which are faster as mauls. And there are staves; which are somewhere in between and considered as the meta by some players. Dual wielding weapons can be done as well, however don't expect to do much damage with the off hand weapon as the current fighting engine isn't really suited for that. As for bows, using them in a fight is a very long process which can be trained at PvE, but you will most likely need to train it a lot before you're even able to do lots of damage compared to melee. It cerainly isn't something I would reccommend to do as a starting player. So my advice, choose the equipment and combat style that you think suits you best and stick to it. Don't switch weapons when you see others doing more damage with something they use, because FS isn't the only skill helping you with that. Each weapon got their own skill and parent and the only thing you achieve by switching out weapons is starting from scratch and dealing less damage because you aren't less trained in it. [/end wall of text] Thorin

Just two things: 1) It's OAKSHIELD, not OakENshield. While the origin of the name is obvious, I made a typo at the time, just to realise I was one of the few with that name, instead of the billions of Oakenshields. 2) While the Lunar Order is part of the Loch Ness Alliance, as far as I'm concerned nothing changes about the housing and guiding of new or returning players as it was done in the past. Having a somewhat bigger alliance and a more active alliance chat may actually be more helpful, but as long as there's a Lunar Order, there's a place to help the new or returning players. So keep on recuiting! Thorin

Glad to help. I had brought that wagon to show off a bit and never expected I would need one of the other horses to save someone. Only thing I did regret is not being able to take you to the boat, as promised. Not something a good Body-Dwarf would do. Yet, I'm glad to see you've had a good time after all and that despite everything, it all worked out well for you. Thorin PS: Next time I do take you to your boat.

All this whining about the praying update and had none of you whiners actually noticed that the one proposing this is playing a priest, most likely has benediction and has been proposing countless of improvements to Wurm for over the years? So perhaps that player actually knew what he was talking about and decided it could be done better. Which eventually the Dev's decided to do. I do sometimes wonder if we have players here who's only goal is to get up to top of having the most skills list; or they are actually enjoying this game. Looking at some comments here, I think there are at least two people replying who are aiming for just that and when things are made easier, think they got the right to complain about it. IMHO Wurm Online is a game you should enjoy and while for some that enjoyment comes from grinding one skill after another, for others grinding skills is something they don't like at all. For the dev's this means they always have to find a middle ground; making it impossible to please all kinds of players in this game. In the past there have been tweaks to this game I didn't like at all; yet I'm still playing it. The reason: I'm enjoying more aspects of this game as just getting skills for doing something. if for some reason the way of gaining skill is tweaked and it would affect my skill - i.e. I've got my WS around 55 with much effort - I may not like it, but I won't complain about it, as in the end the new method may actually benefit this game and all players. Perhaps that's something those whining about the current - and some past - changes should keep in mind. If it benefits the game, it will benefit the players as well. And when the community is happy, it'll benefit the game again. As for the mentioned upcoming changes; I'm really looking forward for the new combat system. Thorin

So this is the first rift out of 21? What happens if the 21st rift is done? Thorin

Issue is stil here after several patches since first time being reported. Please look into it, as disabling it over and over again with multiple characters becomes quite annoying now. Thorin

Regarding the mistake made with the rifts at the new servers: That was the first comment asking why things didn't go as planned. And here's Retro's reply: Meaning, something went wrong, the Dev's were aware of it and have fixed it. Problem solved, let's move on to the next. Regarding the spreading out of their starting times: https://niarja.com/universes/online/rifts And I copy / pasted the table for those to laz... unable to check the link right now. Times are in CET, btw, but it's more to give an impression. The link provides the time according your time zone. As people can see there, all rifts at the old servers are starting at different dates and times. And that's despite they have been starting at the same time twice!! since the mechanics were introduced. Last time was last year, iirc. Which means that within a period of 40-41 rifts times are so different, players can easily visit multiple rifts within a few days. EVEN at the new servers where only 3 servers are available. Seeing the ones at Cadence and Melody open in the night of Monday to Tuesday; it's very likely few players will attent and thus it'll take longer for the rift to close. Which also means the next time these rifts will open, it's likely Thursday late in the morning or early afternoon. I rest my case. Thorin

Yes, you missed something. It seems that when Harmony - and Decadence too, if that had a rift - was coded, the usual rift sequence was added to it as those were the two first servers to open. However, somehow when setting up the other two servers, things got wrong or were forgotten, resulting in both servers having to open their rifts right away, instead of having the two day beacon. I'm aware it's an inconvinience, but rifts do spread out over time, so there's nothing to worry about. As for spreading them out, it's simply going to happen due to the amount of players. Which is going to be depending at the time zone the players live in. Since all Wurm servers are global servers and not every player can be online 24/7, the amount of players participating in closing a rift will vary. And the less people there are - I've been at a Xan rift where only 5 people were present - the longer it'll take to close a rift. The one at Xan took us close to or even over 12 hours. Which also means that the next rift did appear 7 days and 12 hours after the previous one appeared. No it isn't. Bad game design would be to have a rift spawn, open it up 2 days after and then setting a time lock at it to close; no matter if there are people fighting there or not. Imagine what will happen if you were fighting the last wave, close to kill the last monster so you got enough hearts to sac and the automated rift closing gets activated, leaving you with some nice stats, but no goodies. I'm quite certain the forums both hear and at steam would explode. Or imagine that a rift will auto-close and spawn the goodies. Barely no-one would bother to fight the monsters, given the "why risk my hide if I can get the stuff for free after 'X' time?" That means players would just camp near a rift, wait for it to auto-close, harvest the crystals and wood and return to their deeds. Rifts are community events, in which it is the task of the community to deal with whatever is thrown at them. If the participation of the community is taken away, the entire idea of the rift has become worthless and could as well been taken away. Being a community event, also means that it depend at the community how long the event last. And like I said before, given this game uses global servers and we can divide the Wurm population into 3 groups (Europeans, Asian / Australia / New Zealand and North- / South-Americans), as well as they will open at weekdays, there will different numbers players present to close a rift. That too is the joy of a rift. Sometimes you will fight it with 50 players and sometimes with 5. But eventually a rift can be closed; you just need to adjust your tactics. That isn't bad game design, that's how community events are supposed to work. Like it or not. Thorin

Answer found here. Thorin

It's a herritage site, so yes, GM permission is required. What's also needed is a deed above that specific spot, with the perms to remove any kind of reinforcements to those who want to mine. And finally, since the road got that turn as well, it could be considered to strongwall / collapse some tiles there, redirect the highway making the road a nice long stretch too. But if it could be done, I'm in. As soon as I'm home, that is. Thorin