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I played Wurm Online for a year or so a while back and recently picked up Wurm Unlimited so that I could have a blank map all to myself and not have to spend hours looking for a suitable spot that wasn't already settled. So now I'm going solo-dolo without the help of a village. I'm looking for input as to where to focus during the beginning so I can make sure I have a firm base of operations. In WO I would normally make a bee-line to an established village and work in conjuction with them (farm the fields, gather iron, then collect from communal resources to build my house). However my goal is to stay solo as long as possible so that I have an established area and then open it up to the public. Please give me any suggestions on how you would personally go about this task.

 

Current gameplan:

 

1) Find a wooded area near the shore

2) Place down tent and hunt nearby game to have a small food stash

3) Gather basic crops and create a small (4x4) field to have renewable food

4) Put all my efforts into building a rowboat

5) Pack-up and sail nomadically until I find the "Promised Land" (Area with all resources relatively near ie iron, wood, water, clay, tar)

6) Place tent again

7) Begin creating farmstead

8) Deed the land and expand deed to be large enough to support a village

9) Create basic communal workshop, dock, and farmland (Possibly designate lots of land for villagers)

10) Open world to the public

 

My biggest concern is I know how to accomplish 1-7, even if it will be slow going especially trying to find an area that not only has resources but that could also support a village worth of resources. How large of an area should I be looking to deed? Is it worthwhile to build the communal buildings ahead of time and risk over-building or is it better to add things as the village grows? What should I be looking to build in order to support a community so far the villages I join have a mine, workshop, farm, and animal pen, but I've seen some that have communal housing and others that had the layouts of legitimate cities with shops, churches, jails, etc. Finally, my intent is to make it a water-side village and as such I'd rather not build a highway to my village but rather make it as close to exclusively accessible by water as I can, I know that will hamper my efforts greatly but maybe build a few boats at the starter towns and give directions?

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47 minutes ago, Vanrian said:

My biggest concern is I know how to accomplish 1-7, even if it will be slow going especially trying to find an area that not only has resources but that could also support a village worth of resources.

 

Gameplay in WU is greatly determined by the map, mods, and settings you choose. 

 

A map where you spawn onto a large continent will be played very differently than one where there are mainly smaller islands, for example.  On a large continent, a large cart is much more important than a ship, at the beginning. 

 

If you have cropmod (no rotting crops) then you can travel farther from your crops and not worry about getting home on time so you don't lose them. 

 

If you start with skills all at 1, fighting at 10, and skill gain rate at 1-3x, then your needs will be dramatically different than if you set starting skills at 10, fighting at 20, and skill gain rate at 5-10x.  

 

If you have priest restrictions, that makes a huge difference to how you'll play out the whole game.

 

If you have a trader, you'll want to be able to have reasonable access to it wherever you settle.

 

The number of aggressive mobs also makes a huge difference.

 

Regardless of the map and settings, the first thing I always do is find iron to make small nails for a large cart and water barrel, a sickle to gather from trees, and whatever essential tools I didn't spawn with. I also make good armour as soon as possible, if there are a lot of aggressive mobs.  Gathering logs and other heavy items is so much easier with a large cart.  But of course, if your settings don't allow you to command a cart right away, this won't help.

 

Everything you do to start out really depends on the map, mods, and settings.

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Thank you for replying quickly! To get myself back in the swing of things I've been using the default adventure map and may stick with it because all my research so far shows it's the only map with an "end goal". When I start my project I plan to create an enormous map that I can hopefully make an archipelago with a handful off "continent" sized land masses and an abundance of small islands. I've been playing Catan quite a bit recently and that's what inspired me to begin playing Wurm again. I've only played WO so far so I'm a bit hesitant to use mods until I understand the differences between WO and WU. I definetley see the value in deciding how far to set the skill gain scaling as well as building a large cart to begin with so you can more quickly amass resources. What settings / mods would you suggest for what I'm trying to accomplish? I'm liking the one you mentioned to prevent crops from rotting but I want to stay as close to the base game as possible.

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7 hours ago, Vanrian said:

What settings / mods would you suggest for what I'm trying to accomplish?

I like setting my singleplayer WU to 5-10x skill gain rate, characteristics start at 25 (ride a horse and load a cart right away), mind logic 100 (for 10 actions, since my singleplayer time is limited).  I also usually start all skills at 10.

 

I personally find it essential to have cropmod, no priest restrictions, betterfarm mod, and bag of holding at an absolute minimum.  On my multiplayer server, we have over 80 mods, but I find them optional on singleplayer.  

 

My play style is different than what you mention:

7 hours ago, Vanrian said:

so you can more quickly amass resources.

 

I don't try to amass large amounts of resources as quickly as possible. Instead, I try to find an area I love, then build a fully functional home there that fits into the environment without making it look commercialized. So I don't think I'm the right one to speak to this question.  

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So I've managed to build a cart. I also adjusted the action timer but left the skill gain the same, I figured that if I made things happen faster (and therefore less monotonous) it also buffs skillgain. So now I'm researching various mods to put in. So far I've settled on a few that will make the world feel more alive (ie NPC mod, non-combat pets, and I'm searching for more) I've also found an area that I quite enjoy, it's a valley surrounded by a mountain that geographically can only be reached on water. I've run into an issue though. Prospecting tells me there's iron in the mountain but I can't remove the dirt at the base of the mountain to expose the rock face and digging down in the non-mountain (I guess just before the mountain) just lowers it to water level. How do I remove dirt from the face of the mountain? I keep being told I can't dig in rock but then the pick won't work because it still counts as dirt.

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49 minutes ago, Vanrian said:

Prospecting tells me there's iron in the mountain but I can't remove the dirt at the base of the mountain to expose the rock face

 

Remember that you have to dig down all 4 corners to rock before the tile turns into a rock tile.  So if you can't dig anymore on that corner of the tile, move to another corner and dig there.

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Thank you again for your help so far. When I used to play WO I was told that dirt from higer slopes fall into dirt at lower slopes. Is that true? If so would I need to remove the dirt higher up the mountain and work my way down or would just working at the base eventually remove the dirt from the higher tiles as it funnels down?

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Usually it is only "dropped" dirt that flows down, and usually if the slope is greater than 40. However you can dig into the dirt at an even steeper level without the dirt flowing down. So noramlyl, you would not need to remove dirt from above. You may need to have a higher digging skill however to clear dirt in a steep area.

 

However,  you usually  cannot get a "perfect square" shape for the door of the mine unless you clear off the earth from a much larger area then mine down the rockface. Most Wurm players are OCD enough to do this but it's not required, you can have an oddly slanting entranceway if that doesn;t really bother you.

 

However#2, the fact you are hitting water so close to where you are trying to make the entrance, suggests once you open the mine it also will be under water, as the water table level stays consistent whether you are digging thru rock or dirt, and a mine entrance will normally slope downward once it opens.  So even though you found iron in the area, you might need to find a better spot to open a mine.  This sometimes just takes a lot of practice over time. People who have been playing Wurm for years tend to recognize a good spot without too much thought. I tend to ignore prospecting myself and check the slope of the land and pick an area where the land slopes gradually up, and somewhat even to the right and left,  and where mine entrance will be at least 40-60 slope above the water, which sometimes requires you to be inland a ways from the water.  In other words, I select for a good place to make an opening rather than a good spot for iron.  At worst it usually means I will have to dig my mine a lot further in before I find iron, but the alernative is often having to start and then abandon several spots that "prospected" good but have a terrain unsuitable for a good mine (ie, you immediately hit water, or have unworkable slopes, etc)

 

I went looking for some youtube videos that might explain better, and found these -- I find that sometimes if one video is hard to understand, another one will explain in an easier way:

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Brash_Endeavors

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7 minutes ago, Brash_Endeavors said:

However,  you usually  cannot get a "perfect square" shape for the door of the mine unless you clear off the earth from a much larger area then mine down the rockface. Most Wurm players are OCD enough to do this but it's not required, you can have an oddly slanting entranceway if that doesn;t really bother you.

Actually, the top and bottom tile borders now automatically level themselves when you open a new mine tunnel.  I believe this began a couple of updates ago.  So there is no longer any need to meticulously surface mine before tunneling.

 

@VanrianKeep in mind that tunnel, mine upward, and mine downward create a 20-slope.  You want to make sure that the rock you're tunneling into is at least 20 above water level, though more is better.

Edited by Batta

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It worked! I now have a happy little cottage, with a small farm, and a basic mine that I found sandstone and iron in. Thank you both for all your help! 

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So now I'm ready to deed the land that I've been working on. When I do that does it automatically become a part of the Kingdom I joined when I started? I joined HOTS so that I could make use of mycellium to keep me alive after combat in the begginning. However I was thinking about making my own kingdom so that I can increase immersion. Would that make me at war with the starter kingdoms? If so wouldn't that mean I could no longer use their traders and would have to use GM powers to establish my own so that I can make money in-game? Finally, is it one settlement per person? If so I'll just create alts and use them to found other towns.

 

Edit: From just fooling around I manged to make a rare deed stake, how will this influence my settlement?

Edited by Vanrian

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