Questions about Skill Values

[ChampionRyu]

How do I decide which ones to choose? Which ones does each affect? Which ones are a must-have and very important and which ones are useless or less important? What's the priority list for them?

[Cookie]

I would suggest Exploration as a priority so you can find enough spindley taproot to use for fishing line, dream catchers and such -raise it to ten and then worry about another stat. Survival is another good one. Once it is ten you can make q10 items, and find q 10 taproots which means you will start getting fep fro the food your find.

Edit: In the new world the survival skill has dropped in immediate priority for new players. You used to need it to reach 10 before you got fep from food such as chickens and rabbits. They now give some fep at the lower levels too. However you sill need it to reach 10 before the survival tools you make reach q10 and you probably want it at that level before you build a sling, as suggested below.

After that it depends on what path you take. If you want to hunt works on marksman and build a sling. If you want to farm raise farming and try to get a straw hat.

Skip stealth. Skip unarmed and Melee. Those require all kinds of skills and high points before they are any use at all. Skip mining for now, since you'll first have to find a mine.

Cooking is only needed once you have baking. Survival is the skill that applies to campfire cooking. So Cooking will follow farming and comes after you have wheat.

I hope this helps

[ChampionRyu]

That helped A LOT! Thanks so much, you just outlined the whole thing for me!!! I am extremely grateful. But I just have a couple more questions. I have been skipping skill values for skills and just been getting all the 200 lp skills.. SHould I max out all my skills before I get skill values? Or if not when should I switch over? Lastly, how come I seem to be the only one online allthe time? How do I find others?!

[Cookie]

The actual skills you want to get and the order you get them in will depend on where you spawn. For example if you spawn beside an apple tree you have a ready source of steady food. Otherwise foraging and hunting are essential to find food. Those two are important anyway, since they are your means of getting bone and string but if you are beside an apple tree you might want to get lumberjacking first and start on felling trees for your future house, since cutting down trees is good lp, although hard on the stamina and so makes you want a lot of food. Wherever you end up the first thing you want to do is secure those skills that ensure your food supply.

If you are beside water you will soon want to get fishing and pottery. Fishing is another way of getting food and pottery offers some decent lp as well as urns which hold 8 inventory slots. However carpentry -after you make a saw from a rabbit or chicken bone - enables you to make cupboards which hold far more than that. The catch is that a cupboard will decay outside very soon and you risk losing the contents.

Clothmaking is a 200lp skill that I usually wait on. Getting Animal Husbandry 400 lp and Leatherworking 600lp are more important. Clothmaking will enable you to make nettle underclothing which gives you a survival bonus, but first you have to collect enough stinging nettles. Leatherworking will enable you to tan leather and make a backpack, increasing the size of your inventory. Most players find this an urgent must-have.

Hearth magic may not be useful at all for a long time. It's biggest use is if you find a prime spot to settle but have no source of water there to use for leatherworking. In that case get hearth magic, make a dream-catcher, make a dowsing rod and find yourself a well spot. Otherwise... the skill can wait, possibly a long long time.

Plant lore enables you to make herbalists tables and then to purchase the 600 lp skill farming. The herbalists tables will now be much more use than before because they enable to you get the seed needed for farming,so Plant Lore has become a more important skill on the new map than it was on the old.

There are plenty of 200lp skills you may never get to need. Candlemaking is an example. Candles can only be used in a metal candelebra or a metal miner's helment. It's probably gonna be a loooooong time before you can lay hands on either of those.

What you want to get therefore is dependant on where you are and the resources around you and what you want to play.

The absolute most important thing to keep maxing out as fast as you can is your learning rate. The higher your learning rate the more lp every task will earn you. To max it out go to beliefs and change your beliefs towards peaceful. Once you get to full peaceful your beliefs will also have moved to full change giving you a 360% learning rate. For a new character this is invaluable. True, peaceful means you are less good at hitting things (like that first fox you are trying to kill) but you are also harder to hit (like that bear that is chasing you as hard as you can run towards deep water). If you want to go martial wait until you are actually experienced enough to hit things effectively and can afford to gain lp slower. You can always switch it back.

As for Where The Heck is Everybody!! - If you want to find people to play with you could always grind up to wheelmaking and build a boat and go search. But you still might not find anybody. Your very best bet is to post here, advertise to find some people to play with you, and when you create your character enter their hearth secret. That way you will spawn near to their hearthfire and with luck get together a half dozen people at the same spot to form a community. Otherwise it's the hermit life for you.

[Moracin]

Great post Cookie, thanks alot. It has some great newbie pointers, and If I had read this earlier me and a friend of mine would have started out alot better. But now with the reset we have another chance and your pointers will help us alot. You should post it on the wiki.