Few newbie questions.

[Kolazonta]

Okay... i tried to find answers in old topics, but not everything is clear.

1. Melee combat and hunting. In every hunting topic I can see "put xx number into unarmed combat and bla bla bla". Why unarmed? Isn't melee combat better for future?

2. Fighting with stone axe = melee combat or unarmed?

3. Near my beautiful log cabin I found two abounded houses with... crops. I could kill to get those crops, coz I really need them (wheat for straw, carrots for food). But they are in claimed land, but they are abounded for sure (fence in some places is damaged or is gone, crop fields are unplowed). So... any way to harvest those crops? Probably I need some skills?

4. When I finally have log cabin, some basic tools, basic structures, few seeds from WWW, claim stake... Should I focus on one chosen skill for LP farming (like carpentry or farming) or I should put points into all useful skills? Exploration, survival, carpentry, farming, combat...

5. E... this will be stupid ;p "A Silkworm Cocoon left for 24 real life hours will turn into a random-gendered silkmoth." But... i hope that they will stay inside container? Or will have to catch them again in my house?

6. Containers outside decays, but seems that containers inside house cant decay, right? So better to put all containers inside?

[Pansy]

Things may have changed but if you are doing close ranged combat, melee combat does more damage in the early stages, but in the later stages unarmed does more. The only important thing is to pick one or the other, and if you go melee to use a shield and "sheild" for defense, but if you use unarmed to use "dodge" as your default defense setting. Then experiment if you can by sparring with a partner to figure out how the system works.

Using a stone axe is melee.

To steal those crops you need to take the expensive path of crime: Will to Power, tresspassing, theft. And then you will leave theft scents and can possibly be hearth summoned and executed while off line. You are probably better exploring a little further and doing what you can with WWW and begging anyone you meet for one carrot or one wheat seed or whatever it is you need to start your farm. By the time you have the criminal skills to steal those crops you will probably already have them.

[Pansy]

A very good new player path to follow is: 1. Make sure you character is safe first. (Don't hang around bears, player killers, figure out how to escape attacking animals, etc.) 2. Make sure your character has a steady and reliable source of food. (Starvation kills many noobies. The combination of healing and not enough to eat and low stamina can cause a sudden acute crisis resulting in death before you expect it. 3. Make sure your stuff is safe. (Develop yeomanry so you can put up a claim AND A PALLISADE. )

I gather you have already worked this out. Along the way you want to experiment and try things out, you want to find leeches so you can heal yourself and you want to find a good source of lp that doesn't render you camp unusable, such as not paving every tile within reach and not turning every tree in miles into buckets. But what next?

It depends on what you have been enjoying so far. For example hunting is a good source of lp, and if you like hunting you want to put lp into survival (so the butchering doesn't reduce the quality of the animal) and into your hunting skills, such as ranged. If you find foraging fun you want to put lp into exploration so you find more stuff and survival so the quality of the stuff is better. If you like to farm you probably want to put your lp into farming but also into cooking. (Cooking should actually be renamed baking.) Farming generally produces lots of flour and making dough of whatever type brings in a lot of lp and uses up the low q wheat seed. A farmer also probably will want some good high q herbalist's benches, so you then might want to invest in carpentry skill increases, and get into planting trees as well as the field crops. However, if you don't need to make high q wooden manufactured items (tanning tubs and benches) you can skip raising carpentry.

The answer to your question is variable because there are so many paths. As a generalization however you might like to settle on a couple of activities -say farming and foraging - and raise the skills connected to those. A lot depends on what resources are available in your area and your trade opportunities, if any. If someone will give you high q herbalist's benches cheaply, you don't need to worry about carpentry. If you are in an area with no animals higher than lvl VI and a lot of competition from other hunters, hunting is less likely to be a high lp path. If there are no mulberry trees raising silk moths and the skills to support it won't be an option. So try everything and if you can, anticipate your needs and raise skill levels a little bit before you need them. Say, you realise you want decent leather armor. Start raising sewing as you start hunting. By the time the hides are cured into leather you will have raised your sewing enough that you don't totally ruin the skins.

[Pansy]

Hatched silkworms stay on the table. They do have to be transferred into a container promptly with lots of leaves.

Hatched silk moths also stay in the container. For best results use a huge container with lots of space, such as a cupboard with nothing but your hatching coccoons in it. They won't fly away, but they will die soon. If you hatch them together with lots of space and then are prevented from getting on line to tend them, the moths will pair off and breed, so with luck you will end up with lots of new eggs instead of an empty container.

Yep, store liftable stuff inside and inventoriable stuff in containers. Drop inventory stuff on the floor inside and it will still decay. (NOOOO! Our only gate key!!!) The basic rule is that everything you can lift is better stored inside a building, and everything that you can put into inventory is better stored in a container. The only exceptions are carcasses which you can lift but will decay no matter where you put them.

[Oskatat]

when taking seeds from someone who is almost always offline, the rule is to replant the highest seed. If your skill in farming is low it wont help much, but if the player doesnt get online, there's small chance he'll find out

what skills to get? depends.
do you live alone, sorry, you'll need almost everything, If you dont have a mine and dont plan on doing criminal stuff, you wont need smithing or stealth

if you want good leather clothing you'll need survival to get good leathers and sewing for making the stuff
for good crops you'll need good farming, good food you'll need cooking.
making good tools needs good boards, which needs good carpentry
to find some needed herbs, you'll need exploration

and so on and so on

yes, you'll need a lot of skills

[Kolazonta]

U, thx for really helpful advices.

Part about skills - well, yes. I live alone now. Want to know game better, want to develop some skills and then I will join some village. Imo it's funnier than getting everything from village mates.

About my location - I have mulberys trees quite nearby, so it's ok to hatch moths. Food shouldn't be a problem - many rabbits, and one lake with plenty of fishes. So, I won't die. And have leeches. Also - seems that I'm alone there. Of course seen few farms, but all are empty. So... location for newbie is quite good.

Part about lp. Well... now I'm making palisades. 100 block of woods each, cutting trees and removing stomps gives nice lp.

And part about hunting. Well... I don't like ranged combat here, so want to stick with unarmed/melee. Cant decide yet which one ;p But probably will go melee (cooler look? ;P)

And one more stupid question... how hunting can give lots of lp? I will kill animal - great - will get some xp. And... thats all? Of course later I will roast meat, dry leather etc. But... is it really so good?

Ach, and... when I will build palisade (now have this crapy fence) everything will be... well, normal? I just saw somewhere post about crops. Someone said that they cannot be inside terrain walled by palisade.

[Pansy]

Hunting is one of the good sources of lp. The bigger and meaner the animal and the higher the level the more lp you get. The lp from processing the carcasses is not as good as the actual killing. I got over a thousand lp for killing a level IX fox earlier today, but my peaceful and change are maxed out, giving me the highest lp earning rate. If I recall correctly I get about 700 for each mouflon I kill and about a thousand for each aurochsen. A decent bear can bag me 7000 lp with the kill alone and processing the bones and teeth brings me a fair bit more.

Don't lose aggro on animals you are trying to kill because you lose the lp you would have gained from that part of the fight.

You might want to try and get a sausage grinder from somewhere if you are going into hunting in a big way. Processing meat into sausage give you more lp than just roasting it.

Animals will not spawn on a claim. However plants will spawn. And you can grow crops just fine whether or not the territory is claimed. It's not the pallisade that makes the difference. If there is no wall to keep them out the animals can wander onto your claim, so having claimed land doesn't make it safe from animals.

[Kolazonta]

Okay, thx. Fill follow advices. I have been robbed today, so... have nothing (miss my moths ) so its good time to start all over again.