Hey all, have my 1000 lp from branches. Now what?

[symbolicicon]

First off. Hello everyone, just joined a day or two ago. I was kind of confused when I first started on what to do, read around on the forums. I have learned very little still, but I have the general idea. So I decided before I posted my noob questions I would just collect branches until I reached 1000LP and hopefully I would have a general idea on what to do next. I think I have made up my mind on what I want to do, I am just unsure how to get there. So here are my questions.

1) Im thinking of using my LPs to become a farmer/fisher what is the best way to do that? My general plan is to be able to make my own farm, grow crops and fish to trade for goods.

2) Can you lock doors of cabins you make?

3) How do you build fires? I know its adventure>build a fire but it keeps saying I dont have the material. I tried using branches...am I doing it wrong?

4) Are there any established villages interested in my help? Once I learn how to start my farm im sure I can be of some sort of use.

5) Assuming there are no available answers for question 4, does any have any tips on what I should do now? I will keep sifting through the wiki and forums for ideas, for now I am just a bit lost.

[tristamizumi]

2) No. If you want to secure your compound, you need to build a palisade around it. This requires you to learn the Yeomanry skill; it'll also let you put down a personal claim over the area so people will leave scents behind if they trespass/steal/vandalize your property.

3) You have to move the sticks from your inventory to the build window. Next to the stick icon in the build window will be three numbers; initially it will say 5/0/0. This means it still needs 5 sticks, 0 sticks are in the build site, and 0 sticks have been built into the site. Shift-click the sticks when the build window is open; it should then read 0/5/0. Now you can click "Build" and the numbers will periodically go from the second row to the third; once it reaches 0/0/5, the window and construction sign will disappear and the fire will be built.

1/4/5) I'll let others address these.

[Twerp]

You need a generalized skillset before you decide to start specializing in something. I'm assuming that you have, in fact, done nothing BUT gather branches, and haven't bought any skills yet. First off, I'd grab Stone Working and Lumberjacking and knock down a few trees for lp (just don't clearcut the whole forest, and spare apple trees for easy food if you live in the right kind of forest). Then get Hunting and Carpentry and you'll be much more capable of exploiting natural resources. Once you're comfortable and earning lp messing around with your new skills, pick up Fishing and Boat Building. Don't be scared off by the lp cost of boat building, it's very much worth it for getting around. That, and those bastard boars can't sneak up on you while you're fishing from the safety of your boat.

I'm also assuming that you're out in the wilderness on your own, like how I started. Don't feel like you gotta do what I said to the letter to survive, mind you, it's just how I got by. Messin' around, learning by doing. Anyway!

1) Before you can even begin farming, you'll need seeds. Pick up Foraging and put points into exploration, and at around 6-10 you might start to notice what looks like a light green leaf standing on end in the wilderness. Those are wild windsown weeds, get 'em. Then build a drying frame (you learn how to build them when you get the Hunting skill), and put them on it. Then wait about sixteen hours real-time, because drying frames aren't the ideal vessels for drying seeds, but you're a Rugged Pioneer and you'll make do.

While you wait, learn Plant Lore and Farming. Once this is done and you have your dried seeds, go into the Adventure menu and plow a tile. Then left-click the seed in your inventory to pick it up, and right-click the plowed tile. Your work is done, now it's nature's turn.

As for fishing, build yourself a boat and look for fish leaping outta the water. They're not hard to see, but if you're blazing down the river you might not see the animation at all before passing them by. You need four things to go fishing, one of which you should already have if you looted the chest in character generation before you left: a fishing pole (two branches), a fishing line (use your foraging/exploration to find a brown herb, looks a bit like a rotting log. That's a spindly taproot which miraculously works as a string substitute), a fishing hook (catch, kill, and butcher a bunny or chicken, make the hook from the bone), and a fishing lure (chip a stone off a boulder, make a rock lobster lure). Right click each piece on the pole to assemble it, and once it's all together, you're good to go. Equip the pole and click the fishing icon under the Adventure menu on any spot with fish splashing out of the water, and as long as you can get up real close to it, you'll cast. Then it's the waiting game, fishing takes time. You'll automatically keep fishing until you run out of inventory space, or a fish makes off with your lure, or some similar tragedy.

4) Herein lies the conundrum! You don't know where you are, and we don't know where you are, and there's little either of us can do to help the other know. If you're interested in finding civilization, build a boat. Boats can store up to two containers, so you can carry a couple baskets of food or something if you're worried about leaving your comfortable corner of the wild. Then just coast along the rivers looking for signs of settlements. If you're lucky, you might run into somebody willing to tell you about any nearby villages. Or they might just be paranoid jerks and threaten/kill you, but that's life on the frontier for ya.

christing crap i wrote too many words

[symbolicicon]

Thanks for the help guys, I really appreciate it. There is a lot to learn from what I can see, so I guess im just going to go with the flow.