New player question

[MadamTweak]

So reading a lot it seems having 2 accounts is the way to go, but do i have to? me and my wife normally play this on and off, and i was looking more into the FEP system and seeing how its recommended to have one for lifting and such and one for other things i guess?, The main point of this is am i gimping myself horribly if i dont do that? i mean me and her will split tasks for now most likely, i normally do int/perception so i can see things and grow crops etc.

[shubla]

You can play the game with only 1 character and 1 account just fine. You can also have multiple characters on one account, but you can then only play with 1 of them simultaneously.
Having 2 different accounts or characters can make playing a bit safer, as you can use one for going outside the walls to danger, and one inside the walls. You can also gain stats more efficiently, as you can focus more on specific things with specific characters. But this is not required to play the game, only if you want to be competitive in quality etc.

[MagicManICT]

I think it comes down to how you want to play the game. As shubla points out, if you're not going to compete for trading, PvP, or other things, you don't need to min/max stats. The other thing to consider are credos. They can add a lot to the game, but can be tiresome (to put it nicely) to grind out on more than one character. For some things, it makes the game so much easier, for other things, they're a nicety or simply a title as they don't add a huge amount to your performance in those jobs.

[Dondy]

You're a casual player, not a competitive one. In that case you definitely don't need multiple accounts. It's not that running just one character is going to hold you back, it's that running just one computer each and starting well after the birth of the world will keep you from ever getting anywhere near the higher tier players. And that's just fine, because you probably want to play as opposed to running an army of specialized bots 24/7 with the help of some friends who know your log in and account sit for you so your character is only ever logged out when they need to heal in a bed.

If you do aspire to one day be a higher tier player, you will still need at least a few weeks of learning the game mechanics thoroughly. One day the world will reset. Consider this a practice run for that day, and use your time figuring out how to play and how to have fun. Long ago a new character named Nao Whut became famous for how often their character got killed. A few months later she was reknown for knowing how to play her character so well that she was capable of defeating any other player she ran into. She became famous for ko-ing people and stealing their pants. There's going to be a learning curve and mistakes. It is likely to be easier for you to learn the mechanics and the reason why you want to balance your stats by playing, than by trying to follow contradictory rules people tell you. If the game is fun you will stick around. If it isn't fun you don't need to learn to play well, you need to find a different game you'll enjoy more.


You will hear a lot of lower tier players talk about specializing, but in my experience they are people who are impatient for points and want to boast that in less than a week their fighter has 180 in melee! They don't feel it's a drawback to have a character who has 5 in carpentry and 2 in farming, and not only can do nothing effectively but fight, but because of having hugely unbalanced attributes with high agi, con and str, will never be effective at anything else without hours of work. I notice that the people who boast of having a great character always seem to boast of what a great fighter they have, and never what a great carpenter and crafter they have... and they don't seem to be around very long either. Those who take less than a week to get to 180 in melee are quite likely to be the impatient sort and when they realised they need to have a crafter who is 120 in psyche and lore and 120 in dex they just don't find the game so interesting any more.

The hardest character to raise as multipurpose is your first one because your stats are apt to get lopsided due to shortages of psyche food in the early game and fewer resources. After a short while you start finding those cave bulbs and those mussels and can manage a fully balanced character but by then your first character might well have stats all over the place. That is okay. Your beginning character can be regarded as a scout, and once you have found some good resources, then you can either settle down to get the trailing stats and attributes up, or create an alt or two, or both.

But keeping your stats and attributes perfectly even from the start is more work than it is worth. For one thing, if you hate farming, you really don't want to spend two hours a day tending crops and livestock. It's better to run a character who is limited in scope than one that includes the stuff you consider tedious grind. For another you can compensate for somewhat unbalanced stats by using gilded equipment. Your main may have crafting stats that lag, but they can put on a full set of gilded crafting equipment - footwear, two pairs of pants, two shirts, hat, cape and jacket and they will not be lagging so very far behind after all.

Playing the parts of the game that you enjoy is absolutely key. If you find village resource management finicky and annoying, you don't want to get hugely into crafting, upgrading, staggered plantings, and production zones. Maybe you want to spend all your time roaming around, scavenging, hunting and doing quests. But maybe you like having a tidy little farm with everything just so and the stockpiles of bones in order of low q to high q from right to left, and you hardly want to leave your pali because it is an interruption to the absorbing domestic stuff, and worse puts your character at risk. There are bears out there...

The one alt you want to seriously consider is a key alt. If your main is carrying the gold key that allows her to open the gates from the outside, losing your main is likely to mean you lose everything. Either the attackers get the key and your entire claim, or when the snekk breaks up in deep ocean your main drowns and the key goes to the bottom with them. And at that point your resources can be stuck inaccessible to the characters who inherit. Now, some people figure if their main goes they'll either quit playing or start over anyway, and are willing to write off the pali with the main and start a new character. You can mitigate this risk and leave your options open if the only person who carries the master keys is the key alt, and the key alt is never played. They are a vault who stays on the claim and opens the gates as needed, and to ensure they are rarely needed, the hearth fires are inside the pali so you can hearth in, and the characters all carry slave keys so they can open the gates from the inside and get out.

A key alt however is not really a character - they are a vault, made out of an un-played character. You can never let them stroll around on the outside of the gate, so they have minimal chances to earn points. Even if you were to help them fill a desk they wouldn't be able to study because they don't get enough experiences to keep the points coming in.

If you are playing with a partner you can split the roles between you. You can always have one of you run the crafter and the other one run the farmer, and the two of you share fighting and mining. You'll probably start to do this anyway, as soon as you discover which parts of the game keep you coming back. Without botting it is a pain running more than two characters, with a two player team, running two characters is easy. You are not likely to want to run alts for either of you until you have been playing for awhile and have a strong base full of varied resources.