Returning player with questions (+ free story!)

[vatas]

About #4, I was able to find it by looking for a patch of mud or the greenish stuff, and then scouring the worldmap for that patch.

That it was phallic shaped was pure coincidence, I promise!

- it wouldn't be hard to believe considering eveything is phallic shaped, even the stalagmites and though they sorta are in rl, I've yet to see any with a scrotum, lol.

Proof I am blind and lazy.

Lol, np.

[Cranny]

Related to this question:

2) We assume answer to #1 is no, so does anyone have some insight as to what we can do to discourage raiders? Does size of settlement matter, distance of walls to houses, etc.?

I for regular make 2 parallel brickwalls, leaving in between them as many tiles as to be sure that if a ram does break the outerwall, the ram needs to be repaired to continue moving, so I get an 8 hour gap from the moment the outer wall has been passed. That would be about 35 tiles. As it changes depending on what place of the grid your char stands, it has to be tested in the place.
Also that distance allows no one from the outside to see whatever we place in our home, so it is less tempting to make all the work that placing a ram means and raiders do not know how much we log, or if they are going to meet defenders.

Building underground, I leave the supports, as no one can dig from the upper level on the area near to supports and once I have xroads to go upwards, I demolish the mine hole so no one sees the entrance. Ofc I save signs in an alt so if my xroad gets demolished I can place another to get out.
Some players make support lines along underground walls, because they make cave ins when demolished.

About houses, I learned the hard way that wooden ones can be easily demolished by developed chars, so I only build stone mansions.

[Rhakar]

Ah well, someone found us while we were afk (not that us being present would have made a difference).



Thanks for the replies, though.

[Tonkyhonk]

sorry to hear of your loss, but paving and building over mudflat doesnt exactly look like you were trying to hide yourselves.
i would be annoyed too if my neighbors started killing mudflat tiles like that.

[Rhakar]

What's the benefit of mudflats?

Edit: If there's no clay node, that is.

[Tonkyhonk]

http://ringofbrodgar.com/wiki/Mudflat
value depends on its node (not only clay node but also soil node), though.
the important thing is that you can never recover those original tiles once you pave them. (some people pave them on purpose because of that.)

people often check mudflats for clays and forageables, and your camp stands out from passer-by's minimap very well.
unless you are confident that you can secure it yourself and you know what you are doing, it isnt wise to build your camp on mudflat.

[Rhakar]

Ah, we went ~3 grids away from the river, and took this location because there were no soil, water or clay nodes around, and building on mud is easy, but what you say makes sense.

We'll choose our next spot more carefully.

Edit: How much does the forest type matter? We were in a coniferous forest, for future mulberry tree grow times, but we would have liked to have birch trees around for barkboats.
I just read on the wiki that trees can randomly change the soil their planted on to their native terrain, how often does this happen? (Could we get the best of both worlds by starting with barkboats and eventually changing a patch of land for mulberry grow times?)

[Xcom]

Im sorry to say you got hit. But I must say I disagree. You just had very bad luck and it had nothing to do with settling on mudflat or not. This game is a bit of hit and miss when it comes to those first hours / days before your established. Its all about the chance encounter of having a random hostile neighbors to spot you and your camp will get hit. If you happen to settle near a hostile raiding town or one of there regular outposts you will be spotted sooner. If you have a tough skin you will eventually by shear luck find a quiet area to settle in.

Just as a note. The sooner your newly built camp is spotted and raided can mean you have by bad luck found yourself in one of the traficated areas of a larger faction. If your killed and driven off soon its better then later when you have more to lose. Generally a larger hostile faction have there regular hunting / foraging / traffic routes they frequent. They are hard to spot on the first glance as people have by this late stages of the world the ability to port to any point on the map across the world. My advice is to keep trying until you have found yourself inside a brick wall. If you by some bad luck finished your brick wall in the traficated routes of hostile factions your brick wall will get rammed and your base raided as well. Be glad that you where driven off now rather then later.

Edit: I would suggest to keep traveling the world till you find a spot on the map with both types of terrains. There are plenty of locations around the world where the 2 types of forest meat.

[Rhakar]

I am very glad that we died now, the only thing that annoys me is having to look for a new spot to settle (mainly because I fear making a wrong decision again), and the eternal wait for sliders

And thanks a lot for your work on Apoc Lite!

Also, last time we played, two years ago, we were on W6, and we were invited to settle within a supergrid of a faction that actively fought raiders/gankers, and we were settled in relative peace for ~a month, should we try to get such a deal again, or how are things politically?

[Xcom]

The best way to find a quiet spot is to contact friendly folk on forums and asking them for advice. Asking them here on forums would be suicide as they could just as well guide raiders to your location as well, pm them instead. Good folk you could contact are Eemerald, Amanda and a few others. If they are to bizzy then they might give you a different name to contact.

A good hint on a spot you should look for are dead end river ends that leads into a large landmass. If there are no crossroads or outposts in those locations you most likely wont find alot of traffic and less chance to bump into people. The general gist of factions are that they clean up anything in a super grid around there bases. Stay clear of anything faction related. Even the peaceful ones can attract attention. Last advice I could give is to read up on Congress, specially the few threads that details faction locations. I believe there was one such thread detailing the main bases of the larger factions. South is generally more quiet then north but I might be mistaken on the matter.



Image shows a general gist of what you should look for. As soon as you have found yourself on the map, try and map out larger settlements and scout them. If they are active you might have found yourself in a bad area. Avoid settling alongside rivers, river lengths always attracts attention. Dead end rivers are often the best locations. Along any dead end river is the way to settle. Most people navigate rivers and even look for quick ways to cross supergrids using the worldmap. Some deadend rivers might be the only short landmass connecting 2 super grids so not all deadends are ideal as people might cross them to travel to the next super grid.

More then likely you have had bad luck by now. Most noobs survive in there corner of the world. But if you want to be very paranoid you could go through alot of trouble find the best spot. General gist would be to try find yourself on the worldmap then asking a friendly person on the forum if the super grid you have settled in is quiet or not.

Edit: Seams I always find something new to say right after posting.
Avoid posting alot about your activity on the forum till your trenched in. Most raiders love the idea to crush that guy that just posted about his nooblet settling. Mostly because of the forum drama it attracts and how fun it is reading about it after on forums when you post the carnage.