Our beginnings

[Dondy]

The fist thing I did in game was drop my fishing rod behind the chest it came out of. I spent about twenty minutes patiently trying everyway I could to get the darn thing but it was behind the box and my right clicks kept clicking the box. I had to abandon it. The next thing I did was right click on the air space between the rungs in the ladder and come to the conclusion the right clicking on it was not the way to go. But I knew I had to climb that darned ladder so eventually a patient sequence of right click and left clicking in that general direction got me to the top. I concluded there was something wonky about the interface not that I had been missing the rungs.

It was dark.

RoB was obviously rather settled since it was full of other people's baskets and houses so I started hiking, into the dark occassionally blundering into unseen obstacles that required me to back up and try again. I figured I should go fairly far out and that was my game plan. Daylight hit and so did the foxes...

I spent the first three days of game play either blundering around in pitch blackness, or swearing about the foxes. I remember more than one game session where I spent a third of my time lying in a little pool of blood with x's whirling above my eyes. Often while I lay moribund and bleeding a second fox would amble up and begin eating so I would continue to lie there while my player darted back and forth to the kitchen making toast and waiting until the foxes would back off enough that I could leap up and race behind an apple tree. It had to be an apple tree so I could stand and eat or my stamina and food bars and shp would not improve. My shp spent a lot of time down around 3 and often I was attacked by another fox which came in from the other side. Every day I would hike out from RoB back to get slaughtered. I wasn't even stuck in Mordor. I assumed the foxes were just as bad at RoB.

After about a four days of play I discovered how to light torches.

[KoE]

TBH I miss these old moments of "OH MY GOD IT'S A FOX GET IN THE CAR"... it was more Fun back in the day. Now it's... safe.

Next map, we shall move faaaaaaaaaar into the wilderness...

Well, where I live, bears spawn at my front door and I generally spend the first bit of each playing session gearing up to smack the local belligerent wildlife. I also experienced the tail-end of the fox debacle, when there were still some level 2 areas south of Bottleneck.

But yeah, once the map reset comes, hopefully we can find some untamed places to terrify ourselves in again.

[sami1337]

TBH I miss these old moments of "OH MY GOD IT'S A FOX GET IN THE CAR"... it was more Fun back in the day. Now it's... safe.

Next map, we shall move faaaaaaaaaar into the wilderness...

Oh man, the times we had to run like hell for level 3 foxes.

[kimya]

when i started, it was day and i almost got bored by the world where you make your name and stuff. i thought like, if everything looks like that im out.

when i climnbed the ladder my prejudices disappeard. i saw baskets lying around at the ring and assumed there were nice ppl who want to give the newbies something for the start. so i took whatever i could use. i met a guy, called "haven" i think, he said he was from bottleneck and they had this town in the beginning and decided to move further away. he gave me his cabin and i was so so happy. i had some kind of neighbours, but i hardly ever saw them, though i was basically on 20 hours a day for the first 3 days... isaid hello to everyone i saw and learned the basic things, it was so much fun... especially cause there were no claims, no walls, no summoning, i assumed this would stay like that and that ppl had to make decisions for themselves how to handle thieves and stuff. well, off topic. anyways i quickly moved to another place, as i wanted to have a little space for myself, but ive still been near the ring. i talked to ppl and met the first "friend", gauteamus, who invited me fr a cup of tea when i said hello. i gave him my first apple pie. i was very proud and imagined it tasted just amazing. we then made a lot of stuff together, like mining and we shared meatgrinder and things like that.

then, all of a sudden, i felt the need to move on. i read about laketown and figured, i should just take what i need and walk off. so i did, and it was the most amazing journey ever. i was attacked by foxes, ran away, rested, ate apples, got knocked off, ran, rested, when suddenly i wasnt able to move on. there was a transparent wall. i reached the end of the map.
and i was totally lost. i screamed for help in the forum and thanks to some ppl i found the way to the large lake. when i passed the small island on it, i saw a cabin and a kiln, and i though "alright, this is gonna get an outpost for ppl that are hunted by foxes. i built some dreamcatchers, picked apples, built baskets and made that lil isle comfortable. then, at last, i arrived at laketown from the complete opposite direction, with wearing nothing more than a toga and some bunny slippers. i was relieved.

[sami1337]

When i started i was stolen from and got pissed off. I climbed up the ladder and it was really dark. After i minuted i found out i was playing and not just loading. So i spotted a chest in the dark and figured it was a bank chest, so i put some stuff in it, but it was draining! someone was taking it out again when i put it in! Fuck!

Then i decided to grab the map, look for a lake to fish in and just go there. Once i came there and chose the spot to build my cabin, which took so much work back then. It was hard work to gather all those 3 logs and couple boards (or something like that)! Well back then it felt like that.
Holy shit, a guy just warped past me. Jorb arrived! He gave me a mine on my first day and refunded some seeds i had lost thanks to the first crash i've experienced. He also explained that leeches (laketown is sandwiched between a lake and a swamp) hurt you but recover hhp and gave me that miracle bread that heals you completely. From that point on Jorb would visit me almost daily to check progress and to talk about the game.

3 days 23 hours and 4 minutes later i'd make the "village at the sea" recruitment thread to recruit people for the back then still nameless settlement.
Little did i know then when i woke up the day after about 4 people came down to my humble homestead and placed their hearfires there to settle down. some of them were Kimya and thetrav. Many stayed that week and a couple more came down to us, but most of them left after a week or so.
The stream of new people died out. A short while later, about 2 or 3 weeks into the game Gauteamus was invited by Kimya to live with us for a while. He agreed and came to join us as miner. By that time we had just completed working on equipping everyone with leather armor. We are impressed by his plate armor he had already crafted on his own. By this time Rift joined already. Although i am unsure on when exactly. He wandered around as "the wanderer" and carved many runestones and as he stumbled upon our settlement he decided to join after finishing his runestone carving. Rift proved to be a great addition to Laketown, which was the name we finally gave our settlement after Rift joined and people complained the name was too long. We owe a great deal to Rift and because of that were devastated when he left.

With the team of 6 of us we accomplished allot and rapidly developed our town to stay at the edge of development and what's new.
Even today our settlement is still changing almost daily, being refined and improved upon. Sadly however our population still decreases as we are down to 4 people (welcome back gaut) and moonshield of which we are not certain why he didn't log in.

[kobnach]

TBH I miss these old moments of "OH MY GOD IT'S A FOX GET IN THE CAR"... it was more Fun back in the day. Now it's... safe.

Next map, we shall move faaaaaaaaaar into the wilderness...

Well, where I live, bears spawn at my front door and I generally spend the first bit of each playing session gearing up to smack the local belligerent wildlife. I also experienced the tail-end of the fox debacle, when there were still some level 2 areas south of Bottleneck.

But yeah, once the map reset comes, hopefully we can find some untamed places to terrify ourselves in again.

Gods, I miss that. We moved to a nice area with bears in the campsite - just as a whole bunch of others decided to move in the same direction. Now it's level I. I am very much looking forward to a new larger map, where I can get away from excessive civilization.

[Potjeh]

I read the B12 thread and decided this could be fun. So I registered and started walking towards Bottleneck. I almost made it three times, but was foiled by a server crash each time, so I settled in the old B12 colony. After a day or two I moved to Bottleneck, where I was constantly knocked out by foxes until we got civ census. There I mostly worked on establishing communal fields, and I spent most of my time searching the wilderness for seeds, which was a lot of fun.

[Colbear]

I read the SomethingAwful thread and decided to try it out, because I'm a sucker for games with lots of crafting.

Then I spent 15 minutes trying to get out of the spawn point, until I figured out left-click move right-click interact. Then I spent 25 minutes wandering around lost, trying to read the map, and basically having nothing and eating a lot of apples. Then I walked around some more and spent forever trying to grind LP but I had no inventory space and didn't know where to go and there wasn't anyone around to talk to and I didn't know there was a world chat.

It kind of sucked a lot.

[kobnach]

I heard about this game from an RL relative. Getting on was a challenge. I downloaded the client OK, but it could not connect to the server. After some exploring the forums, I found it used UDP, and which ports were involved. I opened a hole in the firewall, and managed to create a character. Then I had to figure out how to manipulate objects. I created 3 characters in succession before I managed to get all my starting gear and climb up the ladder - only to see "Loading...". I made my first forum post, in the "bugs" forum. I got pointed to a past thread, where it turned out the issue was fragmented IP packets, revised my firewall rules, checked that the result worked, and posted a technical explanation of what I had done and why.

By this time 2 days had passed, and my relative wasn't online. (He had been there for the "Loading..." episode, and told me I merely looked AFK to hime.) I emerged intending to find a tree and a stone and make an axe. No stone in sight. Fortunately, there was another person. He came running over, asked if I was new, helped me find a rock, and took me from rock to tree repeatedly (it was dark) as I made my first axes. I then learned pottery, and began wrecking the terrain - quite innocently, not realizing the dug terrain wouldn't recover at the next reset tick, anywhere from a minute to a day, like other games I'd played. My new friend told me about his settlement, and tried to recruit me, but I told him I was waiting for someone I knew in real life. We stayed kin though. He had to log; I kept making teapots. Then for variety I made a kiln, and baked some. By this time I'd learned some basic skills - and it was daylight. That's when I saw what a mess I'd made. (It was forest, by the way. Ooops!) I also realized I was hungry, got terribly worried, and stuffed myself with apples. Then I logged off.

Next time my relative was available, I logged in, and he ran down to the RoB to guide me back. That's when I discovered what being overstuffed meant. We eventually made it to his camp. He suggested I put a hearth fire in his clay field, and told em what resources he was Ok with me using. He also gave me a backpack, and probably some leather armour. Leather appeared to be his new thing. I harvested some of his wheat and made myself a basket with the straw. I was afraid to make more, not wanting to harvest too much.

Fast forward a couple of days, having learned the basic mechanics. My host suggested that I might like to settle nearby, rather than in his camp, which was crowded, guided me to a site, found a well and helped me build it. Then he helped me build a cabin, and told me it was OK to take seed from his farm - provided I replanted what I harvested - except for grapes and carrots, which were rare and precious.

Over time I made a very nice stead, using my neighbour's tools until I could make my own. All was great for some time. Eventually bad neighbours caused us to move to a new site, where we founded Barrenburg with the guy I'd met on my first day and some of his friends. In the course of that, I killed my first bear - with arrows, having blocked it on a tree, and another archer doing even more of the work. We used the teeth to build our idol. I became village chieftain with my first day friend as lawspeaker. When fences came out, we built a palisade. And that's Kobnach's life story in a nutshell, except e.g. for my adventures selling tea.