On alts

[Atherman]

I've been playing for a week or two and have built up a farm with some leather production and plenty of food. Now I want to start focusing on taking down bigger animals fr their pelts and I thought I would create a combat/hunter/explorer alt to take advantage of max damage personal beliefs. I would also make him my smelter should I ever have metal.

But now I realize just gaining LP on him is horribly painful because he doesn't have max change/peaceful. Would I be better off sacrificing the 20% war damage and just use my main, because he can learn marksmanship/exploration/survival skills that much quicker?

How do you pros handle your alts?

[Pansy]

I'd stick to my main at first. And I'd use ranged too until I had got lots and lots of lp from killing foxes and mouflon and aurochsen and anything else that will stand still long enough for me to clobber it with stones.

Once you have enough lp, raise your unarmed or your melee combat and only go against animals in your own weight class. For example if you have unarmed 50 you should be able to take down a IV boar (4) without risking your character being ko'd. If you have unarmed 70, you should be able to take down a VI boar (6). Melee requires slightly lower levels than unarmed does for equivalent animals. Tackle the level IX bears with ranged until your stats are so high and heroic that they cause noobies to sigh in wistful jealousy.

I use alts for very hazardous operations like interacting with raiders, doing the harvesting for my miner, or doing the smelting and forging for my farmer. I also use them for storage, having once had some fifteen or so alts with unoriginal names like "Grape" and "Quiver". A logged off storage alt cannot be robbed. Tossing back up supplies into your alt vault is prudent. And of course you NEVER carry keys on your main. You keep them in a key alt who only comes out when it has been ascertained that the coast is clear. Another use for alts is if you want to have characters at two different locations. You might for example have an alt in your trading village and another one at the distance mine site and plantation. This saves having to spend all your time hopping back and forth to deal with daily business in both areas.

Finally, I use alts for roleplay because I like to run different characters. I might very well have a different silk weaver than I do my main farmer, but this is because it amuses me to run Li Chan the silk weaver, and Garth, the Saxon peasant flax and wheat farmer. In fact there is a serious disadvantage to doing this, as they both need the same skills but will be building them up at only half the speed by sharing the lp.

[DeadlyPencil]

Alts arn't going to be as frequent as in the previous map. The combat system has changed to much. You used to be able to feed an alt food so they could bust down brick walls solo and they only needed 50 marksmanship to be able to hit anyone in the game.

now you need alot more than 50 marksmanship if you want to use a good bow, and you cant hit anyone who is moving. Ranged fire can be completly negated by armour unless you have a hq ranger bow, and busting down a brick wall solo on an alt is out of the question.

soooo i dont think many people will make them.

[Pansy]

I've been told that lately everyone goes full change until they are contemplating something really hazardous, such as doing a player killing. If you are full change and have a few moments warning before going into combat or swimming you will probably find it worth setting your slider back a notch towards tradition. Otherwise it is full change and peaceful all the way. Some players do full change and full martial, but in my experience if you need the attack advantage that full martial gives you, you are probably better off waiting another day or two of lp and attribute gain before going after the quarry which is that difficult to hit. Higher perception or strength or combat skills do not carry a learning disadvantage the way full martial does.

The lp gain is so much better at full change so that if you play a full tradition character for a month and lose him, and a full change character for a month and lose him, the full change character will be so much advanced over the full tradition character that his descendant will be way way better than the full tradition character's.

My experience during my village's recent raiding crisis bears this out. I brought in a brand new alt to scout the village and do some field work. She played for about two to three hours before she was killed, not long enough to go more than one notch towards change and peaceful. However her daughter was considerably better off than a noob character. I was quite surprised by how much she retained of the skills her mother had bought. If I had set her mother one notch towards martial and tradtion, the daughter would have found her inheritance made her worse off than an ordinary new character. It makes that big a difference.

[theTrav]

belief sliders are a good idea, but nothing in the current line up really works for assorted reasons

[Flame]

usually i don't make alts, so all the lp are gained by my main, also when i build a road or a wall.
Why waste lp, the time in real that i use is the same...XD

[exewu]

Als are generally a good idea if you have a main that is has a vital non combat skill. (high farming/sewing/psy/..) and you want to go plunder/kill/maim stuff. That way you can lose your combat alt and still keep the important non combat skill you have on your other character. Also it gives you the freedom to raise their base stats independantly and you don't need to bother with con/ag on the peaceful guy.

[Sarge]

Alts is a good idea if/when:

1. You need to personal claim more than one area
2. Any trap/ambush risk mitigation situation, eg. You need to make a trade and don't know if your trading partner is trustworthy
3. If you are a macroer and have your alt macro eg. as a carpenter when your main is a farmer.

The rest of the time, Flame is correct, you would use the same amount of irl time, so you might as well let your main earn the LP.