trust

[Perakp]

How do you do it?
Asking to live with strangers seems like a deathwish, so how can you live in a village where you don't know the other people irl?

My first character in this game was killed by people that after inviting me to their village decided to kill me. No hard feelings.

[MagicManICT]

Either live as a hermit or be a bit more of a forum warrior to find out what a villages rep is before you join it.

You could get some RL friends or guild members from other games playing, too, and make your own village.

[Sevenless]

Trust slowly, that's all I can say. Start your first trade by putting items in a crate bit by bit. Keep trading. Find out what they're up to, and if you can help them do things.

I made my biggest ally because he needed help building a palisade and I put an hour's worth of work in for indeterminate pay. We'd traded and talked before that, but that was really where we became friends. Due to raiders we've merged groups and I'm now a chieftain of our town.

[TeckXKnight]

How do you do it?
Asking to live with strangers seems like a deathwish, so how can you live in a village where you don't know the other people irl?

My first character in this game was killed by people that after inviting me to their village decided to kill me. No hard feelings.

Trust is a hard thing to develop and a long, arduous process to learn how to judge character/intent successfully. Take your time and take the good with the bad. You can gamble on joining a random village, though as you've seen this can go awry very easily, or you can settle down in a peaceful spot near others and see where that takes you.

Many times it's good to use another medium to judge an individual in-game, such as the IRC or Forums. If someone tends to be honest and forthright on the forums, they might not be that bad in-game either.

[theredone]

for my 2 cents searching other communities based on something else you have in common, a game you play, place you're from, searching for "haven and hearth" on whatever other forum you find yourself can net some interesting results and possibly help you get a kickstart to the trust.

[WarpedWiseMan]

Do some research.

I made the Single Greatest Recruiting Thread in the History of Dwarves and Thieves back in world 3. I vetted every person that asked to join and we had 18-20 actives at one point, all good people.

I turned down 75% of requests to join because of various reasons. Search through the heartling database here and you can find out a metric shit ton about almost anyone.

Then I let El Gato (He was one of our best citizens) in, but I quit shortly thereafter and the village fell into a dark time.

Trust, trust never changes.