back for a few moments

[theTrav]

Ok, started a new game having forgotten most everything.

I Notice that the is still a wide range of skills for new players that do nothing.

Most glaring this time around is that fishing does not actually let you fish (you need hooks and lines and other bits and pieces).
Farming does not actually let you farm (you need seeds which you can't get until later) and hunting does not actually let you hunt (you need weapons and combat skill and other bits and pieces)

Try stripping away all the skills that are effectively unusable, find a way to only present them until they are clearly usable. I get the feeling there's not going to be a lot there for the new player

[Sarge]

Yeah, if you're looking for a great success within hour one then you have this game confused with whatever you played in your lengthy absence. Put in a bit of effort mate, it's really nowhere near as hard/bad as you're making it out to be.

[Aokigahara]

Try stripping away all the skills that are effectively unusable

They are all usuable given even the littlest bit of effort. It takes all of 5 minutes to make a rod for fishing? Hunting allows you to raid anthills immediately even if you can't kill animals right off the bat and farming allows you to plow (The first step in building a house foundation) and at this point in the world you could probably wonder around and find abandoned crops/drying racks with seeds in em. Must have been a LONG time ago when you played last.

[borka]

wb Trav! - you'll find your way back in ...

[AnnaC]

While I agree on your general sentiment, some of it is erroneous; Hunting for example is useful right off the bat as without it you can't grab chickens and rabbits, or raid anthills; you only need other requisite skills to hunt larger creatures safely. I think one of the worst of these is First Aid. It sounds like such a useful skill, but acquiring gauze early game is practically impossible: just acquiring the wool by yourself takes a lot of lucky spawning situations, and then you need Basic Mechanics to build the device to make the gauze.

They are all usuable given even the littlest bit of effort. It takes all of 5 minutes to make a rod for fishing?)

Well, with fishing, you can build a fishing rod, but it doesn't mean you can equip it. It doesn't tell you at all what is needed to fully equip a fishing rod (I remember early in W3 when I was new this was baffling, and in our little crappy village someone with a full equipped fishing rod was practically a god while the rest of us had no clue how to equip it). Also getting the material to make a hook might be difficult early on, and requires Hunting as well.


This is a problem with the game though as I've talked with several new players and there is a huge wall with character advancement at that point; when you really don't get discovery LP anymore, and you're not advanced enough or have the economy to really acquire curios. I guess at this point this wall is a metric to weed out the weak players, but I think it's a bit more harsh than it needs to be. Perhaps a few more primitive curios would help (horrible knot was a good addition, but the time duration on that one is retardly long, and early on string is pretty important for a variety of things).

[dvsfx92]

I agree a bit, like to fish as a hermit u need 3 or 4 skills not sure what plant lore even does XD
Fishing - to build a rode and actually fish
Hunting - to catch a rabbit and convert its bone into a hook
Foraging - to see and harvest spindleroot or nettle for the line
You also need bait ot a lure, u can just dig or trudge thru a swamp to find.
Which as just starting out may seem a bit confusing and frustrating but if you can play this game u can search the forumsfor your anwsers

For me I would have liked to see a description to the lp dump skills
Not knowing how important survival was as a attribute I think really gimp'd my beginning as i made several bases just because i liked the landscape not because i knew ther were quality resources near by

[AnnaC]

For me I would have liked to see a description to the lp dump skills
Not knowing how important survival was as a attribute I think really gimp'd my beginning as i made several bases just because i liked the landscape not because i knew ther were quality resources near by

That's a very good point, survival and especially exploration are ridiculously important for new players; new players aren't aware of the resources potentially availible to them, and the game doesn't give any indication that certain stats or skills really promote the access of these resources.

[theTrav]

Yeah, if you're looking for a great success within hour one then you have this game confused with whatever you played in your lengthy absence. Put in a bit of effort mate, it's really nowhere near as hard/bad as you're making it out to be.

I'm not complaining on my own behalf, I have already proven I can figure it out / work up the chain.

I'm critiquing on behalf of people who want to be able to play the game without a reference guide.

I'm wrong about the hunting thing, I didn't put grabbing or anthill raiding in that category. There's a use for it, it's just not obvious

Fishing I think while technically you can get it together, the requirement to forage for string (requires exploration and possibly plant lore?) and build a hook (requires hunting) to equip the rod means the skills and the exploration level should be pre-reqs or the string for a line should be dropped.

Maybe even collapse some of these skills into packages... The Forager package, the Builder package, the Farmer package, the hunter package. Make it come with a big slug of abilities and also knock up the numeric skills to the baseline levels

[Sarge]

And add a Tutorial.

Most of us gave up ages ago with C&I though, there's not much (<- optimistic) of a point.

[Tonkyhonk]

at first glance, i thought you were talking about salem