[Outdated] Sevenless' beginner guide to Haven and Hearth

[shubla]

I made this incomplete visual PvE guide, cause I was too scared to learn the interface

it looks complicated

[SilverMud]

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Setting up camp

During your long trek, here's the skills you should be looking into. This next phase can take anywhere from 2-6 hours easily so I'll just give the skill/ability order at the start in a block:

Hearth Magic

In order to make a hearth fire, you'll need to discover a dream (make a dream catcher, wait for a while and harvest) and then the option pops up in the adventure menu.

Farming
Will to Power

Assuming you've butchered something and chopped up a hollow log on the ground, the Mirkwood Offering should unlock. This curio is very fast, gives good LP, and devours XP. However in the early/mid game days you should have a healthy surplus of XP and there really isn't anything else to use it on. I'd suggest keeping a reserve of 1k XP, but any XP you get above use this curio on. The LP gain is massively useful at this stage of the game.

Yeomanry
Exploration to 15
Survival to 15 (including nettle bonus)
Swimming (prerequisite for boatbuilding)
Boatbuilding (for the nice curio and added mobility)
Tanning
Sewing
Stone Working

Now that we've covered that, you may have noticed a distinct lack of mention with regards to settling down until now. And this is for a good reason, you need yeomanry first. House damage soak (or damage reduction as it's called in other games) now starts at zero. A newbie character can bash a house with enough water. This is to prevent “gatehouse” griefing where players would construct buildings to block gates.

As such, without a claim anyone can destroy a house with zero effort or investment. Perhaps it's worth stopping to discuss the crime system and why exactly a claim helps protect you:

There are varying types of actions in game that leave “scents” on the ground after they have been committed. These scents allow your current location to be tracked, but the severity of the crime can also impose a secondary set of penalties. For serious crimes an initial debuff called "Red Handed" will prevent the criminal from hearthing home or allowing their character to log off (now that you're setting up camp it's neat to know through the adventure menu you can teleport to your hearth fire). This eventually lessens in severity into an "Outlaw" debuff, which only prevents character logout. The exact length of the buff changes based on the relative severity of the crime. Trespassing (entering buildings, peaking inside containers) and Assault (attacking a hearthling but not knocking them unconcious) are considered minor crimes and do not cause the red handed/outlaw debuff, only allowing someone to track you or your hearthfire (hearthfire is always trackable even if you're offline). Other offenses include Battery (knocking out a hearthling), Theft, Vandalism (damage to claimed structures), and Murder.

Note: All characters can turn on criminal actions toggle and enter/exit claims without the trespassing skill. The naming often confuses people a little. You will still get the health penalty for leaving scents though.

So, we can see that at the very least destroying your house with a claim over it requires some accountability due to the crime system. Because of this crime system, there's a saying among hearthlings "If it's not on a claim, it's fair game". Some choose to be annoyed if someone takes a boat they are using, or something out of a crate that was just placed there, but the game's morality system sees neither of these constituting "crimes". Thankfully, there's plenty of ingame methods to protect your items from casual sticky fingers.

Now that we've covered crime, back to business! For your first camp, if you've not managed to buy Yeomanry (which also requires farming and will to power skills) you can use leantos instead. Once you deposit a liftable object into a leanto, you'll have a little piece of paper show up on it and it will be claimed. Each player can only claim one leanto at a time, and it requires theft to take items out or vandalism to destroy the leanto. If using crates, this gives a nice 30 slots of inventory space to work with until you can drop a proper claim. Empty leantos are not claimed by anyone, so always keep a container in there if you don't want someone snagging it from you.

Note: You've probably been doing some hard work terraforming and noticed your energy dropping. Some foods in game are much better at regenerating energy levels without trashing your hunger bonus than others. One of the beginner ones is Rat on a Stick, 450% energy for 2% hunger. Explore the different foods available and pay attention to those numbers!

At this point, it's time to be honest with yourself. You're probably going to want to stay at the first spot you plonk down a leanto, perhaps an hour or two walk from the starter zone. You will find a million and one reasons why it's an acceptable place, and many rationalizations for why the downfalls are tolerable. Don't do it, don't give in. Your first camp, even your first claim, is temporary. If every player gives into that desire, and many do, they will be living in the areas just outside the starter zone which become cramped with high competition for forageables and easy pickings for raiders.

So, after you've set up your first temporary camp (with everyone's hearth fires there) here's how to go about hunting for a new spot: Each player should head in a slightly different direction from the starting zone. With hearth fires all centralized, anyone who doesn't find a location of interest can port home to the same starting point as the rest of the party. As for biomes that are particularly useful:

Forest

Spawns nettles, taproot, anthills, huntable wildlife. The anthills will be quite important for both LP and fishing in the early days. There's no longer a distinct difference between leafy forests and pine forests, so there's some variety in what animals/forageables spawn but they're all variants on this basic concept.

Since trees are central to quality gain in the game, if given the choice settling ontop of a forest for faster tree growing isn't a bad idea. It can be "created" slowly, details in the farming section below.

Grasslands

Better chance at seeing tamable animals, lots of chicken flocks, some useful forageables not found in forests. Sparse on trees, but horses that can have clovers used on them to let you ride them are amazing for many tasks right now.

Swamps

Dragonflies make a good relatively active curio to run for early right through mid game. The rare ruby dragonfly you get is a very solid curio even in the highest developed towns. Several plant forageables are also found here that are of use. Leeches will also attach on any open equipment slots, useful for bait (once they've fed on your 3 times to bloat) and healing some wound types as discussed later.

Mountain

As of current, mountains even at high PER*EXP are somewhat lackluster. The one major benefit is a large supply of caves (benefits discussed below), and the occasional frogs crown.

Caves & Water

Ok, ok, so they're not exactly biomes but both are important. Shallow water is one of the best areas to hunt for quality clay nodes. Drinking water is also a bit annoying to haul over large distances. Furthermore boat transportation is quite speedy, allowing you to cover large distances. But then again, this works for raiders as well.

Caves are not "required", but miles easier than punching mineholes down from the surface for beginners and also give access to lots of walls to test for ore. Metal isn't "necessary" if you're hermitting solo (unless you intend to someday work on a brick wall, which requires iron products), but it's incredibly helpful if you intend to be self sufficient. It's a huge quality of life boost, and it's been made easier than it was in legacy for a solo player to get the metal basics even if quality metal is a far off dream.

Global Resources***

This section will be written once the global resources have been tweaked around, settled out by the devs, and I'm playing enough to fully understand their implication. Sufficed to say, settling near these may be useful or it may bring too much attention. Your gameplay isn't going to be crippled for lacking your own source, although you might need to trade for some. Take a look around the forums/wiki to figure it out if you feel it's important.

~~~

Now, there's many variations of these biomes in the game of current. Each one may have slightly different forageables and vastly different plant life but generally speaking they still fall into those categories. Due to ants being so useful in early and mid game, I feel living within 5 minute walking range of a sizeable anthill spawning forest to be absolutely crucial. At least 15 “minimaps” (the default view range of the minimap in game is “1 minimap” in size) worth of forest, and even that's cutting it kind of short.

Grasslands, due to the temporary tame-able and ride-able horse, are nice to have nearby other good biomes you want to forage. In particular, for now at least, horses not getting a move speed debuff when riding over swamps makes for an excellent dragon fly catching machine. Living in the middle of a grassland isn't advised though as you'll have difficulty with curio deprivation. Variety is key!

Leafy forests are a mild positive to have nearbye but not particularly required. It entirely depends on what type of curios that particular leafy forest spawns, they seem to have the most variety of any biome type in that sense.

Swamps and Mountains both fall into the realm of “not required at first”, but they grow in utility very quickly as time passes. I would say you'll want to be within a ten minute walk of at least one of these biomes, both obviously preferable.

Caves are great if you can find them (They are much more common in this version than they were in legacy, shouldn't be an issue finding one), but please don't make the mistake so many haveners (myself included) have made in forgetting that people can use it to walk into a base if it's not walled off properly. The cave mouth * must * be treated like it's outside your walls when it comes to placing gates around it. I've walked into a village and killed them all when they felt an ungated cave mouth was safe. I lost a 1500 hour character and half my village to raiders because I decided a palisade was enough instead of a brick wall to separate it from the rest of the village in mid game. And that's just my experiences, those stories have happened hundreds or thousands of times by now.

Water is also as much a danger as it is a blessing. For all its usefulness, raiders can use rowboats to scan areas much more quickly for targets. The old maxim of haven 1.0 was to live 3 minimaps away from any connected body of water. Living on the shore of a small unconnected (this also means at least 3 minimap away from all water sources on all sides) lake is acceptable if you manage to find one.

As a final note, don't forget your need for surface stone at first. It's a real pain to end up a 30 minute walk from any stone sources. By the start of midgame mining will be producing all the stone you need. If it happens, remember you can hearthfire home with a crate over your head. Just make one when you find stone and port with an inventory+crate full.


Walls and Safety

This is a great time to mention the fact that there are many mean people in the world. Do not trust strangers, and do NOT let them walk up to you. It is essentially impossible to escape an attacker on foot, if they decide to hurt you and you get within 20 tiles of there is nothing you can do to stop them. Several of the custom clients have "autohearth" features, which automatically engage the hearth teleport if an unknown character enters your viewscreen. I advise you have this turned on, and if you find you're being teleported home a lot maybe it's time to find a less populated area. Neighbours can be helpful and friendly, or deadly. Hearthsecrets left on runestones can let you start talking to them, but ultimately anyone may disguise their intentions as they see fit.

Take this as a word of caution, but decide for yourself how to play the game.

Now, from personal protection to protection of property: Claims only provide a small amount of protection, and effectively zero protection against anyone with any serious intent of harming you. Here are the various protection combinations available within the game:

Claim (village or personal): No skills required to enter
Claim + roundpole fence with gate: Trespassing to enter
Claim + roundpole fence with no gate: Vandalism to enter
Claim + Locked Palisade: Requires a very large amount of strength + Vandalism to destroy by hand, otherwise must dry a ram for 24 IRL hours to enter
Claim + Locked Brickwall: Requires decent amount of strength and multiple characters using a ram + vandalism to enter

As you can see, the first two options are pretty cheap to get the skills to bypass. You should skip straight to option 3 for your first setup (destroy a hole in the wall and rebuild it when you leave). This should be used for the sole purpose of acquiring enough leather to build yourself a palisade. Everyone should longterm aim to have a brickwall because "Palibashers" start to exist 2-3 months after world start, and with a character like that attacking a palisaded hermitage becomes very cheap to engage in.

Gate direction and keys



The ramp opens towards the outside. Slave keys can open the door from inside only. Master keys can open it from both directions, but also allow the locks to be changed. You should always have your hearth fire inside your walled encampment and the master key should never leave. Preferably an alt walked to your base will be holding said master key, and left logged off at all times unless you need to make new slave keys.

Remember, a Master key gives a raider full control of your doors, including replacing the locks and tombing you inside your own walls.

[MagicManICT]

Added in a note on the Marksmanship section about arrow/stone softcapping.

Noticed when skimming through the rest that hive quality matters and will softcap the honey and wax produced. I might have missed a few other details.

[Iva]

Now, this dust means one of the 8 tiles surrounding it is marked as unstable.

There must be made small, but very critical, editing: this dust means at least one of the 8 tiles surrounding it is marked as unstable.

[xTrainx]

Now, this dust means one of the 8 tiles surrounding it is marked as unstable.

There must be made small, but very critical, editing: this dust means at least one of the 8 tiles surrounding it is marked as unstable.

also you can tell how many of the surrounding tiles are unstable by the quantity of dust dropped

[Sevenless]

Edit: Wups, completely forgot that adding a post to this would necro the guide thread. Just storing this here for future use.

Equipment bonuses, Gilding, and you

Equipment for the most part no longer has innate ability/attribute scores. There are a couple exceptions (capes and armor being the primary examples), but most items don't offer anything in and of themselves. In order to get benefit from them, there's something called the gilding system. It doesn't take long to discover your first gilding item, in all likelyhood it will be the taproot lacing. All you need for this is water and a taproot. At base quality (q10 if I haven't mentioned that before), this gives +2 survival to any gildable clothing item it is attached to. You can tell if a piece of clothing is gildable because mousing over it will display "gildable" in blue text in the information box that pops up. In order to actually gild an item, take a gilding item and right click it onto a clothing item with an open gild slot. And don't worry too much about your first items, the % chance you see appear is for extra gilding slots on the item to appear, not your chance at actually attaching it in the first place. Worth mentioning, only one of each gilding can be attached per clothing item. This doesn't stop you from haphazardly gluing taproot to every piece of gildable clothing you can wear mind you. At first, you won't have much else of interest to use anyway, so it works for now. Trying to get a full set of taproot survival gear (spruce cap, 2x nettle shirt, 2x nettle pants, wooden clogs), should be a priority to anyone starting out. You might notice that as you fill out your set, your survival score remains the same after a couple clothing items. This is because you can't boost your score past twice the base value, which means you'll probably need ~12 survival to get full use of your nettle set (quality bonus on gilds rounds up, quite useful at this stage of the game).

If we're talking about the gilding system a bit past the homeless sprucecap stage of the game, we need to dig into the numbers. You might have noticed the skill/attribute icons and some percentages on various gilds/equipment pieces. The icons are the gilding affinities, and the percentages are the chance ranges. In order to increase your gilding chance, you need to match gilding affinities. Lets take a badger vest (affinity survival, 0%>35%) and a Taproot Lacing (affinity survival, 45% > 95%), the worst possible extra slot chance is 0% (0%*45%) and the best possible extra slot chance is 33% (35%*95%). The matching attributes (in this case just survival) will determine where in the score range of 0%->33% you land on. If attributes don't match, you always get the worst extra slot chance possible.



Now for this particular combination, 50 survival gives a 10% chance, 75 survival gives a 14% chance and 160 survival gives a 22% chance. Noting that 50 survival gives a mere 30% of the possible value, while 160 survival gives about 66% of the maximum value, you need quite a lot of ability/attribute levels to reliably get extra slots per gilding attempt. From a quick look at an agility based gild, the formula remains the same for attributes so 50 agility will give ~30% of the maximum extra slot chance, etc.

I've spefically not mentioned equipment/gild quality in these formulas because they don't actually influence gild chance. As mentioned earlier, gild quality is quite important for getting bigger bonuses, however equipment quality effectively softcaps (averages the quality of the equipment and the gilding to determine the bonus given) gildings applied to it. There's no need to have equipment above your gilding in quality, but often equipment is harder to make high quality than gildings in the early days.

And finally, we have one last little tidbit to cover for the gilding system. Recycling. You can take a gilded item with no open slots and right click it onto another gilded piece of equipment of the same type to attempt to combine them. This can either result in a new item that has an extra gilding slot and the gild(s) on it (all the extra gilds and the other equipment piece are used in the process). Or a failure where the gilds are rejected, which always destroys one of the equipment pieces and can destroy some or all of the gilded items in the process. Using the same gilds on each of the items is not required, so this can potentially give you multiple gilds on the new item and an additional slot as well. The exact chance for recycling isn't displayed because it's a multi chance proces, but this is how it works according to jorb:

You then roll once for each gilding in either of the pieces of equipment --
chance being half of what your normal chance to gild the item would be -- if you succeed you keep the gilding as slotted into the new end product, and failing that you have another chance (50%) to keep the gilding as a loose, available, gilding.

The wiki's gilding and equipment pages are really helpful in planning out what items you want to create for gilding purposes, click the arrows at the top of the tables to sort by affinity. Many endgame items *and* gilds end up being compatible with Charisma and Sewing. When planning to make multi gild items, remember that the last item you plan on attaching doesn't need to be compatible. There are some really good items like the Fancy Buckle that have no real useful affinities, so are often used last to close the item out.

Thanks to SovietUnion, who I've been bugging about the gild system for a couple days now. And thanks to Tammer, whose post provided the 160 survival value, and from whom I nipped that particular combination for the explanation to get a wider range of stats.