Peaceful approach?

[Amberlight99]

I know that being actually pacifist or what have you isn't an option, but I was curious if there is a way to present cooperation when approaching someone?

I've had my first death at the hands of a village that I wanted to try and trade with. I tried to ask if they were willing to trade anything and mostly just got two or three fighters charging out at me to kill me.

I'm not really surprised by this, i've seen word of hostile or kill on sight villages.
Not really upset either, a death is a death and probably would have happened first time I tried to kill a boar.

Just want to know if there is a good way in the community to show intent to cooperate or at least to communicate before being killed, or if I just found a particularly aggressive crew.

[Stormhammer]

Leave a runestone by their gate with what you want to say when they aren't looking and come back to check later. Walking up to a village unarmed and
asking to trade is begging for trouble.

[nivelheim]

Sounds like they were a particularly aggressive bunch. I've come across loads of villages and no one has been aggressive.

[Ysh]

Big stick ideology.

[Archiplex]

always have an escape plan, and ask to kin mains

aggressive folk don't usually like kinning others

[Zampfeo]

Saying hi or trying to kin usually works. If they're attacking you, it's too late; they are an aggressive group. If you're trying to contact an entire village, a runestone with your forum name or Discord sometimes gets DMs.

Especially as a weaker player, you are at the mercy of whoever you encounter. I've noticed over the years that the amount of aggression has increased and the amount of repercussions to aggression has decreased. I think this is because most active villages are virtually impenetrable to anyone that doesn't have 22 straight hours to protect a ram, so ranging aggressors is pointless. More aggression because it's harder to kill people: sounds weird, right? Well, there is simply less risk to being a criminal nowadays. They can't even be ranged outside their base because of knock out protection.

The only way to be peaceful and in control of your destiny is to carry a big stick as Ysh said, but at that point you're just setting yourself back for not using said stick to loot, pillage, murder, etc.

[banok]

Theres never really been any meaningfully increased risk to being a "criminal" in haven. Even when you deal justice to a mass murderer of innocent sprucecaps to the gamerules you have commited the same crime. To my dismay J&L have always seemed to dislike allignment/flagging type systems of other sandbox mmos, probably because they are near impossible to implement effectively.

Edit: at least thats how i remember the discussions going

[Amberlight99]

Leave a runestone by their gate with what you want to say when they aren't looking and come back to check later. Walking up to a village unarmed and
asking to trade is begging for trouble.

Thanks! that's good to know. I was unlucky enough to have found them while they were active but I think that's fair. sad that just talking through walls isn't even considered.

Saying hi or trying to kin usually works. If they're attacking you, it's too late; they are an aggressive group. If you're trying to contact an entire village, a runestone with your forum name or Discord sometimes gets DMs.

I think they were just aggressive then. I lead with saying hi and asking if there was anything I could trade. Not sure if they saw it but it felt uncomfortable that they said nothing.

Theres never really been any meaningfully increased risk to being a "criminal" in haven. Even when you deal justice to a mass murderer of innocent sprucecaps to the gamerules you have commited the same crime. To my dismay J&L have always seemed to dislike allignment/flagging type systems of other sandbox mmos, probably because they are near impossible to implement effectively.

that's sad but a common issue. in reality there is never a repercussion for groups to be aggressive in videogames, because the chances that some random solo is going to injure you enough to kill you is low if you have a group, and even if they do, you just got set back, yeah, but you don't lose everything and they certainly only killed one of you. It is hard to make permadeath mean something short of just telling someone they can't play until the next world. Not sure how I'd fix it if flagging is off the table. Though I guess that would be a discussion for the dev suggestions threads.

[Zampfeo]

Theres never really been any meaningfully increased risk to being a "criminal" in haven. Even when you deal justice to a mass murderer of innocent sprucecaps to the gamerules you have commited the same crime. To my dismay J&L have always seemed to dislike allignment/flagging type systems of other sandbox mmos, probably because they are near impossible to implement effectively.

Edit: at least thats how i remember the discussions going

Hearth vaults have always been a thing, but at least before knock out protection you could track and kill someone while they were online. I understand it's a double edged sword because KOP helps any spruce cap with a secure hearth fire, but now there's really no option with sieging being weak as always and actually murdering someone being difficult nowadays. It would be an interesting experiment to see how things would change if possessing someone's scents allowed you to attack them while they were KO'd or if ranging simply disabled their ability to hearth, but as you said that's a bit too similar to other MMO flag mechanics.