Is there a way to determine distances? (oh god i'm so lost)

[Twerp]

I've been playing a few days, see, and a couple friends started as well. Now there's that handy-dandy party arrow that tells you the direction the other members are in, but I've spent nearly two real-time days following that arrow without any appreciable (or measurable) progress. What I'd like to figure out is how far I still have to go, but I haven't been able to figure out any of the maps I've found outside of the game, and I haven't seen a single other person INside of the game to ask for directions/location; I've passed plenty of seemingly-empty villages, but I'm leery of wandering around inside looking for people lest I get splatted for trespassing or something. I'm too bull-headed to kill myself or start an alt and use a hearth secret, though two days worth of boars lunging out from behind trees might make that decision for me... nonetheless, what's a reasonable approach?

[Moogie]

I've been playing a few days, see, and a couple friends started as well. Now there's that handy-dandy party arrow that tells you the direction the other members are in, but I've spent nearly two real-time days following that arrow without any appreciable (or measurable) progress. What I'd like to figure out is how far I still have to go, but I haven't been able to figure out any of the maps I've found outside of the game, and I haven't seen a single other person INside of the game to ask for directions/location; I've passed plenty of seemingly-empty villages, but I'm leery of wandering around inside looking for people lest I get splatted for trespassing or something. I'm too bull-headed to kill myself or start an alt and use a hearth secret, though two days worth of boars lunging out from behind trees might make that decision for me... nonetheless, what's a reasonable approach?

Be warned that, over long distances, that arrow will point in a completely erroneous direction. You could very well be travelling away from your friends rather than towards them.

There's no way to know how far you are from them. Your only bet is to find a village and see if they know what SuperGrid they're in. Your friends would then have to do the same. If you're more than 1-2 SGs apart, I wouldn't bother trying to make it on foot as a new character. Starting over via hearth secret is your most time/effort efficient option.

Good luck.

[Chakravanti]

Starting over via hearth secret is your most time/effort efficient option.

Good luck.

This. Especially if you have friends.

[Twerp]

I guess I might just bite the bullet and join them the easy way, then. They managed to find each other and start a couple houses, anyway. I've seen what you mean by the inaccurate long-range arrows; at one point, i was right on top of one of them to the point where their little blue x was right on my minimap. Then that rascally arrow snapped to the south-southwest, it's even meaner than those clogs-eating boars are.

If I were to just off myself for the ancestral lp, would it be worth it? I've got about a dozen skills (mostly lp from having built so many boats crossing those monstrous blue barriers), which I thought was a decent amount until I looked at the wiki and realized none of them were higher than 3, where everybody is talking about their Exploration 50 and their Survival 40 and stuff.

Also, IS it bad form to wander around somebody elses city/village/claim? I wonder if I might have seen another player by now if I hadn't been taking pains to go around fences and such.

EDIT: Seems you can't walk onto claims anyway without the Trespassing skill, but the rest still stands~

[hfacktor]

You can walk on claims without trespassing, you just have to turn on criminal acts. Trespassing is only used for snooping in their belongings.

[Twerp]

Well, to my surprise, I actually made it on the third day of travelling. I'd been looking for villages along the way, but I only found... clear-cut trees? It seems that my protests otherwise were drowned out by the siren song of easy lp as my buddies have been steadfastly obliterating the forests outside a certain distance from our camp. Which is kind of a nuisance since I had to row for miles to find another birch tree for baskets, and our unofficial party leader has been trying to instill in us the alleged threat of "the russians" who I guess are supposed to be unreasonably murderous and thieving, not that I've actually met any.

What I'm longwindedly getting at is, ARE there consequences for deforestation-for-lp? Besides the obvious harder to get resources and the annoying of the neighbors, I mean. I've been half-wishing a dryad would pop out and smack some sense into them.

[DatOneGuy]

Well, to my surprise, I actually made it on the third day of travelling. I'd been looking for villages along the way, but I only found... clear-cut trees? It seems that my protests otherwise were drowned out by the siren song of easy lp as my buddies have been steadfastly obliterating the forests outside a certain distance from our camp. Which is kind of a nuisance since I had to row for miles to find another birch tree for baskets, and our unofficial party leader has been trying to instill in us the alleged threat of "the russians" who I guess are supposed to be unreasonably murderous and thieving, not that I've actually met any.

What I'm longwindedly getting at is, ARE there consequences for deforestation-for-lp? Besides the obvious harder to get resources and the annoying of the neighbors, I mean. I've been half-wishing a dryad would pop out and smack some sense into them.

Sadly there isn't until they decide to build a house or a palisade and realize they then have to build a road to be able to properly drag resources from so far away.

Q10 trees are fine to replace what's there, so get someone with at least 10 farming to use some q10 clay/water/pots and hopefully get some trees (a lot) planted to replace what's there, do this now not later so that when you do actually need said trees, they are ready.

[Twerp]

I guess this is my newbie questions topic now.

What's the trick with hunting? I decided I'd provide for our little village by being the hunter, and picked up archery and five points in marksmanship. Got a sling and a backpack full of stones and... I can't really seem to hit anything, because as soon as my target moves, my accuracy vanishes. I'm guessing it'd need roughly three minutes of aiming at a stationary target to fill up the bar. My party tells me that the proper strategy is to build a fence or something around the animal you're trying to kill, then just pelt it to death like that, which sounds kind of absurd.

Do I need to crank up marksmanship in order to hit anything, and if so, how high? I'm getting the feeling that I need to grind something for lp before I can be at all productive with hunting for anything besides picking up rabbits off the ground. Would I be better off fishing to feed my village until I can afford to pump up marksmanship to a more feasible level, or is there a better way to provide food? Our farmer has 30 points in farming, but I'd like to be productive in my own way. More productive than wandering around picking up loose rabbits and getting knocked out in one hit by boars, ideally.

[DatOneGuy]

I guess this is my newbie questions topic now.

What's the trick with hunting? I decided I'd provide for our little village by being the hunter, and picked up archery and five points in marksmanship. Got a sling and a backpack full of stones and... I can't really seem to hit anything, because as soon as my target moves, my accuracy vanishes. I'm guessing it'd need roughly three minutes of aiming at a stationary target to fill up the bar. My party tells me that the proper strategy is to build a fence or something around the animal you're trying to kill, then just pelt it to death like that, which sounds kind of absurd.

Do I need to crank up marksmanship in order to hit anything, and if so, how high? I'm getting the feeling that I need to grind something for lp before I can be at all productive with hunting for anything besides picking up rabbits off the ground. Would I be better off fishing to feed my village until I can afford to pump up marksmanship to a more feasible level, or is there a better way to provide food? Our farmer has 30 points in farming, but I'd like to be productive in my own way. More productive than wandering around picking up loose rabbits and getting knocked out in one hit by boars, ideally.

Aiming Speed is capped by either your Sling Q (x2) or your Marksmanship level, whichever is lower.

You'll want at least 20 Marksmanship to start off with a Q10 sling and you'll want to keep making better slings, the second you can kill a deer/boar/bear make a sling out of their hides, especially if you have nice survival.

Building fences around is actually done with signs. You set down a sign for a Fire (Adventure->Fire), put 1 branch into the sign (Don't build it in, just place it in). The animal now cannot walk through it, you can safely shoot him and he can't run. This works great for foxes, boars if you can do it without alerting them, deer (don't bother unless you outdamage their heal in dps). Don't try this on bears they break through anything wood, you can only do it with boulders/runestones really.

[Twerp]

Sounds borderline exploity, not to mention tedious; the idea of a hunter rushing to surround his quarry with incomplete campfires before it wanders off is just goofy, but what the hey, when in Rome. It sounds like I've got a LOT of lp to be earning before I can really become a proper hunter, and I won't be gaining lp by hunting just yet, as I can only make q6 slings with my 5 points in survival. Which brings me to a new question...

What are the sane, simple ways for early players to earn enough lp to become productive? I've gone over the lp section of the getting started wiki page, and it seems that the BAD ways are the ones my party members are using to push their skills up into those glorious double-digits while I flounder about making campfires and cooking bunnies. I made at least a couple thousand lp on my grand journey by making boats (more likely, the lp gained from felling and processing all them trees), but that seems just wasteful as the local tree population diminishes.