Ø wrote:What happens if the play style of factions changes to nomadic griefing at the beginning of the world? I doubt that would happen, but I like to ask dumb questions. If a single faction goes out of its way to destroy as many starting villages as they can would they be able to snuff out the efforts of the other factions and have free reign over the world by getting the rest to quit? I don't think the world is small enough for this to happen, though.
To make a secure base, you need 14ish hours to dry 10 molehide, then like another 14ish hours for your molehide to finish tanning (I don't know the exact figure, I just know molehide is in this ballpark.) Then you place a palisade cornerpost, and within another 36 hours your palisade will not be hand bashable by existing characters without a pickaxe.
You will need your base to be unseen by a dedicated attacker within that period, which requires some degree of secrecy if you're worried about someone attacking you.
Snekkjas require hard metal, which you can't get in the first week.
People have limited will, not as many thingwalls discovered, and there is no tobacco or other accessible travel weariness elimination mechanics in the first week.
With the world as large as it is, factions can at best keep people from settling in their immediate vicinity in the early world even if they constantly patrol the area. If they went "full nomad" and gave up all attempts to build their own base and simply troll others... they might effectively stop some people from building, but at the expense of their own infrastructure, and they'd be effectively culled whenever they fall asleep because they don't have their own palisades up to defend their hearthfires where their characters will be logged out.
If you really want to fuck off, you can take a bunch of random whirlpools and end up somewhere likely far away from spawn, then move about 45 minutes away from the whirlpool and get several minimaps off the river system, then even if you're in a world like the one we were in where everyone spawned relatively close, the chances of someone stumbling upon your base and stopping your construction are next to nil.
Also, let's assume again you knew you were going to be targetted and wanted to put up a palisade anyway.
Just do this:

This is how we broke a multi-faction alliance trying to keep our exterior palisade wall down in the lategame... and they had bots, with 600+ strength, and sledgehammers. (Albeit, we also had fighters to make this very difficult for them.) But just imagine trying to break all of these early game.
All you need is 10 leather to get started, which is a little over 2 days of hiding some racks and tanning tubs.