Mine level progression

[Dawidio123]

I might be in the minority here, but i actually liked the way how there was an actual sense of progression at the start of the world that was tied to the mine level (probably not so much for people who get their pyres whooped or didn't build them in the first place).

So like level 1 you only get lead and tin, which means no hard metal and basically the best weapon is a tinker's axe, a pretty solid upgrade from a knife which mean you can fight like people and not like the brits.
On level 2 you get copper, which allows you to get bronze, thus bronze swords, plates, ore smelters and so on. Again a very noticeable upgrade.

Then on level 3 you get iron, silver and quicksilver. Which allows for a lot of new things to be made. You can basically progress all the way to steel and get the endgame gear right there, the only issue is that ores you find there sucks ass, so you either mine all day hoping to get enough to actually equip your village with it (hopefully decent ql otherwise you can just keep on using bronze), or you wait for the deeper levels to get some black ore or bloodstone. Silver allows for some basic jewelery (forges, thimbles, etc.), and quicksilver is basically needed since the devs made glass a piece of shit to make, not to mention all the curio you can make from it.
After that i think it's on -4 or -5 (can't remember) that you find your first gold. Basically a great upgrade overall, new symbel, jewelery, helmets and finally a decent belt.

And that's basically all the progression you are getting, what's deeper you might ask? New ores with same metals but better rates and quality (sometimes, not always, it can still be trash ql and you'll keep on using the ore you found two levels ago), some new stones, and i think those mushroom trees (?).
I honestly liked how combat changed during the first 3 levels but that lasts for literally 4-5 weeks, and that's only due to not every village being autistic enough to grind steel to get everyone a b12 ASAP (which is fine, but once everyone gets there that's the meta for the rest of the world, and the biggest upgrade you'll get is a troll belt).

Therefore i propose to extend that progression, for example:
How about the first two levels of the mine staying the same (So you still get hard metal at -2), but iron would only start appearing at -4. But, to postpone the steel, make steel crucibles need some stone or something from like -5 or even -6 or -7. That would mean you would be getting wrought at -4 which brings quite a bit of upgrades (winged helmets, butcher's cleaver, maybe some other stuff if they actually make them not trash compared to bronze counterparts) but you wouldn't be able to directly rush to b12s and steel plates. This is just an example, when those things become available could be adjusted to be faster (or slower) and I'm open to discussing it. This way combat wouldn't achieve it's endgame meta in a month, and the sense of progression would linger just a bit longer, because honestly once i got my steel gear i didn't notice futher upgrades, i sometimes got items with bigger numbers but so did every other village, so it stayed basically the same. Another thing that could help alleviate that is adding more stuff to later mine levels (new metals, new dungeons, maybe new kind of gems that only appear deep in the mines, etc.), but that's a lot more work than just changing steel crucible recipes and ore spawn levels.

TL:DR Early game lead and bronze stages are fun (i like spears) but they last a week, steel is too soon, make it available deeper, buff wrought iron gear to not be garbage, maybe add new stuff to later levels?

[yym331]

+1
I've often wished there was an Iron Age

[SnuggleSnail]

I'd add:

Mine pyres bad because

• Doesn't prevent you from being obligated to maintain minehole in starter base - even after the catchup mechanic we maintained the minehole in our starter base because it'd always be ready a day earlier.
• It's not really telegraphed to new players at all - even most of the MAIN FACTIONS didn't figure them out after 2/3/4 days this world, how is a genuinely new player supposed to understand this?
• It can kinda fuck you if you drop it in a bad spot you can't mine out of, resulting in you needing to build another pyre and wait another day
• It effectively makes sieging/raiding multi-level bases impossible, not that it matters because sieging the first layer is impossible regardless
• Sometimes when I'm rich in the late game I just wanna plop down 9 mineholes in an afternoon, and IDK it's not fun for the game to stop me for no reason

suggested fix: just make unlocking new layers a global timer as in the original suggestion, maybe make building on top of a burnt out mine pyre cheaper if you want to keep them for LARP purposes

Blackbox FEP RNG machine bad because

• This world raising strength was NOTICEABLY harder than previous worlds irrespective of hunger changes because there were simply fewer good strength foods.
• Gaining FEPs is how most people spend most of the time. It is retarded that you are not ensuring this is fun, but instead effectively random with no plan for how players should play and no freedom to choose less effective methods because of hunger/satiations
• FR I know you guys didn't plan to make gaining strength>mining harder from this, but it was like x2-3 harder than previous worlds and the fact you didn't intend that should be definitive proof the system isn't working (although fixing the feasting system would alleviate a lot of this)
• I do not feel good when I find the secret OP recipes, I feel like I was wasting my time during the period I didn't have them

Suggested fix: viewtopic.php?f=48&t=73262&p=908870#p908870 OR viewtopic.php?f=48&t=72059&p=893387#p893387 + remove satiations

I still think the way FEPs for food is decided/distributed would be bad, but fixing the hunger system would solve genuinely 99% of its negative effects on gameplay as well as just being better in and of itself

The first 2-3 layers that give cast were AWFUL because of steel

• The effort required to get steel was INSANE compared to previous worlds with black ore/bloodstone
• There were seriously only 2-3 villages in the game that had people fully kitted in steel
• The jump between bronze>steel is big enough that you can't rly fight steelbois if you don't have steel also, which is unfun for all parties involved - just results in very few fights
• B12 style PVP is most people's strong preference (shield up/chip damage metas are braindead/stat based/boring) and while the 1-2 weeks of UA/sword fights are funny, B12s shouldn't rly be delayed for longer

Suggested fix: add bloodstone ore black ore to to steel crucible's recipe to prevent people from forcing it during the chalco stage. OR just take the obvious/easy option of putting blackore on earlier levels, but I know you won't do that

[Robben_DuMarsch]

Suggested fix: add bloodstone ore black ore to to steel crucible's recipe to prevent people from forcing it during the chalco stage.

I think this is a reasonable and beneficial suggestion.

[srt66]

I can't type out as many words as all of you. But I know of jorb's Last visited: Fri Aug 25, 2023 9:42 pm

[Dawidio123]

Truth

I completely agree with the first two problems + fixes because unlike the devs i actually play this game.

And ye steel making early game was shit due to chalco sucking ass, i think we were one of the first that had guys in full steel and that's only because one of our fighters sat down and grinded it out just to have it since our main miner was too busy doing everything else, and that was only for 1-2 guys, not everyone tho, we just had steel legs for the most part.

I like the idea of crucibles requiring blood/black ore since that would delay the steel a bit (1-2 weeks so no that much tbh, you'd still get a b12 about a month in, so basically same as this world for most groups), and i might be kinda biased because i like spear fighting, although admittedly shield up meta is retarded due to how good it is compared to anything else availble at that point (tbh, jugular + shield up zergs made it even more retarded, so after nerf it might be a tad better).
I just feel that meta becomes kinda stale once everyone is running b12, and staying melee after that point makes you basically a support character (which isn't bad per se, and you can still wreck some people). But it is true that b12 makes for more engaging pvp meta compared to just shield up zergs, thus my suggestion to actually buff some of the wrought stuff and maybe add some new weapons that would serve as a kind of transition weapon before getting everyone a b12 (maybe some new stance that can actually somewhat compete with shield up before b12 but only for one handed weapons/spears).

[Lukash4k1]

Good

[Podli]

I'd add:
Blackbox FEP RNG machine bad because

• This world raising strength was NOTICEABLY harder than previous worlds irrespective of hunger changes because there were simply fewer good strength foods.
• Gaining FEPs is how most people spend most of the time. It is retarded that you are not ensuring this is fun, but instead effectively random with no plan for how players should play and no freedom to choose less effective methods because of hunger/satiations
• FR I know you guys didn't plan to make gaining strength>mining harder from this, but it was like x2-3 harder than previous worlds and the fact you didn't intend that should be definitive proof the system isn't working (although fixing the feasting system would alleviate a lot of this)
• I do not feel good when I find the secret OP recipes, I feel like I was wasting my time during the period I didn't have them

Blackbox FEP RNG machine is good because with propper FEP numbers in the recipes it decreases gap between specialized character and "jack of all trades". If you can get 100 FEP/hunger with wide stat distribution vs 30 FEP/hunger with specialized stats - gap in stats will be lower with even hunger limitations.
Food satiation is good, because it eliminates effectiveness of grinding/botting one food type. Further stat raising requires more different food types, more different things done, which means less boring gameplay. Because doing 10 times 10 different things is way better, than 100 times one thing.
One good improvement of satiation can be raising satiation from rare things in the food like cachaloot meat, etc. Rare catch should be profitable, but in a limited way. Because people see very shitty way of raising their stats even further, do it and get boring.

IMHO overall FEP recipes reballance is better way, than changing mechanics.
Cave level progression seems bad in terms of stats. Catching up with mining strenght for available mine level is hard. I dont like this personally, because i "have to" make specialized miner character with shit tonn of str. And profit from reaching new cave level is to big to be ignored. This can be fixed by several ways.

• Increase availability timers. IMHO best way because you have more time for raising stats, and you'll have better minig tool atm because of wood progression. Also why not increase stone/bronze ages time?
• Soften stone. Is there any good thing for game that adds tough stone and necessity of specialized minig character? By hermit i can catch up with all things solo, without specialized characters - thanx for gilding sets. I have enough stats and skills for every single thing except mining. Why this exception should exist? What is good for?
• Double cave layers numbers. Copper available on 3-rd, iron on 5, etc. Toughness and q progression is divided by 2. It's like first suggestion, but with more smooth progression of stats needed and q gains.

And overall - i strongly dislike specialized characters at all. Specialization should came from different people doing different things, but not from different stats and skills distribution. Because necessity of specialized characters just raise multiboxing.

[SnuggleSnail]

I stopped reading after the bit where you said the the thing people are incentivized to spend 80% of their time on should be literally random.

Your foundation is bad enough that I feel comfortable saying you're objectively wrong.

[Podli]

I stopped reading after the bit where you said the the thing people are incentivized to spend 80% of their time on should be literally random.

Your foundation is bad enough that I feel comfortable saying you're objectively wrong.

Random at long run is very precise - just math. law of large numbers.