Wurm Team Blog » Game Play

Arriving at Elevation

rolfjan — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:01:35 +0000

When leaving Serenity I was a bit over optimistic regarding the distance to the border, so I kept going in hopes of changing servers any second. It didn’t happen and I started drowning so I entered Elevation with 30% wounds.

This is the view I had:

Drown wounds are internal, and as it turns out they take forever to heal. Since I had forgotten that they go away pretty much immediately once you reach land, I bobbed in the water the whole evening waiting for the wound to go away. I should have just swam instead and logged out gaining more stamina in portions.

Yesterday I reached shore. There was a settlement where I was heading and to my mild surprise it was Horde of the Summoned. I have heard that they are in control of large portions of the server but for some reason I wasn’t expecting them here on the east coast.

I approached it with hesitation but nobody was in local so I was hoping it was abandoned or that I could outsmart the guards and look for loot. Little did I realize the gravity of the situation. I tried to avoid the kingdom guards but to no avail. They colored the water red with my blood and within minutes I had respawned at High Hopes.

I figured that I could use some better armour and weapons. With 20 silver in my pocket i started shopping at the nearest trader. Apart from a settlement form, I could afford a pretty decent suit of chain, a longsword and a large metal shield. Navigating High Hopes was a mess. It’s a slope full of olive trees and I got lost in a minute. I had to bring on the deed holder to allow non-citizens to chop them down so things should improve.

Feeling a lot safer I headed out. My vague goal was the White Light but I was open for suggestions. Down the hill to the south was an abandoned settlement and a road which looked interesting. I died to a mountain lion which I thought I was winning against when I was ambushed by his spider buddy.

I could probably have asked someone to help me out retrieving the stuff, but I was eager to head west. I figured I’d just lose the gear again so the new plan was to settle down somewhere and gain skills of my own instead. I headed westnorthwest towards the White Light.

A stranger told me I needed 1 alignment in order to become part of the faith. The only way to get this seemed to be to bury someone. I had seen no player corpses since I entered the server but apparently Wurm provides. Maybe 40 tiles away I found the body of Zaha on a shore. I couldn’t bury it in the shallow soil so I had to carry it further west and decided to bury him in the marshes of a southern peninsula. It was actually a pretty fine moment and I got my alignment alright. The marsh will preserve his body for millennia.

A few steps later I decided to take on a deer with my newbie shortsword and shield. After a few minutes of prodding it with my sword I was down to approx 50% damage from bruises but the deer was vanquished.

First blood. You see those distant trees? Lomaner.

I kept going west grabbing the coastline. The bruises went away in minutes – very nice. As a bear trodded down a mountain side and plunged into the water I headed back and decided to swim across the bay instead of trying to outsmart it.

I entered the custom kingdom of Lomaner and snuck past it on the outskirts. I found treasures in the form of high quality wolf meat which tasted royale even in its raw form. Very suddenly after leaving Lomaner the White Light appeared. It was a lot closer than I expected. I converted to Fo. Now I have to find somewhere to settle down.

My first encounters

rolfjan — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 10:48:42 +0000

After several years of development I’ve started to get an itch to be trying out this game I’ve coded. Most of all I want to participate in the HOTA and take a shot at PvP but the plan has always been to start polishing the game once the basic coding parts are done. Which is now.

So, yesterday I created a newbie and started playing Wurm. I thought I’d share some initial impressions.

I’ve done the tutorial before but since then it’s grown a bit. It’s is an impressive piece of work, being designed by the Game Masters using the ingame mission system. When you get to the cave section it sort of takes off and it felt a bit as if I was visiting a theme park. The drawback is creating the mallet. I got frustrated like everyone else with the timer and the failure rates.

The King’s Academy tutorial area where it all starts

My plan was to head to Serenity and travel West to Elevation and decide there which kingdom to join. I could have gone directly to Elevation but I wanted to experience for myself the trek west.
The first thing I saw on the road leaving the starter settlement of Strongbox was something looking like a massacre with lots of corpses of various players. Nobody could explain if there had been a raid or what had happened.

When travelling west from Strongbox you run into a barrier of mountains and settlements. I decided to head south and it took some time before I could figure out a way swimming past a large walled area. To my great joy I found an unlocked hidden sailing boat on the other side I could pinch, but alas! of course I was not able to command it due to my inexperience. Unless I found someone who could give me a ride I would have to walk and swim as planned.

I followed the mountains southwest. There are two large bays mostly lined with steep mountain sides where you have to swim. If it’s done by the map editor or by experienced players I don’t know, but every now and then there are footholds where you can climb up to get some rest and gain stamina which is very convenient.

At one time when I was able to walk on land I was suddenly ambushed by a mountain lion and I realized that staying in the water does have it’s benefits. Travelling became a game of estimating how far I could swim before I dared to try and climb up and get some rest. I decided to try to rest every chance I got which worked out fine. I could outrun all hostile creatures I met but then again I avoided them paranoically by hovering the beach and waters with the mouse to see if there were any red outlines.

I once swam into a cave since I hoped I could get some rest inside and true enough there was a landing in the darkness. The second I stepped ashore I heard a large scowl and a dark shadow lunged at me! I jumped back in my chair uttering a muffled scream of surprise. In my panic I swirled around 360 degrees and ran straight into the cave. Before I managed to get out again the wolf had given me a few scratches – nothing serious but my movement rate was hampered a bit. It was a very thrilling experience and more powerful than I had expected.

All in all the creature distribution seems good. I like that they can be avoided and the distance they start hunting at wasn’t too large. I quit at the foot of a big sand slide:

Today I decided to bring up the official Serenity map dump at http://www.wlhost.net/images/e2d9b.png and found the sand slide leading down from the old volcano. I think using the map only helped and didn’t take away the sense of adventure and exploration. I ended up walking the west coast north then south again, then west out on those small islands in the southwest and north and still not ending up where I thought I was anyways.

This land bridge leads west towards Elevation. Dragon’s Reach is just yonder. Civilization felt like soft balm when I reached it.

Eventually I realized that to my luck I had swam all the way around a green mountaineous island just on the west border. I stopped and foraged a bit, and ate the rest of the wolf meat I had found on a corpse yesterday while a small bruise healed.
After 4 hours of playing time full of adventure I was on the west coast of Serenity, dove into the ocean and started swimming out to sea towards Elevation. I didn’t quite make it to the border and started drowning but if I stay logged off for a while I should regain enough stamina to reach it. Once on the other side I’ll suicide to shore and take it from there.

The Theatre opens…

Enki GM — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 00:44:26 +0000

The Moderation team, including me, has been actively discussing ways to improve the environment inherent on the Wurm forums. For a while now the atmosphere has been unnecessarily aggressive and we believe that everyone deserves a better wild forum environment.

As most of the visitors and users of our boards are capable of posting within the established rule set and are even respectful towards each other across kingdom interactions, we wanted to provide a better way to interact on the forums without some of the ongoing current nuisances that have been occurring in the full open Wild board we are used to. To this end, as of (Monday), since it is impractical for us to contact your parents for their permission to paddle you, we will require all of our children who wish to participate in the new system to sign up for access and show your responsibility and pride in your kingdom.

Access to the wild forums is by application only.
Apply by sending a /dev from your Wild server game character nominating the corresponding forum account you wish to use. Only one application from any game character will be accepted. Applications will be reviewed for confirmation of ownership, failing in this will revoke the application and may warrant game penalty to the applicant.
Shared accounts: Confirmation of ownership for shared accounts should be provided prior to application in order to avoid inconvienence. Any player on a shared account that is not the owner and making application for the purpose of gaining forum access will be viewed as illegal process and may result in that player having their forum, game account or both banned.
Rule of thumb, if either of the accounts are not yours don’t try it.
All applicants will be consenting to in game penalties for repeated forum violations.

Thank you,
Enki (Game Moderator)

p.s. To all of you who think you are too old for a spanking…. Don’t count on it!

Talking Tutorials

Poseidon GM — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 01:18:06 +0000

If you play Wurm, the chances are you’ve already completed the tutorial.

If you haven’t, they currently use NPC tutorial ‘guides’ that give text-based instructions to players. They then send them away to complete their mini goals on the premise that they return to recieve more once they are finished. This repeats until all of the missions are completed.

The problem is that this method of tutorial relies too heavily on theory (text) rather than the practical usage of that theory (doing things). On top of that, to advance in the tutorial you need to return to the guides time and time again which can be very repetitive.

That’s why we’re in the process of creating the new tutorial using the new mission code.

Led by Enki (GM), the new tutorial is being constructed on the Golden Valley server in a purpose-built tutorial complex. This will be split into stages, each relating to different gameplay elements, ranging from interaction and navigation to the more advanced aspects of crafting and combat.

So, why change it?

The purpose of the re-design is fairly simple – to create a new tutorial which is more structured, dynamic and which offers new players a more effective introduction to the game. So, rather than needing to repeatedly return to guides (that is, if they are found in the first place), new players will spawn directly within the tutorial complex and begin right away, guided by a scripted mission with triggers that can be as simple as standing on a tile, or examining an object.

As you can imagine, this new functionality grants us a considerably large degree of freedom to create a far more useful and effective introduction for new players. This is important, because an ineffective tutorial can lead to problems later on. For instance, very often players can fall into holes yet have no experience using the ‘Climb’ button, and as a result need to spend time either figuring that out or asking other players.

When will it be finished?

At this time we are still in the early stages of construction, so it would be unwise to give out a solid ETA. That said, progress is (at the moment) good. To better illustrate the current state of the tutorial area, I have included one or two screenshots.

The tutorial area as a whole, including all nine stages as of 1st August 2010, though please be aware that only stage one (bottom left) is near to completion.

Tutorial stage one (Navigation), under construction as of 1st August 2010. Note the similarities with an assault course, including slopes, terrain types and climbing.

Decay

Wolfram — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 02:04:37 +0000

There is a lot of confusion and misunderstanding about all the various ways that decay can be slowed or minimised, so here’s everything you need to know about it.

Buildings and fences:

Materials used: Buildings made from stone decay slower than buildings made from wood. Wood types have no effect on decay.
Deeds: Buildings on deeds with less than 28 days of upkeep benefit from slower decay. Buildings with more than 28 days have no decay at all.
Kingdom areas: Buildings built where there are no kingdom influences suffer from a penalty to decay.
Quality: The quality of the walls effects how fast buildings decay.

Items:

Materials used:
Metal: Items made from metal decay the slowest.
Stone: Items made from stone decay slower than wood and faster than metal.
Wood: Items made from cedar wood decay slower than other wood types. Items made from Oak take less damage when used.

Location:

Buildings: Leaving items inside a building will slow decay.
Mines: Mines get the same bonuses as buildings where decay is concerned, but a cave in will completely destroy an item.
Containers: Leaving items inside containers will slow decay. The material used to create the container has no effect on the items inside. Multiple containers do not stack.
inventories: With the exception of food and lit light sources, items in inventories take no damage at all.
Bank: Items in banks take no damage at all.
Deeds: There is no bonus or penalty for item decay rates from deeds. Deeds only affect fences and buildings.

Other:

Time: Items left untouched for some unknown and probably random time start to decay. In theory if you pick up and drop an item every day, it should not begin decaying.
Quality: the higher the quality of an item is, the slower it decays. Note that decay lowers the effective QL of an item, so the decay will accelerate as the DMG accumulates.

Notes:

Decay is the DMG that items take over time when they are left unused.

Damage is the DMG that an item takes when it is being used.

Items made from multiple materials get their decay from whatever material the finished item is considered. A longsword for example is made from metal, and the fact that the handle is made from wood has no effect on the decay or damage of the item.

Multiple containers do not stack. So, having an item in a backpack that is in a chest does not give it a bonus from both containers, it can only get a bonus once.

In theory, an item in a container that is in a house should get 2 bonuses to decay since the bonuses are different, but this has never been confirmed. However, at the very least, the container gets the building bonus, so it’s not a total loss if building and container bonuses do not stack.

Whilst the above tells how decay is supposed to function, it is extremely difficult to tell whether everything is working as intended since the algorithms for decay include a fair amount of randomness.

Here is the link to the server release notes where wood types began affecting decay:

http://wurmonline.com/wiki/index.php?title=Wurm_Server_Release_Notes_2005#050419

Staying Alive

Wolfram — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 11:57:53 +0000

I’ve always thought that cloth armour was one of the most underrated pieces of equipment in the game, so I thought I would make a post about it. Maybe I can turn this into a series of some sort with some more play tips. If I can think of anything else that I think is worth talking about.

Ok, so the first negative of cloth armour are that it does not offer as much protection as say studded leather or chainmail armour. The second is that it wears out and takes damage faster than cloth armour. For these reasons, most players prefer studded or chain, which is fair enough, if your about to tangle with a monster that may prove to be above your ability, then you want every advantage you can get. I’m not disputing this, & I’m not suggesting that cotton should replace either of these fine armours, however, Cloth has one decided advantage over cotton, speed. Not speed of attacks, unfortunately, but speed of movement, so there are 2 main groups of people who should reconsider cotton armour.

The first group are those players who have no interest in this games form of combat & find themselves running whenever they encounter something tougher than a rat. The second are those who get sick of the reduced movement rates of heavier armours & tend to wander around the game bare as the day they were born.

If your a runner, then your only interest is getting out of range of the beastie before it causes too much damage & you can’t run anymore. What I suggest is that you get yourself a set of cloth armour. You only lose about 2kmh on cobblestones which seems pretty painful at first, but you get used to it to the point that after a while it just seems normal.

If your a streaker, then you probably only put your armour on before you fight something tough, if so, then your out of luck, sorry. You’d quickly get sick of taking off one suit to put on another. If you only put your armour on when your leaving home to go hunting or to visit another town etc, Then you’ve probably already had the experience where you just popped out to grab another felled tree & got jumped by something & never made it back to safety. Afterwards you probably promised yourself that you would never leave safety without your armour again, but have probably already done so. If you get some cloth armour & just wear it all the time around home, you wont really notice any speed difference after a while. Then the next time you get ambushed by something when you pop out to grab some more clay, you stand a much better chance of survival.

Unfortunately, I can’t practice what I preach since I’m lucky enough to own a set of drake armour which already has the best of both worlds. The speed of cloth & the protection of chain. I have however opened commenting on this post so that people can offer their own opinions, or hopefully post the results of using cloth armour, if they can find someone to make them some that is.

Last time I made a post, I mentioned one of this game’s easter eggs, so I thought I would point you towards the other one this time. There’s something you can do as an action with some eggs in your inventory, but don’t do it if eggs are precious to you since the egg will get used in the process.

Happy Wurming.