One Hour One Life Forums

I have seen so many villages destroyed because of a rogue murderer killing everyone, or a griefer messing things up, and all we could do is stand around, helpless, with no weapons around in sight to defend against the griefer.

Clearly, having just one or a couple of weapons around makes it easy for a tyrant with bad intentions to come and cause trouble. However, does it make sense for more players to have access to weapons? Is that even safe? I wanted to share a few anecdotes.

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In the first village I spawned in, I noticed that things were pretty heavily guarded, with a guy in blue running around with a bow & arrow, checking up on the farm and basically just hanging around. I noticed the farm was low on seeds so I decided to do a few runs and collect wild seeds from the surroundings.

Then, the trouble started. While going about my business, I would notice blood stains here and there, and the population seemed to be thinning out. I have no idea what was happening, but then I noticed the guy in blue was going around killing everyone, and nobody was stopping him. While observing him, he noticed me and took out his knife, and I moved out of the way just in time to see him stabbing empty air.

I kept an eye on him and saw some text about how he would let the "worthy" survive or some crap like that. I didn't find any other weapons, but I can't abide a place run by a bigoted tyrant like that, so I decided to become the griefer and I sowed the fields with wheat, dug up all of the berries, and let the sheep out of the pen. A better alternative would have been to kill the rogue guard, but that wasn't possible with him hoarding all of the available weapons.

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In the second village I spawned in, my mom took good care of me and told me to be strong and take care of the village. I saw the same problem with the farm here too -- a lack of seeds and some people letting the carrots seed removing good soil, so I spent my early years collecting seeds for the village.

When I grew older, my ma asked me to go north and fetch a wolf pelt for her, so I grabbed a cart, a bow & arrow, some food and must have walked north for a few minutes before I finally found a wolf. I didn't see any others, so I came back with one wolf pelt. Unfortunately, something had happened to my ma in the meantime and she was gone.

Remembering what had happened before, I decided to spend my adult years crafting knives and teaching the villagers to keep an eye out for griefers and murderers, and to keep the weapons safe. I was in the middle of crafting the first knife when my aunt comes to check up and ask me what I'm doing. When I explain, she says "fat chance" and scrapped the blade. I started explaining how in past lives, towns have been griefed due to no defence, when she takes out her knife and says "like this?", and then stabs me. In cold blood. In full view of everyone.

This death is the first death in the game that bothered me, because until then I had been doing my best to make a positive contribution to the village, but not only that -- nobody even questioned my getting stabbed by my tyrant of an aunt who was hoarding all of the knives to herself.

I can understand the logic of not wanting a griefer to craft a weapon, but I have already seen in many villages that when only one person has weapons, they often become the griefer themselves. If I wanted to grief or murder, I would have already done it with my bow and arrow or with the shovels lying around. This was a really unfair murder, and nobody even thought twice about it. If someone tries this shit with me again when I'm only trying to help, I'm going to grief the shit out of them in retaliation.

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The third village I spawned in was an entirely different story. This village was run by a wise king, who had not just one but several guards running around with bows & arrows. From birth, I was chosen to go on a mission to found a village up north along with two females. The king gifted me a knife and a bow & arrow and a cart full of food for the two women, and then escorted us part of the way before we went off on our own.

Unfortunately the mission itself wasn't a great success. The first woman stepped on a rattlesnake and died instantly. After finding a spot, the second one died after giving birth to one girl. Fortunately she made it to childhood in time, and we decided to go back south to the old village. Along the way we came across the dead king, and as we were getting close, I somehow stepped on a rattlesnake myself. Argh! Next time, I think we should go east or west -- much easier to see the snakes that way.

This was the best-run village I had come across -- lots of clothes, a well-run food system and most in line with what I think should be done -- weapons not just in the hands of one, but in the hands of several.