a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building
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Being cursed as a mother is a valuable gameplay experience. Especially in Bell towns where there's plenty to go around. It's a learning moment. You have to experience poverty to appreciate wealth.
Yeah, it sucks to have a smart kid that curses you even if they know you have other things to do. Sometimes the next Mother Theresa gets cursed by an infant Hitler. That's life.
You're literally the worst mother in the game though.
Being abandoned as a child is a valuable gameplay experience. Especially in eve towns where there's not enough to go around. It's a learning moment. You have to experience poverty to appreciate wealth.
Yeah, it sucks to have a dumb mom that kills you even if you know you could save everyone. Sometimes the next Einstein gets aborted by a teenage single mother. That's life.
The thing about adding food recipes, it increases options to yum chain. Currently the yum mechanic is pretty balanced. A good player in a decent town typically eats 15 times in their life. Every 4 minutes on average they build the chain and doing it is a minigame. Adding too make food items trivializes that. It makes a healthy diet into something natural that anyone can develop with no effort. Additional food items would either have to be extremely few or extremely complex recipes to remain balanced.
Expanded animal husbandry.
It would be nice if domestic dogs lived indefinitely and actually had a purpose. Keeping out dangerous pest animals within a radius maybe.
A bicycle.
Most importantly, junglers are the only ones that can trigger the apocalypse.
I agree with pein, practical clothing is important. Especially if I don't have a backpack when I'm born I'll always make an apron first. A regular apron with the knife in its pouch is always cool and a good way to discourage people from starting trouble. If possible I prefer a medic vest and knife in the backpack though. It's good for saving lives in a pinch.
If I'm wearing a medic apron I try to match one other red clothing item. Red and yellow can make a stylish fit. Red bowler with white rose, medic apron, yellow reed skirt and matching yellow shoes for example. Or straw hat, medic vest, red bottoms and yellow wooden clogs. I don't hate the clogs as much as some people.
Occasionally, I'll wear a cloak. It's very impractical but with an apron for storage in a wealthy town that has plenty of food it makes a stylish statement. A black cape, apron with knife, blue tophat and skirt with yellow clogs. It's gaudy and makes you look like some kind of magician or hero. The cloak is the single most stylish item.
In primitive towns I prefer fur clothing. It's more efficient and fits the theme better. I go out hunting and come back with a full outfit. It lets people know that I'm capable and an asset to the village. When everyone else is naked, I'm warm and clothed. Wolfskin hats also tend to boost confidence for babies.
Hi. I was your grandmother, Miranda Che. Your mother Rosemary was my daughter. I like to name my children after favorite herbs and spices. My other daughters died young, but Rose promised to live to 60- which she did. In my life I owned two crowns but wore neither. I don't really like politics. In old age, I gifted one to you. My grandson Simon Che, the next king.
After that I was born to a darkskinned black woman named Aya Pie. It was a ferile birth and we took a long trip to reach the bell town where I'd just died. My name was Richa Pie. I recognized you, but couldn't understand you or any of the other Che family members I'd just left. Regardless, I followed you and made to live a peaceful life. My mother Aya carried me a long way to reach town and in appreciation I named my first son after her. Ayaan Pie. He wore a devil mask- you and John targeted him but I never learned why. Wearing my medic vest I healed him two or three times. While he was on cooldown I told him to run, to seek refuge in the desert if he was chased. Eventually he left town and lived a long healthy life. My mother Aya was also attacked while defending him and I saved her too. Later, you delivered a message apologizing for the violence and begging for peace, which I ignored.
After your death I took your writing tools and issued a formal challenge against your young successor Honey Che. Feeling wronged, I wanted a duel to restore my family's honor. She fled, and I told the people that she was a coward. Later ambushing her, she escaped again and a posse formed to hunt me down. Eventually I fell upon your brother John Che's knife as the final song played.
Having spent a few lives as king, avoiding violent is always the right answer. Especially with a language barrier people won't understand the reason behind it. Even without that people go murder crazy with strings of revenge stabbing. Don't just attack that suspicious lady carrying around a bow and arrow, use your words. She'll probably be happy to compromise and put the arrow in her bag, because she didn't realize holding it in her hand like that made people nervous.
I had a new player as a baby today. For their entire childhood I instructed them. Do -not- starve. Always remember to eat. Keep food with you. I filled a backpack with pie and gave it to them. They grew hair and waddled off. Five minutes later they starved.
For the most part, short of following a kid around like a helicopter mom there's nothing you can do for them. A good player will be born ferile and go on to be the king of bell town. A bad player will be born in bell town and starve in the woods. It's all down to luck who your kids are.
My cousin and I completed a road between eastern bell town and zucc town. It stops in a town between the two with an incomplete road between there and zucc, but there's not much work left to finish completely. A couple busy lives should do the job.
What I suspect is punktown is still around 1.7k tiles southeast so I don't see it being connected by road anytime soon.
The system seems so backwards and luck based. Realistically there's not much you can do to keep your kids alive longer. Things like building up the town or teaching them provide intangible and arguable benefits to them. They either live or they die and you can't do anything about it. You can live to 60 every life, making very small personal gains but making huge losses from your children. You're punished for having a high score and rewarded for having a low one so it works to average everyone out around 30.
In practice it basically caps everyone at 7 total tool slots. You'd have to be a top 100 player to get those 7 slots, and a top 20 player on the leaderboard to make it to 8 slots. The genetic fitness system just doesn't work. Even after several reworks it remains completely broken.
No more dung with iron bones and steel tendons, breaking shovels in a crushing fashion.
I was thinking the same thing. Plant a ton of milkweed then take a cart to gather butt logs. Turn them into stacks and stacks of buckets. Needs a hoe, mallet and saw in terms of tool slots. Maybe an axe too. Also unlocks farmer, carpenter and lumberjack professions. If you go outside of town you can even use wild soil and water to basically make tons of free buckets. I'll probably spend most of my next life just making dozens of buckets.
So what you're saying is, I should curse early and often. Once as soon as I'm old enough to utter a curse and again in old age. Curse them before they can curse you. That's the message you're sending.
By definition I am the only person that matters. My actions and opinions are all that matter. It's a multiplayer game sure, in the sense that I am the actor and you are my audience. Other players only exist to witness my glory. That's the only purpose they serve. If they conflict with that purpose, I will destroy them. That's how this game works. Cower and pray that I'm merciful in allowing your family's existence.
It says more about how many people are abusing or otherwise liberally applying curses than it does about cursed players being bad. You basically get one curse token every life. It takes one hour to generate and lasts a month. People don't understand how curses work exactly, they just curse people they dislike. A couple days ago I got cursed because I made clothes for myself before making pads. After getting sheep for the town, breeding those sheep, using my own tool slots and everything. Stuff like this happens often. The only way to avoid it is to stop playing the game for a month and that's not really a reasonable expectation is it? Don't like donkey town? Don't play the game.
Ironically I attract fewer curses when I'm -actually- griefing because then I have something to hide. Nobody notices and if they do it's easy to explain away. No I'm not wasting water with this bucket and adobe wall outside of town. I'm learning to build. No I'm not killing all the town's sheep to cut off food and clothing. I'm just slaughtering a few for pies. If anyone questions it? Curse them and go rally a mob to murder them. People are gullible, it's easy. Generally speaking curses tend to benefit griefers the most because they're not afraid to use it. You get one every life after all.
Hitler did NOTHING wrong.
Is it?
I like to play doctor because it's great in a pinch and few people know how to do it. With only six tool slots however it's difficult. You need to learn shears to get balls of thread and learn hot coals to make them into pads. You need to learn sewing for stitches and knife for surgery. That's four tool slots already. What happens if there's no kindling prepared when you go to make pads? You have to learn axe or hatchet. Five of your six tool slots. What happens if there are no steel tools available and you have to make shears or a knife? To smith a blade you need a MINIMUM of four tool slots. Tongs, firing kiln, hammer and file. Even if you have a high enough gene score to get eight slots you're stuck with that specific kind of work. Smithing and doctoring. You can't build or bake or hunt or farm. It's a system that puts the survival of the family and town on the back burner, because you're hard locked. You literally can't help them. You can do one or two things and that's it. To me it defeats the purpose of the game.
I almost always wear a medic apron in bell towns. Three pads, needle and thread and a knife to do surgery with. Sometimes I'll go my whole life and never have to heal anyone. Sometimes all the medicine gets used at once and I'm desperately making more while the murders continue.
In my experience violence comes in short but intense bursts. One person kills and it destroys the peace. Suddenly the town becomes divided. The killer is evil! No, no the person he killed is evil! The underbergs are all evil! Wait no you're wrong, the connells are evil! He stabbed my mom! Kill all connells!
It creates this feedback loop where people take sides and the supporters of each side create a chain of revenge killings. Morality gets blurry and there's no real justice to any of it. Just pointless violence. It really makes me second guess, even if I'm sure of the situation. Do I want to get involved, knowing I'll almost certainly die?
Yesterday some naked idiot in the nursery kept stabbing babies. They were such a bad baby because they moved one tile from the fire where she placed them, because it was too hot and she wasn't feeding them enough. She killed at least three babies for no real reason. I cursed her. Later on she led a posse of gullible morons to try and kill me so I had to leave town. There's really no winning sometimes.
Each building with a waystone next to the door describing their purpose. Then maybe a matching set of waystones in the center of town to point out different work areas. It would improve storage and organization a lot if people explicitly labeled where to put/get things. Instead of leaving clothes all over the place so people have to search for example, make a building next to the sheep pen where unused clothing is stored.
I want to say that building an armory so you can lock up all the weapons is a good idea, but really it just makes people waste more resources on crafting more.
The western bell town is connected by road to a central bell town around 3.5km away. This twobell town in turn is connected to the ancient eastern bell with another 2.2km away. The far eastern bell still rings as explorers visit the dead city. In total, the ancient eastern bell is connected by 5.7km worth of near-continuous road to the modern far-west bell town with twobells in the center. Traveling on the road with a horse the distance is surprisingly navigable. As a man I traveled from one end to the other and back while still having time to live an actual life. Wouldn't recommend touring like that on foot or as a woman though.
I've noticed people building waystones outside the bakery in bell towns conferring a name on the city. "Welcome to Rabbiton, a peaceful village" for example, short for rabbit-town because it was built on a prairie biome with lots of rabbits.
People also make signs sometimes, but characters are very limited and making letter stock is an expensive pain in the butt.
Having a mechanic allowing players to return to places from past lives clashes thematically with the game's core concept. Your life is a snapshot in time. When the hour's up you leave never to return. Do what you can to build up a home for your family, knowing that ultimately the future is in their hands and there's nothing more you can do. Your part of the story is over and you'll never get to see the end of it.
A minority of affordable yum food is essential imo. It's what separates a proper chef from some noob baker that only churns out mutton pie. If I can go to the slot box and right click to find a yum pie it's a chef's product. When nothing but mutton pie is available I'll take it but let's be frank, it's a waste. Talking about food math, when every new food adds ten bonus pips you're wasting food by NOT making it. First food is a berry, then a berry bowl, maybe some popcorn, then fresh corn. I might eat a carrot once in my life and that's with five bonus pips. Another five easy yums from wild food like wild carrot and wild onion, burdock, maybe a banana or cactus fruit. Stew and turkey and turkey broth. Bread. Milk! Butter! Buttered bread!! Forget that mutton pie just cook the meat itself. There's so much easy variety with yum in any basic town. Unless it's a primitive camp that's struggling not to starve there's no excuse not to make yummy food. You can eat rare low-pip foods endgame like a mushroom and get twenty-five pips just because hey you're on a x15 combo. Any decent player in a town with berry, carrot, wheat and sheep should have no problem hitting this number. Especially if the farm's expanding to stuff like three sisters, tomato, onion etc.
The only excuse I can really see is doing a lot of hungry work. When you need a bite for every felled tree the only effective way to be a lumberjack is with a pack full of mutton pies.
yeah but what do you mean by "work to be done"?
shouldn't someone else do that work?
Realistically regardless of should or should not, they CAN'T do that work. You try to give people jobs and they don't know how. I pass my apron off to a kid, he doesn't know how to doctor. My daughter asks me "JOB?" and I ask her to bake. She doesn't know how. Even before getting into advanced stuff like newcomen machining, basic smithing is fairly complicated for new players. Making charcoal, refining the ore, creating and using different tools. Bellows, hammer, tongs, chisel, file. You know, a lot of people don't even bother to play the tutorial. A lot of players really don't know how to do any productive work at all. They're just existing and eating berries and trying to figure out how to play the game.
realistically it's not possible to be smith+tailor+farmer+engineer+baker etc.
Realistically, a lot of people have more than one job in their lifetime. Maybe you spend a year working in a factory. Maybe you spent a summer working at a bakery in college. Maybe you got your first job getting paid under the table at your uncle's farm. A lot of people have had 5 different jobs already by the time they're 30. Not a profession, just a job. Baking a couple of pies shouldn't mean that's all you can ever do with your life.