Wurm Online Challenge Server: free sandbox MMO with fast skills, full PvP

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Wurm Online Challenge Server: free sandbox MMO with fast skills, full PvP

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

Official Game Website: http://www.wurmonline.com
Official Game Wiki: http://www.wurmpedia.com/index.php/Main_Page
Pre-release Challenge Server Map: http://www.wurmonline.com/images/mail141202/Challenge_WIP01.png
Goon Village Steam Group http://steamcommunity.com/groups/occupyrolfstreet

Wurm Online is an independent open world sandbox MMORPG in a low-fantasy Iron Age setting. It was officially released in 2006 by Swedish friends Rolf Jansson and Markus Persson, aka Notch, who left the team in 2007 to create Minecraft. It has many similarities to UnReal World, Minecraft, and Dwarf Fortress with a heavy emphasis on surival, crafting, and PvP. Wurm Online was originally a punishing grind-fest with an awful community that required hours of tedious bullshit before new players could become useful, but the new free-to-play Challenge Server was released on December 10th, 2014 with an updated ruleset that almost completely eliminates the grind and encourages fast and frequent PvP battles over resource spawns.

What are the unique features and differences between the Wurm Online Challenge Server and typical commercial MMORPGs?

The Challenge Server is completely free and does not require any paid subscription
The terrain in Wurm is a fully deformable heightmap, and modifying the terrain is necessary for constructing a village, establishing roads, and laying siege to other players
Full PvP is allowed between two symmetric factions and one asymmetric faction, and players drop all items upon death
There is almost no grind required on Challenge Server, players can make most things and perform most actions immediately, and new players will become useful specialists by the end of their first day
Nearly all tools, weapons, armor, and buildings are constructed by players, and NPC vendors are few and of limited use
There are no levels or classes in Wurm - the game is completely skill-based

What are the differences between Challenge Server and the vanilla servers?

Skill, characteristic, and faith gain have been greatly increased to roughly 20x the vanilla rate
Most skills have a higher effective level than the listed level, according to the Epic Server skill curve
Most action timers have been reduced by 50% to 75%
New characters start with 21 in each skill and characteristic
Players may found villages and raise their skills and characteristics above 20 without paying for a subscription
Resources periodically spawn in designated areas, and may include rare or magical crafting materials
Only one map is available, and it's a fairly small 8x8 km area
Players drop everything when killed in PvP, including no-drop newbie tools
New fortifications and siege machines are available, including spike barriers, automated turrets, and trebuchets
There will be a full character and map reset after 30 days, starting from December 10th, 2014

Do I need to buy a subscription to play this game?
The Challenge Server is free-to-play and places no restrictions on free accounts. Founding a village requires players to buy in-game currency with real money, but we already have a goon village founded. The vanilla servers require you to buy a subscription (16 euros for 2 months) if you want to increase your skills and characteristics above 20, which is necessary to get anything substantial done, and is another good reason not to play on the vanilla servers. There are also some special consumable items available on the vanilla servers that must be purchased with in-game currency.

Is there an active goon community for this game?
Yes, goons have been playing Wurm Online ever since it was in beta, and there have been multiple goon villages spread over multiple game servers with a history of mostly getting trashed by pubbies. There have been a few wildly successful goon villages however, such as Bearback Mountain in 2007 that boasted over 100 unique players at its peak, or Occupy Rolfstreet which dominated an entire server for the first few months of the Epic Server release. Our current village of Chode Caliphate on Challenge Server was recently started by returning veterans from previous goon villages, and we several players active during American and European hours to provide advice and free equipment.

How long does it take for a new player to be useful?
With the increased skill gain on Challenge Server, a new player can reach 70 shortbow or longbow skill by the end of his first day. That's enough to compete in PvP against most players, and to defend our town against pubbie invaders. New players are also able to craft most items immediately on Challenge Server, and can start making PvP-quality tools, weapons, and armor within the first hour or two of play.

How far can I get in this game alone?
The Challenge Server is quite dangerous and only has about six small and underdeveloped public areas where players are safe from roving gankmobs. I highly recommend joining a village for protection, although the skill gain is high enough that you could try living as a lone bandit and just replace all your equipment yourself each time you get killed and looted. It's easier to play as a lone homesteader on the vanilla PvE servers, although the wilderness areas are still dangerous, and the grind is so bad that it'll take a month before you become self-sufficient.

How do I join the village?

Make a new player account here: http://jenn001.game.wurmonline.com/WurmWeb/index.jsp?c=register
Make sure you've got a recent Java version installed and download the Wurm client here: http://www.wurmonline.com/client/wurmclient.jnlp
Wait like half an hour for all the sound and graphics assets to download
You can skip the tutorial now, so just head straight from the spawn point to the glimmersteel portal.
Use the portal with the right-click menu, select the Challenge Server, and choose Mad Door (far base of Horde of the Summoned) as your spawn point
Request a village invite through this thread, or the steam group chat, or by sending a /pm <message> <playername> to Ratskull or Dirtycheat
Instantly teleport to the village with the one-use /vteleport command

How do I shoot things with arrows and gain archery skill?

Get a shortbow and/or longbow from the large chest labeled "free poo poo 4 newbs" or from one of our boats
Get a quiver full of arrow shafts from the free poo poo chest or the boats. Alternatively you can make the shafts yourself in a few minutes by carving a log into shafts with a carving knife, and then carving the shafts into arrow shafts
Get a few bowstrings from the large chest or the boats. Activate a bowstring, rightclick a bow, and choose the "string" option
Equip your bow with the "equip" option on the rightclick menu, or by dragging it onto your right weapon slot on the paperdoll
Activate the bow by leftclicking it on the paperdoll
Now you can shoot things by rightclicking them and selecting "shoot". I highly recommend shooting at critters on the coast from the safety of a boat. You can only shoot from the boat when riding as a passenger
If you click the bow-and-arrow icon on your fight options window then you automatically shoot at things by double-leftclicking them. This will save the time and hassle of opening up the rightclick menu each time
Remember to pick up any arrow shafts you see on the ground, or on the corpse of the thing you're shooting at. Arrows and arrow shafts will usually be preserved after firing
The optimal range for a shortbow is 5 tiles, and the optimal range for a longbow is 20 tiles. Try to keep your target near the optimal range at first so you hit more often. Hits give more skill more than misses
Once you reach 50 skill in shortbow and/or longbow then you're ready to help the village. If you keep going to 70 skill in either then you're on par with most of the top archers in the game. Getting 90 skill is not really necessary and will require grinding, but also allows you shoot people directly in the eye for massive damage, unless they're wearing a full helmet

Screenshots
Wurm has gone through a couple of graphical overhauls and looks really nice with the graphics settings maxed. Check out the new folliage models, building types, and interior furniture models:

Here's some pictures of old goon villages from a few years ago. The terrain in Wurm can be raised or lowered on a tile-by-tile basis and the building layouts are all free-form without any pre-fab buildings. All the buildings you see here are single-story, but now the game engine supports multiple stories, archways, and interior walls:

Actually lemme show you an example of the crazy poo poo you can build now with the multi-story buildings:

Terraforming is normally time-consuming, but the new Challenge Server has reduced action timers and increased skillgain. Check out some of the insane terraforming feats you can pull off with the game engine:

Bears

Ziggy Starfucker fucked around with this message at 19:24 on Dec 17, 2014

# ¿ Dec 7, 2014 20:49

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 07:43

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

Dr. VooDoo posted:

Last thing I remember of the goon Wurm presence is that the massive road we built that went everywhere was used even after we all stopped logging in and was like one of the main ways of travels in the server until a reset

That was the Curtains Memorial Highway, built about 6-7 years ago by the largest and greatest goon village, Bearback Mountain. It was the largest village on the server at the time with over 100 members and was mostly built within 2 weeks. At the same we built a massive 3-tile-wide leveled highway through the hills to the spawn point about 3-4 km away. Most of the work building the highway was credited to a player named Curtains who almost immediately burnt out and quit, but he's still considered one of our greatest terraformers. The highway got a huge amount of traffic from nearby pubbies and led to a proliferation of shanty towns spreading directly towards Bearback Mountain like a kudzu. The goons didn't receive proper credit for the highway from the pubbies, who assumed it was created by the GMs and took the liberty of modifying parts of our meticulously leveled landscaping. Sparr described our frustrations with this comic:

Sadly, this was not a PvP server at the time.

Testvan and a few other goons decided to block the highway with a giant ditch in retribution, and I believe they got banned for it, despite it being our highway. Eminent domain by the GMs, I guess. Around that same time a big group of goon regulars including myself gave a stern talking to some pubbies who messed up part of our highway to flatten out their own village. Fathertime, one of the worst GMs in the game's history, immediately appeared and banned all goons with 500 meters. We learned later that he had like 7 children and at least one of them played Wurm too - we suspect one of his daughters was in the village we lambasted. The GMs have a history of hassling the goons, but Fathertime went too far and Rolf overturned his bans, ordered an apology, and personally planted the sign shown in the first link.

Speaking of Testvan, he was another of our greatest terraformers. He built this ramp up to the Bearback Castle:

Ziggy Starfucker fucked around with this message at 22:29 on Dec 14, 2014

# ¿ Dec 9, 2014 04:19

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

Regarding the grind,

official Wurm Online "Public Relations Officer" RedBaron_Johan posted:

Talking about recipes and such, I see some are talking about having to grind from 0 each restart.
This is easily addressed and planned into the initial release.
Firstly, when I said ultra fast skill gain I truly mean it. You will not need to grind much at all.
Secondly, we can start out Challenge characters with a pre set skill level to already be sufficient to create ok armor and weapons etc.

I haven't seen any actual numbers yet on how quickly characters will gain skills, but this sounds promising.

Sparr posted:

Do the plants grow faster? This is very important.

The developers haven't said anything about growth rates, but I assume they'll stay the same. There is a priest spell available to Fo priests though that makes plants grow faster in a 3x3 tile area. I expect faith points will be gained faster than normal so it might actually be worth it to become a priest or have a main and a priest alt.

Also it looks like there's enough interest to get a goon village started on Challenge Server. Join the Occupy Rolfstreet Steam Group if you want to get in on ground floor with founding the village. An official pre-release map dump of the server is available now. It's small, only 8x8 km which is the size of Affliction for anyone who was involved in the successful Occupy Rolfstreet goon village. You'll be able to cross the entire server within an hour by boat.

Ziggy Starfucker fucked around with this message at 05:26 on Dec 10, 2014

# ¿ Dec 9, 2014 06:45

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

More details for Challenge Server have been released: http://forum.wurmonline.com/index.php?/topic/115181-challenge-build-the-battlefield-release-notes/

A few highlights:

The server will launch during the mid to late day Central European time. That's somewhere around late morning or early afternoon in Central Time in the US
You will need a new account to join the first scenario. Existing accounts will be able to join later scenarios
Most skills will start at 20. They may start out slightly higher for new characters towards the end of the scenario
Skill gain will be at least 20 times faster than the skill curve on the Epic Cluster
Some actions will have shorter action timers

It's not clear if priests will have faster faith gain, or if crops and plants will grow faster. Also not entirely sure if the skill gain rate is directly increased, or if there'll just be a massive skill curve like the one used on Epic Cluster. Also they're adding some new siege equipment, and also automated defense turrets

# ¿ Dec 10, 2014 01:54

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

Waldorf Sixpence posted:

Wait wait wait. "Resets after 30 days." I will play the poo poo out of Wurm again if I don't have to pay, but not if there's going to be no, you know, point. Terraforming and building and creating for what?

For griefing any obnoxious pubbies that settle close to us, mostly, but also just to witness an incredible amount of coordinated manpower that completely changes the landscape in a few days. Most of our earlier construction projects consisted of digging up dirt somewhere and dumping it somewhere else using a tiny hand-drawn cart. Now the game engine supports some more interesting stuff like multi-story castles with walkable battlements or hedge mazes, and they should be faster to build now with the increased skillgain and reduced action timers.

Waldorf Sixpence posted:

Do you guys remember when we dug up so much dirt to build a land-bridge to a nearby island that the game decided "hey, that sure is a huge area of bare rock! Must be a volcano" and started spawning lava? Good times.

That was the Bearcatraz Landbridge, shown here from an aerial view using a hacked client that has long since been discontinued:

The bridge was built over the course of 3-4 weeks by a 50+ team of goons on the old JK-Home PvE Server on Gold2. Most of them quit before the bridge was finished because it was a monumental effort, we dug up a large coastal area until the rock was exposed and starting belching lava in retribution for the insult to Mother Earth. Then we hauled that dirt 40 units at a time on small hand-driven carts and dumped it in the ocean to form a bridge to a small island. We built the goon village of Bearcatraz on that island, and this screenshot was taken from one of the completed dirt spires we built as watchtowers:

Ziggy Starfucker fucked around with this message at 05:36 on Dec 10, 2014

# ¿ Dec 10, 2014 05:24

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

Also post your player names in this thread, because you have to make a completely new account to join in the first 30-day scenario. Mine is Ratskull. Also here's instructions on how to join the village:

Make a new player account here: http://jenn001.game.wurmonline.com/WurmWeb/index.jsp?c=register
Make sure you've got a recent Java version installed and download the Wurm client here: http://www.wurmonline.com/client/wurmclient.jnlp
Wait like half an hour for all the sound and graphics assets to download
You can skip the tutorial now, so just head straight from the spawn point to the glimmersteel portal.
Use the portal with the right-click menu, select the Challenge Server, and join the Horde of the Summoned (HOTS) kingdom
It doesn't matter if you spawn at Mad Door (near base) or Hacksorrow (far base) because we need both scouted out
Wait for the village to be founded and then you'll receive a remote invite from me or another villager
Instantly teleport to the village with the one-use /vteleport command

Also I'm taking suggestions for the village name if anybody comes up with something funny or offensive.

Ziggy Starfucker fucked around with this message at 06:49 on Dec 10, 2014

# ¿ Dec 10, 2014 06:42

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

Feindfeuer posted:

I played this ages ago but never really got into it even though the building/terraforming sounded nice in theory. This challenge server sounds like it's pretty PvP centric so I have to ask, did they improve combat? I remember it just consistet of me and my enemy standing in frontof each other and having damage numbers run through the chat while the alter egos stared at each other motionless.

Is combat now fun and engaging or is the challenge server more of a 30 day building/terraforming trial that gets reset on a regular basis cause the advertised focus, combat, is still weird and unfun.

Individual combat is still largely a text-based staring contest, although they've finally added decent animations and sounds. Group combat tends to be more interesting as you coordinate the movements of several people over Teamspeak and try to break up the enemy formation before pouncing en-masse on an isolated straggler. I've done a modest amount of PvP and some ambush tactics work really well, like Mongol-style false retreats. The Occupy Rolfstreet village on the Epic Cluster had a lot of success with false retreats while raiding the Jenn-Kellon home server spawn. We'd hide about 8 goons on horseback behind some lovely half-finished walls or shacks and send two of our best fighters towards the spawn deed, and they'd stop halfway there before milling around a bit and running away. This would usually get a mob of about 10 pubbies to chase them in an uncoordinated conga line, and then we'd all jump out and slaughter most of them.

Our greatest tactical victory though was on the Horde of the Summoned home server, when we wiped out an enemy force twice as strong through a well-placed coastal ambush. Two of our members were scamming local pubbies by advertising rare commodities at a remote meetup point and slaughtering anyone who showed up. When pubbies started whining at us over the global chat this escalating into a handful of goons raiding their village and digging up their crops and walling off their mine. Eventually the pubbies organized a big lynch mob and chased them halfway to our village, where the rest of us laid in wait in a forest on the far side of a bay. We pounced on them while they were still in the water with almost no stamina and it was a complete rout. We took a large amount of loot from the bodies and the entire server was too scared to mess with us for the next month or two.

# ¿ Dec 10, 2014 19:05

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

Challenge Server has been launched now after about 2 hours of delays, make sure you join the Horde of the Summoned. Send a /pm to Ratskull if you want to coordinate with the village founding, otherwise I'll post once later once it's founded and give remote invites.

# ¿ Dec 10, 2014 21:13

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

Looks like registration is back up now. I've confirmed that skills (including fighting) start at 20 and increase at an absurd rate now. There's already people with 50 skill titles. It looks like fighting skill does not have the super-fast skill gain rate though. Also the pubbies here are complete idiots, already got ganked by a mob of pubbies that didn't realize I was in the same kingdom as them.

Solvency posted:

Oh god, not this lovely game again. Do animals and characters have animations now? Is leveling out an area still tedious? Does the injured sound still sound terrible? Can I come back and eat all your food? Where do I start?

There are animations now for players and critters, and they actually look half-decent. Leveling an area still takes a lot of work but should be faster with the massive skill gain boost and the new level command, which lowers or raises an adjacent tile to the height of your current tile. And you can start by registering a new character at http://jenn001.game.wurmonline.com/WurmWeb/index.jsp?c=register

# ¿ Dec 10, 2014 22:39

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

Hmm looks like we have to build a guard tower before we can plant a village deed. Meet up at the big red X and we'll start up a temporary work camp there until the village is ready later tonight:

If you go the route provided it should be safe and only take about 15 minutes

Ziggy Starfucker fucked around with this message at 23:08 on Dec 10, 2014

# ¿ Dec 10, 2014 23:06

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

Avocados posted:

I was waiting for this incredible graphical trainwreck of a game to come back. Of course this happens during college finals week.

e: It looks like this crashes on launch for OSX

Can you post the error you're getting? Might be an issue with Java

# ¿ Dec 11, 2014 00:17

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

Looks like the problems with registration have been fixed, also

:siren:

Get in the Steam group chat for Occupy Rolfstreet Steam Group :siren:

we'll coordinate things from there. First task is to build a guard tower so we can plant our village

# ¿ Dec 11, 2014 05:21

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

Justin Tyme posted:

I like how they made huge spiders even more terrifying to defenseless peasants

endgame content for nonpremiums used to be ganking a single huge spider and killing it with a mass of 20 dudes with shovels and hatchets and rakes

Spiders were actually nerfed significantly when they made changes to the fighting system about 6 years ago. Now that everyone starts at 20 fighting you can kill one in single combat once you get a horse and a full set of combat gear. In the first few goon villages though yeah, spiders were instant death the moment you bumped into one. Walking through a forest in this game was like walking through a minefield, except the mines could walk around and chase you forever.

Also the village of Chode Caliphate has been founded. Send a private message to Dirtycheat or Ratskull with /tell <player> <message> to request an invite in-game, or post here.

# ¿ Dec 11, 2014 16:48

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

Avocados posted:

Yeah I unironically love this about Wurm. I always give myself one reason or another to take an adventure across the map. Ill prepare food and water skins and then set off on a morning. For all its huge flaws, this game makes traveling really enjoyable..

...except when this happens a hour into your trip and you have to race to your corpse before someone else stumbles upon it.

This was my ill fated trip to gooncamp last night. Immediately behind me is a sand tile and ocean. I died minutes later to a moonwalking fire boar.

Are you Avocados in-game? Send Ratskull or Dirtycheat a pm and we'll give you a remote invite and teleport to the village

# ¿ Dec 12, 2014 05:50

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

Xibanya posted:

I greatly enjoyed the will we/won't we debate on ganking the pubbie and resulting HOTS chatter last night.

Yeah I was little concerned about alienating our peaceful neighbors but there's kind of an understanding in the Horde of the Summoned kingdom that you can get killed for almost any reason, especially for loitering around someone's village while alone. Normally though when we encounter pubbies on PvP it's a pretty clear-cut kill-them-all kind of situation.

Also the terraforming for the village is pretty much done, now we'll start putting up walls and launch raiding parties by boat. Also I see automated archery towers listed in the crafting recipes tab, so we can try spamming those around our village borders

# ¿ Dec 12, 2014 22:07

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

That's some impressive exploration, this will help us find potential raiding targets so stick around the voice chat or the steam group to hear our plans for hunting and raiding trips - we'll be doing at least one every weekend, including this one. Also I've finished the plan for the first gatehouse, attach bricks and mortar to it while I finish the town plan. Also have the start of a screenshot timelapse of our town as it gets turned into a deathtrap fortress:

Chodes

# ¿ Dec 13, 2014 23:07

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

Justin Tyme posted:

If skillgain is significantly higher, isn't it kind of an obvious choice to grind the poo poo out of archery? Back when I played archery was god-tier PVP since you could belt out severes like noone's business.

Yeah archery is fantastic in PvP and you gain it much faster now, and you still get regular fighting for each kill too. You can get to like 70 archery by killing maybe 10 trolls, and that will let you aim for the feet or the face. Everybody in the village needs to have a bow and arrows and at least like 50 archery skill

Ziggy Starfucker fucked around with this message at 01:34 on Dec 14, 2014

# ¿ Dec 14, 2014 01:27

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

Avocados posted:

So did they ever patch in the ability to shoot arrows from horses?

It looks like you can shoot from horses now - I tried it out on that last skirmish. One of our next big projects should be to build a big horse pasture and fill it with horses from the Horse Sea

# ¿ Dec 14, 2014 08:16

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

Biowarfare posted:

I have bad experience with wurm and it's triggering.

(rolf said i was grinding too fast or something and reset my stealing[?] skill to 0)

Yeah Rolf is paranoid about people running macros and has definitely banned or reset innocent accounts before. On the new server though, the skillgain is cranked up so high that macros are of marginal use, and people were getting 50 or 70 skill titles on their first day playing without attracting any suspicion from the GMs.

Also I've updated the OP to be more useful, feel free to provide suggestions on other stuff to add

# ¿ Dec 16, 2014 07:45

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

Justin Tyme posted:

Please tell me having like 4 dudes riding in a cart firing arrows like some sort of giant war chariot is an effective tactic.

We have used battlecarts before on hunting trips - they're not any more effective but it's easier to keep a hunting party together that way. I'm not sure if passengers can shoot arrows while riding on a cart, but they can while riding on a boat so I would assume it's possible. The driver of a cart cannot shoot though so the only real benefit to an archery battlecart is that it uses less horses and horse armor than having everyone mounted separately.

Werkwerk posted:

We found a silver vein in the new mine last night. Silver better than iron/steel for weapons/armor?

No, although I think you can make vanity chainmail from it. It's also needed for silver statuettes for priests (I just became a priest this morning, get online so I can give sermons for increased faith gain) and silver altars which give better rewards when you pray at them. Silver is also used to make pendulums which a priest can use to magically locate and track down other players.

Ziggy Starfucker fucked around with this message at 21:57 on Dec 16, 2014

# ¿ Dec 16, 2014 21:48

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

Piglet posted:

That's probably Serpentarius' handiwork from his horse mill in Nation of Grizzlam (on Independence). Someone has that shot I'm sure.

He still has an unhealthy hatred for horses with bad traits. Recently when a bunch of us moved to Xanadu (new giant server) and he had to start a new herd from scratch someone asked him for a couple of his rejects for pulling carts and stuff since they were too lazy to go out looking for horses in the wild. He took the time to lead two horses to the other guy's deed and then proceeded to kill and butcher them both right before his eyes.

edit: Oh, forgot to mention his deed is named "Dead Horses" on Xanadu.

How's Serpentarius doing these days? Haven't seen him in a while. Also, you should drop by the village on Challenge Server, even if it's only to give some advice on building layouts and obscure Wurm gotchas for the new features they've added recently.

Also, just got back from a successful excursion near Two Shores. We recovered one sailboat, looted one settlement, and murdered one nub with hammers. We were going over a Jenn-Kellon settlement that had already been raided and looted when a dude pops into local. I wanted to bail because we were shadowed earlier by a Jenn-Kellon hunting party of our same size, but Werkwerk spotted him very close by on a horse. I shot his mount out from under him and he ran into a nearby unlocked mine shaft filled with useful stuff. We found him idling in the mine, presumably after walking away from his keyboard because of a panic attack.

# ¿ Dec 17, 2014 07:51

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

Ziggy Starfucker posted:

We have used battlecarts before on hunting trips - they're not any more effective but it's easier to keep a hunting party together that way. I'm not sure if passengers can shoot arrows while riding on a cart, but they can while riding on a boat so I would assume it's possible. The driver of a cart cannot shoot though so the only real benefit to an archery battlecart is that it uses less horses and horse armor than having everyone mounted separately.

Actually I just discovered that the driver of a large cart can shoot a bow, so this could be a viable tactic. Also you can ride on a tamed crocodile through the water.

# ¿ Dec 17, 2014 22:51

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

Broand posted:

I haven't played this in a good long while. It's good to hear that the grind is reduced, I might hop on again. You guys got any positions vacant? I'm thinking dye maker/juice maker/happyhappy cult member.

We could use more priests, but they have a bunch of restrictions and it'll take you 8 days to get access to the good spells. There's no grinding involved in though. We always need archers, and we could use a skilled bowmaker to spam out some high quality willow longbows and shortbows. Another blacksmith would be great too, especially with all the new folks joining up recently.

# ¿ Dec 18, 2014 08:21

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

Got another combat report from last night. We assembled the largest raid force so far for our village and loaded everyone onto a knarr, which is basically a Viking longboat and one of the larger and faster boat types in this game. We scouted out a handful of semi-organized pubbies building a settlement not far from us and spent a few minutes rifling through their meager possessions - they claimed they had just started playing that day. We then started bashing our way into their iron mine with giant hammers but were interrupted by two more pubbies who rolled up on a sailboat and started lobbing arrows at us. We returned fire and quickly brought them down to half health before they turned the boat around and escaped. Next time we'll keep our own boat nearby for chasing. Then some unfamiliar pubbie starts swimming towards us while acting like he knew one of us - none of us knew who the hell he was so we started shooting at him too but I think he drowned before we killed him. We continued bashing into the mine but it was taking too long - we'll have to start using catapults and ballista now if we want to break into walled-off areas. We continued on to the "safe" public spawning point for the enemy Jenn-Kellon kingdom and terrorized the area a bit, but were unable to catch anyone out in the open. A few goons needed to leave at the point and the rest of us should have too, but we pressed on deeper into Jenn-Kellon territory to the settlement we looted last night. We looted a few more things and nearly killed another pubbie and then we found a lightly fortified village further inland surrounded by endless swarms of mobs and NPC guards. We bashed on their walls fruitlessly for a few minutes while monsters rushed at us from all sides, and then we got split up while returning the boat and lost a goon to a large mob train. So now we've found a few good soft targets to hit on the east coast of the map once we have some siege weapons ready, but we should probably look for stronger and wealthier targets elsewhere now that our village is getting larger and more developed. Alternatively we could just troll the spawn point by planting fake protest signs or automated turrets or something, given that we marauded through the area mostly unopposed for over 2 hours.

Ziggy Starfucker fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Dec 18, 2014

# ¿ Dec 18, 2014 17:45

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

The Second Battle of Chode Caliphate
I wasn't planning to get in a fight today, but today the fight came to us. About 16 heavily armed raiders from the Dateline NBC megatown rolled up to our village and started bashing down the outer walls while we rallied a handful of defenders to the parapets. An intense battle followed as we sniped them from fortified gatehouses, but many of our arrows were too low quality to pierce their extremely heavy armor, plus their chancellor was present with an incredibly overpowered undroppable cape that can be used to quickly and effectively bandage wounds an infinite number of times. At one point their chancellor was healing faster than I could injure him, and I was using high quality war arrows. Just before the outer wall was breached we pulled as many horses and supplies into the inner wall as possible, and I made the mistake of making one last horse grab right as the invaders poured into our village. This must have surprised them because I ran right past half of their force before they turned around pursued. I stumbled into the safety of another gatehouse with a sliver of health despite getting dogpiled by like 6-8 elite warriors. The invaders then started to bash down the inner wall as the rest of our defenders regrouped and reequipped for melee combat. Our allies sent a relief party but were unable to enter the inner wall because of an incorrect permissions setting, and they all died in a chaotic melee along with several goons as we attempted to assist them. After hiding and securing as many of our valuables as possible we made a last stand and were overwhelmed. The raiders drained our token and stole a large amount of useful stuff, but didn't clean us out or cause much infrastructure damage before leaving for another fight elsewhere. Overall it was a pretty fun battle despite the loss, and I know a few things we can do to improve our defenses and fight more effectively.

# ¿ Dec 20, 2014 07:25

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

Minor correction, the guys who raided us yesterday are in the default Mol-Rehan (MR). Their main competition right now is Dateline NBC, which is a player-made kingdom (PMK). We could form a PMK for the next map so we have all the special kingdom titles and the bullshit bandage-cape, but it costs like 100 euros. Also there's a massive political realignment going on right now with random skirmishes breaking out all over the place. Pretty interesting, will write up a big post about it when the dust settles.

Ziggy Starfucker fucked around with this message at 06:22 on Dec 21, 2014

# ¿ Dec 21, 2014 06:15

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

I'm negotiating a mutual defense pact with 3 different HOTS factions which all hate each others guts. This is going to be interesting.

# ¿ Dec 22, 2014 08:53

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

BERGfu posted:

I'm not going to be playing as much as before. I'm opening my house for newbies who don't want to build a hut but like want to make a bed or something. It might not even be there as I haven't check since the big raid.

Your house is still there - there was almost no property damage during the raid and there hasn't been any successful or even large-scale attacks on our village since. It looks the MR guys who raided us were just looking for kills, rare items and resources, and somebody to pick on a little. They're not actually on a scorched-earth policy or anything. And all the recent drama is finally bringing all the HOTS villages to the negotiating table.

# ¿ Dec 22, 2014 19:23

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

Alright now that things have settled here's a quick review of this goon village and all the political drama that went down at the end of it.

Political Factions

Horde of the Summoned (HOTS] - One of the three default kingdoms. Members of this kingdom have a different deity than the other two kingdoms, and may attack each other without penalty. During this scenario it was plagued by in-fighting and lack of inter-village cooperation.
Chode Caliphate - The goon village for this scenario. Part of the HOTS kingdom. Led by myself as Ratskull.
Black Summit - Originally the largest and strongest village in the HOTS kingdom. It soon lost several members due to poor leadership, and alienated several allies due to monopolizing the resource spawns. Led by Defiance.
Blacker Summit - A group that broke off from Black Summit because of disagreements with the leadership. Formed another village nearby in the HOTS kingdom. Led by Gorillas.
Sebastiano's Group - I don't know the name of this village, but they're mostly players from the other vanilla PvP servers. They were in the HOTS kingdom and were led by Sebastiano.
Mol-Rehan (MR) - One of the three default kingdoms. Intended by the developers to be a smaller kingdom made of elite and experienced players. Apparently well organized and relatively egalitarian. Their frequent raids managed to unite the feuding HOTS villages but also drove Chode Caliphate mostly out of the game.
Jenn-Kellon (JK) - One of the three default kingdoms. Intended by the developers to be the default kingdom with a large number of new and inexperienced players. During this scenario it was a complete non-entity, with only a few small villages that were quickly overrun, and a few unorganized hermits that were hunted by much stronger villages.
Dateline NBC - A player-made kingdom based off the JK kingdom template. Apparently very well organized and composed of a small number of experienced players from the vanilla PvP servers. Most members eventually split off to join the HOTS villages after a disagreement with their leadership.

The founding of Chode Caliphate
The Challenge Server went live on December 10th around 3PM CST after a few hours of delays. I set out alone to scout for a good village location on the southern coast of the main landmass and was ganked by members of Black Summit who apparently mistook me for a member of another kingdom. Between this and Black Summit's dumb recruitment thread I decided they would be poor allies, I mean seriously take a look at their ridiculous leadership position titles. I chose a small island near HOTS and JK territory with plentiful resources under the assumption that our island location and distance from MR would protect us from raiding parties for 1-2 weeks. I was soon joined by a few veterans of earlier goon villages, and we founded the village of Chode Caliphate on a low-lying patch of flat ground to reduce the amount of labor needed to terraform the village foundation.

The goon village gains momentum
We quickly discovered that the notorious Wurm grind was removed from Challenge Server, and the goon village grew to a height of about 15-20 active players and a total membership count of about 30-35 players. Each day our experienced veteran players were organizing multiple hunting trips and gank squads, and we hunted down the unorganized pubbies in the JK kingdom without fear of reprisal. We launched a successful gank-raid against the MR kingdom, but they quickly retaliated and looted our off-deed mine forge while most of our players were offline and our village defenses were only 1/4 complete. I expected that boats would not be available until the end of the first week, but both we and our rivals had them by the 3rd day, and our island location offered little protection against seaborne raiding parties. We also discovered that Black Summit had walled in the nearby resource spawns, but kept our distance - they were too antisocial to cooperate with, but too powerful to antagonize.

The HOTS kingdom splinters
After the first raid by MR against our village we relocated everything from our off-deed mine to the village center, constructed two rings of walls with fortified guardhouses on the corners, and continued to organize hunting parties and raids in the unprotected JK lands. Black Summit began to lose allies at this point, and several players split off to found Blacker Summit under the leadership of Gorillas. A second and much larger raid by MR on the 10th day of the scenario smashed through both of our walls, although we put up significant resistance and almost repelled them with help from Blacker Summit. The next day a massive drama bomb exploded in the HOTS kingdom as Gorillas went nuts and banished most of his players for currently unknown reasons. Most of them joined Chode Caliphate as a temporary measure, and we also started to recruit some of the JK chumps whom we had previously been hunting for fun and practice. For a day we were officially the capital of HOTS, and our village was full of activity as refugees forged new weapons and armor to replace everything they lost in the political realignment.

The HOTS kingdom reunites
Gorillas somehow managed to regain the trust and loyalty of his followers, and they left along with most of the JK refugees to reestablish their village. Sebastiano's group briefly joined our village but dropped back out just as quickly to focus more time and attention to their village on the vanilla PvP servers. Our village membership dropped down to about 10 active players with a handful of pubbie refugees from various other villages. By this point we realized that each HOTS village was full of egomaniac spergs who all believed they were the best PvPers in the game and were entitled to all the kingdom titles and resource spawns, and each HOTS village hated the others with a burning passion. The threat of MR raids made them desperate for allies however, and they grudgingly agreed to a mutual defense pact. The next time MR launched a raid against Black Summit they were repelled by a large force composed of members from each HOTS village, but they retreated and reorganized in more advantageous terrain nearby, and the disorganized HOTS forces launched a badly timed and executed follow-up attack that was completely wiped out.

The goon village disintegrates
Normally goon villages start to run out of steam by the 2nd week as players get sick of the grind, but in this case I think it was mostly fear of MR raids and the busy holiday season that drove our membership down. Weekdays have significantly fewer players than the weekends too, and so when MR launched their 3rd raid on December 23rd we only had a handful of defenders online. Previous MR raids left most of our equipment and fortifications intact, but this latest raid was scorched earth, and the MR players also abused an exploit with siege shields to prevent our defenders from leaving the village to counterattack. I disbanded the village and everyone still interested in PvP has joined Black Summit for now. I'm going to spend some more time on my IRL commitments while I wait for details on the next Challenge Server scenario, and if it's still free-to-play I'll negotiate an alliance with a different faction with less sperginess and infighting than HOTS.

# ¿ Dec 27, 2014 09:07

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

Turtlicious posted:

Is this F2P? Can I get good without paying?

The current scenario is F2P and Rolf is using a temporary hack to give every character on Challenge Server premium time for like the next century or something. We don't know if the next scenario will be F2P, and probably won't find out until January 2nd at the earliest. The current scenario also ends in like 13 days but that's more than enough time to get 70 fighting and archery skill and get involved in some large battles during the last two weekends of the scenario, if you don't mind fighting against an overwhelmingly strong alliance with tepid support from terrible spergy allies.

# ¿ Dec 28, 2014 22:29

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

Justin Tyme posted:

So is the server reset yet and still F2P?

Rolf is back from vacation now but hasn't said anything about anything yet except for some brief patch notes. I'm still waiting for more information before I do any substantial planning.

NZAmoeba posted:

Wait this game was made by Notch? I remember playing in Goondor and pre-Goondor days, holy poo poo.

How bitter is Rolf that he's not a billionaire?

Notch made the original client, then some volunteers and maybe Rolf did a crappy job of updating it for a few years after Notch left. About 2 years ago Rolf finally got a small team of paid developers and now progress has been pretty regular and a lot of good common-sense features have been added that should have been added in a long time ago. I haven't seen any bitter remarks by Rolf regarding Minecraft, but I like to imagine that Challenge Server is his way of admitting that Notch's approach to game design is better.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2015 03:30

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

NZAmoeba posted:

How bitter is Rolf that he's not a billionaire?

I did a little more research on the relationship between Rolf and Notch and found some interesting stuff in this book about the development history of Minecraft. Especially this quote from Rolf in a phone interview regarding Notch's success with Minecraft:

Rolf posted:

I am really glad that Markus has gotten rich. That comes from the heart. On the other hand, I'm not completely at peace with how it happened. I can't think of anything else to say

My understanding is that Rolf and Notch used to be really close but grew distant when Rolf co-opted more of the design process in Wurm, and then they moved to different cities, and then Notch left to make Minecraft. Notch is still apparently on Rolf's company board but has no actual creative control, and their relationship is strictly business now. So yeah he's kinda bitter for sure, but I think it's less out of jealousy and more out of a sense of being cheated somehow when they broke off to do their own things.

Justin Tyme posted:

Is the server not reset yet?

Don't fail me now Wurm goons I started playing this poo poo game again just for you

Rolf finally gave an update about Challenge today, mostly just announcing the winners, but also said he'll start a feedback thread on the Wurm forums, and announce the next scenario start date "asap". I'll link to that thread here once he posts it, and I recommend registering an account on the Wurm forums so we can all yell at Rolf to keep Challenge F2P until he fixes the bugs and the kingdom balance.

Ziggy Starfucker fucked around with this message at 18:31 on Jan 12, 2015

# ¿ Jan 12, 2015 18:27

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

The Challenge Server feedback thread is up now on the official Wurm forums. The Mol-Rehan guys we were fighting are all asking for Challenge to be pay-only, so it's important that we all get accounts on the Wurm forums and make these suggestions:

Keep Challenge free-to-play until it stays balanced for more than the first week
Either nerf kingdom titles/items or make player-made kingdoms cheaper so everyone can have access to them
Improve the map so it doesn't have steep slopes over most of the coastline, and make it easier to find exposed rock faces with iron ore

Ziggy Starfucker fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Jan 13, 2015

# ¿ Jan 13, 2015 17:53

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

Here's some more suggestions to copy and paste in the feedback thread:

code:

prevent horses from going into the water when not led
put less water on the map so horses don't wander in
fix the siege machine bugs
don't let people build or terraform the HOTA
newbie tools should be no-drop for the first 24 hours of play time
make newbie tools no-drop again
archery needs adamantium and glittersteel items too
siege shields should be planted instead of dropped

add more dry land to the map
the next map needs more exposed rock faces with ore
there was too much water on the last map
make the terrain less hilly
dirt layer needs to be smaller
put less water and more plateau-like mountains on the next map
starting locations should be more symetric
put starting locations in better defensive terrain
improve the map balance
keep the fast skillgain

keep challenge server F2P
don't make challenge server premium-only
the server should stay free for this next scenario
challenge server needs to stay free until the bugs are worked out
challenge still needs to be F2P for now

kingdom items and titles are too powerful
encourage players to fight in the HOTA and resource spawns instead of raiding villages
remove PMKs
get rid of kingdom titles
remove champion damage reduction
increase the shieldbash cooldown

# ¿ Jan 14, 2015 07:44

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

Amazing, it looks like the developers completely ignored all the poo poo suggestions on their forums and only made changes that would disrupt the status quo and help out newbies. This scenario is only going to run for 2 weeks unfortunately, but it seems like a good idea given how the last scenario was a forgone conclusion within 9 days. I'm guessing future scenarios will run longer and have less downtime if this one turns out to be successful. I've started up a ShoutWiki for the next scenario with a few guides, and I'll post a village plan and other useful information later. If you want access to the wiki, you'll need to create a ShoutWiki account and post the username in this thread so I can add you manually.

Also I'd like to hear some opinions on our choice of kingdom for this scenario. I think we should give Jenn-Kellon a shot - the kinds of players that will likely join Jenn-Kellon will give us less trouble than the members of any other kingdom, and they'll be easier to control if we want to organize a ghetto village of pubbie conscript allies or whatever. Also larger kingdoms will get more of an advantage now that everyone starts with 70 fighting skill. Here's a short list of the pros and cons to each kingdom:

Jenn-Kellon
Pros: Likely to be the largest kingdom; least likely to have players with massive egos
Cons: Probably will have the largest number of spy alts, clueless newbies, and rejects without a village

Mol-Rehan
Pros: Likely to be the most organized kingdom and have the most experienced players
Cons: Probably will have a lot of spergs with massive egos; has most of the players that raided us in the last scenario

Horde of the Summoned
Pros: Unique blacklighter magic and abilities; we can attack other kingdom members without penalty if they annoy us
Cons: Only one deity; probably will be completely full of spergs with DotA-level egos; probably will be the smallest kingdom

# ¿ Jan 30, 2015 18:24

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

Biowarfare posted:

also @ Ziggy Starfucker can i just host an actual wiki because i don't like looking at even more ads

I don't see any ads on ShoutWiki but I don't have any particular attachment to it either, if you can set up your own wiki with a better invitation system then I'll move all the guides over there instead.

# ¿ Jan 30, 2015 19:36

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

Biowarfare posted:

Are you in the steam chat?

Yeah I'll start idling there now so we can plan stuff out

# ¿ Jan 30, 2015 20:57

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

Justin Tyme posted:

Is it all fighting related skills (archery, fighting subskills, and weapons), or JUST fighting?

Looks like it's just overall fighting skill that starts at 70, all others will start at 21. Fortunately you can get 90 effective weapon and shield skills within 2 hours by AFKing in a suit of armor while a horse kicks you. Also you don't lose weapon and shield skills from dying in PvP, so you won't have to grind it again for the rest of the scenario. If we can set up a horse-kicking dojo quickly it might give us an advantage in early PvP fights.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2015 01:11

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

Justin Tyme posted:

So you'd parry and get weapon skill? I never considered parrying as a means to raise weapon skill, would you still parry when defending attacks if you weren't targeting the thing attacking you?

Yeah you'll get shield skill from blocking (shields are super important in mass PvP for when the entire enemy team targets you) and you'll get weapon skill from parrying. And you also gain fighting stance skill, although sometimes that gets bugged out and you have to switch to another horse. I'm writing up a guide on that on our new private wiki. You can request a wiki account from the signup page and I'll verify it later. Also I'll move everything over to a new thread in the MMO HMO soon, and I'm taking suggestions for thread tiles. I"m thinking maybe "Wurm Online - We will never add black people"

# ¿ Feb 2, 2015 00:03

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 07:43

Ziggy Starfucker: Jun 1, 2011; Pillbug

The Games forum is moving way too fast for this thread, so here's a new one in the MMO HMO:
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3698417

# ¿ Feb 2, 2015 19:06

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Wurm Online Challenge Server: free sandbox MMO with fast skills, full PvP