a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building
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Never done, Sauerkraut or Stew or any food else other than the wheat based ones.
Oh yeah, sauerkraut! I've done stew many, many times, but making sauerkraut might as well be flying to Mars. I prefer to learn by watching others, so I try not to use crafting guides unless it's something I'm determined to make that round or have screwed up numerous times before. Sauerkraut and its various apparatus just magically appear in a town, I think.
I've been playing since March. Only 180 hours, which is barely anything compared to some of you (1300 hours!? Holy smokes, Morti!), but still, I consider myself very experienced. I'm not super efficient like some of the streamers I've seen, but I know how to do most things and I spend lots of time teaching other players.
However, there are a number of things I've never successfully done, or never tried in the first place:
- I've never actually killed a bear. I've shot one on a few occasions, but never have I landed three arrows in a single bear. Damned things always get me, even though I know to just stand on an object.
- I've never so much as made dye, much less dyed any clothing. Never really done any other "boiling stuff" activities, either: making paper, for example.
- I've never built a complete sheep pen of any kind. I've started a few and fixed dozens, but I've never built one from scratch.
- I've never crafted anything out of gold.
- If it was a new tech that came after the Casino Town days, I probably haven't done it. Paint, playing cards, rubber, pumps. I'd imagine this isn't that unusual.
Those of you with significant experience, what are some things you've still never done? Or do you tend to rush a new tech as soon as it's released?
It's a feature. Someone just *had* to suggest Jason implement special events.
Oh this is a really, really good idea. Crocks become like cisterns for food. They could take on a little label like the bowl of squash seeds does to indicate its contents. Maybe a crock could store like 8 bowls' worth of raw materials like wheat or picked beans, and maybe 12 or so of processed materials, like flour or soaked beans. I like that crocks, which are very inexpensive, would have more uses, like bowls.
If we ever get food spoilage, it'd make sense to have crocks of stored food go bad somewhat quickly if they're not stored in the right conditions: on a floor, in a cool biome, preferably in a room. Crocks would be easy enough to empty with bowls, but once they become a storage crock, they're immobile, to prevent griefers from running off with all of that stored labor.
Idk why but I feel like this would be a milestone update, similar to the big farm update.
Ah, yes, that's it then. But they must've been tossed *really* far out of view, because I never found either of them.
I lived a life today when I was a naked pseudo-eve exploring the new terrain, looking to stumble upon a better civ than the one I was born into. I wound up catching yellow fever like four times that life, and eventually died from it. Obviously when you get yellow fever you drop whatever item you were holding; however, two times I caught yellow fever while carrying a basket, and both time the basket straight up disappeared. No sign of it anywhere. The first time I thought it was dropped behind a tree or something, but the second time I was pretty well out in the open--that basket was *gone*.
Anyone else experienced this?
As far as iron sinks go, I find it odd there are no iron tools only steel. Perhaps another tier of tools that are in between stone and steel in durability? Raise the amount of iron, add in iron tools and up resources for steel tool production could be another sink that could work.
Cosign this. Or just make more steel tools or supplies necessary (pitchfork and nails have been suggested). There are many, many other things we can make out of steel. Steel wheels or axles for carts? Grills or other cooking tools that can be removed from a bed of coals? Lots of possibilities.
My favorite thought, which I started really investing into after seeing yellow fever, is a transferable epidemic. Large towns that don't create medicines run the risk of being wiped out no matter how much food they have sitting around. Tie it to food and animal husbandry and or maybe temperature. Having a "bad" diet of eating one thing your whole life, stepping on sheep poo all the time or being cold for long duration have a chance to make you ill, and that can be passed to others in proximity with a second but higher chance.
Edward Jenner developed the first smallpox vaccine after he noticed that milkmaids, who had been exposed to cowpox, seemed to be immune to smallpox. We have cows. (Also, we get the word vaccine from the latin word for cow, vacca.)
Next step could be hereditary immunity. A mom who goes through the trouble of immunizing herself can pass the immunity down to her children. Imagine the drama of unvaccinated newcomers from out of town arriving in your advanced civ.
Next step would be zombies, obviously.
Yes, just a simple list of current/weekly/monthly/all-time longest lines would be awesome. If I see there's a 50-gen lineage still active and I have a spare hour, I might jump in and hope to spawn into it.
I can see an argument against listing current/active longest lines in that it might artificially inspire folks to join in like I described above, but really it isn't so far removed from browsing through recent deaths.
CrazyEddie wrote:No one is going to use birth control even if Jason adds it, because it will always be easier to simply not feed your children.
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lets start from the point that most good moms who can sustain a family are working
there is no choice having a baby or not, and no punishment losing one
should reward certain actions and punish the ones who don't know this actionsthe babies could be malnourished, meaning they are smaller and weaker for longer
a good mom would be the one who keeps the baby ward, has good yum bonus and is full
i think overeating should be punished by having more babies, this is understandable action if you want a baby, a yum chain could further increase this behavior but would need a certain item/food which activates ityou should feed the baby often, keep it warm
not doing so the baby would have certain problems after birth, walking very slow, cant speak properly, his food bars disabled for a few minutes, but if you would keep it warm, and you got good yum, the kid would get a part of your yum bonus
so if a female would stand in fire, waiting a baby, surrounded by many types of food, could have a chance to raise a baby faster than one who cant control temperature and has no yum bonus
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This got me thinking: what if keeping your babies was incentivized by your hunger bar increasing in capacity the more you breastfeed? Note that your hunger bar would still empty a little each time you breastfed a baby, but what if it increased in capacity by one pip for every N times you fed a baby (or however you want to calculate it)? I remember when my wife was nursing our children she would eat practically all day and still be hungry. And when she ate, she ate, like, an entire pizza. Far, far more than she'd ever eat normally.
All I'm sayin' is that nursing mommas are making fuckin' FOOD with their BODIES and maybe the game should reward them a little for doing that.
I just spent 30 years of my life hauling back six iron for my camp. I didn't see a single vein. The town had pretty much collapsed by the time I returned with a second basket.
This isn't fun anymore.
Edit: It turns out I was in generation 9 and was apparently the first to forge an axe. I'd seen a steel hoe, but that was it. GENERATION NINE and just getting into steel tools.
Maybe I'm a bit biased as I remember the times when items didn't stack at all and the fact that we can now stack plates still makes me happy when I see it. Items stacking is the way forward and I hope we'll get more such options in the future. I really hope we'll get ability to stack mutton next or at least place it into basket.
This is unrelated but I'm imagining a group of prehistoric scientists diligently studying item stacking technology.
I'm all for improving the player experience--it *sucks* to die as an abandoned infant over and over and over again. But I think the answer to this is increasing the general skill of the player-base, not in substantially altering how many players get to be born to an individual mother.
As the playerbase skill increases, various dials can be turned to crank up the difficulty and thereby keep the playerbase engaged. Jason is already doing this - he's talked many times about "boiling the frog".
My thesis is that the playerbase skill just took a MASSIVE nose-dive, and the dials should be cranked down accordingly, QUICKLY, so as to retain as much of the new playerbase as possible.
THEN put the frog pot back on the stove.
Fair enough.
What if a system for harvesting ore from ponds or mud were implemented? Iron bacteria occurs naturally in some surface waters, and it's possible to harvest mud containing that oxidized iron and smelt it into tiny prills that can be forged. The Primitive Technology guy does that here: https://youtu.be/DyGLE0usN_I?t=298.
One way to think about the issue is this: spawning a baby that will be abandoned is functionally equivalent to not spawning the baby at all - except that it frustrates the spawned player and annoys and/or scares the mother's player, which means that it's strictly worse than not spawning at all.
This means you should want to tweak the spawns so that the kept-baby/abandoned-baby ratio is as large as possible. And if that means more Eve spawns, then so much the better.
An abandoned baby is in no way equivalent to no baby at all. Any baby represents the opportunity to eventually multiply your productivity and possibly extend your line; with each child, the mother has to decide whether the potential benefit of a productive child outweighs the risk in raising that child. If yes, she keeps it; if not, well, sorry BB. But if she *can* afford one and no baby ever comes because her birth rate is so low, she'll never get to make a decision in the first place. Tweaking Eve's birth rate makes a ton of assumptions about those who spawn as Eve. I've seen experienced players raise every baby they pop; granted, they don't exactly get to steel tools in one generation, but that was their decision to make.
I'm all for improving the player experience--it *sucks* to die as an abandoned infant over and over and over again. But I think the answer to this is increasing the general skill of the player-base, not in substantially altering how many players get to be born to an individual mother. For this, an age-free sandbox, maybe just as an optional "area" of the tutorial, would allow players to get that experience that will let them keep more babies when they spawn as Eve. That's been suggested here numerous times.
Even if I decide to skip axe, there is still seven iron ore I need to find. But skipping the axe would be crazy because that hatchet isn't going to last forever and it's a pain in the ass to gather those branches and keep the small fire alive.
You can't skip the axe. You need a butt log for the mallet to make planks.
Jason can compensate for this by dialing up the baby cooldown timer. That will create fewer spawns as unwanted baby #4 and more spawns as Eve. That is vastly more preferable for a new player. They may die soon as an Eve, but they'll at least be given an opportunity to explore and discover. If they spawn as an unwanted baby they can do literally nothing; all they will do is spend a minute or two waiting to die.
I'd even suggest tweaking the spawn algorithm to increase spawn frequency in established lineages and decrease it - dramatically! - in new lineages. Expose your new players to towns; even if there's increased baby pressure because of it, they will at least survive to early childhood because noob moms will feed them. And if towns collapse from the pressure, the new players will start to learn WHY the towns collapse (no berry maintenance! no branching out to other foods! no basic tech and tools!), and that learning experience is an important part of the game.
But even more important is decreasing the number of babies born to Eves. Noob Eves need a big, big break from baby pressures so that they can spend time exploring and learning about how to start camps. Right now if a noob spawns as Eve, they have a fighting chance to learn something and survive for a while; but when they get their first baby, they are basically doomed. Now is the ideal time to relieve that pressure, at least a little bit... Now, while the new players are flocking to your game.
You're getting there, I think. I remember as a new player being *so* frustrated by the sheer number of moms that would straight up abandon me. I'm doing far too much of that now, just out of necessity, when I spawn as eve. I apologize when I'm able, but I know I'm giving someone a bad experience. I also remember being so excited to spawn into a small town, because I knew I'd have a chance to survive long enough to actually play. These things are important for the long-term success of this game.
However, I have a couple of worries about dramatically increasing or decreasing spawn frequency depending on the age of the lineage: 1) Older lineages would experience (exponential?) growth, because the older the lineage gets, the more babies each mom has. Unless we start teaching moms to start outpost camps or to migrate far from their birthplace, even the most efficient cities would collapse from sheer numbers. And Jason has promised to continue "boiling the frog," so maintaining old lineages is only going to get more difficult. 2) Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't the current birth mechanics have a bias toward warm moms? The warmest moms are either clothed, established near a desert, working near a big, slow fire, or working on a floor or in a room, none of which are typical of early camps. So the bias toward older generations is already kind of built-in. 3) If babies born to eves drop off dramatically, I would assume that we'd get more and more lineages that end at gen 2 with just a few of unnamed babies--maybe one named girl. Sure, eves pop a lot of kids now, but the more kids an eve has, the greater chance she'll have of keeping at least one girl alive.
Your suggestion to simply increase eve spawns is a good one, as is tweaking the cooldown for eves and probably all moms, generally, at least until the initial Steam activity starts to plateau. For eves, maybe delaying the first birth until age 20, even without a cooldown, would improve the abandoned babies problem. Eve spawns at age 13 or 14, right? Give her a 6-7 minute head start to at least find a decent spot for her camp.
I agree with others in that I don't think it's very helpful to give blanket prohibitions on things like eating corn or putting a flat rock on the last fire. There will *always* be times when it makes sense to break those rules. I was just in a town that had a ton of fresh corn and not a single squash seed for miles. There's no chance that corn was going to turn into stew anytime soon, so you bet I ate some of it to up my food bonus (and, in one case, to survive). In the past, direct prohibitions made sense. If you drained a pond, that pond would never come back. I don't mean to pick on this example, but saying things like "never eat corn" just isn't at the same level. You can plant more corn. If you need to find more teosinte, you can find some.
Maybe a better way to ask the question of "commandments" is "What are the basic principles one should live by to ensure the survival of the bloodline?" I realize that not all of my suggestions rise to this level, either.
Those who've been playing for a long time will remember that in the early days there were a few lists of universal "laws" or commandments that players developed to be easily teachable in-game. Things like "never drain a pond," "only snare rabbits with babies," "only pick fruiting milkweed," etc. Those were pretty crucial to ensuring the survival of early towns, but eventually these became less relevant as different mechanics changed. An empty pond will now refill over time, for example, which wasn't the case early on. But it wasn't uncommon for a town to have a dedicated nursing mom who cared for all of the babies and shared those epithets with them between feedings.
Now that we have an influx of new players seemingly desperate for teachers, what are some new "laws" that match the current mechanics? How would you simplify them to ensure a mom can say them in one line of speech? How would you prioritize them?
To me, the most crucial things are, in this order:
1) Stay warm. Wastes less food.
2) Eat small foods when young.
3) Eat different foods when grown up.
4) Soil and water on languishing berries.
5) Tools break. Don't overuse them. (Especially important now with the iron nerf)
6) Name your babies.
What are yours?
Dodge, you say "items that can't be switched" so you're obviously aware of switching items, so this isn't directed at you. However, I see a teachable moment.
For any new players that might be reading, one very simple move that'll make your play more efficient is to swap a held item with an a non-container item on the ground or in a container. To do that, right-click on the item desired item while you're holding something. This swaps your held item for the item on the ground, and you don't have to seek out an empty tile to put down your held item. This is super useful all the time, but practically essential for making fires, forging, and baking--anything that requires precise, timed movements.
Note that Dodge's original concern is with picking a gooseberry *off of a bush* which requires you to put down any held item. The right-click move won't work.
One way I learned to play was, when I spawned as a guy, I left town as soon as I could and practiced setting up a camp and surviving without the pressure of babies popping out ever minute.
This is a really good suggestion. I wouldn't limit it just to boys, either. As soon as you're big enough to carry a basket, strike out on your own. If you're a girl, you'll have plenty of time to find an ideal spot before you start popping babies. Splitting up a lineage geographically is a great strategy for ensuring lineage survival--a famine or griefer in one location won't kill out the line entirely.
Hey! That's my village from last night. I'm assuming you were Benjamin? I was your mom.
Lets see how long you can keep up this positive attitude of teaching new players without them destroying everything.
I've been patiently and enthusiastically teaching anyone who'll listen since March, friend. It never went away. I'm just glad there are many more opportunities to teach again. Even if they "destroy everything" this time, I like to think that by being patient and teaching them, I can forestall disaster in their next life. You were new once. You destroyed everything for someone--maybe many someones.
Oh man I am so happy about the Steam release. So many CLUELESS new players to teach, and there's hardly ever a guarantee of spawning into a comfortable life anymore. Things were getting far too comfortable post-Donkey Town and pre-Steam. I'm so looking forward to my work and teaching to actually mean something again.
Yes, the game has been far too predictable since the Donkey Town update. I think with the lineage ban fix, once a griefer is killed off, we can at least feel like we accomplished something lasting instead of postponing the inevitable.
Man, you're taking a lot of shit lately in the forums for the iron nerf, but I am so glad I found this game and I so appreciate your work and the careful thought you seem to give to every decision you make, even when it's pretty predictable that those decisions will be unpopular. You stick to your vision, and I so respect that.
As a note, I haven't played games of any kind (console, PC, etc.) since college, more than 10 years ago. I doubt I'll get into other games, but when Jason Kottke shared this on his blog, it was an insta-buy. I suspect you'll have tons of success with the Steam release, and good on you for considering the new players w/r/t Donkey Town.
what food you should make:
you need baskets? you can go out and get from swamps just make sure you dig out the stumps for adobe or they get lost anyway
each basket made this way can hold the adobe produced so you can get 2 baskets full of adobe and 3 other things in third basket, and the shovel in the cart
Wait you can DIG reed stumps and get adobe? I've been playing since frigging March and didn't know you can dig reed stumps? Was this an update, or has it always been this way? Omg all of the adobe I've left in the ground and all the additional baskets I could've made.
