advice Suggestion for New Players

[Rowan14]

Hello everyone, first forum post.
After having bought the game just recently I was having a hard time in the start, even after managing to get the hang of the hunger system I was constantly being ambushed by random wolves and bears, one time even while being inside a trader wagon and a bear just mauled me the minute I stepped out.

After fighting the urge to request a refund I did some looking around in forum guides (trying to stay spoiler free) and I changed just one thing in world customization: Increased my starting health.

Now i'm 4 hours in a new world and just made my first copper tool and i'm quite intrigued by what's to come.

This one change negates the frustration from being 360 no scoped by a wolf that you never heard or saw, while not removing any of the difficulty or danger.

Highly recommend this to new players!

[Jackal Black]

There are those who increase health, and those who increase the speed of movement in order to be faster in escaping wolves and bears.
There are those who avoid wooded areas at the beginning, and those who don't dare to go where they can't see clearly beyond 20 blocks. (so avoid areas with tall grass, dunes or too many bushes.
No matter how you decide to play the game, everyone has their own style and cross choices.
This is the game, it doesn't want to be a clone of the other game which is objectively too simple, it wants to be a continuous challenge and something that always gives you a reason to pay attention to where you go and what you do

For example, I prefer the almost vanilla, i.e. I don't touch the difficulty of the game, I don't increase my hp or even my running speed. I have some mods that add content, such as additional dungeons, improved Ruins, the one that adds pottery, in short, all stuff that adds things but that doesn't make me crazy or that are too unbalanced in short. But this is me,
After the first two runs I learned to handle Bears and Wolves and I'm not usually a runaway but a fight, but over time I've learned to avoid them in the early stages.
For example, many do not know that bears swim in the water for a while and die from drowning, so you just need to walk along large lakes and if a bear gets angry, run away into the water (please, it must be at least 2 blocks deep!) and swim in a circle making him follow you (the character swims faster than both wolves and bears, but on land they are faster than you always remember this!) until the bear starts taking damage because he is slowly drowning, it takes a while based on how many HP they have, realize that Bruno the bear has a lot of hp and it takes a really long time. But it's a safe way to kill them easy with minimal effort
Over time, you too will get the hang of it and start handling them better without resorting to HP bonuses or escaping with speed bonuses
Then oh well everyone has to play the way he wants, but don't mistake VS for MC, even if they have the "graphics" and the block system in common, they are totally different titles

[Thorfinn]

1 hour ago, Jackal Black said:

I'm not usually a runaway but a fight...

Oh, I am. Permadeath makes me a chicken.

1 hour ago, Jackal Black said:

bears swim in the water for a while and die from drowning

Is that still true? I thought that was patched.

1 hour ago, Jackal Black said:

on land [bears and wolves] are faster than you

I don't think that's still the case, though at one time I thought I was sure it was. They may both be faster on the straight and flat, I don't know, but where you can outpace them is dodging around blocks and timing your jump properly when ascending slopes. Watching them, I'm pretty sure they both run into the block, stop, go around or up, start again. I kind of wonder if their pathing has trouble if you are out of sight, too. For whatever reason, it's not too hard to give them the slip by bobbing and weaving through trees.

3 hours ago, Rowen14 said:

I changed just one thing in world customization: Increased my starting health.

I have to agree that's a pretty good one to tweak. It doesn't do much to change gameplay, other than give you some margin of error.

3 hours ago, Rowen14 said:

Now i'm 4 hours in a new world and just made my first copper tool and i'm quite intrigued by what's to come.

Holy cow, how did you do that? I've never built a copper tool that fast. Found one, sure, but never made one.

I know it's possible to find enough coal and copper nuggets by then, but how did you get the crucible and mold? Lucky drops from cracked vessels, or panning? Or is it a ruins find or something?

[Rowan14]

6 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

Holy cow, how did you do that? I've never built a copper tool that fast. Found one, sure, but never made one.

I know it's possible to find enough coal and copper nuggets by then, but how did you get the crucible and mold? Lucky drops from cracked vessels, or panning? Or is it a ruins find or something?

Found Blue Clay on the surface and a lucky amount of Malachite Bits. Didn't think it to be such a rare find but now that you've made this comment i'm starting to think it might've been

[Jackal Black]

7 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

Oh, I am. Permadeath makes me a chicken.

 

Ah no, I still have never played permadeath, realize that I still die like a chicken in the stupidest ways like death by cold, death by hunger, dead buried alive in a mine, dead by lightning, dead by fire at home, died of flights in caves covered by a light slab of sand, died of cold etc..
 

7 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

Is that still true? I thought that was patched.

I also remembered that they had to patch this bear thing, yet it still works today, and I say thank goodness now, because it is the only smart way that allows you to kill them in game without running too many risks, of course you can always do the infamous pillar from 4 blocks too. But I think taking a bath every now and then is useful

7 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

I don't think that's still the case, though at one time I thought I was sure it was. They may both be faster on the straight and flat, I don't know, but where you can outpace them is dodging around blocks and timing your jump properly when ascending slopes. Watching them, I'm pretty sure they both run into the block, stop, go around or up, start again. I kind of wonder if their pathing has trouble if you are out of sight, too. For whatever reason, it's not too hard to give them the slip by bobbing and weaving through trees.

look I did tests on a generally flat world, and actually running they are much faster, also I remind you that when they leap forward (I discovered that the bear is worse than a cricket! O.o) they also gain too much ground.
Then maybe in the slalom between trees their AI is actually not the best, but both going up and going down the blocks didn't seem so much to me (slow) but that's just my impression
Surely if I feel like a bear chasing me or wolves I won't turn around to see if they can climb the blocks.
At the very least I cry and run like a child, I run to the base, I shut myself inside, I put myself in a corner and pray to San Gennaro to let that nightmare pass

[Thorfinn]

8 hours ago, Rowen14 said:

Found Blue Clay on the surface and a lucky amount of Malachite Bits. Didn't think it to be such a rare find but now that you've made this comment i'm starting to think it might've been

Oh, you mean 4 real-life hours, not 4 in-game hours. My mistake. Even if you use coal to fire the blue clay, that takes a minimum of 12 in-game hours. I just could not see how you could accomplish that by noon of day 1 without getting at least a crucible and mold as loot. Malachite? Are you in limestone? Be sure to mark the spot. I frequently find Bountiful copper in limestone under malachite bits. Not sure whether I've seen Bountiful anywhere else. Must have, but nothing comes to mind.

@Jackal Black I just meant that I run from everything except rabbits and sometimes chickens. 

I, too, tested speeds in a world made in creative and switched to survival so I could run backwards and watch what happened. You can figure out how to time your jink to avoid the rush, but it is inapplicable to a real game, because running backwards, you cannot avoid the bushes, trees, slopes, etc. that stop you and allow the critter to catch up. So in-game, you just have to trust that if you execute well, you are making headway, then turn around at the top of slopes to watch their movement patterns to figure out their weaknesses. Bears are particularly easy to lose in thicker bush tree cover because while you change your path slightly to get through, they have to slow down to crawl over bushes, and there are a lot of places that are too narrow for them to navigate at all.

[Locklear]

On 6/15/2023 at 4:13 PM, Rowen14 said:

Hello everyone, first forum post.
After having bought the game just recently I was having a hard time in the start, even after managing to get the hang of the hunger system I was constantly being ambushed by random wolves and bears, one time even while being inside a trader wagon and a bear just mauled me the minute I stepped out.

After fighting the urge to request a refund I did some looking around in forum guides (trying to stay spoiler free) and I changed just one thing in world customization: Increased my starting health.

Now i'm 4 hours in a new world and just made my first copper tool and i'm quite intrigued by what's to come.

This one change negates the frustration from being 360 no scoped by a wolf that you never heard or saw, while not removing any of the difficulty or danger.

Highly recommend this to new players!

It is very interesting to me how much things can vary starting out.  In my current main world, I pretty much have no dangerous animals.  Maybe the occasional wolf but, rarely.  It does sound exciting to plan for expeditions to unknown lands with dangerous creatures!

[Maelstrom]

On 6/17/2023 at 4:32 PM, Locklear said:

 It does sound exciting to plan for expeditions to unknown lands with dangerous creatures!

Especially when those unknown lands are below your home!