HugoCortell

My bad, I meant to say copper (though my goal is to make bronze). My highest reading of Cassiterite within a day's travel of my base has been "very poor" and I failed to find any Malachite at all. After reading in another post that going into caves and shafts is a death sentence unless you have good armour (I have no armour, and a very worn copper sword that I can't afford to replace), I decided to try digging straight down and prospecting using the proximity thing every X blocks. Half a pick later, the best I got was some useless quartz. Assuming that I'm just unusually unlucky, I'll stick to using my metal tools as little as possible to conserve them until my farm produces sufficient food so that I can go on much longer expeditions in search for deposits.

Since I suck at prospecting, I suppose I'll do a long trek to try and find a bronze deposit. Thank you for the heads-up.

Would it be a valid strategy to make a hole straight down every X blocks and as soon rock is reached, to use the prospecting pick on the density/precise search mode to try and locate surface deposits? I've had no luck whatsoever with veins so far, maybe I there are unmarked (without stones on top) surface deposits I can exploit near my base instead?

Yes, surface ones I think they were (the ones right under nuggets on the ground). I considered going cave diving, but found that for the most part it's just a great way to get myself killed for little more than some quartz or bismuth. I never found any copper in caves. Do you have any advice? I did try to use a prospecting pick, I admit that I don't understand it too well (triangulating stuff isn't something I'm too good at) but so far I've prospected about a quarter of the pick's durability and have yet to find any copper. It feels rather stressful to be in a race against time to locate another vein before my pick breaks and I get sent right back to the stone age.

Have ore vein sizes changed since you made this post? I've exhausted 4 entire underground veins and only just barely had enough for one pick, hammer, and anvil.

"Second Impressions" based on my subsequent play sessions today. This time without classifications or any order. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The tutorial seems to persist across worlds. I had planned to do it all over again in a new world to make sure I really got the basics down. I suggest that there should be the ability to re-take the tutorial, particularly since the UI prompts you to press a key to start the tutorial (but if you do, it just takes you to the "you're done, put down a torch to make this message go away" part of the tutorial. It might be nice to be able to set the starting weather. I like to explore right away instead of settling the spawn area, and starting in the rain kind of dampens that. This is a very minor thing, but a little bit of extra customization to let players tailor their own experience is always welcome. There were several instances where UI prompts of "press X + RMB to do thing" had blank spaces instead of a key. There was a bug where my map became empty if I pressed the buttons on the left side of the map, it was fixed by reloading the save. It would be nice to be able to tame foxes/wolves and send them out to hunt on my behalf. Go catch a rabbit for me! Rifts appear everywhere all the time. Every morning I wake up to a small army outside my door. Had I not randomly found a sword in a ruin, I am sure I would have died many times and gotten really frustrated. I think perhaps the surface drifter types should be limited by the passage of time or something to ease players in. I haven't even made my first pickaxe and I already need to somehow match up to the doomguy just to stay alive. Here is a picture of a rift literally on my front door, there were 3 or 4 more nearby. It's true that I'm not the most capable gamer, but it was a little offputting just how much I had to struggle constantly just to keep the monsters at bay. I'm talking 2-3 bowtorn, 2-3 shivers, and about a platoon of drifters. This has already been mentioned in many posts, but the world generation is really rugged and it makes exploration and finding a place to settle and develop quite hard (particularly since I think that making a mountain home is not possible since it counts as being underground). I installed the plains and valleys mod. I'd like to suggest that using the mouse to highlight the cog in the HUD should not just show your sanity percentage, but also the temporal stability. It's already represented visually by movement, so it feels like an oversight that it does not show as text when highlighted. It would be a nice accessibility addition. I noticed that the game would frequently put harvested items in my hotbar in spite of the fact that I already had a stack of that item in my inventory. Happened a lot with berries and mushrooms, wasting precious cargo space. I'm unsure if this is a bug. Animals should probably have telegraphing animations and sounds to inform the player that they are being targeted. Bears in particular. I was already told in a reply earlier that this will be improved in the future. None the less, I wanted to mention this. The game is lacking rivers, which is odd because there are boats. I guess they could be for ocean voyages? But that feels like a waste considering how valuable navigable rivers have historically been. I vaguely recall Adam Smith dedicating an entire chapter of The Wealth of Nations to talk about how disposable rafts carrying bulk cargo through navigable rivers are what makes civilizations possible. The waypoint icons not showing on the map was fixed after I installed some mods. I am unsure if it was just luck or if somehow a mod I installed fixed things. Writing in text chat should must make the player speak like it is animal crossing. This is of upmost importance. The game clearly needs this. It was meant to have this. While this is for a different engine, here is a video that can help inspire the game's implementation or whatever. It's imperative that the player's instrument pitch/tone noise roughly matches to the phonemes of the text so it creates an uncanny speaking effect. Update: The linked video isn't what I originally had in mind, but it seems to have gone missing from the internet. Regardless, the idea is the same. It would be a great UI/UX addition to make a small popup with an image of the stack and its size whenever you pick something up into your inventory. At the moment, the only way to check if I have collected enough of something during harvesting is to go into my inventory. It's not a big deal, but it could also be improved to give the player information as they need it. Below is a rendition of what that might look like. Like a little card that slides up from the basket icon, then slides back down, flashing only for a minute to let you know the current size of the stack of the item you just picked up. I really like the detail that beds are bouncy Historically, fishing has sustained entire civilizations, which is why I am shocked to find out that the game is lacking fish traps and that fish do not respawn. Considering how difficult winter is supposed to be in this game, it would be a really great addition to have fish as a small source of food during such a harsh season. Finally, I'd like to suggest a bit of a weird idea: A game demo which is fully featured (allowing prospecting players to fully experience the game and learn it to their heart's content) but with the world map being locked to a small (hand-crafted) island. Considering how pivotal world generation is to a survival game (and how this demo would lack story locations), I doubt it would harm sales, and it would probably make for a better "demo" (the classic edition) than the current one which is a really old build which does not represent the game and might give a bad impression to prospecting players. Playing this game reminded me of when I was a kid, endlessly re-playing game demos on an old macintosh, I think it would be nice to have a demo that acts as an alternative to piracy for customers that for one reason or another can't attain or afford the game. Of course, game demos are known to be bad for sales, so this suggestion is weak at most. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PS. I assume insulation matters for winter, I found a command to tell if the game recognizes my house as being an enclosed space or not, but I don't know what the colours mean. Is my house safe? Valheim was very permissive with what is considered "indoors" but I'm not sure if this game is too or not. Any way, that's all! From now on, I'll probably make separate suggestions for any future stuff (and potentially for some of the suggestions here so I can dedicate them a better explanation and argument). I hope that my suggestions, negative and positive experiences, and misc thoughts are of some use in understanding how a new player experiences the game.

Could be, I use Windows, which is a pretty bad operating system.

Thank you, @LadyWYT! You're right, I somehow missed the option. I'll certainly be playing in "Maximized Borderless" mode from now on. Updating this comment: It seems this does not remove the taskbar even after restarting the game. On my third play session, markers started working again for reasons unbeknownst to me. Though some bugs like the map sometimes turning black persist. I might make a bug report if I can reliably reproduce them. I agree, though I hope the aforementioned creature behaviour improvements will make their attacks and behaviours more for inexperienced players. Now, with a bit more experience, I am mostly doing fine through avoiding forests and figuring out how to outrun animals. Well, except for that one time that a bear and a bowtorn decided to gang up on me. I had hoped that wild animals would maul enemies, but instead they have decided that the enemy of the enemy is their friend. Oh, I look forward to that, and hopefully steam power too! As for the other replies I haven't quoted, thank you for them all! I didn't have anything in particular to say, except thank you for the information. I look forward to seeing the game's lore in detail for myself. Later tonight, I'll be making another post with "second impressions" (I guess?), mostly just feedback from my current play session. After that, this post will have served its purpose, as any further feedback wouldn't be from the perspective of fresh eyes.

Has this changed since? I found a ruined hut to settle, but there's two rifts near by. I was wondering if I should keep exploring, or try to settle it and hope the rifts disappear.

Hello, I bought the game today (a family pack no less, hoping this might be a great game to play with my siblings) and I wanted to share my first impressions of the game (playing alone). I know first impressions are usually considered valuable since developers can derive things to improve from them, so I'll be sharing mine. Throughout my 1-2 hour play session, I wrote down my thoughts as I went. I only had the better ruins mod installed, since I wanted to settle a ruin for a base. I'll be structuring this post from most to least valuable. Starting with outright suggestions which I consider sensible, though in general I prefer to share the problem or experience itself and let the reader decide for themselves what the solution to my problem may be or what I am trying to suggest. If a comment is in quotations, then that is [mostly] a straight copy and paste from my notes, which may be less professionally written but might better convey the immediate thoughts a player may have. In addition, here is a follow-up set of impressions/suggestions/etc from my subsequent play session. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Suggestions (& Bugs) It would be nice to be able to save world generation presets for future use. The UI button prompts are not entirely dynamic (assuming they are supposed to be). Both the tutorial and the world UI show control + right click for knapping, but I had re-binded the keys to swap the functions of control and shift, which did to reflect in the UI. There should be holstering functionality by selecting the currently selected item to de-select it. Which would be useful to avoid wasting tools on early resource collection. That is to say, if I have a spear in slot 3 and I am currently on slot 3, then pressing 3 on my keyboard should bring me back to my firsts. This one isn't a big deal, since I can just select a random junk item in my inventory, but I think it would make for a nice QoL addition. Support for windowed full-screen would be very welcome. Being able to click on my other monitor without the game minimizing would be nice, as would be being able to use an external recording or screenshot tool without the window freaking out. For what it's worth, the full-screen feels good. I've seen games that had full-screen implementations that put the fear of god into you whenever you alt-tabbed, this one isn't one of them. I think certain animals (wolves come to mind) should have a "cautious" state where they keep their distance and attack only if they see an opportunity. Smart animals like wolves would generally think twice about attacking an armed human or one holding a touch, unless they were either really desperate or had the numbers for it. I make this suggestion because in the early game it would be nice to keep wolves at bay with a touch, not necessarily being able to defeat them or trespass in their territory, but just be able to get started without constant harassment and the possibility of losing all progress. Positive Thoughts "I used the experimental immersive first person. It is AWESOME!" The weather effects are very impressive, I was surprised by how powerful distant thunder seemed. "The variety of instrument voices is a wonderful touch. Does it do like animal crossing and make noises when I type in chat? If not, it should!" Using screenshake for feedback in certain actions (like starting a fire) is very welcome, as it let me know that something was happening when I tried to start a fire in a pitch dark cave. Without it, I might have thought nothing was happening and given up. I'm unsure if this would be a problem for balance, but being able to sleep on the ground (or on a stack of dry grass) would be nice. I didn't have much to do during the first night except keeping the fire lit and getting killed by wolf packs. In the early game, when one is under equipped, I doubt inexperienced players will want to brave out the night. Knapping feels surprisingly good. I can hold down my mouse to avoid carpal tunnel, and I can cut away at the edges to avoid having to do every voxel. It feels like it respects my time, which I didn't expect from when I was first faced with the process. There is a button to select the last customization selection for a character, it would be nice to build on that by being able to save and load characters. Negative Thoughts "I closed the trader's first dialogue to open the tutorial. This caused two issues: 1. It flung my camera back, this is repeatable 2. It made me lose out on the initial dialogue now I won't know what he meant by 'you just woke up' " Point number one may be due to the immersive camera. Either way, it was weird for my character to physically do a 180 every time I closed the dialogue menu. "Waypoints do not work. I tried creating two, they show up as 0 and 1 on the text chat, but I don't see them on the map..." This seems to be a bug: "I was only able to see the waypoints after I respawned, probably a bug?" The game asked me to look for cat tails, but I spawned in a biome without them. While I knew where to search, it would be nice if the tutorial outright stated to seek out lakes with soil around them. I was killed by wolves, and then they guarded my corpse, which ended my play session. My starting location was awful (granite and gravel), so it made more sense to outright make a new world than to struggle on and re-make all my tools. I'm unsure if there is a solution here other than cheating, but being faced with either re-starting with a fresh world, or doing it all over again in the same world except the countdown to the next temporal storm is now closer (and it's nighttime) made the potentially un-fun choice of starting a new world the natural one, when it could have perhaps been more fun to live with my mistakes. To quote: "GOT KILLED BY THE SAME WOLVES! I guess my loot is lost, and with that, any attachment to that world. I don't want to start all over again from zero in a [bad] spawn like that AT NIGHT, [away with] that." Misc Thoughts "Are drifters supposed to be animals? They seem to be according to the hostility stuff." Perhaps they should be separated? "I think this game has mechanical power, I found a waterfall. Can I make a water wheel?" No. Which makes sense since it would be easy to cheat, but damn. "As a cave man, I went to put my fire in a cave to protect it from the rain. BAD IDEA!" This one is pointless, but I thought it would be funny to share. "I RESPAWNED AT NIGHT. AHH, HOW DO I SEE NOW? Wait, I have a... holy light? To protect me? Thanks jesus!?" Being bioluminescent is an admittedly crude but welcome solution to spawning in the pitch dark of night. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I lied when I said they were sorted in order of usefulness. I placed positive feedback (which offers a direction to develop in, but is otherwise much less valuable than negative feedback) above negative feedback to avoid this post feeling like I'm punching down on a game that I actually like. Right now, I'm about to start my second play session, I'll update this post with thoughts from it too (while denominating them as second play session comments). I hope this is of some marginal use to the developers. Wolves aside, I'm really enjoying myself so far. Kind regards, Hugo Cortell