Lee Hammock's page

Not everything in the game currently is something that a single character, or even a single group, of max XP can take. We want to have both aspirational critters in there, and to provide threats that really big groups of players can try and tackle. Without these sorts of AI changes higher tier monsters would never be a threat.

On watching the video it looks like no one was getting Opportunity for movement, just using feats/items/etc. That is obviously a bug. If anyone else runs into that sort of situation please let us know as this could be very difficult to track down.

We are currently discussing plans to take settlements that don't have anyone in them after the first couple of months of EE and redistributing them to interested parties that have the strength to hold them. There are lots of particulars to figure out, and we will warn settlements in danger of getting reassigned before it happens.

Please submit shrines where this happens as a bug and we'll get them sorted. With hundreds of shrines we've tried to keep them all clear, but with such a large area of procedurally based terrain we have missed some.

To give the people all the information from the relevant posts on the Goblinworks forums:

Just to warn people there are some loot changes on the next update:

1. The tutorial goblins will no longer drop any loot of any kind.
2. No low level monsters will drop armor. The weapon drops will continue for the short term but will likely be ending in a few weeks as well.

So stockpile your +0 tier 1 gear so you can sell it to the people who come later.

To add some transparency to this, as several folks said, this is a change that designers can make without using programming resources. Designers cannot fix desynching, floating nodes, aggro issues, etc. We can only use the tools that already exist, and those tools include the drop tables. Us working on this in no way conflicts or impedes with other work getting done on the game. They are two completely different resource pools.

Now, as to why we want to make this change:
1. Farming the tutorial goblins is way, way to easy and we don't have a way to make them harder without taking up non-design resources or defeating the purpose of them being tutorial monsters. Also we don't want people standing around in town farming them as that just adds to server loads in starter towns, which are already going to be heavy population areas.
2. Right now the number of +0 tier 1 gear in the game is very, very high. Check out the threads where people post what they got for killing some number of hundreds of goblins and you'll see that all tier 1 +0 gear has effectively become trash loot. The encumbrance value of items can get ridiculous, so people are just destroying them. In my own experience on my non-cheater character I get actively annoyed with all the armor drops.
3. We have no economy for +0 items. People make them, they have to for achievements, but there's no reason to buy or sell them.
4. In the experience of the design team thus far by the time we've been killed enough to be near losing our starter gear we're really needing that +1 gear.

Also we are modifying the quests in the starter towns that previously gave you shortbows, focuses, etc, to give you a basic set of tier +0 gear for a given class if you buy some skills associated for that class. So the quest NPC who previously gave you a shortbow if you talked to him twice will give you a shortbow, light armor, and rogue kit if you go buy the proficiencies for all three. So players will be able to get a set of starter gear, and one tailed to their class, but not an infinite number of them.

This heart makes my little designer heart go pitter patter. Go players, trade like the wind!

Hey guys, just to let everyone know we are all keeping an eye on the thread.

A thing to keep in mind is the current list of achievements is not intended to be all the achievements in the game; we want to have healing achievements, saving people from bleeding out achievements, wizard kill achievements based on wand or staff type, etc. Problem is right now we have no tech for detecting when these things happen, so yes while we would like to get more achievements in for clerics (and wizards), we have to balance it against things like getting achievement points showing up on your character sheet, making Attacker flag functionality clearer, PvP looting, etc. It's always a trade off.

So, uh, I went ahead and right-clicked mine already. Is that a problem?

You just can't get them until anew until we fix the issue. If you already have them you still have them, or if you have not used yours yet it will be available once we get the fix in.

There is an issue with new player and role/class packs currently such that we have disabled them to avoid further problems. They will be available again as soon as we get a fix for the problem.

Actually you guys are right, I misunderstood something Paul said a long time ago, it is a flat count. So if you harvest a forester node, another forester node shows up.

When I did the testing I tried to gather every node in sight - no matter if sparks or middens or plants and I tried deliberately not to prefer certain ones.

I also gathered until I had >30 of the most prevalent node.

Now here is the question that is rightly asked:

Hex x has
2000 pine
3000 herbs
1000 ore
250 gems
2500 Essence

Will the nodes be distributed 4:1:2 ?

What happens if middens are collected most? Will the distribution of nodes shift - and how?

Algorithm 1:
A new node is spawned relative to abundance - so if a midden node was picked and 2 resources taken this would be 5000:1248:2500

This would lead to certain nodes become less common.

Algorithm 1b:
Varient of 1) A new node is spawned relative to max abundance - so if a midden node was picked a new node would be spawned in the ratio 4:1:2

This would lead to certain nodes become less common.

Algorithm 2:
A midden node is picke - a new midden node is spawned

This would keep the abundance of different nodes the same,

When I checked the swamp I tried deliberately not to have an effect of nodes by preferring certain ones. But off course I can't rule out others doing so.

Algorithm 1 will drive distribution slowly back to the ratios as it becomes more and more difficult to pick node type A.

Algorithm 2 will avoid this problem but will make it more easy to completely take out one node type.

I can't say what is better.

The way the system works currently is there is a set of relative weights for each terrain type. Whenever a node is spawned, those relative weights are used to figure out what type of node it is. For example, is a terrain type had 40 geology node, 30 forester node, and 30 essence node, nodes spawned in those hexes will have a 40% chance of being a geology node, 30# change to be a forester node , etc. I can technically make as many terrain types as I want, so each hex could technically be it's own terrain type with custom numbers, but running custom numbers of resource types for each is enough world already.

This does create a problem where if someone comes through and harvests, say, all the geology nodes in the above example and left the rest, when the hex gets back up to it's full allotment of nodes it would be 16 geology nodes, 42 forester nodes, and 42 essence nodes. If the geology cherry picking continued, this would only get worse. So we know this is a problem in some sense, but not a huge one so it's low priority to fix.

Thanks for all the info! This is a super useful thread.

Would it break any assumptions if the chance to get wood or herbs were weighted by the "value" remaining, rather than the number of units remaining?

Maybe? I'll have to do a lot of math on that.

In any case it's a sufficient enough change where it can't be done without programming support so it's going to take a good while if it does work out.

So I stated something without going into the math behind it that has caused some confusion.

The total number of resources available at system start (and the max availble if it regens to full) are the above numbers.

Those numbers times the value of each resource and the results addede together are the total value found in the hex. So the value of esoteric essence*2666 plus the value of Laurel Leaves*1500, etc. That total value/1000=330. That's the metric I use to figure out how much stuff goes in a hex (and so wilderness hexes have a total value of around 673000 and monster hexes have a total value around twenty times that). So each NPC hex has approximately 330000 "value units" of items in it. This usually means 4000-8000 actual items in the hex, but this various widely.

2Stephen - you said that you aimed for 1% regrowth / 15 minutes. Do you allow >1 pine (iron, coal) to regenerate in a 15 minute timeframe? Otherwise it is still capped at 96 (92) per day and this is the amound a single player might gather.

Currently everything regens at 1% of full value with no cap every 15 minutes.

The core problem that people seem to be running into I think is caused by the relatively low value of herbs and how spread out wood is in the game.

So each resource in the game has a "value" when used in crafting recipes. We use the same value to figure out how many resources should be in a hex. For example, the total value of (a given resource)X(that resource value) for all the resources in an NPC hex is 330, while for a wilderness hex it is 674 (and much higher for a monster hex). A single piece of wood has a value generally 4-6 times higher than a single herb, so if a hex had an equal total value of herbs and an equal total value of wood, there would be a lot more herbs than wood in that hex.

Secondarily, there are far fewer varieties of wood in the game than herbs so they are spread over a larger area. Effectively half the Woodland hexes in the game drop Pine, and the other half Yew; this means the total value of Pine and Yew have be split up among half of the Woodland hexes each if we want wood to be found in every Woodlands hex. On the other hand, Comfrey Leaves are only found in a region or two, and so have much higher concentrations in those areas. We could change up and say wood is only found in some limited subset of forests, but that seems counter intuitive and puts a big bottleneck on controlling the wood supply.

It could be we have underestimated the total demand for wood in the game. These numbers have been continually adjusted, and probably will forever. That said, even if we doubled the amount of wood in the game, it would not mean you get a majority of wood each time you harvest a plant node.

To give everyone an idea of the ratings for hexes, here is the ratings for an NPC hex near Thornkeep (5.4 for those who care). This is relatively neutral territory that no one can control, so I don't feel bad posting it, but this is not going to be a regular thing. I'm not posting stats for any wilderness or monster hexes. Note this hex has a wider than normal cross section of resources for a Woodlands hex due to needing to get a lot of things into the hands of new players.

Esoteric Essence: 2666
Laurel Leaves: 1500
Dragoon Leaves: 550
Bloodstone: 203
Moonstone: 100
Onyx: 300
Coal: 800
Hemp: 250
Wool: 380
Animal Pelt: 210
Beast Pelt: 200
yew Sapling: 650
Pine Log: 1200

So if you were to go up to a Forester hex you would have a 650/3900 chance of getting yew, a 1200/3900 chance of getting pine, etc. These numbers change as the ratings change. Every 15 minutes there is a chance equal to (current value/original value) that the resource will increase an amount equal to 1% of it's full value. So if Pine was harvested down to 960, there would be an 80% chance of restoring 12 points on the next 15 minute check.

Thanks for the info!

If you are specifically looking for wood some areas have more wood in proportion to herbs than others, so it's a good idea to move around across a wide area. For example, if you go more to the northern center of the map you'll likely find more wood.

There aren't hills in the NE to speak of aside from one hex near the old Ossian's Crossing location. If you want coal, the NW corner is the place to go.

The coal did not move in the most recent update and most of it remains in the hills. Some other things did get moved around, so there may be more of other things in the hills so coal may drop less often due to relative drop weights, but the majority of the coal is still in them thar hills.

On the next update the beast and monster pelts will have increased their drop rates from nodes, as will adhesives. They will be found in all the same places they are already found. I increased the amount found in the game overall of both item types by 40%, so we'll see how much that ends up changing.

I'm still eyeing increasing the amount of blue stocks coming into game via nodes.

Actually something went wrong with the reset and it did not take. We're looking into it.

Ermmmm, one possible monkeywrench to at least part of your plans: we zeroed out the escalation cycles on the server reset this morning so we could see them spread with the new math. If any of them get back up to 100% by tonight, we'll have known something has gone horribly, horribly wrong, but most likely you won't have high end escalation cycles to beat on. Sorry!

Will resources at some point be tied to the proper in game object ie pine from pine trees oak from oak trees? Obviously not important just wondering if theres a pl;an to do that at some point.

Maybe someday, but we have a lot of higher priority things on the list (the harvesting/gusher system being the big crafting one).

I posted this on the Alpha forums, but also figured I would post this here:

So the resource numbers have settled down for a bit now and I was again curious what folks are finding not enough of, too much of, etc. Note I am not really concerned with things you have to walk a bit to find, such as coal or gold, but more when people can't find a given resource at all.

Also are there hexes where certain node types feel too prevalent? Are there not enough scavenging nodes in woodland hexes, or too many in the cropland hexes?

We are looking at scaling up the base level a PC settlement has to be the same as an NPC settlement, but scaling down the bonus each tower gives. The p[lan right now is to change it to starting at level 7 (which is what NPC settlements do) and adding a third of a level for each tower. So you'll be level 9 if you take the six towers around your settlement, etc.

Actually the fix I outlined ended up being pretty simple to get in, so it should be in on the next update.

As Stephen said yesterday, you spoke the language of my people: math. The arcane language of math is the best way to summon an GW game designer, especially when your math points out problems in our math. So thanks for the math. It was good math.

Hey guys

First off some info:

1. Starting value and max value are the same, so if a hex has Gold at 200 it starts at 200 and never goes above it.

2. I have target numbers of resources for the whole game that vary according to how the project demand is for that resource. For example, the projected demand for iron is such that the total iron value for all hexes is 343,152, while the project demand for gold is such that the total gold value for all hexes is 33,383. This is because the projected demand for iron far, far outstrips the demand for gold. The only things that come close to the demand for iron is coal and wool.

3. Mountains Ranges and what they should have:
Splinter Peaks (Near Callambea and Freevale): Iron, Silver, Lodestone
Northern Thorncrags (Near Golgotha): Copper in the northern end, Gold at the southern end, Iron
Southern Thorncrags (Phaeros and Brighthaven): Iron, Gold, Londestone
Southern Echo Peaks (Forgehelm): Iron, SIlver, Lodestone

I agree with Thod there is a problem with the long term harvesting of resources in that if you have two resources with differing values the lower ranked one will come to dominate more than it should. The current fix I'm working with as it is simplest (at this stage on the game programmer time is incredibly rare so I have to do the simplest implementation if I expect it to get done any time soon) fix I've got so far is changing the rate of increase to 1% of original value (which mirrors some of Thod's math, using 1% instead of DV15 in his original equations I believe which was close to 1% to begin with). Long termWe may be able to do something more complicated, and this may not make it into EE so we may do a fix shortly after EE starts and do a resource reboot, but we'll see how things shake out.

Lee Hammock wrote:

At that point best case scenarion you're getting 7-20 resources, one per type, every fifteen minutes. Or you could go to a hex that is not mined out and get a lot more a lot faster.

Gotcha. So how would we tell at a glace? I'm walkin' through a hex and I start to mine, what should I see in an hour of mining in a good hex vs a stripped one?

And how does my rank work into depletion? Just a greater chance to take more from the hex in one node vs going to several nodes? How do the Tiers factor into ranks?

Oh and what if I see a resource and decide not to take it, does that avoid the depletion?

Eventually you will be able to get resource information from the world map, at least about the hex you are in or neighboring hexes.

Currently your rank does not affect resource depletion except that higher ranking gatherers will deplete hexes faster and you need them to get higher tier items. You need level 7 skills to harvest tier 2 resources and level 14 to harvest tier 3.

Once you open a node the depletion check is run. If you choose not to take it, the numbers have already been decreased. I'd like to change this at some point, but it's a minor thing overall.

Lee Hammock wrote:

Anything reduced to 0 or a negative number automatically increases by 1 each 15 minute check. The negative number thing comes up if you happen to get a lot of items out of a node, and once we get the harvesting/gusher system online.

So if the fastest a resource will ever replenish is 1 every 15 minutes, and if you can get it to 0 it will automatically replenish then what is the harm in stripping every possible resource? I'm not following the advantage to leaving a hex alone. Even if it's only a 1% chance that the number will grow by 1 there's still a resource available to harvest.

At that point best case scenarion you're getting 7-20 resources, one per type, every fifteen minutes. Or you could go to a hex that is not mined out and get a lot more a lot faster.

On a side note, the system as described provides no way for a resource at zero to replenish; is that intended?

Anything reduced to 0 or a negative number automatically increases by 1 each 15 minute check. The negative number thing comes up if you happen to get a lot of items out of a node, and once we get the harvesting/gusher system online.

I actually found some use for Belladonna berries in a low level alchemy mixture, but I dont recall wich it was. I rememer it because I had left a heap of them in my Alderwag Vault and wished I hadn't.

Very interesting with the resource info. So there is no actual environment parameter? So all nodes within a hex is the same independent of the location such as river bed, glade or roadside. Is there any plans for a future environmental distribution, like making gold more commonly found in riverbeds mineral nodes than in mineral nodes spawned on roads...

We have a plan to go to a placed node system rather than the pure random system we have currently, which would fix a lot of the nodes in weird places issues we have now. With such a change we could make them more location relevant, but that project is a ways off as it is a lot of work.

So, in order to maintain maximum resource ratings, we shouldn't harvest more than 72 units of a particular resource per hex per day.

That seems really low, as I can clear that in around an hour with just one character. I'm foreseeing a lot of depleted hexes in our near future....

96 per day technically, but your point is still valid. Expecting to do all your harvesting next door to your settlement is not going to be effective in the long term. People should go to the frontiers to really find large supplies of items.

An important distinction to keep in mind: I said that gold could only be mined in the Southern Thorncrags. I did not say it could not be scavenged elsewhere. Same with silver and copper.

And it is supposed to be Thorncrags...because I think it sounds better.

Forgehelm is in the Southern Echo Peaks.

The hills in the NW of the map have approximately 55% of the coal in the game. So in 60 hexes out of 900, you have half of all of a major resource in the game. Plus 50% of the bloodstone, 70% of the brimstone and juniper berries, 66% of the cinnabar, 90% of the saltpeter, and all of the parafin wax, quicklime, aqua mortis, and aqua fortis in the game.

All of the resources in the game show up where they do not just because of terrain and region, but also projected demand. We have a bunch of spreadsheets to try and figure out how much of each resource players will want, and gold for example never gets a lot of demand so it's never going to be present in a wide swath of hexes. Coal on the other hand is needed in such vast quantities we can't restrict it to only the hill hexes we have present on the map unless those hexes only produced coal...and maybe not even then. It's easier to restrict off higher tier stuff, thus the hills are the place to go for tier 2 and 3 chemicals. These demand numbers will be updated as we see actual demand in game (on the next build you'll get a refined resource chart that does just that, putting more copper into the world and less silver).

Lee Hammock wrote:

Regions:
The map is broken up into a number of regions, each of which have their own resource themes. For example, the Northern Cragthorns are the mountains to the southwest of Thornkeep and they are the only mountains in the game rich in copper, meanhwhile the Southern Thorncrags down near Brighthaven and Phaeros are the only mountains in the game rich in gold and the Southern Echo Peaks just north of Thornkeep are rich in silver.

This is the first I hear of a "regional" map with names for mountain ranges and passes. Is this an informal map that GW staff makes reference to, or is there an actual map of the area divided by regional names/terrain types?

There is an actual map, but the only thing it does is help me organize what areas produce what resources. I could have called them Mountain Range 1, Mountain Range 2, etc, but I figured I would put something in more interesting. Unfortunately I don't really have a good clean version that would provide more answers than questions really.

So the system as it's intended:

There are a 130 resources in the game. Each hex has a rating, generally 0-5000, for each of these resources. Usually hexes have 0 in most resources. Each hex has a total "value" of resources, which is the value of all the resources in the hex at server start in terms of of the crafting system. In figuring out how much of a given resource is required for making an item we assigned values to each resource, but these are not prices as the price of a piece of iron ore is ultimately going to be determined by the player. We just needed some rough relative values to determine the ratios of adamantine to iron in the world and such.

Each terrain has certain types of resources it favors. For example, you tend find more iron in mountains and wood in woodlands. These rules are not hard and fast though; you can scavenge iron in croplands hexes. Woodlands, croplands, coastlands, and wetlands hexes have dowsing, scavenging, and forestry nodes while highlands, mountains, and brokenlands (meteor craters) have dowsing, mining, and forestry nodes. In a given hex you can only get a resource out of one node type, but you can get brimstone out of a scavenging node and a mining node in different hexes.

Terrains:
Woodlands hexes produce wood and a variety of herbs from forestry nodes, gems, metals, leather, cloth, and chemicals from scavenging nodes, and essence from dowsing nodes.

Croplands hexes produce a wide variety of herbs from forestry nodes, cloth, leather, gems, metals, and chemicals from scavenging nodes, and essence from dowsing nodes.

Wetlands produce a wide variety of herbs from forestry nodes (with a higher rate of color herbs), cloth, leather, gems, metals, and lots of chemicals from scavenging nodes, and essence from dowsing nodes.

Highlands produce a few herbs from forestry nodes, chemicals, gems, and coal from mining nodes, and essence from dowsing nodes.

Mountains produce a few herbs from forestry nodes, chemicals, gems, and metals from mining nodes, and essence from dowsing nodes.

Regions:
The map is broken up into a number of regions, each of which have their own resource themes. For example, the Northern Cragthorns are the mountains to the southwest of Thornkeep and they are the only mountains in the game rich in copper, meanhwhile the Southern Thorncrags down near Brighthaven and Phaeros are the only mountains in the game rich in gold and the Southern Echo Peaks just north of Thornkeep are rich in silver.

Hex Types:
Starter/NPC hexes generally have non-zero ratings in 10-15 resources, all of which are tier 1. With the next update you will see that they provide a wide variety of resources so tier 1 characters can find what they need without going to far, but are still limited to terrain and region appropriate resources. The total value of resources in a NPC/starter hex is approximately 1/3 a wilderness hex and 1/64 that of a monster hex. Any hex neighboring a starter settlement, within 2 hexes of Thornkeep, or along the major roads is a starter/NPC hex. These cannot become infected with escalations and will not be claimable by PCs in any portion of territorial conflicts.

Wilderness hexes, which are most hexes, have non-zero ratings in 8-15 resources with a mix of tier 1 and tier 2. These resources are limited by terrain and region, some some woodland hexes have lots of pine while others have lots of maple These differences are usually along geographic lines, like mainly pine in the north and maple in the south. The total value of the resources in a wilderness hex are approximately x3 as much as an NPC starter hex, and 1/20th that of a monster hex.

Monster hexes have non-zero ratings in 6-20 resources from all tiers, but most of their value comes from tier 3 resources following region and terrain restrictions. Despite having so much more value than other hex types, monster hexes can be tapped out about as quickly as a wilderness hex, if not more so.

Each time you remove a resource from a node, the associated rating for that hex decreases by one. If that rating reaches 0, that resource stops appearing in nodes in that hex. If all the resources for a node type reach 0, those nodes stop spawning in the hex. Every fifteen minutes the system runs a check to see if the resource rating should increase by 1; the chance of increase is (the current rating of the node)/(original rating of the node). So if the hex originally has iron of 1000 and you harvest 10 units of ore, it has an iron rating of 990 and there is a 990/1000=99% chance it will get one point of iron back when the next 15 minute resource rating check comes around. This means if you really take a lot of resources out of a hex the harder it will be for it to replenish, the higher the value the more you can take out before you begin to notice the slow down in replenishment, and the more resources in a hex the more checks the system runs to see if resources are to be replenished. So a hex with a few high rating resources will be more likely to replenish those ratings, while a hex with a large number of low resource ratings will be easier to tap out on any single resource, but will have the chance to restore more value to the hex overall by running more checks.

Currently the system is refilling all the resources every server day, so a lot of the paragraph above is effectively invisible. Sure if a resource rating is 200 or below you may get it to 0 in 24 hours, but if it's 3000 that's not so likely.

The lower the resource rating is compared to the original rating, the more likely you are to get impure (i.e. heavier) resources.

The likelihood to get more than two resources per node is based on your skill level.

Are our interactions with mineral nodes impacting resources? If so how? It's been like this for weeks.

On the bright side we have everything we need to build as many +1 charged wands and staffs as we want.

There is a bug in the system currently that resource ratings are being reset each time the server resets, i.e. every morning. So even if you exhaust a resource, it will be back to full after the restart the next morning. This is in addition to checks run every 15 minutes to restore resources bit by bit if they are below max. So gathering has an impact, just not a long term one.

The only settlements with no choices received are the Iron Gauntlet and Open Road. Everyone else is accounted for.

Two weeks ago I emailed all the leaders I had on record for the 33 settlements in the War of Towers to ask what settlement template they wanted. Now today is the last day for settlement template choices! Thus far I do not have choices from Keepers of the Circle, Kabal, Forgeholm, Tavernhold, Sunholm, Les Compagnos, The Gauntlet, vVv Gaming, Iron Gauntlet, The Deaders, Open Road, or the Bastard Sons of Daggermark. If you are in these groups and you sent your choice I did not get it so please resend. If you are a member of one of these groups please poke your leaders to get their choice in or I cannot guarantee what they will have in the War of Towers.

Eastern Sun became Kreuz Bernstein. Did someone else have the 0.5 bonus instead?

And congratulations to all!

Nah, that was mean leaving it on the list. On the actual spreadsheet nothing refers to that cell.

So final Land Rush week results. Not a lot of movement, but there was a surprising attempted move by Hammerfist Clan from M to A, which was unsuccessful as Agents of Erastil had it locked down by numbers alone. Lots of population increases among the guilds this last week.

Guild Name Base Population Population Plus Hunker Down Location
Talonguard (NG) 104 K
Golgotha (LE) 97 W
Keepers of the Circle 83 AB
Ozem's Vigil (LG) 76 E
Kabal 69 F
Aragon (CN) 60 X
Dagedai Alliance 50 L
Emerald Lodge 49 V
Forgeholm 47 B
Tavernhold 43 C
Blackwood Glade 36 39.6 Y
Hammerfall 35 38.5 Z
Sunholm 33 38.61 O
Kreuz Bernstein 30 47.4 H
Freevale 29 40.02 I
Les Compagnons 22 33.22 AD
Mystical Awakening 17 24.31 AA
Hope's End (NE) 16 17.28 S
Agents of Erastil 15 20.55 A
Hammerfist Clan 13 13 AC
Terra Australis Incognito 13 21.97 J
Brains and Brawn 12 15.96 U
The Gauntlet 12 13.56 D
Reading Between the Lines 12 18.24 P
vVv Gaming 11 M
The Guardians 9 G
The Iron Gauntlet 9 T
The Deaders 8 R
Open Road 8 N
The Bastard Sons of Daggermark 7 Q

For anyone who cares, the relevant hunker down bonuses for the week:
Hammerfall 0.1
Blackwood Glade 0.1
Sunholm 0.17
Freevale 0.38
Les Compagnons 0.51
Kreuz Bernstien 0.58
Mystical Awakening 0.43
Eastern Sun 0.5
Terra Australis Incognito 0.69
The Gauntlet 0.13
Agents of Erastil 0.37
Read Between the Lines 0.52
Brains and Brawn 0.33
Hope's End 0.08

I believe it was an error. I'm going to tag Lee on this.

I think the following bonus numbers are errors:
Kreuz Bernstein dropped for some reason
Agents of Erastil didn't increase as much as I'd expect.
vVv has no bonus, though I think they didn't move
Iron Gauntlet has no bonus, though I think they didn't move.

I'm assuming bonus doesn't apply if you don't pick your same hex, but not that it goes away.

EDIT:

Agents of Erastil should have gone up .04 more, and thus have a modified score of 14.392. Again good catch. Not sure what I did on that one, so again good catch.

vVv Gaming and Iron Gauntlets did not have the same position as last week as their first choice so no hunker down bonus. vVv Gaming had a hunker down bonus in week 5 of .16, but have been bumped out of that spot long ago. Both groups have been bumped around a lot and have never been in their first choice since the hunker down rules were clarified to only apply to first choices.

This week the sassy pants came back out as Kabal, fresh off a recruiting binge it seems rocketed up to number 6, displacing Tavernhold from F and into C (which pushed the Gauntlet out of C despite their hunker down bonus and into D). There was a lot of recruiting paying off this week aside from Kabal as the new Kreuz Bernstein moved up a few spots, Ozem's Vigil snaked around Aragon, and Blackwood Glade moved up but didn't cause any disruptions. The Bastard Sons of Daggermark got back on the list after a long absence thanks to so many mid tier merges.

Number Guild Population Population with Hunker Down Slot
1 Talonguard (NG) 95 K
2 Golgotha (LE) 93 W
3 Keepers of the Circle 74 AB
4 Ozem's Vigil (LG) 71 E
5 Aragon (CN) 56 X
6 Kabal 52 F
7 Dagedai Alliance 50 L
8 Forgeholm 48 B
9 Emerald Lodge 44 V
10 Tavernhold 42 C
11 Blackwood Glade 33 35.97 Y
12 Sunholm 33 37.62 O
13 Hammerfall 33 35.64 Z
14 Kreuz Bernstein 30 39.9 H
15 Freevale 29 38.57 I
16 Les Compagnons 21 30.45 AD
17 Mystical Awakening 17 23.12 AA
18 Agents of Erastil 14 17.22 A
19 Hammerfist Clan 13 22.75 M
20 Brains and Brawn 12 14.52 U
21 The Gauntlet 12 D
22 Reading Between the Lines 12 16.56 P
23 Terra Australis Incognito 12 18.96 J
24 Hope's End (NE) 12 S
25 vVv Gaming 11 N
26 The Guardians 9 G
27 The Iron Gauntlet 9 T
28 The Deaders 8 R
29 Open Road 8 Q
30 The Bastard Sons of Daggermark 7 AC

Hey guys

The offer to join the core land rush was made as part of the introduction to War of Towers, and was not in fact a blanket offer to rejoin at any point. Switching any those three guilds to the normal land rush rules in the last two weeks of the land rush we think would create too many weird and unfavorable situations so we're not going with it.

Sorry for the delay two weeks on a row folks, and there may be a delay next week as well. Long story short: doctors visits are long.

Not a lot movement this week; Kabal took off the sassy pants, but I suspect they have not put them away for the duration. Lots of movement at the bottom range, not much at the middle or top. The first 24 slots all pretty much got their first pick, or at least stayed in the same location as last week. Hunker down bonuses are really starting to accrue in the middle range.

List is showing place, settlement, population, population plus hunker down bonus, and placement. Note settlements 1-10 do not get a hunker down bonus nor to they accrue one, but if they earned one previously and they drop out of the top ten they get it back (as seemed to be the popular opinion from last week).

1 Talonguard (NG) 93 K
2 Golgotha (LE) 92 W
3 Keepers of the Circle 74 AB
4 Ozem's Vigil (LG) 60 E
5 Aragon (CN) 56 X
6 Dagedai Alliance 50 L
7 Forgeholm 48 B
8 Emerald Lodge 44 V
9 Tavernhold 39 F
10 Kabal 34 Q
11 Blackwood Glade 33 35.64 Y
12 Sunholm 33 36.96 O
13 Hammerfall 33 34.65 Z
14 Freevale 29 37.12 I
15 Eastern Sun 28 42 H
16 Les Compagnons 21 29.19 AD
17 Mystical Awakening 17 21.93 AA
18 Elkhaven 17 21.93 G
19 Agents of Erastil 14 16.66 A
20 Hammerfist Clan 13 21.58 M
21 Brains and Brawn 12 13.32 U
22 The Gauntlet 12 19.08 C
23 Reading Between the Lines 12 15.12 P
24 Terra Australis Incognito 12 17.4 J
25 vVv Gaming 11 N
26 The Guardians 9 D
27 The Iron Gauntlet 9 T
28 The Deaders 8 R
29 Open Road 8 S
30 Hope's End (NE) 8 AC

EDIT: Oh, whoops, had not noticed that Eastern Sun and Quadrivium had joined up. Good job guys!

Reading the latest 'Alpha testing week' blog notes, I see the Achievement system is being fleshed out in a way I like very much. Thanks.

Consider my worries dropped until further notice ;-)

(ps: does subterfuge replace martial for rogues? ).

It replaces both Martial and Adventure. Now Rogues just need Subterfuge. We are working on getting more ways for them to earn it into game too (same with Divine and Arcane).

The Officer skill which has the formation leadership features is based on Personality. So is the Seneschal skill which will be used for infrastructure management.

Being either an Officer or a Seneschal makes you a very high priority target- for focused fire, or for assassins, or both.

The natural fits for personality skills among the core classes are Paladins, Sorcerers, and Bards.

Sorcerers are squishy. Bards aren't frontline troops either. So an LG settlement can field very tanky paladin officers and hard-to-assassinate building managers, while everyone else is left with choosing between robes or frolicking to protect their leadership assets.

Clerics might make a decent alternative if there's enough personality-oriented stuff in their channel energy design to make developing these skills practical. I just hope that we don't end up with a scenario where anyone who wants to manage a building makes a dowsing sage animal-handling persuasive bluffing fighter.

Actually the best class for settlement management is Aristocrat, which is a mixed buffer/social force multiplier/light combat sort of character. Sure it may not be as assassin proof as a paladin, but its role features relate directly to making settlements or formations better and will be less squishy than a sorcerer, probably a little less squishy than a bard but not a whole lot.

Is the hex selection also captured automatically at midnight? (i.e., if it is set as a.b.c at midnight Sunday, then gets changed to c,b,a later that night, but before the positions are assigned in the morning, which one will get used?)

Captured at midnight. I just don't get the report until I get in in the morning.

So the big news this week is the Librarians of Doom relinquished their hold on Q, joining up with Freevale. Freevale was a big mover this week, plus with a decent hunker down bonus they are sitting pretty good. We also had several other settlements move up and down in the top ten, but no real position changes.

Also it seems Kabal continued to wear their sassy pants as they staked their claim to Q despite it being pretty public knowledge that the Hands of Abbraxas had been gunning for it last week. Kabal continues to be the wild card player.

Quadrivium tried to move into H, but Eastern Sun's hunker down bonus allowed them to keep it, so Quadrivium ended up in S same as last week.

If anyone from the Guardians is reading this, please have your guild head update his draft. It reads ABCDEFGHI etc etc.

Trying a new display this week
Settlement Name Population Population + Hunker Down Position
Talonguard (NG) 92 92 K
Golgotha (LE) 91 91 W
Keepers of the Circle 74 74 AB
Aragon (CN) 56 56 X
Ozem's Vigil (LG) 55 55 E
Dagedai Alliance 49 49 L
Forgeholm 46 46 B
Emerald Lodge 45 45 V
Tavernhold 36 36 F
Sunholm 33 33 O
Hammerfall 33 33.66 Z
Blackwood Glade 32 34.24 Y
Freevale 29 35.96 I
Kabal 25 25 Q
Les Compagnons 21 27.93 AD
Elkhaven 19 22.99 G
Mystical Awakening 17 20.74 AA
Eastern Sun 15 21.75 H
Quadrivium 15 15 S
Agents of Erastil 14 15.4 A
Hammerfist Clan 13 20.28 M
Reading Between the Lines 13 13 P
Brains and Brawn 12 12 U
The Gauntlet 12 17.64 C
vVv Gaming 11 11 N
Terra Australis Incognito 11 14.41 J
The Guardians 9 9 D
The Iron Gauntlet 9 9 AC
Hand of Abraxas 9 9 R
The Deaders 8 8 T

So new rules question that I don't think I specifically stated that has come up with Tavernhold and Sunholm. Both of those guilds worked their way into the top 10 or have bounced in an out while retaining their spots. While they do not get hunker down bonus while in the top ten, should they keep their comparatively minor hunker down bonus from previous weeks not in the top ten? I don't believe this was ever specified. My instinct is to say yes, especially since it's a few percentage points that are unlikely to make a difference (Note currently Sunholm and Tavernhold's points do not represent a hunker down bonus, but adding it would not change anyone's position this week). Last time we seemed to have a pretty good discussion about a rules question, so I figured I would try this again.

Also we should warn people there are a lot of things on these spreadsheets that we have on the sheets but do not plan to implement for years, if ever (Firearms, the Fly skill, etc). Just because it shows up here don't plan on it coming in soon, if ever.

To be perfectly honest, I expected the disparity to between the top and bottom ends of the settlement population range to be smaller such that a 10-30% bonus would mean something. Given the disparities between even 20th place and 30th place the hunker down bonus means a lot less than I intended. Also other than Librarians of Doom no one in the bottom range of the list, the people who could really benefit from the Hunker Down bonus, have not been trying to use it much (and we have a lot of guilds who have never who have never updated their drafts to take advantage of changes in the list).

Also at this point I was expecting more consolidation. I know I harp on this every time I talk about the Land Rush, but all the guilds with 5-6 people need to find someone bigger to join up with. This is a contest where coming in 31st place (or 34th depending on how you look at it) gets you nothing. I don't think any guild in the bottom fifteen would turn down another five or six people in their ranks.

Lee Hammock wrote:

I have their hunker down bonus as 91%

week 2: 29th place so 19% bonus
week 3: 27th place, but tied with the 26th place guild, so 16% bonus (35%)
week 4: 29th place so 19% bonus (53%)
week 5: 28th place so 18% bonus (71%)
Week 6: 30th place (since they are still smallest by raw numbers) so 20% bonus

So 91%, which gives them a total value of 15*1.91 or 15.28, which beats your 15 barely (and if I rounded down, they are the older guild so they would still win).

That sheet says 92% which is probably off 1% due to the tie week.

Sorry for the confusion in the spreadsheet, folks. I seem to be a week behind somehow.

Never apologize for providing an awesome data collecting service to the public for free. You do damn fine work.