Grandmother Unchained

[Yourgrandmother]

This post is going to come off as a rambling incoherent TLDR mess but I assure you that any 'non titan' will learn something from it if they stop their whining for one second.

In the first week of January on Roanoke I was raided by Russians in my mostly solo hermit town. At the time I had a strong character considering. I was very active and although it took several weeks to learn what the hell I was doing with farming and purity grinding; pumpkin purity (mercury) was only in the teens before the Russians hit. The most discouraging thing about being raided was the present the Russians left behind. 49% pumpkin pies which meant 90%+ pumpkin flesh. After seeing them go thru a stone wall in under 10 seconds and disable my 75+ brazier hermit town in one wave (pre-defensive update) I did not give up and whine. While they did KO and spare my life, which was a mistake on their part I decided to band up with people who I had met in Salem that did not live with me and TAKE A CHANCE living with them in a new town.

So after understanding the farming purity mechanic and looking at the technological and time advantage the Russians had, took a moment to reflect on the situation. Look at things under our control that could put things under a more equal footing. Tailoring and gear. How many people right now whining about titans have their fighters equipped with gear that boosts total Thrusting Combat Power by 400 and total Thrusting Combat Defense by 250? Did you spend any time farming snakes for etterfangs, or t3 cotton fields to make embroidery, or t2 indian and egyptian cotton fields to make colored flagstraps, or oiled boards to make buttons or roaming the map exploring and adding to your own personal world map collecting whispering snake skulls?

When the Russians raided Sam and Stormy's base with 9 characters all with 250+ biles we had 100 bile fighters with clothing to put us on equal footing. We didn't cry that they had nearly 3x our biles and 90% purity crops, and guess what? We fought them and killed one of their main fighters. We didn't log out mid-raid and cry on the forums. Do you realize how easy it is to gain proficiencies with the new update. There are so many 40%+ salt dowsing rods on the market. A couple days making lovers locket will get 2 core tailoring proficiencies to 200+ enough to hit the soft cap on % chance to slot Buttons, Etterfangs, Flagstraps and Snakeskulls. I even see people who BOUGHT 90%+ pumpkin seeds weeks/months before the purity nerf complain about character parity. Have you been using those seeds to plant ghostrider fields or are you too lazy to tier up t3 fields????

Humus. Oh here we go about humus. This purity update completely screwed farming I will admit but there is no shortage of humus out there for active players. I am going to give you a little secret about how we went from 150 to 3,500 50-100% humus since the Farming Apocalypse.

Dead claims. Do you idle in your village whining to one another about how it's impossible to catch up in biles or roam around the map checking dead claim gold mines? Based on the amount of dead claims on Roanoke we've found 'casually' checking I'm going to assume it's the latter for almost everyone. 'But Grandmother' you say. 'We are not allowed to raid on roanoke or we will get summoned killed'. You can easily get a 100 phlegm character to bash off-claim walls to investigate all dead claims without leaving a scent. That's another thing, why does everyone have 50 bile characters and then go whining about titan characters?? I had a friend try Salem when I still had 0% crop purity, within 2 weeks he had 100 biles and was killing bears off of 6 fields. Do you realize how little effort it takes to till 100+ fields for 0% crop purity to get 150 bile characters?? I hope all these villages complaining about having no purity and no way to catch up to 'titans' have actually tiered up all their fields to 100 bar at the minimum right?? More on the recent food update that made gluttony off tiered crops so much easier later. All the abandoned/raided towns we run across have barely any influence, how do you expect to be on par with so little effort invested?

Raiding is too easy - Oh here we go. Comments from a bunch of ignorant self entitled dumbasses. You should have been around pre wall/brazier update AND crime debuff you would have had weekly night terrors playing Salem. Raiding is not easy, in fact it is too difficult and with the farming apocalypse update is nowhere close to balanced with your average character. Maybe if you spent 10% of the time smelting iron than you did ***** and moaning about titans you would have an un-raidable base by now. I'm not going into detail here but I can assure you that if your entire town spent a week making braziers instead of three weeks leveling your 300x300 town area you would still have a base. If this game ever reset with current purity mechanics NO ONE would be raiding you if your base consisted of 40 braziers or more within a compact area. You guys have no idea it's hilarious. Again I see all these gigantic bases, 2-3x the size of our production facility that has fed and gluttoned 'an army of titans' with less total braziers than I could make in ONE DAY.

Gluttony since the food update. Again if you focused on things under your control like TIERED FIELDS you could have 300+ bile characters by now. New food recipes with barley, rye, wheat are insane. You can make 0% windy poohs with 200 phlegm on it, but you guys are probably sitting on those 15 bar fields in your gigantic 300x300 town with 10 total braziers crying about how unfair the game is and how you can never catch up. Here is just a glimpse of a chat I had today about my farming yields:

<12:33:12> "Yourgrandmother": 2 fields planted yielded 90 aspens or 1,350 seeds
<12:33:14> "Yourgrandmother": from 50
<12:33:48> "Yourgrandmother": enough to replant 54 fields
<12:34:08> "Yourgrandmother": which comes out to
<12:34:50> "Yourgrandmother": average yield of 16 aspens with 12 lime/field. 864 aspens which is enough flesh for
<12:34:57> "Yourgrandmother": 1,728 lead pumpkin pies
<12:36:14> "Yourgrandmother": and let's say average yield is about 60% pumpkins which is about right
<12:36:28> "Yourgrandmother": that's 130 blood pumpkin pies
<12:36:36> "Yourgrandmother": which comes out to 224,640 blood gluttony

<13:01:33> "Yourgrandmother": 24 fields at 90 bar using 12 lime/field yielded enough rye to make 1,400 cabbage crumbs

All the top factions have access to high end pumpkin seeds. Some of the people I have confirmed as being 'seed sellers' are the same people who cry about being unable to catch up to characters. Everyone should have endless supply of cereal seeds thanks to the tens of thousands of ears of oat on so many dead claims. The new food update made it possible to gluttony to gigantic levels now. PUT SOME WORK IN and chip some lime and use a community farmer for planting with high stocks. You don't need thousands of high purity humus. Do you realize what kind of stats you can get up to with even 10-20% cabbage making high tier flour cabbage crumbs for black bile and yellow bile now??????? I'm going to tell you a secret. All of Candy Gangs character has gluttonied off cabbage crumbs that only had 50% colewort/green cabbage. But alas people are too lazy to tier up fields or check abandoned towns/claims for high purity humus and instead whine day and night about titans.

Back to clothing and slotted artifacts because people seem to be so clueless on the subject. Here are some real numbers based on tests:

X Biles with NO gear thrusting NO gear player: 37 Damage
X Biles with gear thrusting NO gear player: 69.5

X Biles with NO gear thrusting gear player: 22 Damage
X Biles with gear thrusting gear player: 33 Damage

So even if you were handed a 'titan' character your complete lack of effort character with smooth stones, abandoned cobweb and indian arrowhead character would thrust my 0% purity 150 bile character for about 22 damage. How hard does a 150 bile character with good gear hit... a lot more than that.

Band together with neighbours, make a new town. Make a super secret alliance (whoops) to kill the titans. Spend some time smelting iron to make braziers, go check some old stumps. Help a character get artifact slotting stats to make you some good clothing. Tier up your fields and put in some damn effort because you have ZERO idea of the amount of effort required pre-farming apocalypse to grind 0-100% cabbage/pumpkin purity.

Wrapping things up. These forums are a damn joke. Never seen such mod bias in all my years on the internet.

In conclusion:

[colesie]

Good post, welcome back

[Pjotr84]

Absolutely, this should help out players quite a bit and make clear that tiering fields makes a load of difference.

[Dallane]

well said chief

[Kuksmoer]

Watch out titans, I now know what to do with my 24 fields.

ps. Very inspiring!

[Borgins]

Good post, excellent comments only problem is that the people who need to read it either won't find it ("why should I bother reading the forums?") or it will be TLDR.

[Claeyt]

Welcome back grandma

Well, I'm going to ramble right back then

Don't take this as a criticism, but rather as a friendly argument. I definitely get how much time you guys have put into the game to get where you are. The main point of my argument is that if some new group of players started today and put in the same legendary amount of game play, they would not be able to reach your character levels in the same amount of time. In fact it may be impossible for them to ever catch you.

This argument seems so old now, what has it been, 2 months since the purity nerf?

So after understanding the farming purity mechanic and looking at the technological and time advantage the Russians had, I took a moment to reflect on the situation. Look at things under our control that could put things under a more equal footing. Tailoring and gear. How many people right now whining about titans have their fighters equipped with gear that boosts total Thrusting Combat Power by 400 and total Thrusting Combat Defense by 250? Did you spend any time farming snakes for etterfangs, or t3 cotton fields to make embroidery, or t2 indian and egyptian cotton fields to make colored flagstraps, or oiled boards to make buttons or roaming the map exploring and adding to your own personal world map collecting whispering snake skulls?

Yes, gear helps a lot, but all of these things you mention T3 fields, Tailoring, Hardcore mining are much easier with a town, especially when you're playing with the most dedicated active players on the server. Yes it's best if you specialize with a Farmer character, and a Tailor, and Combat characters. Nobody disputes that. Most people just don't have the town structure to do it. Your town does. And for mostly hermits like me, it's even harder. Gear isn't everything though. It can only take you so far without the stats to back it up.

When the Russians raided Sam and Stormy's base with 9 characters all with 250+ biles we had 100 bile fighters with clothing to put us on equal footing. We didn't cry that they had nearly 3x our biles and 90% purity crops, and guess what? We fought them and killed one of their main fighters. We didn't log out mid-raid and cry on the forums.

Not many people are complaining after being raided, couple have but not me. We're mostly complaining about how high purity is now unattainable without a comparable lowering of the stats of the pre-purity nerf characters also. It is now much, much harder to reach 90% purity, in fact it's probably impossible.

Do you realize how easy it is to gain proficiencies with the new update. There are so many 40%+ salt dowsing rods on the market. A couple days making lovers locket will get 2 core tailoring proficiencies to 200+ enough to hit the soft cap on % chance to slot Buttons, Etterfangs, Flagstraps and Snakeskulls.

Proficiencies are incredibly easier to get. This was by far the best thing they've done in the game in my opinion, and the main reason I've stopped arguing about purity. This update made it incredibly easy to get a character up to a medium level quick. With a town in place and food in the shed, you can get a guy to Cain and Able and 50-100 humours in a day or two, I've done it myself. But It's now much, much harder to reach, say, 500+ in fact it's probably impossible without old hummus and seeds.

I even see people who BOUGHT 90%+ pumpkin seeds weeks/months before the purity nerf complain about character parity. Have you been using those seeds to plant ghostrider fields or are you too lazy to tier up t3 fields????

Seeds are meaningless now, even with high purity seeds, without comparable hummus you just don't get enough to get the high levels. You use it once and it's gone.

Humus. Oh here we go about humus. This purity update completely screwed farming I will admit but there is no shortage of humus out there for active players. I am going to give you a little secret about how we went from 150 to 3,500 50-100% humus since the Farming Apocalypse.

Dead claims. Do you idle in your village whining to one another about how it's impossible to catch up in biles or roam around the map checking dead claim gold mines? Based on the amount of dead claims on Roanoke we've found 'casually' checking I'm going to assume it's the latter for almost everyone. 'But Grandmother' you say. 'We are not allowed to raid on roanoke or we will get summoned killed'. You can easily get a 100 phlegm character to bash off-claim walls to investigate all dead claims without leaving a scent. That's another thing, why does everyone have 50 bile characters and then go whining about titan characters?? I had a friend try Salem when I still had 0% crop purity, within 2 weeks he had 100 biles and was killing bears off of 6 fields. Do you realize how little effort it takes to till 100+ fields for 0% crop purity to get 150 bile characters?? I hope all these villages complaining about having no purity and no way to catch up to 'titans' have actually tiered up all their fields to 100 bar at the minimum right?? More on the recent food update that made gluttony off tiered crops so much easier later. All the abandoned/raided towns we run across have barely any influence, how do you expect to be on par with so little effort invested?

I have also been looting dead claims for weeks now and have gotten a couple of hundred hummus in the 50-95% range (It's all alt-vaulted ), but it's hard to find any now. Either the declaimed bins have rotted or the hummus has all been found. Sure you can till 100 fields but you still have to bake it and cover it with a claim. I've got about 15 tier 3 fields myself and yes tier 3 foods are much, much better now, but they're still not as good as the old high purity foods.

This is another recent update that's stopped me from complaining about the purity nerf. Between the Proficiency update and the tiered food update I think they've done a good job leveling the playing field a bit. They're not there yet, but they're close. The only real thing they're missing is how are we going to match the high end guys. A player starting today (if that even happens anymore), putting in the same amazing amount of time and effort as you guys, will have a much more difficult time getting to where you are right now, but the Proficiency buff and the Tiered food buff have helped them a bit.

Raiding is too easy - Oh here we go. Comments from a bunch of ignorant self entitled dumbasses. You should have been around pre wall/brazier update AND crime debuff you would have had weekly night terrors playing Salem. Raiding is not easy, in fact it is too difficult and with the farming apocalypse update is nowhere close to balanced with your average character. Maybe if you spent 10% of the time smelting iron than you did ***** and moaning about titans you would have an un-raidable base by now. I'm not going into detail here but I can assure you that if your entire town spent a week making braziers instead of three weeks leveling your 300x300 town area you would still have a base. If this game ever reset with current purity mechanics NO ONE would be raiding you if your base consisted of 40 braziers or more within a compact area. You guys have no idea it's hilarious. Again I see all these gigantic bases, 2-3x the size of our production facility that has fed and gluttoned 'an army of titans' with less total braziers than I could make in ONE DAY.

Personally I think they've got it where it needs to be. I don't raid at all and have never left a scent but it seems that right now Braziers are king and the perma hit hurts higher end guys more than say, a 100 stat guy. The walls are tough but not quite as tough as they were. I still think they need to fix the splash damage affects. Especially off claim splash damage. Raiding towns should be very hard. Right now I think it's probably easier to raid a town with 10 100 stat characters than with 3-4 500 stat guys.

Gluttony since the food update. Again if you focused on things under your control like TIERED FIELDS you could have 300+ bile characters by now. New food recipes with barley, rye, wheat are insane. You can make 0% windy poohs with 200 phlegm on it, but you guys are probably sitting on those 15 bar fields in your gigantic 300x300 town with 10 total braziers crying about how unfair the game is and how you can never catch up. Here is just a glimpse of a chat I had today about my farming yields:

All the top factions have access to high end pumpkin seeds. Some of the people I have confirmed as being 'seed sellers' are the same people who cry about being unable to catch up to characters. Everyone should have endless supply of cereal seeds thanks to the tens of thousands of ears of oat on so many dead claims. The new food update made it possible to gluttony to gigantic levels now. PUT SOME WORK IN and chip some lime and use a community farmer for planting with high stocks. You don't need thousands of high purity humus. Do you realize what kind of stats you can get up to with even 10-20% cabbage making high tier flour cabbage crumbs for black bile and yellow bile now??????? I'm going to tell you a secret. All of Candy Gangs character has gluttonied off cabbage crumbs that only had 50% colewort/green cabbage. But alas people are too lazy to tier up fields or check abandoned towns/claims for high purity humus and instead whine day and night about titans.

Band together with neighbours, make a new town. Make a super secret alliance (whoops) to kill the titans. Spend some time smelting iron to make braziers, go check some old stumps. Help a character get artifact slotting stats to make you some good clothing. Tier up your fields and put in some damn effort because you have ZERO idea of the amount of effort required pre-farming apocalypse to grind 0-100% cabbage/pumpkin purity.

These are all good ideas, and are being done.

For a player starting today 50% colewort/green cabbage is impossible and will never be reached. They could never get the hummus for it. Again, the seeds alone are useless. If you don't have the hummus, you get almost nothing. Tiered food is a good development, but to truly make a 300 stat guy from scratch right now for a player starting today is next to impossible. 200 yes, but 300 will take them 3-4 times as long to make as players with 3,500 high end hummus.

Eventually all that purity hummus will be used up. You guys probably have more than enough to get you to high purity bin caps, and 30-50% hummus. But again, for a player starting today with no hummus raids or hummus vulturing, for them even if they put in the same amount of legendary time and effort as you guys, they'll never catch you stat wise.

Again, the proficiency bump and the tiered food bump are a huge bonus for new players to get up into the hundreds and because of them I've softened my calls for a titan nerf. I've seen new towns and characters get real big in 2 months with no purity hummus and plenty of proficiency but I doubt we'll ever see a brand new player reach 800 or 1000 again without some new big town raiding some of that 3,500 high-end hummus you have stored in all those sheds and cabinets.

Again, props on how you guys have got there. Tons of work and a fully active team, that's really the only way to get there then or now. It was just somewhat easier pre-purity nerf than now.

[Potjeh]

In short, people should quit their jobs to play Salem.

[KitKat]

The main point of my argument is that if some new group of players started today and put in the same legendary amount of game play, they would not be able to reach your character levels in the same amount of time. In fact it may be impossible for them to ever catch you.

No this isn't true. If they invested the same amount of time they can reach our levels. In fact I wanna say it's a lot easier and faster to catch up now then what it was before. Now all you have to do is Tier up fields. Even at 0% purity you can make some legendary food.

For example:



It just takes some time and effort to tier up fields.

Yes, gear helps a lot, but all of these things you mention T3 fields, Tailoring, Hardcore mining are much easier with a town, especially when you're playing with the most dedicated active players on the server. Yes it's best if you specialize with a Farmer character, and a Tailor, and Combat characters. Nobody disputes that. Most people just don't have the town structure to do it. Your town does. And for mostly hermits like me, it's even harder. Gear isn't everything though. It can only take you so far without the stats to back it up.

Why not join a town? I think a lot of solo players should be looking to team up and be apart of something that could turn out to be huge. It's a big part of the game sure you are always going to have your solo do it yourself players but the game is so much more fun when you have a group to play with.

They're are also a lot of towns that have been forming on Roanoke lately. Why not team up with one of them? I know a few that would probably be very happy to have you be a part of their town. I think you would enjoy it a lot more than playing by yourself.

Not many people are complaining after being raided, couple have but not me. We're mostly complaining about how high purity is now unattainable without a comparable lowering of the stats of the pre-purity nerf characters also. It is now much, much harder to reach 90% purity, in fact it's probably impossible.

You're missing the point you do not need 90% purity anymore.

But It's now much, much harder to reach, say, 300-500 in fact it's probably impossible without old hummus and seeds.

You're beating a dead horse with this statement. It's not impossible it's very attainable with the food changes.

Seeds are meaningless now, even with high purity seeds, without comparable hummus you just don't get enough to get the high levels. You use it once and it's gone.

This is just not true. So what if you use it once and it's gone you are still going to be able to use the food you harvest. YGM posted real numbers from fields we harvested just the other day. If you find a base with good humus on it you can get returns back on those seeds. (if you say oh theirs no more humus to be found out there in the past two days I've looted over 4 dead claim bases that had humus 50-100%) You just have to look.

I've got about 15 tier 3 fields myself and yes tier 3 foods are much, much better now, but they're still not as good as the old high purity foods.

Still beating a dead horse here. So the old high purity food are a little bit better that means so little in the long run of things. Think about it... It took months to farm purity on crops that's why their are so few titans running around. Now alls you need is Tier 2 and 3 fields and you can reach high humors.

Personally I think they've got it where it needs to be. I don't raid at all and have never left a scent but it seems that right now Braziers are king and the perma hit hurts higher end guys more than say, a 100 stat guy. The walls are tough but not quite as tough as they were. I still think they need to fix the splash damage affects. Especially off claim splash damage. Raiding towns should be very hard. Right now I think it's probably easier to raid a town with 10 100 stat characters than with 3-4 500 stat guys.

You don't know what you are talking about. Braziers are way to strong right now and It has nothing to do with the perma damage done to humors. When you have them grouped up they just do to much damage to fast. Anyone who has raided anything of note would know this. I would love to see 10 100 stat people try to raid someone with concentrated braziers. I'm willing to bet they would give up before they got anywhere. It's not easy at all. This is something you shouldn't have an opinion on no offense you just haven't experienced this part of the game.

I'm not going to respond to anymore of your post because you beat that dead horse six feet down.

edit:

In short, people should quit their jobs to play Salem.

Or just play with people and split the work up ^

[Potjeh]

No matter which way you split, hay spam is just plain tedious. Games are supposed to be fun AFAIK.