The Inspirational System

[Procne]

ITT OP is a moron.

You have a **** attitude. I was upfront with the fact that this is my first impression.

While I get that this game is not out to cater to new players. The fact that it has an outdated wiki that does not explain new development correctly is not a new players fault.

I went and looked how to bypass this time gate. The wiki says absolutely nothing about glass panes being player craftable. There is a lot of information missing on the wiki/game client that could have made this a lot easier to figure out.
It's probably a hard sell to convince new and old players alike that they need to come and read every single update thread since the beginning of time instead of going to the wiki to figure out core game mechanics.

Edit: Trash this thread if you feel like it. No hard feelings from me.

Glass pane is indeed craftable now, but it's not really possible for a new player to craft it - it requires some high level infrastructure. So the only option is to buy from other players or from NPC stall for silver. But even then crafting the bottles from glass pane won't be available to you either, but it should be possible to buy some bottles from NPC stall as well. Also, in case this isn't clear - silver is NOT a premium currency. There are many ways in which a new player may gain some silver

[trungdle]

We appreciate your information and the devs will look over them and see if they can/will do something about it.
For now, use the tribe's wiki. Ask around in help forum, and also enjoy other activities
As stated, you can make silver selling charms. I know the system is ugly that way, when low-tier crops sell for nothing and some stupid charms sell for more, making it the preferable method of gaining money, but heey, at least you've got something.

[TotalyMeow]

Now now, this is not a stupid thread. We do want new players to do more than just grind skills. Skills are fun and easy to get in the beginning, but much more difficult later on and if getting those skills is all you know, you're going to get bored quick. Better to have skilling up as an easy thing to look forward to while you learn what else Salem has to offer.

Like John said, we can make a help page trigger on the first "you don't have enough inspiration" message. Such a page could recommend Gluttony for better Humors, exploring the world, picking things up, making Savage Charms, peddling 7 use Inspirationals in town, buying inspitation potions, hunting crickets and bunnies, finding a good site for a first base, building a claimstone, building a fence, encountering another player and getting murdered, or whatever else a very new player might need to do.

And this is the kind of thing we don't think of since we know exactly what to do now that we've all made a new character several times.

[Dallane]

Like John said, we can make a help page trigger on the first "you don't have enough inspiration" message. Such a page could recommend Gluttony for better Humors, exploring the world, picking things up, making Savage Charms, peddling 7 use Inspirationals in town, buying inspitation potions, hunting crickets and bunnies, finding a good site for a first base, building a claimstone, building a fence, encountering another player and getting murdered, or whatever else a very new player might need to do.

Do you really need to go into all that for new people tho? I dunno, maybe I just don't like a ton of hand holding. It's needed now and then but you are basically telling people how to play at that point. All that info is available if they would just log on the forums.

I could update seven's noobie guide while at work.

[TotalyMeow]

Like John said, we can make a help page trigger on the first "you don't have enough inspiration" message. Such a page could recommend Gluttony for better Humors, exploring the world, picking things up, making Savage Charms, peddling 7 use Inspirationals in town, buying inspitation potions, hunting crickets and bunnies, finding a good site for a first base, building a claimstone, building a fence, encountering another player and getting murdered, or whatever else a very new player might need to do.

Do you really need to go into all that for new people tho? I dunno, maybe I just don't like a ton of hand holding. It's needed now and then but you are basically telling people how to play at that point. All that info is available if they would just log on the forums.

I could update seven's noobie guide while at work.

I'm not saying we'll go into great detail about these things, just a list of suggestions of things to try for anyone who doesn't have the imagination to try things on their own, or the motivation to look up newbie threads and things on the forum or wiki. Truth be told, anyone who needs this probably won't stay in Salem long since Salem is a Sandbox and people who need to be pointed at goals probably aren't going to like a sandbox in the long run. But we want all new players to at least stick around long enough to be murdered by someone.

[Dallane]

Like John said, we can make a help page trigger on the first "you don't have enough inspiration" message. Such a page could recommend Gluttony for better Humors, exploring the world, picking things up, making Savage Charms, peddling 7 use Inspirationals in town, buying inspitation potions, hunting crickets and bunnies, finding a good site for a first base, building a claimstone, building a fence, encountering another player and getting murdered, or whatever else a very new player might need to do.

Do you really need to go into all that for new people tho? I dunno, maybe I just don't like a ton of hand holding. It's needed now and then but you are basically telling people how to play at that point. All that info is available if they would just log on the forums.

I could update seven's noobie guide while at work.

I'm not saying we'll go into great detail about these things, just a list of suggestions of things to try for anyone who doesn't have the imagination to try things on their own, or the motivation to look up newbie threads and things on the forum or wiki. Truth be told, anyone who needs this probably won't stay in Salem long since Salem is a Sandbox and people who need to be pointed at goals probably aren't going to like a sandbox in the long run. But we want all new players to at least stick around long enough to be murdered by someone.

Very true. A extra window saying some general paths for new people wouldn't be THAT bad. Should hire another voice actor to scream use the forums at the indian guide.

[loftar]

for anyone who doesn't have the imagination to try things on their own

Just for the record, I don't think every instance of this can be ascribed to lack of imagination or exploration spirit, but also simply to what expectations a player has of the game when they come around. I wouldn't know by experience, of course, but I imagine it wouldn't be all too uncommon for people to come here having been given expectations of mining, PvP, monster hunting, metalsmithing and whatnot, and, given that, they might not have the patience to sit through stuff they hadn't signed up for. The same people could possibly even appreciate it had they only been given the right expectations from the start.

I'm not saying that observation necessarily changes any conclusions, but it never hurts working from the right premises. :)

[TotalyMeow]

Sorry if I sound a bit harsh, but I never had a hard time finding things to do in Salem right from the beginning. Then again, I tend to take forever with RPGs and the like as I will periodically abandon all the quests and just run around looking for secrets.

[lachlaan]

Personally I think a more discrete solution for guiding the player are more tooltips for proficiencies, for humours, for the gluttony forks etc. It's very useful to scroll over your mines and mountains and read what it influences, and that alone tells you that if you want to mine mo' betta, you get your mines and mountains up. Same goes for other proficiencies and more tooltips or just general visual queues could make it more intuitive without giving players the manual to read through to understand it.

Not as a tutorial, but as a general guideline for people that aren't already used to the routine of Salem or similar games. While the initial tutorial tells you "stuff yo faaaaace" , I guarantee that a slightly more explicit tooltip for the bars would help a bit more if only to remind people which bar is which. (I used to have townies that always forgot the order of the bars >.>)

The other newbie that mistook stall prices for cash shop currency could've been helped by adding a simple silver coin icon next to all the prices in the list, as a new player might wonder "A gold bar sells for 1000 .. 1000 what?"

Hovering over your inspiration amount, and I'm sure any newbie with ~0 inspiration left hovers over it 10 times in the first minute counting how fast it goes up, could instead also say "Cap improves with higher black bile, regen rate improves with black bile and some skills you can find yo damn self".

Just some hints here and there as reminders later on so people don't have to necessarily hunt through the forums or wikis. Up to you guys to decide just how subtle the hints and queues can be to not give the feeling of hand-holding but to also more or less contain all the info about Salem within Salem in one form or another. Perhaps adding tooltips to stuff after it's no longer a novelty to help fresh players get the gist of things, or perhaps that's not needed as other players can be asked as is the case now. To exemplify, I meant something along the lines of when golden eggs were added : while it was nice to wonder where they came from at the point, after a while you could've made them say in stalls or the king's stall, stuff like "Smells like a hare's ********, ew". Idk, I'm sure you guys can find more elegant solutions for the newbie problem should you deem that aspect of the game worth polishing as opposed to leaving rugged to weed out people that can't handle the truth of salem xD