Salem

I have settled in a new area like the guides say. I walked a really long distance. I have been here a few days now and have been happy with the area. But tonight I found a town called Newtopia. Can anyone tell me if this place is dangerous? Should I consider moving again before I get to settled and build the farm house?

TJHooker wrote:I have settled in a new area like the guides say. I walked a really long distance. I have been here a few days now and have been happy with the area. But tonight I found a town called Newtopia. Can anyone tell me if this place is dangerous? Should I consider moving again before I get to settled and build the farm house?

You could try building a sign outside their main entrance(s) and specify your HS in hopes of them contacting you.

Alternatively, you could try building a handful of crabs on a spike outside their main entrance(s) and see if they get taken down Much less friendly, but perhaps more likely to be acted upon.

How close is it? There's pretty much always going to be a town nearby somewhere... Maybe you should just try to rush towards getting a town bell so they have to do more than simply build a chain of boundry stones and eminent domain you.

If you aren't short on inspiration you might want to consider logging out your main outside your base if you think you might be high risk of getting it domained... Logging in to find yourself trapped in someone elses town is no bueno.

jcwilk wrote:

TJHooker wrote:I have settled in a new area like the guides say. I walked a really long distance. I have been here a few days now and have been happy with the area. But tonight I found a town called Newtopia. Can anyone tell me if this place is dangerous? Should I consider moving again before I get to settled and build the farm house?

You could try building a sign outside their main entrance(s) and specify your HS in hopes of them contacting you.

Alternatively, you could try building a handful of crabs on a spike outside their main entrance(s) and see if they get taken down Much less friendly, but perhaps more likely to be acted upon.

How close is it? There's pretty much always going to be a town nearby somewhere... Maybe you should just try to rush towards getting a town bell so they have to do more than simply build a chain of boundry stones and eminent domain you.

If you aren't short on inspiration you might want to consider logging out your main outside your base if you think you might be high risk of getting it domained... Logging in to find yourself trapped in someone elses town is no bueno.

If they know my HS dont they know exactly where I am then?

How do you build crabs on a stick what would that do is it food?

eminent domain.... This sounds bad

I see the town bell costs 8500. It took me 3 hours to make 150 silver for the writ of homesteading.....

TJHooker wrote:

jcwilk wrote:

TJHooker wrote:I have settled in a new area like the guides say. I walked a really long distance. I have been here a few days now and have been happy with the area. But tonight I found a town called Newtopia. Can anyone tell me if this place is dangerous? Should I consider moving again before I get to settled and build the farm house?

You could try building a sign outside their main entrance(s) and specify your HS in hopes of them contacting you.

Alternatively, you could try building a handful of crabs on a spike outside their main entrance(s) and see if they get taken down Much less friendly, but perhaps more likely to be acted upon.

How close is it? There's pretty much always going to be a town nearby somewhere... Maybe you should just try to rush towards getting a town bell so they have to do more than simply build a chain of boundry stones and eminent domain you.

If you aren't short on inspiration you might want to consider logging out your main outside your base if you think you might be high risk of getting it domained... Logging in to find yourself trapped in someone elses town is no bueno.

If they know my HS dont they know exactly where I am then?

How do you build crabs on a stick what would that do is it food?

If they know your HS, they know you. That's it.

Crabs on a stick aren't food. They just cause an area effect for increased insanity.

TJHooker wrote:

jcwilk wrote:

TJHooker wrote:I have settled in a new area like the guides say. I walked a really long distance. I have been here a few days now and have been happy with the area. But tonight I found a town called Newtopia. Can anyone tell me if this place is dangerous? Should I consider moving again before I get to settled and build the farm house?

You could try building a sign outside their main entrance(s) and specify your HS in hopes of them contacting you.

Alternatively, you could try building a handful of crabs on a spike outside their main entrance(s) and see if they get taken down Much less friendly, but perhaps more likely to be acted upon.

How close is it? There's pretty much always going to be a town nearby somewhere... Maybe you should just try to rush towards getting a town bell so they have to do more than simply build a chain of boundry stones and eminent domain you.

If you aren't short on inspiration you might want to consider logging out your main outside your base if you think you might be high risk of getting it domained... Logging in to find yourself trapped in someone elses town is no bueno.

If they know my HS dont they know exactly where I am then?

How do you build crabs on a stick what would that do is it food?

eminent domain.... This sounds bad

I see the town bell costs 8500. It took me 3 hours to make 150 silver for the writ of homesteading.....

God damn I'm glad those days are long gone for me.

Don't bother putting crab on a stick down outside someones base. If you did that to me, and I figured out you did it, I would retaliate 10 fold. You don't know what the owner of that place's attitude is.

So jcwilk was telling me to start a fight with a town.

Is there any other way to find out if the town is deserted/safe to be around? Is there a list of owners. I made enough silver to see the town registry but Newtopia is not on there and there is no information about who owns the towns either.

TJHooker wrote:So jcwilk was telling me to start a fight with a town.

Is there any other way to find out if the town is deserted/safe to be around? Is there a list of owners. I made enough silver to see the town registry but Newtopia is not on there and there is no information about who owns the towns either.

If it was abandoned, it'd be obvious. No, there isn't a list, you're just gonna have to find out on your own. Like it was previously suggested, place a sign telling your HS, etc to find out if they're friendly or not.

A sign is a good idea, with a short message about who you are and your intentions. If you can, leave a box with materials to build another sign so they can easily reply with their own sign. Or if you give them your homestead secret, they can kin you, which means they can see when you come online and contact you, and you can do the same to whoever kins you. If you are very paranoid, do all this with an alt so that if they kill it, you won't lose your main character, just remember to log in the alt and watch its kin list / chat.

I don't recommend starting contact with a crab on a stick as that is a hostile act. Might show if the town is occupied, but won't make you any friends.

TJHooker wrote:So jcwilk was telling me to start a fight with a town.

Not exactly. I gave you two suggestions depending on the type of player you are. One was to try to contact them by leaving your HS. This is entirely safe and non-hostile. it just means you'll be added to each others' buddy lists and will be able to identify each other if you happen to run into each other. It also means you can start a chat with them if you're both online. The drawback to this is if they're paranoid they might just leave the sign up and ignore it.

If you really want to know if they're active in a hurry then do something annoying to them and see if they fix it... This is, of course, only if you want to move away if they -are- active, since as others have mentioned revenge is a sweet ***** in Salem and that would certainly be interpreted as a hostile act, though they wouldn't immediately know who did it. If you absolutely do want to move away if they are active though, IMO this is a reasonable approach assuming they aren't literally right next door.

Just depends on how you approach situations, I tried to offer a couple different ones.

TJHooker wrote:Is there any other way to find out if the town is deserted/safe to be around? Is there a list of owners. I made enough silver to see the town registry but Newtopia is not on there and there is no information about who owns the towns either.

Nope, nothing safe and reliable like that. As Meow said, you can always make an alternate character and even make him hang out outside their town hoping to see someone mucking around... Worst thing they can do is kill it but who cares it's a 15 minute alt.

TJHooker wrote:How do you build crabs on a stick what would that do is it food?

I think you need the Bullying skill, and yeah it's just a nuissance, something easy to build and likely to be taken down by an active player.

TJHooker wrote:eminent domain.... This sounds bad

Yeah, the minutia of the mechanics are a bit much to explain here but in a nutshell if you don't have a town bell and only have a reasonably small claim they can buy the claim out from you, this is relatively low effort to do if there's already a nearby hostile town claim and means they can steal all your things. They won't bother doing this though if you have only a modest looking base unless you're extremely nearby.

TJHooker wrote:I see the town bell costs 8500. It took me 3 hours to make 150 silver for the writ of homesteading.....

It gets better lol. Enjoy the high risk slow pace while it lasts, it's loads more fun in that honeymooning stage than when you have salem semi figured out and have daily chores to do

Yeah, you definitely want to make friendly overtures, and be cautious. If they don't want to play ball or seem likely to get ugly, you should leave. It's not a great investment at all for a well established town to unceremoniously evict you from any relatively nearby area to their location, and they might well do it just on general principal/for security irrespective of whether or not they make money.

Still, if they do ride you in hard and put you up wet, you can inherit (you DO have inheritance set up? It's worth the silver) and you get something even if they do scalp you, which they probably will if they elect to kill you. Still, something is better than nothing and they can't take your experience with playing the game, so even if it was a total loss it would be a lot easier starting over again than "Oh God I'm so Afraid I don't know how anything works!" like it was the first time you built up from nothing.

Learning to be a gritty, weasely little opportunist that can readily live off the land and hit the ground running in terms of exploiting available resources from scratch is a good thing to learn anyway. (Both from the stance of "starting over" and from "Oh, I can just get food and stuff when I'm out hunting/doing Stuff away from home")