Some question from a beginner

[DamJNeT]

Hello !

Been playing H&H for some times and I must say Salem doenst look bad at all :]

I started couple days ago, and I have some questions :

I'm about to get a claim, where should I settle as an hermit ? I read sevenless guide, but I've also read people advicing to settle in a plain near watter (I have no plain at all around me at the moment)

Does increasing your proficiencies helps with foraging and stuff ? I have the feeling that with Frontier & Wilderness I see forageable farther, and with Hunting & Gathering I see more of them. Am I dreaming ?

Because for humours, I'm suposed to get blewit for increasing my YB. My problem is I can't find much. I get tons of other stuff, but no blewit. Where could I find them (more than 1/hour) ? I have the mushrooms skill btw.

That's it for now, thx for answers.

[TargetPractice]

Hello fellow newbie,

Regarding claims, I think the general agreement is not too near water - I can't remember where but someone brought up a very good point: players follow coastlines, rivers, game trails etc.. while traveling. Not to mention the Ender client allows you to zoom out the minimap, so for the sake of safety I'd advise a 1-2 minimaps of distance between yourself and the nearest body of water. I don't follow my own advice, but I wasn't aware of this when I first settled

Proficiencies increasing drops - I doubt it, but I haven;t played long so what do I know. What does affect your drop chances are the movement skills Wander and Forage. When Wandering around grasslands I find quite a few blewits, to the point that I've stopped picking them up: they simply take too much bag/basket space to be worth it

Good luck on your adventures in Salem, and a word of warning - watch out for snakes! Little buggers are aggressive!

[Kandarim]

generally, don't settle right next to water - as has been said already. If you have the skills, and the means, you WANT to have a mineshaft IN your claim. It really helps out tons! (you can use it for easy ore, but also for some cheap claimed land where you can put coal clamps/drying racks and other things like that.

For Lavender Blewit: I'm pretty sure you need one of the gathering skills (probably mushroom hunting, or botany or something like that). The distance at which you see forageables pop up on your minimap is fixed, independent of your proficiencies, and personally, I've never noticed an increase of detected forageables with higher proficiencies.

About snakes: don't they run from you like any other animal( except for turkeys) now?

[DamJNeT]

No snakes do chase you, made the experience yesterday
;
Thx for advices. But I have an abandoned mineshaft near my current location... I think I'll settle where I am and give it a try.

I can now craft some clothes, but can't find what doe slots and numbers means on their description.

Also what would be a safe B and YB to hunt rabbits and crickets for a noob ?

[TargetPractice]

Snakes are the worst. I spent ages building a fence with 5 phlegm because I got so sick of random snake drive-bys
Though good info is that they can't enter shallow water! Run to the nearest river and just dip your toes in the water, then follow the river until you lose aggro.

Hunting crickets? Definitely not 5 B / YB. I was very surprised to see how easy it is for them to piss on my corpse and equally surprised to notice they're quite a bit more resilient than rabbits(4 - 5 punches as opposed to 2)
At 10-ish humours and some amount of skill you'll rarely have to worry, unless you try to kill several in quick succession. I don't know if you've read the guide detailing this, but the best way to hunt animals is to get aggro with a slingshot, move away and then hit the animal as it heads towards you. It will then run about a bit, during this period you run away from them: that way you can easily see when it stops faffing around and starts chasing you again. Rinse and repeat until you get sweet sweet animal corpses.
EDIT: almost forgot. Don't underestimate the use of Guard! It lowers the amount of frontal damage you take, and with only 10 Blood you'll want all the damage reduction you can get

Slots are for artificing, which means adding an artifact to your clothing. I don't understand it very well tbh, but I doubt you'll have to worry about it for a while yet! Slotting typically gives you bonuses to offence or defence, and the number (eg 30-0) is the range of success chance: high numbers are hard, low numbers are easy. So if there is an item with difficulty 65-50 it'll be very hard to slot. These numbers are affected by your proficiencies however. I believe the hardcore PvP players have fully slotted gear to maximise their damage

[Yourgrandmother]

Don't settle near a river/lake of any kind.

Make sure you are 1.5+ hours away from Roanoke/Jamestown/Boston.

Majority of raiders hide in their secret super fortresses way out in the darkness. For them to raid they need to port to town and move on out so this is the main reason why distance away is critical.

Work towards building a smelter/smelters. Make a dozen braziers and sell excess iron in town to build up silver to expand your pclaim. Work towards a town bell which will then make you very safe.

[qbradq]

I never could find blewits either. Here is what I used for early-game humor gain:

Blood: Plank Stake + Buddies on a Branch
Phlegm: Lean Rabbit + Sizzled Slug
Yellow Bile: A Fish in the Reeds + Fillet on the Rocks (great use of dross BTW)
Black Bile: Garlic Spitroast

Also, don't worry about being in grassland. You can always port to Boston and forage around there. Worked fine for me until I rolled a grassland alt.

[DamJNeT]

Thx for answers.
So is there a defense value on equipment or is it purely aesthetic ? I'll try to put arrowhead or smthg on a hide cape anyway to see how it turns out.
Why would a town bell make me safe ? I looked on wiki and didnt see. I only saw it requires upkeep, wich is bad in my case (often afk for extended period of time for work)

[dmdisco]

its only the socketable items that gives defense/offense/misc bonuses, clothing without any thing in the sockets gives nothing.
a town (under a town bell) afaik can only be attacked with the use of a trail by fire http://salemwiki.info/index.php/Trial_by_Fire (not sure how it works but im sure you can find better info here on the forum)

[Yourgrandmother]

So is there a defense value on equipment or is it purely aesthetic ?

It can add both attack power and defense.

Very noticeable. Damage reductions of 20-30 already from what I'm seeing.