A haven's veteran thoughs on what Salem does right and wrong

[Lord_Avu]

So I've started playing Salem 5-6 weeks ago (I did play it back when it was first opened I was among the first 5 people allowed but there simply was not enough content back then and I wasn't a fan of the cash shop). In this time me and my buddy built a town, walls, got up to dehydrated roses and almost viscera and bits, firsts fields reached 100 influence, we're raising turkeys, pottables trees basically everything. I got past the 100 bile threshold. I have no experience with pvp other than the info I gathered from forums and wiki but it's all getting changed anyway so there's that. I'm writing this so you can understand where I'm coming from so my feedback can be framed.

The cash shop it's a bit pay to win but it's a lot better than other implementations. Probably early on in a world the ones that can invest most amount of silver have most advantage due to the costs of setting up your first mine but after that you can basically play for free and eventually get some of the packs for looks and convenience. I'd prefer a one time buy in rather than a cash shop but I realize that's not going to happen.

Farming system is very complex and unfortunately extremely grindy. Haystack are pretty much a lost cause you need crazy amounts of hay and you simply can't do it with just grass and whatever you get from your regular fields without having auxiliary grind fields whose only purpose in life is to feed a few big fields. And once you do get fields to t3 you then need stupid amounts of lime which is still annoying to get. I can probably learn to live with the system if the rewards were worth it. Cotton I can see the benefits, cereals and cabbage sort of but pumpkins and corn seem really ****, maybe I'm missing some amazing recipes that have better utility than easy acquired meat with red peppers for restore but I don't know yet. I like that crops have utility without tiering them cotton for cash, cereals for hay, pumpkins for feeding composts, cabbage for pot q raising, corn I guess for hay but meh.

Potting system is ok I guess the inspirationals you make are nice but most of the food ingredients are not worth the hassle, carrots, tomatoes, radishes, onion radishes too much work not enough bonus, red peppers are probably the best item you can pot due to the strong synergy with meat which is more abundant than crops and more important you can actively get it rather than passively wait for timers to expire. Connected with pots tree planting leaves to be desired the whole waiting for decay ticks to replenish products I'm not a fan of and I don't understand the reasoning for planted trees.

Hunting is fun. A big reason is the fact that you can actively go out there and hunt like I mentioned before and the actual mechanics for each animal are different which is nice.

The whole board system is a huge grind but it's a grind you have input in. You can estimate how much dry boards you need to end up with the amount of eventually oiled boards you need. Similar tiered grind systems don't work so well, I'm looking at you lard maybe it gets more reliable once I get viscera will see.

Inspiration system: I like the proficiency raising and the skill what I don't like is needing to use pretty much every single inspirational of the type, it's nice that you're encouraged to do it but not that you're basically forced. The penalty for spamming same thing should be lowered by a lot a max of 2 times I think is more than enough. Also new inspirationals should be added over time so that you actually have a choice of what to use.

Gluttony that's a tricky one I like how it's supposed to work the variance in foods required the full and fed thing that is supposed to temper stat growth so people that play less can theoretically keep up what I don't like is that entire system is basically negated by design with pay to win, you want to cook only one food type no problem buy restore food ingredient and you're set, you want to lower full and fed timer no problem eat retarded amounts of glass using potions glass and all.

The announced pvp stuff I like I've advocated an arson system in haven for a looooong time. I also feel rangers needed an incentive other than the goodness of their heart to fight criminals and you're doing that. I don't like the whole layering of walls thing but I accept it as a necessary evil.

Game needs a system of fast travel restricted to working proximity. Man I miss my inner town crossroads from haven. Long distance teleport was very exploitable but local one was so much easier and fun than walking everywhere. I don't care about realism (and you don't either hello there lard walls) I just want to enjoy myself. Also pavement should speed up movement and should greatly speed it up for carts hopefully horse drawn carts waggons whatever else gets in will fix this problem.

What I feel is the biggest issue with the game though is the impracticality of doing projects. Say you manage to gather 10 people online in a town what can you realistically make them do together? Pretty much nothing. Stone hedge? K maybe you can set that up, mining well there's this 20 minute wait time or whatever it is where you mine one row and then there's another 20 minute wait time so there's that, no mining party and even if you do it only reason would be clearing space in mine definitely not for ore which is too much that I throw away 90%, plank wall? meh sure you can make people build the piles but then there's 5 and half days wait to see any result, brick wall is gate behind lard so no need for 10 people again unless you send them all out into the world to kill stuff and then cook it over fires but that's just solo work divided not something for everyone to do in same spot. In haven we had brick making parties (bricks ended up as our trading with other people currency aka we bought tons of it), we had mining parties that resulted in steel (they kinda ruined that later on when mining required titan characters for the good stuff), we had the all fun hemp farming lining parties (which unfortunately ended up with 8 bots working it instead). The point is there were activities we could do as a group grindy **** for sure but grindy **** that wasn't do this now and then wait 8 days for the result like in salem.

And this is not only a group thing even solo you can end up with nothing to do. Why make more food when you can't even eat the one you have, why hunt more when again food (you end up hunting just for the rare drops which is pretty ****), you can't build new stuff since you're gated by waiting for boards or rare drops mostly boards, you can't make new inspirationals because they'd just take more space and you'd be wasting your inspirations if you used them. So you end up with nothing to do times. In haven when the town projects were done your crops farmed your animals fed you could work on food and finding curiosities, working on different stuff actually made you hungry so you could eat your food (you could plow drink to make yourself hungry but I very rarely resorted to it usually I just worked on stuff then ate). There was also looking for purity nodes, raising authority, extending town claim towards local attractions (mostly local clay nodes for bricks to be able to place crossroads next to, pandemoniums claim was half a supegrind long not quite as wide but still) which involved a lot of hemp farming, mussel hunting for pearls (which ended up in rings and necklaces which were rare, very sought after and NOT consumed as curiosities). My suggestion figure out a way to remove dead times (and I know I should just probably start making alts but I don't want to). I'm sure this problem would be lessened with more content as well.

[fox]

Heya Avu Just wait a little. I think with new patch a lot of changing at that time.

[Dallane]

awesome feedback. I agree with a majority of it.

[JohnCarver]

This was a very nice read and I must admit that it was nice to see somebody 'highlight' the differences between Salem and Haven in a well articulated way. It is difficult to respond to a lot of the concerns in this post because we share many of them and I feel in the next 90 days a lot of these things will be partially or fully eliminated.

[NordErdTod]

Read the whole post, and as a fan of both Haven and Salem I must admit that mostly it is true.
I like stuff which pays you off depending on how much effort you give aka grinding.
Also, Salem is quite a social game - so more of group activities would be really nice.

Hope for the incoming 90 days = )

[Dallane]

Also, Salem is quite a social game

not at all lol

[shizuka]

would you mind me asking you a few questions about haven? i never played it. Being a moba games player basically i dont really have the same vision of salem/haven than most people i think , but id like to know more about haven , i heard its gonna be like remade into smth newer?

[shizuka]

can i pm you?

[Dallane]

would you mind me asking you a few questions about haven? i never played it. Being a moba games player basically i dont really have the same vision of salem/haven than most people i think , but id like to know more about haven , i heard its gonna be like remade into smth newer?

They are essentially the same game. Haven is a amazing game and easy to get into.

It is currently being remastered

[shizuka]

They are essentially the same game. Haven is a amazing game and easy to get into.

It is currently being remastered

Is there a new version of it getting released soon? i heard stuff but i dont know much, but with the new scents and tbc system on salem, well i'd love to try out haven , how much do u know? i googled a lot but didnt find much info