I figure I can revive this thread since the server's wiped (for the last time, I hear) and there's been a few cool updates.
This game is a lot of fun for me, but only because I've played it before and know how to progress. It gives you no indication of what you should do or work towards. Only once you know what features exist do you really have any motive to play.
Anyway, last Sunday my two friends got beta keys, and we decided to give Salem a shot. I'd played it during the last beta, but the others had little-to-no experience. I will admit here that we consider Salem a way to pass the time between now and Guild Wars 2, so we are not so concerned about dying and losing our characters, or having our possessions stolen.
We each started fresh off the ship in Boston, with nothing but the clothes on our backs. We picked a rough direction to walk and set out.
We started with the goal of gaining the Swimming skill, just to make our journey easier. Scrounging inspirationals from the ground, we continued heading further and further from Boston whilst generally leveling proficiencies and skills and looking for a suitable place to settle down. I'll admit the beginning is the dullest point in the game, even if I personally enjoy searching for good locations. My friends grew tired of walking so we settled down by a river in a small maple forest. We stayed here for a few hours, getting three lean-tos built from scratch in the first and building up our foraging efficiency skills.
Salem's rate of progression is not linear. The more you progress, the faster you progress and the funner the game becomes, I find. Food is scarce until you gain Mushroom Hunting and other such skills. Digging is a chore until you raise your max Phlegm. Walking is a journey until you get Swimming. For example, one friend died before having a lean-to and found that the hour and a half walk we took to get to our location took only thirty minutes with swimming!
So we built "camp one" up for a few hours, at the same time leveling stats. Leveling stats drains black bile and working phlegm, so it's actually food-efficient to multitask. We got to the point of having a lean-to each and a nice foundation of foraging and building abilities before deciding we wanted a better location, a bigger forest to forage. Our old camp would serve as a spawn point should a rattlesnake or bear surprise us.
So the next day we gluttony'd our reserves and burnt through the inspirationals and set out once again, with more to study on the way. After a long walk we found the location we're currently at, and set up a similar camp. The other two went off foraging and I built a camp of three lean-tos, each with a nice, spacious box and everything we had made from the first camp in a quarter of the time it took all three of us to build the first camp.
Currently we are working on a cellular-styled village. Although I - now that I think about it - am doing all of the building, I'm still ahead of the others skill-wise in about the same play-time. Knowledge is power! So if you enjoy the thought of building thriving villages with friends, small-scale politics with neighbours, and settling the frontier of civilization, I recommend acquainting yourself with the wiki. If you forsake the wiki, you'll likely be doomed to combining rocks into crappy inspirationals for all time.
And let's be honest, if you play Dwarf Fortress you shouldn't mind keeping wikis close to hand.
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Topic: Salem: paradoxe's new free to play MMORPG. (Read 47801 times)