Let's LARP the Unreal World!

[AzraelCC]

For those who don't know this game, visit the official site: http://www.jmp.fi/~smaarane/urw.html

Basically, it's a survival simulation in the form of a roguelike, where you try to do whatever the Finns do during the "Iron Age." Like Hearts of Iron or Saints Row, this game has no strict goals--therefore you have to LARP you way through it.

First off, we're going to create a character:

Who we'll name Chubby, because we'll expect him to get fat on a very... "special" kind of meat

Now we choose a culture. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses. Well actually, no--the Kaumolainen (Kaumo for short) are pretty much the uber races in the Unreal World, so we'll choose them.

Of course Chubby is male, one cannot expect a woman to survive in the harsh Iron Age of Finland

Notice Chubby's smile is very familiar We then choose the season where we'll start Chubby's adventures. Spring, Summer and Autumn are for weaklings. Winter is the only way to go.

Now we roll for stats. In Iron Age Finland, strength and agility are very important, since we'll be cutting fown lots of trees and dodging arrows a lot. Notice that there's a phobia, too (which is randomly generated). Chubby decides to have an irrational fear of horses, simply because there are apparently no horses in Finland. Some fun phobias include other people or weapons, both of which can seriously fuck up your day.

Chubby also gets two Rituals, which are low magic spells in the Unreal World. Now, the rituals I got are pretty useful for hunting animals. But Chubby doesn't really like hunting animals that much. He prefers to hunt something more "challenging." Still, these might be useful.

I wasn't able to get a screenshot of the skill selection, but you'll see them in the game later. You can choose to improve five skills, and I chose the following:

Cookery - better cooking means better hunger prevention per unit of food. Since we'll be cooking meat a lot, this is an important skill

Survival - This is a survival game, so naturally this will be very useful

Timbercraft - Chubby will be cutting LOTS of trees. Hundreds of trees. This takes time, and this skill will reduce that time significantly.

Fishing - Besides "meat" Chubby likes fish. A great skill to have for those lean times.

Club - the highest rated weapon for a starting character. With full strength, this skill can be improved at character creation to a maximum of 80%. The next highest rated weapon, the dagger, can only reach 56%. Clubs are also so easy to make,making this the weapon of choice for Chubby.

After the skills have been improved, it's time to create a randomized map

The red square is the starting location of Chubby. If we press C, the location of major areas where the other cultures have settled can be seen:

We don't want Chubby to be too close to these tribes, so we randomize the starting point a bit until he's far away from civilization, like a real man

Next we choose the scenario. Since slavery is up the Codex's alley, let's choose the Runaway Slave scenario

Look at how awesome the graphics are of the Unreal World. Photorealistic shit, right there:

We then decide if we want to have tutorial messages or "advanced" quests. Since this is a LARPing session, let's choose the sandbox option

With everything set up, let's see where we find ourselves in the wilderness of IRON AGE FINLAND!

Oh, right, we're in the middle of a slave camp. And we have to escape.

Well, perhaps the slavers (called Njerpez) are a poorly equipped rabble, typical of next gen tutorial missions. We press F3 and Chubby looks around:

The slavers are just wielding short swords! Surely, Chubby's +3 longsword will totally own these bitches. Let's equip our uber weapon from inventory:

A knife?? And we only have three pieces of armor. Linen trousers doesn't look like it can withstand a lot of punishment...

...and the red color of the armor coverage against blunt weapons says it all. Maybe the woolen undershirt will protect me from the cold?

Just barely. It seems that Chubby's balls are the only parts of his body that won't be subject to frostbite. You notice on the upper left part of the UI, we see the time of day and the temperature, which is a little below zero. Frostbite is an injury that is certainly possible. We also see a picture on the upper right that shows the current action of Chubby (walking). At the lower left is the message box, and above that is the status of hunger, thirst and fatigue.

Well, at this point, we are still full, not thirsty, uninjured and "vigorous." Given that the slavers are well equipped while we're lucky to have any weapon at all, I think it's time to do what real men do:

RUN THE FUCK AWAY!

Next episode: Running away and running back--with a big club.

 

[MisterStone]

This game was fun for at least a few days... I just wish the developer was a bit more... active. At some point you kill a large animal, get a cabin put together, and there aren't really any challenges left at that point. Still, when you are still learning the ropes it's pretty cool! Be sure to make some cool hunting traps, like a barricade and pits or sth.

 

[Phelot]

YES! I tried playing this game awhile ago, got busy and stopped and never had time to learn it. It'll be fun to follow

 

[Phelot]

Also, what do Taste/Smell and Touch do?

 

[Fafnir]

YES! I tried playing this game awhile ago, got busy and stopped and never had time to learn it. It'll be fun to follow

 

[Silellak]

Bookmarked. Carry on, good sir.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Cool, I wondered what this game would be like but didn't want to play it.

Play it so I don't have to.(tm)

 

[mondblut]

Try LARPing somebody who does not sustain himself on this special meat. Now *that* is challenge.

Really, after offing all these slavers there is really little else to do in the game, you have all the best equipment (battleswords, iron armors...) and enough meat to last you a year. I then went to hunt a bear and got thoroughly crippled (but managed to kill him just when he was going to break my last unbroken limb).

 

[AzraelCC]

This game was fun for at least a few days... I just wish the developer was a bit more... active. At some point you kill a large animal, get a cabin put together, and there aren't really any challenges left at that point. Still, when you are still learning the ropes it's pretty cool! Be sure to make some cool hunting traps, like a barricade and pits or sth.

Yeah, there's a lot of potential with the game, and at some point it does become tedious. Hopefully the developer would stop going Na'vi in the wilderness and keep coding more. Elevation's in this version already, though, and human opponents can use ranged weapons now.

Episode 2: Running Away and Running back with a Big Club

When we left Chubby, he was being a man and running the fuck away. Now, in the Unreal World, when running away, it's best to run backwards, while still facing your opponents. The best way to die is being hit by something you can't see, and if you run away with your back turned on some Njerpez bastard, chances are, you'll die quickly. So the adage that you should keep you enemies closer not only works for Italian mob bosses, but also for almost half-naked survivalist Finns during TEH IRON AGE!

After dodging a few short sword blows and moving diagonally in between trees, Chubby manages to escape his Njerpez captors.

Now, while Chubby may be a free man, freedom of choice is not all that it's cracked up to be. Because as Codex knows, there are consequences. We have no food, little clothing to protect us from the subzero temperatures of winter, and virtually no tools.

But if almost a millennium later another Finn can survive 700 Soviet soldiers invading his homeland and counter snipers tasked specifically to eliminate him, so the Hell can we!

First, we have to keep warm. Notice in the hunger/thirst/vigour status bar, we are still "comfortably warm." But in a matter of a few hours, even with good clothing, this status will go to "bitterly cold" or "freezing," at which point the least protected body parts will start having frostbite. Frostbite is a bitch, since it takes several weeks to heal, and every time you're exposed to cold weather, it wouldn't heal for that day.

Since vodka hasn't been implemented in the game yet (as it should be), we have to build a fire. The best way to do this is to look for felled logs, since they can burn for more than 8 hours, and you don't have to cut them down anymore. We actually can't cut the large trees, since that requires an axe. Notice I am already standing near a said felled log. So we press the # sign to bring up general actions:

And we select build a fire. After a few minutes, we have a nice large flame consuming that log lying around. During winter, always look for such logs, and thank the industrious woodpecker who felled that tree.

Now let's take a look at Chubby's skills:

The skills are a determined primarily by the statistics we rolled during character creation. I forgot the formulas for most of the skills, but I do know that survival is a combination of intelligence and endurance, timbercraft strength and dexterity, club strength x 2. Even when we chose the "best" culture for Chubby, his stats are pretty fucked up. Half of the skills above 50 are due to my choice of proficiency (Survival, Timbercraft, Club). The skills in weapons are crappier, with the base skill rating for most weapons below 40%

Skill improve by doing activities associated with them. The progression is quite slow, and as the skill gets higher, it gets slower. I once cooked everyday for three months and my skill only increased 7%.

Activating a skill is simple, just press Alt + the letter of the skill you want to use. A couple of tiles below our fire is a small tree--one of the few things you can cut using a knife. We don't want to stay too far from our fire, unless we want frostbite. We activate the Timbercraft skill, and we see the fell a tree option.

After a few minutes the tree is felled. Notice in the message box that in this version, the game suggests which tool would be appropriate for the job (next-gen handholding :grumble. If you don't use the best tool, the activity takes longer. Cutting down that small tree was to be done "preferably with an axe." Fuck you! I'm a slave who just escaped captivity, not a tutorial pussy!

We get several pieces of wood, called "Slender tree trunks" beside us:

We pick them up, and bring them closer to the fire. We'll be using them to create a couple of useful tools, so we have more options than just a stupid knife.

The carrying penalty (topmost right, near the photorealistic movement status window) increases by 8% to 10%, because those slender tree trunks weigh 150lbs in all. this penalty would apply to all skills, so when fighting animals or people, remember to drop heavy stuff to minimize the chances of death.

Anyway, let us make something, by pressing Shift + M (Make). As you can see, we can create a lot of things, like wooden items, weapons and even buildings:

Let's choose weapons, and it's nice to know that we can make a club! Once the Club is selected as the item we want to make, we see the tools and materials required, and our inventory window opens as well, so we can choose the materials and tools needed:

Look! A club just needs a slender tree trunk and any cutting weapon! Let's make ourselves a club, which is has the highest skill rating for Chubby. It'll take a couple of minutes...

Excellent! We have our club! Next let's make ranged weapons, some javelins:

But what's this, it says that we need staves! We don't have staves!

Actually, we have to make them first, using the slender tree trunks. They're under wooden items:

We choose our remaining STT, and make the staves:

Which takes almost three hours!

And finally we can make our javelins:

Now, these tools still won't do. We at least need an axe to survive the harsh Finnish winter of TEH IRON AGE. The only way to get them is to kill those damn Njerpez and take their loot. We have a decent weapon, and with the guerrilla tactics of positioning between trees to prevent being flanked, we go off to battle!

We hide (as seen in the photorealistic status window) near the trees until we spot the enemy:

A few more steps, then we throw a javelin at the bastard...

And choose a high probability target: the body

Naturally, Chubby misses with his fat-fingered hands. We sneak closer, not only to get a better shot at the enemy, but also to get the javelin we've just thrown:

Chubby throws a second time and misses as well, but the Njerpez warrior notices us! He rushes at Chubby while he picks up the earlier javelin

In the Unreal World, the best way to kill a person is to go for the legs. I wait until the opponent runs beside me, so I get first strike. I press 1 to attack and target his legs:

I hit his abdomen instead, but he still falls down! Fuck yeah. Squirming in pain, I would hit him some more, but another warrior is nearby, and I'm in an open space, waiting to be flanked. I move back to the trees, luring in the new opponent

And I score a light hit to his thigh! He falls down. Now its time to go "Bear Jew" on his ass:

And hit the fucker in the head with a club until it explodes like a watermelon:

After a few blows (you can repeat the previous attack, including target body part by pressing the number 3), the Njerpez warrior gets hit in the shoulders and finally twitches and dies. However, Chubby's first opponent has finally recovered from the gut-blow and has now stood up.

Sounds are also heard by the rest of the camp and will soon attack Chubby! Will Chubby survive the harsh people, winter and animals of IRON AGE FINLAND?

Next Episode: The Final Solution... for Hunger.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Some pics aren't loading and I have to manually open them in another tab, not sure if it's my fault or the site's

other than that, I'm anxious to find out about Chubby's fate :D

 

[Phelot]

MOAR!

 

[Zdzisiu]

MOAR! I remember playing this game and this particular scenario and getting gang-raped by the Njerpezs but I never thought about hitting their legs, like multiheaded dick :D

 

[Trash]

This is actually one of the easier starting points when you know what to do. Worse, when you finish killing and eating them and take all of their loot there is hardly any challenge left in the game.

 

[MisterStone]

So there's elevation in the game now? What does it do? Also, I'm surprised these guys are using ranged weapons, they ought to be putting a few javelins or arrows in your ass. Maybe some other ones will in a moment..

I think the slave scenario would be pretty difficult if the bad guys could actually shoot at you.

Also, did the man implement the feature where you can use tracking on a local map instead of just the world map?

 

[AzraelCC]

Really, after offing all these slavers there is really little else to do in the game, you have all the best equipment (battleswords, iron armors...) and enough meat to last you a year. I then went to hunt a bear and got thoroughly crippled (but managed to kill him just when he was going to break my last unbroken limb).

This is actually one of the easier starting points when you know what to do. Worse, when you finish killing and eating them and take all of their loot there is hardly any challenge left in the game.

Actually, this scenario has become more difficult in this version. Originally I wanted the hurt, helpless and dying scenario, but a catchup game for this version made me choose this scenario since the tactics have changed. A bit of a *SPOILER* for those who haven't played the game:

• -Njerpez warriors are now fewer in every camp. There used to be at least 12 of them in every camp, now there are at most half that number in the games I've played so far. They have their own "area" now in the game, which figures into the "goal" of this LARP
  
  -Human meat is now less filling and there are fewer of them per person. Each human used to have 90+ cuts of meat produced; this has again been halved. human meat is less filling--you need to probably consume 8 delicious human meats per day to keep full
  
  -Njerpez warriors have fewer iron-based equipment, and usually in bad condition. Plus, they can use ranged weapons now. Ranged weapons are quite powerful. You start bleeding, and you're fucked.
  
  -Lone people travelling used to be a great source of food. But in this version, adventurers and travelling merchants always travel in LARGE groups. This was my mistake during my first playthrough of the version, thinking there was just one of them in the forest

My next episode will detail Chubby's goal, which you Nazi's would probably like

ITZ COMING, BTW

 

[mondblut]

So you're going to slaughter the moskalinjerpez to the last untermensch? I applaud thee!

Human meat is now less filling and there are fewer of them per person. Each human used to have 90+ cuts of meat produced; this has again been halved.

FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Oh no now you spolied the secret of the special meat :sad:

/naive

edit: pics are all opening ok now.

 

[Luzur]

hey, i remember trying this some time ago.

 

[AzraelCC]

Welcome back to the Unreal World!

First, let me answer MisterStone's questions:

So there's elevation in the game now? What does it do? Also, I'm surprised these guys are using ranged weapons, they ought to be putting a few javelins or arrows in your ass. Maybe some other ones will in a moment..

I think the slave scenario would be pretty difficult if the bad guys could actually shoot at you.

Also, did the man implement the feature where you can use tracking on a local map instead of just the world map?

Yes on both counts. Elevation so far has the biggest effect when traveling in the world map. While mountains still increase visual range, elevation increases it as well, to a greater extent. On the local map, I don't think it has an effect on combat just yet, but when moving heavy objects (a new feature, at least for me, which will be detailed in a future update) it will take more time when the destination is of higher elevation.

You can now track on local maps, and even tells you if there are multiple tracks visually. Of course, a higher tracking skill would determine if you distinguish between them or not.

Episode 3 - The Final Solution... For Hunger

When we last left Chubby, he had managed to kill a Njerpez warrior, but the fallen one had risen up and was now ready to attack him. Again we lure him into the woods, for roguelike anti-flanking and cover from ranged weapons.

We hit him again in the leg (which as Zdzisiu pointed out, is HEAVAN). He doesn't fall down but, repeated hits in the thigh kills him outright. Notice the aforementioned tracks in the local map made by the late Njerpez warrior.

Well, as we look for more slavers to kill, we discover that it was a different warrior who attacked us, and fallen guy is still fallen. But one of his comrades has appeared.

I decide to finish off the fallen guy, but as I do so, I notice my javelin in the distance. It seems that the Slaver is going to pick it up, which equals to: not fun for Chubby

I beat him to the only ranged weapon in camp, and aim for his body...

And it hits him in the thorax! A HARD wound, which probably means he's bleeding

We move in for the kill, ready to bash his brains in

And he's dead. This probably is the last slaver in camp. As I mentioned before, there are now fewer slavers in Njerpez camps (there used to be at least a dozen in a camp), because they actually have settlements of their own in the world map.

Chubby was very lucky that there were no hunting bows or javelins with the Njerpez. A bit disappointing in some way for this LARP, but in previous playthroughs of this version, many characters were killed by bleeding wounds from arrows.

Well, now its time to loot the corpses! One of the best things this slaver has is a woodman's axe. The fastest axe in terms of felling a tree, this will prove invaluable in surviving winter. He also has a shovel, which can be used to create wonderful traps. The javelin we used to kill him survived, too.

We loot the rest of the corpses. Notice that there are very few iron armors worn by the Njerpez compared to other versions. I only got two (a ring legging and halfhelm), and one is severely fucked up (as shown by the "health bars" of items) because of our multi-headed dick attacks. The nerfing is actually to prevent players from having to good a protection in choosing this scenario.

We wear most of the woolen clothes to have better protection against cold, to good effect. Only our hands and face are subject to quick frostbite:

Now we have to get food. With winter making game rare, we only have one recourse at this point: eat the bodies of our fallen enemies.

Probably one of the greatest appeal of the Unreal World. We go to a place with a couple of bodies lying around and try out our new woodsman's axe:

It usually takes an hour to cut down a tree with the woodsman's axe. It takes more ifyou use a crappier axe.

We use the log to build a fire. Harvesting meat takes some time, and we don't want to have frostbite.

Now it's time to cut the carcass. All Chubby needs is a knife to take out the juicy parts of the slavers

After which, we get 44 cuts of meat. Again, as I mentioned, the previous versions had Njerpez warriors producing lots of meat, as much as 110 cuts per warrior. This is raw meat, we still have to cook it.

Alt+C will bring us to the cooking skill menu, where we have lots of recipes to choose from: fish, meat, bread and vegetables. Of course, since all we have is raw meat, and we don't have any other ingredients or tools except a fire, we choose roasted meat.

Just like any activity, we choose the tools and materials:

And we're ready to cook. Usually, the maximum number of items in a stack when doing activities in TEH IRON AGE is 20, so we'll cook 20 cuts of meat

We wait a few minutes, using the _ button, until we receive a message that the meats are done. Then we pick them up:

And it's time for dinner! Mmmm... This tastes very good when hungry indeed! That particular message means we cooked the meat nicely. Not delicious, but good enough than bland or awful.

With such cooking skills, Chubby takes on a new persona:

After eating a few more of our delicious slaver/dinner, our tired Chubby, realizing that it's already late evening, prepares to sleep, right next to another Njerpez corpse for extra warmth. It'll be dark soon, anyway. If you don't have a torch, you can't see anything when Night comes.

Besides, we need to be well-rested for more meat harvesting we'll be doing tomorrow.

Rise and shine! We have lots of work to do, but it seems that Chubby is quite thirsty.

Since Njerpez camps don't have water, we'll have to zoom out to explore large areas faster. Just press enter and as long as there aren't any enemies nearby, we are taken to the world map. Again, we are very lucky; it seems there is a very small pond just a tile away from us:

We zoom in, also by pressing enter. A photorealistic rendering of the area being entered is shown:

Now, normally you can't enter bodies of water--you have to enter the tiles beside them in the world map. But since in winter, lakes and most rivers are completely frozen over, we can walk on them. Still, you don't want to enter a frozen lake tile with Njerpez slavers or worse, a bear in it. There's no cover and running across them will cause you to slip a lot.

Another bad thing about frozen ponds/lakes is that you have to make a hole through the ice to actually drink water. Axes work great for this task, another use for the very versatile woodsman axe. The hole created will last a day, then it will freeze over again.

After an hour(!) of chipping away at the ice, we manage to get through. Now we can drink water. Our warmth rating is at "warm" because of the time-consuming activity. Always make sure to leave a fire "sweating a lot" when traveling through the world map, to trek longer distances without getting frostbite.

Just press Q near a natural source of water to drink

One of the items we looted from our former masters was a wooden mug, which we'll fill with water:

We choose the wooden mug in our inventory. It's current usage status, as you can see, is empty.

With our thirst concerns rectified as of the moment, we return to camp. Things are pretty much the same: dead bodies in the snow, bonfire, Njerpez cabins.

We start harvesting the other body for meat.

Now, roasting all of the meats of these slavers isn't a good idea, since food spoils in the Unreal World. The meat we cooked yesterday would keep for less than a week. But then, leaving all this delicious slaver meat would be such a waste, especially since it's winter.

To solve this problem, lets first take some slender tree trunks by cutting a small tree:

We then use them to make a small bonfire near a Njerpez cabin. This is to prevent frostbite while we prepare the meat.

Next we prepare around 5 primitive cords, a very basic tying equipment made from torn fabric of most clothes.

Making the cord requires 2.5 lbs of cloth. The badly tattered clothes of our enemies should suffice.

What we're going to do is dry the meat. This basically involves making a clothesline out of the cords and hang the wonderful Njerpez cuts to dry. Dried meat keeps well, that the food will last for several months, like Mcdonald's french fries.

Meats and fishes can only be dried in Winter and Autumn, and you need to have a place to hang the meat, like a cabin wall or a fence. The cords Chubby made will be the tying equipment.

After a few minutes, 19 of our Njerpez meats are hanging on the wall, bringing the holiday cheer to the Njerpez camp. As you can see in the message box, drying meat takes time--in this case, 16 days.

The rest of the day is spent harvesting bodies and preparing them to dry. By early morning the next day, two cabins have been decorated with about a hundred pounds of meat:

It seems that the problem of hunger has been solved, at least for a month or so.

Next episode, we leave the camp to look for civilized Finns!

 

[someone else]

So there's elevation in the game now? What does it do?

Affects LOS, also some terrain needs to be climbed.

Also, did the man implement the feature where you can use tracking on a local map instead of just the world map?

Big living things leave actual tracks which you can follow. Smaller animal tracks only show up in snow.

 

[MisterStone]

Dude, you could have used the manflesh to bait a trap or something. Also, since it is winter, doesn't meat just freeze or sth?

Still, sounds like fun! Glad to see the Njerpers have been tweaked a bit.

I can't remember- did previous versions allow you to chip ice? Is ice fishing possible?

 

[laclongquan]

Gah! It's too realistic.

Which is a refreshing change from the usual settings.

EDIT: also, you have meat, a tool to set trap, why dont you make traps? dried meat work fine (I guess) but why not use the raw? The pond is a likely candidate for watering hole.

 

[AzraelCC]

Dude, you could have used the manflesh to bait a trap or something. Also, since it is winter, doesn't meat just freeze or sth?

Still, sounds like fun! Glad to see the Njerpers have been tweaked a bit.

I can't remember- did previous versions allow you to chip ice? Is ice fishing possible?

I saved some meat for baiting. Raw meat and corpses keep a bit longer (around 5 days if I recall from a previous playthrough), but they don't really "freeze" to become unusable.

Ice Fishing is indeed possible. Both ice and net fishing are possible in holes in the ice, but the latter is not advisable. Your net would just be frozen into the lake and you'll chip it out with dead, uneatable fish afterwards

 

[Multiple Sarcasm]

So... there's a fuckton of purified crystallised water lying around and a roaring fire, but the smartest thing to do (I assume, the dev offers no other choice?) is to hike to the nearest germ-infested puddle in the cold, swing an axe for an hour, wasting energy, take a sip and head back? Alright then.

Still, good stuff. Am looking forward to moar adventures of Chubby, our beloved man-eating horror.

 

[MisterStone]

IIRC eating flesh will harm your mental health and make it hard for you to sleep or sth. It will be fun to see what this does to Chubby....