One Hour One Life Forums

From Jason's notes:

"Long term food sustainability has been made much harder.  Getting up to 30+ generations in one spot should be a pretty substantial challenge, and you won't be able to do it on carrots alone.  The top has been hardened."

Does anyone know yet what exactly this change is?

There is ALWAYS a chief incentive, and a very difficult one at that, at the heart of this game. And that's sustainable civilization. And more than ever now, that means long lineage. So far the longest family line is 31 generations. Obviously you're not likely to play 10 hours straight to see this through, the only way you can top this "high score" is to organize, to contribute toward long-term sustainability in whatever way you can best do. You may just end up living a crucial, fluorishing lifetime in the most successful family tribe in OHOL history. It's not about the tech tree. Things are far from done when the wells are built and the horse-drawn carts are in use.
What use are they if they're part of a doomed and poorly-operated settlement?

The game is long-term - the challenge is long-term. It's about figuring out what works best, and your legacy really matters in a long-lived tribe. Jason is constantly adjusting the game, and meanwhile the community is constantly adjusting how to create and organize the most sustainable civ.

If you're looking for a challenge in the game's world, look beyond the top of the tech tree.

Yeah, it's gotten now to where a plot of un-watered carrot seeds is an incredibly valuable thing. If a farmer tending the crop isn't watering seeds, don't take it on to do this for him - ESPECIALLY if there are lots of carrots in baskets. You're doing no favors! The harvest has become a delicate dance that needs constant vigilance. Definitely, if you're the last person in a settlement, one of the best things you can do is seed the farm without watering it, so that future generations may come across it and have a huge leg-up in their brief lifetime.

I want to  mention something about old age. When you reach the elderly stage, old and hunched and wrinkled, with a tiny dwindling childlike hunger meter, it might seem so sad, you might feel useless, and it might make sense to help tend the local duties with the children.

But there is a power that only the elderly have in this game, and it is crucial beyond measure. It's the ability to write long sentences. The job of the elderly is to teach. If you're in a dense village, and you're in your final years, the best way you can use your dying time is to gather where the density is highest, especially around a fire where children are being reared. It may seem shocking, but give them your clothes while you can. You don't need them anymore, and they need them the most. They have nothing to do but sit and wait and be fed. You have nothing to do but teach. So use your power of long sentences and pass on the knowledge to the children, many of whom may in fact be actual (newb)orns in this little world.

If you're old, and there's people around, use the hard-earned power of your wisdom and teach!

We might have reached the top of the current tech tree, but we still seem to be far from making it work sustainably. So many settlements are permanently in a state of death, revitalization, death - and only because the resources aren't being smartly utilized.

The top of the tree currently involves working wells, three golden crowns, dyed wool... Most settlements I'm born into are full of starving naked people hustling desperately just to get food in their bellies.

Sustainable settlements within the current tree are so rare, and I think this is what it's all about. We can figure out how to make everything, but making it actually work is the whole game. If things were easier, we'd be seeing surplus and abundance, but we always seem to be teetering on the precipice.

Until some unscrupulous cousin's mouth starts watering at the prospect of their own easy handcart! And then poof, there goes your north fence. It's a good idea, but very risky.

Is this true?? Oh my god this changes everything for me. Somehow I recall sheep trampling all over my sheeplock no matter what was in it, but I'm probably mistaken and they came in as soon as I opened the fence and still holding the shaft. If this works and you can just block their way, this makes the whole ordeal a hell of a lot easier!

that's excellent. they should be in the hands of every newb across the lands.

Echoing Matok's experience, when I've made compost and haven't been the chief farmer, I've harvested wild berries away from the village center, wild bushes only. It's often possible, and in the context of domestic farming, practically equals  free compost. If you combine what you're growing with a bit of the bounty that the land renewably offers, pies, wheat, and compost become much more manageable. You can never assume however how many bushes are sustainably useable around any given settlement. This is a wildcard dependent on where you are.

I gotta give a shout out to Ned too for that graphic at the head of this thread. It's phenomenal. The best single-graphic guide I've seen on this game! You could make smithing seem simple with that kind of layout.

True, this suggests that the only safe way to draw from a well would be to give it a single fill first.

But if you're using the well because you need water, and you already a full bowl, and you don't gain by drawing... I mean, you see where this is going.

You'd have to have someone watching the well around the clock and keeping stock, and get it right. I really suspect this is an oversight, but we'll find out soon enough from the man himself!

Uuuh! Umm! Shhhh!!!

Oh man, I agree 1000%. Matok's point of a backpack of pies being able to feed you for half your life is a major one. If you've ever done this, had a backpack of meat pies, it changes the entire game experience. No more worrying about food at all, you've got it on you, you've got time on your side. And time is everything, whether with carrots or rabbit pies or wild berries, whether with one pond or twelve, time is THE thing you're always buying.

If you've got a backpack with pies in it, no matter where you are or what you're doing, it takes two seconds to whip that pie out and take a bite and put the leftovers back in the bag. Now you're full and can keep working and never had to walk a step to feed yourself. Whether you're trapping in the prairies or clubbing seals in the tundra or tending the aulde carrot patch, a single backpack can hold 12 servings. That's incredible. Each pie is like its own uber-basket of food. This particular quality of pies is SO valuable when it comes to the messy business of actually making things happen in the world. One single watered wheat plot creates enough dough for THREE pies - an entire half of a lifetime from 1.6 bowls of water (.6 for the three carrots). A pie-carrier can easily manage to build a pen and domesticate sheep, but for a carrot-eater it's going to be uphill.

And not to mention the abundant rabbit meat if there's an active trapper in the village. Cooked rabbit is a mess. It seems like a waste to me to cook rabbits if it's possible to make them into pies. It doesn't have to be constant - just once in a while, and if there's enough water, and abundant rabbit meat - It seems absurd not to make use of pie magic.

Oh, god, it's so funny to me. I was playing on this server until I got to experience a lot of the stuff I hadn't seen yet - I built the sheep pen behind the great hall and brought the first sheep in, dyed the first wool, learned how to wrangle the little buggers (my initial attempt was an absolute disaster - sheep running all over the fields, dead lambs everywhere - it was bedlam I tells ya), but going back to the main game is such a hilarious contrast. In Norggland, it's not at all unusual to see royalty in colored garb and crowns lounging around on the bear rug chatting about gold mining and eating rabbit pie. Back on the savage servers, you're lucky to get a few berries in your belly before you die naked and alone in a desolate swamp.

By the way, you were really close to making the head for your hammer! All you needed was to smack it with a round stone and you just about had a smithing hammer.
Also, I believe that royal passerby was me - You showed me the northern road of tilled rows and I'm sorry I never did return with those baskets - I got caught up in the city bustle when I returned!

Classic mistake. Right-clicking a wolf is "kill", left-clicking a wolf is the command for walking up to the wolf and offering your tender meat for a snack.