Just had the best experience! Also new player question.

futurebird · 2019-02-20 17:27:12

I was just in the best town and I died of old age.

http://lineage.onehouronelife.com/serve … id=3511516

The town had a nursery next to the pie making place. All knives were in backpacks with nice people. The farms were balanced. And people *talked* a little role play, but also just letting people know what they were doing. I took bread and popcorn to the nursery and let the babies know they could eat it first instead of berries. I took pies to the cart maker and to the fields so they could get yum bonuses. There was food all around, just tucked here and there and I didn't worry about starving.

It was calm enough (and there was enough compost) that I felt OK about making a berry rabbit carrot pie (fancy, little wasteful) as my last act.

Everyone was so nice. I love this game when it's like that.

BUT my next life was... different.

http://lineage.onehouronelife.com/serve … id=3511677

Still a big town, but somehow there was no food that I could find. Never got named. No pies, no stew, bread, but not sliced. These things were being made but not distributed. I was planted carrots and making pie filling (rabbit carrot) since I saw pie crusts and a few raw pies, but I starved right next to the raw pies and a loaf of unsliced bread. *there was no baker*

I realized that maybe I was doing the wrong task. I asked my mom what to do as a baby she said "CARROTS"

How do you determine what a big-ish town needs?
What do you look for first before getting down to a task?

Give me your expert tips.

DestinyCall · 2019-02-20 18:17:19

I'm guessing your mom was asking for carrots because your town was low on compost, rather than rabbit/carrot pies.

Once your town is large enough to have sheep, carrots are best reserved for composting, rather than eaten as a food source. The mutton which is produced as a byproduct of composting can be used to make meat pies. This is especially important if you are out of rabbit meat. You must make new sheep to get poop to get wet compost piles to turn into fresh dirt. But in order to make new sheep, you must have at least one uneaten carrot. This can be very hard to find, if people are eating carrots when other options are available or if the baker is using the carrots to pies. You also need another carrot to make a dry compost pile, so for each pile of compost, you must use two carrots. The fresh dirt can later be used to make even more carrots or other important crops, like wheat, corn, or milkweed.

If you find yourself in a large town that looks like it is struggling, your first stop should be the bakery. Check if there are any baked pies. If no baked pies, are there any unbaked pies? If yes, is there anyone who looks like a baker, actively working on the pies? If not, bake those pies ASAP. You are now the town baker.

If there is a baker working on pies, check to make sure that the baker has an adequate supply of tinder and check that the town has a lit main fire somewhere. If not, fix this problem so the baker can finish his job more quickly. If yes, go check on the sheep. If the sheep are dead or not present (early village), look for meat. Rabbit meat and mutton are good. Pork is bad - you cannot make pies from pork. It looks like mutton, but has a white bone sticking out of it. Do not bring pork to the bakery. If it is already in the bakery, move it out. Move other meats close to the bakery to help your baker make pies more quickly, if they are scattered around town or located at a distance or if the mutton is still in the sheep pen. Using baskets or boxes to conserve space is nice, but try not to occupy every basket in the village with raw meat. Spread it out in a meat field, if there is enough space near the bakery.

If your town is completely without meat, this is a major problem. If you still have some pies, you have a little time, but no meat means no meat pies and no meat pies usually means starvation. Meat problem needs to be fixed quickly to end the food crisis. Depending on the size and resources available to your town, you can fix the lack of meat by either hunting rabbits or slaughtering excess sheep or hunting wild mouflon. Alternatively, you can make three sisters stew, bread, turkey slices/broth, popcorn, bean burritos, pork tacos, or milk, if the necessary ingredients are available and ready to process into edible food. Rarely, you might find yourself in a town with the tools for making saurkraut or the raw ingredients for other rare foods like mango slices or baked potatoes. I don't recommend farming cabbage, potatoes, or mangoes for food, since they are not a good time/resource investment. But if someone else already did the work, you might as well make them into edible foods. These options are frequently available in larger towns, but underutilized because few people have the opportunity to learn how to make them.

However, the easiest solution to a starving big town is usually fixing the compost cycle and getting mutton pies going in the bakery. One of the major issues you might come across in a medium sized village or large town is a mis-managed sheep pen. Either no one is tending the sheep at all or someone "broke" the sheep by killing the mouflon and shearing all the adults. Sometimes it can be hard to find a knife, especially if the town was visited by a murderer or griefer. Sometimes the griefer steals the only knife and dies away from town. Other times, a well-meaning villager will hide all the knives to stop the murders. Without a knife, you cannot harvest mutton. Either find someone with a knife and ask them to help kill the extra sheep or locate/craft a knife of your own. Be sure you have an apron or backpack for the knife if you get one yourself. Loose knives end lives.

If all the sheep are sheared and there are no babies, you should feed one of the adults. In times of food crisis, you want more mutton, so be sure to feed babies if they are available and do not sheer the last sheep. If you have a domestic mouflon, DO NOT KILL IT. It provides an infinite supply of babies and helps protect your sheep pen against accidental over-shearing. Remember to clear the sheep pen of bones and meat so the sheep have room to move around and produce offspring. If the pen is cluttered with dead or dying babies, shear all but one of the adults to reduce the birth rate. The baby corpses despawn quickly, so do not bother digging a trash pit. Just manage the number of unsheared adults to keep the unfed baby population reasonable.

Once the sheep pen is under-control, your final stop should be the wheat fields. Wheat is vital for pie production, but it also produces a very important byproduct - STRAW. Straw is a vital part of the composting cycle and, unfortunately, it can be lost quite easily. Unharvested wheat plants last forever in the field. Once the wheat is harvested and threshed, the pile of wheat lasts forever, but the straw decays very quickly. This is why you see fields full of wheat piles, but you will never see fields of straw (unless someone has just threshed a bunch of wheat and abandoned the straw to decay). Do not thresh wheat until you know what you want to do with the straw. Never leave straw on the ground "for later". It will be gone in a few minutes, just like squash seeds and wheat seeds. Instead, you should always have a plan for your straw. The most important use for straw in a sheep town is compost. Adding a mashed bowl of carrot and berries to a bundle of straw makes a dry compost pile. With water and sheep poop, this will become fresh soil in a little while. Unless your village already has an abundance of compost, this should be your primary use for straw. Make the bowl of berry/carrot FIRST. Put it where you want the compost pile to end up. Take the bundle of wheat over to the bakery and thresh it on an empty tile so the baker can find the wheat pile easily. Carry the straw over to your prepared bowl for berry/carrot and make it into a compost pile. Repeat a few more times until you run out of carrots or wheat. At this point, you'll probably want to farm more carrots or wheat, unless some else is already working on it.

If your town already has a ton of compost piles and you don't think anymore are needed ... make straw into extra baskets OR straw hats. Baskets decay over time and many villages don't have adequate headgear. Use a ball of thread from a sheared sheep with a bone needle and craft straw hats from straw. Or combine two bundles of straw to make a new basket. For bonus points, head over to the sheep pen with your new basket to gather mutton for even more PIES!

Good luck in your next village. If enough people do these important tasks, even more towns will be saved from starvation and death. Once the pie supply stabilizes, there are other important tasks ... like diversifying the food supply, building floors/walls, expanding the sheep pen, gathering firewood, gathering lost clothing, making carts, farming milkweed, and more.

Last edited by DestinyCall (2019-02-20 18:25:30)

CrazyEddie · 2019-02-20 18:35:37

What I look for, in order:

First, the bare essentials:

Berries that need tending
Soil that needs hauling
Water sources that need development or maintenance
Compost cycle that needs fixing

Any of these items (especially the last one!) can have any number of dependencies that are broken and need fixing. Maybe there's not enough bowls to farm effectively! Okay, make bowls. Is there a kiln? Kindling? Fire? Clay? Do I need to haul clay? Are there baskets? Do I need to plant wheat to make baskets, or can I find wild wheat or reeds? FOR GOD'S SAKE WHAT DO YOU MEAN THERE'S NO SHARP STONES !!!!???

So you can live a busy and productive life just making sure that the town has what it needs to tend the berry farm!

If berries, soil, water, and compost (and everything that those depend on) are all in good shape, then I turn my attention to some things that are almost always under-supplied. People make just enough of these to minimally function and then don't make any more because they don't have to, but the town will always work much, much better if there's a lot more of them:

Baskets
Bowls
Milkweed
Buckets
Carts
Backpacks
Aprons
Kindling
Firewood

I suppose after the recent update "clothing" needs to be on that list.

After that I'd make sure that there's plenty of pies and that there's someone doing the baking (and the associated tasks, like fetching plates and hauling mutton and cleaning up wheat etc).

I didn't list "smith" anywhere here, because steel tools are a dependency of nearly everything listed above, so if all of the above are in good shape that means you've got all the tools you need. If you don't, then you'll need to do some smithing (or find someone who can) in order to fix compost, fix water, grow milkweed, make carts, get firewood, etc. While you're at it, make sure there's a backup hoe, shovel, and axe, so that when one breaks work can continue while someone makes a new one.

And, of course, if there's not enough iron to make new tools, go get iron. That'll take about half your productive life, so good luck with that.

If all of the above are in good shape, then your city is stable and mature, and you are free to indulge your creative urges. Pick something that interests you and learn to do it, either by trial-and-error or by watching someone, and then practice doing it for as long as it keeps you entertained.

And finally, every town is always in dire need of cleaning up. You can spend life after life after life being productive simply by getting rid of clutter and moving essential items back to where they belong. It's a thankless task; no one but you will ever know what a difference you have made, but rest assured, you have indeed made a difference.

CatX · 2019-02-20 18:43:56

That's a great summary.

You might also want to check the water supply.

Kids sometimes ask me for a job when I'm a wet nurse. The problem is, as long as I'm more or less locked to one spot raising babies, I have no clue about how the rest of the town is doing. It would be great if more village elders came to the nursery to die. They could give quick instructions to the new generation about what is needed where.

Last edited by CatX (2019-02-20 18:44:15)

futurebird · 2019-02-20 18:49:54

I always go to the nursery to die if I have the time. Give clothes and get a little dramatic, tell the young ones what must be done.

Greedy little things mostly just want your backpack.

But it's still good to do.

I think my mistake in the 2nd town was thinking there was a baker. I'm good at that job but others are too, and some of the time I feel like i'm in the way (or I'm baking up a storm and others get in the way)

Moving baked pies out of the bakery can help keep people from coming in all the time. Put em by the door. (wish we had easier signs...)

Anyway, I will check more carefully that it's being done next time.

CrazyEddie · 2019-02-20 19:03:32

In my list above, "fixing the compost cycle" takes up just one line, but within that one line there is a huge amount of dependencies, complexity, and work. DestinyCall did a good job describing what's involved in detail. I'll add a short summary:

Sheep pen
- Constructing the pen
- Killing a wild mouflon and domesticating the mouflon lamb
- Fixing the pen when someone breaks it
Sheep tending
- Making lamb food
- Feeding lambs
- Shearing sheep
- Killing sheep
- Butchering sheep
- Making wool
- Keeping the pen clean and clear
Berry farming
Carrot farming
Wheat farming
Compost making

Tools needed:
- Shovel
- Knife
- Shears
- Sharp stone
- Branch
- Bowls
- Drop spindle
- Knitting needles
- Baskets and carts (optional but helpful!)
- Bow, arrow, and rope for the mouflon lamb
- Other tools for pen construction (depends on type of pen)

Most of the items on this list could be expanded even further. The point is that there is plenty here to keep anyone busy, and lots of things that can go wrong and require fixing. But the compost cycle is the heart of a viable town; everyone in town should be aware of its condition and should take urgent action to keep it going whenever any part of it breaks down.

Last edited by CrazyEddie (2019-02-20 19:16:47)

fragilityh14 · 2019-02-20 19:17:05

the most important things for town survival is the compost cycle and baking pies, and both are pretty easy things to do. When you're a kid it's good to tend berries so you're always near food.

Also check iron levels, taking a horse and cart on an iron run can be the thing to save a city.

And if you ever want to feel appreciated, come with a full load of iron lol

JoshuaN · 2019-02-20 19:21:47

You could always make wooden boxes to store materials inside and outside the bakery. Baskets do decay but people need them to carry stuff, especially with handcarts they need 4-6 depending if they have rubber tires or not. Each wooden box holds 4 items but they do not decay and are far more effective than baskets, and if you did have extra baskets you could store pies in baskets in crates for up to 12 storage. I really hate that baskets decay though. Wild reeds and wheat don't grow back so at some point you have to use straw for baskets which takes 4 soil, not including the cost of composting.

Last edited by JoshuaN (2019-02-20 19:25:13)

happynova · 2019-02-20 19:24:13

Some truly excellent advice from DestinyCall, but I'll just add and/or reiterate a few things. (And apologies if I'm repeating anyone else here. I was interrupted while typing this up, and I see others have commented in the meantime.)

I've noticed since the temperature update that I'm seeing a lot more towns go from well-fed to crashing into famine hard, very quickly. Presumably this is because cold people can go through food very, very quickly. I've been in a few villages lately that had a little population boom of new players, which previously did not seem too difficult to absorb, but which now can be deadly.

So I've started, first and foremost, checking out the food situation when born into a town, and making that a priority. If someone is baking and they don't need help, excellent. But check back periodically to make sure someone is still baking and hasn't suddenly died and left the post vacant. Also, are there empty stew pots? Are there stew vegetables sitting in the field? People seldom keep up with stew production as well as they should, in my experience, and stew components sitting there unused do no one any good. If stew can be made, make it. If stew can't be made, and you don't have three or four pots of the stuff already (or maybe even if you do, if it's a big town), do what you can to ensure it can be made, whether that's planting, making more pots, or looking for seeds.

Remember, the idea is to stay ahead of your food needs. If you don't have a comfortable supply of food in reserve, you really want to do whatever you can to secure one. And if you're too late and there's no food at all and your town in in the midst of a massive famine your best efforts seem unlikely to fix? Run for the wilds! Forage. There are probably berries around in the countryside somewhere. There might be bananas you can bring back. If all else fails, save yourself and a girl child, if you can, and come back to repopulate when it's over.

Second, compost. You can never have too much compost. If you think there's enough compost, there probably isn't enough compost. If you think there's too much compost, there's probably enough compost for now, but there very well might not be by the time you die. When in doubt, make compost. Composters are the unsung heroes and saviors of this game. Make sure to replant wheat and carrots as you use them. And if there is no compost, if the berry bushes have been stripped bare and there's no soil to use on them, or all the carrots are gone and there's no way to plant new ones, once again you can scour the countryside. Maybe you can find wild berries and carrots to use in composting. Look for soil, too; I've seen towns in major soil crises with still-usable wild soil deposits only a few screens away that nobody thought to go and look for.

Third, water. Keep a good eye on your water supply. If it's low and there's a newcomen pump, keep that pump working. And make sure to always put the last bucket of water back into the pump! It's often a good idea to make a dedicated charcoal kiln near the pump, if there's not one already, so you're not getting in the way of smithing, or fighting with the smith for charcoal. If there's not a cistern near the pump, it's an excellent idea to make one, or better, two. (You might not know how to do that yet, but it's not super hard to learn, and you can get a smith to assist you with the first step to make the plaster.) Operate the pump repeatedly until the cisterns are full.

Fourth: Firewood. Without fire, a town is in trouble, and you don't want to wait until it's burning down to coals to go looking for wood for it. Make sure there's always a good stack of firewood next to any fire you want to keep burning.

If your town is doing OK and there is what looks like too much compost and people are keeping the food supply going steadily and you've got water and firewood, then you can look for other things to do (without forgetting to check periodically that all that stuff is still going okay). Growing milkweed is always useful; there never seems to be remotely enough of it. Making carts and boxes for storage is often very useful. Making clothing, or even just collecting clothing off of bodies to give to kids is really useful now. Collecting clay and making bowls and plates is super helpful; there never seem to be remotely enough bowls, either. Teaching new players is always a good deed, not just for them but for the town, as it helps turn them from liabilities into assets. Even cleaning up dead bodies is an underappreciated and underrated contribution.

My feeling is, the hallmark of a really experienced player is being able to look around a town and see what needs to be done without asking. You'll undoubtedly get the hang of that as you play more, with or without all these tips. But it's a good place to get to. Newish players are sometimes told to ask for a job when they're young, which isn't the worst advice in the world, but it's far from the best way to find out what needs doing. Especially if you're asking the woman who's been standing around the fire tending babies for most of her life. That's an extremely useful contribution in itself, but she's probably the last person to know what else the town needs.

(Edited to fix some typos.)

Last edited by happynova (2019-02-20 19:34:10)

Ellesanna · 2019-02-20 20:01:47

The main resources one needs to watch for are: iron, water, food, furs, and string/rope. Everything in this game and the value of each act tends to be measured by iron, which is one of the few resources that you will inevitably run out of. Look to see if the tools needed are around and not broken and then see if there is a blacksmith and if so, ask them to make said tool if there is iron stacked nearby. Water in the form of ponds or wells is needed for everything- literally everything and if your town runs out you're screwed. Check to see if the dry wells can be upgraded further, like a shallow well to a deep well with a bucket. Furs are needed for clothing and backpacks- not usually immediately life threatening but with the new update clothes are definitely a good thing to have. Plus you need bellows for smithing. As for strings and ropes, which are needed for clothing and various other necessary crafting items- you can get them by foraging milkweed but also starting up a milkweed farm. Though it is far more effective to turn wool into string.

Last edited by Ellesanna (2019-02-20 23:47:05)

wondaland · 2019-02-20 23:00:14

This post is incredibly helpful, thank you to everyone who has contributed.

I would like to add a bit about raising babies. The nursery is best served in or preferably next to the bakery with two dedicated nurses one to stay and feed/help bake pies when the baby count is low and one to deliver food to the fields and return with supplies for pies and instruction on what needs doing

For example as the traveling nurse you take a basket of pies to the smith and see there is low iron or only one person working. Proceed to inform the babies we need iron or a second smith.

This also helps as some will inevitably come looking for pies and can also see any information you are passing on. In general people should communicate as much as possible to prevent time wasted looking for items and things to do.

Lastly, this was previously mentioned but I will add, when you are old go to the nursery and give advice while also letting them know what you had been doing. If you were tending sheep ask someone to carry on your work. You may even have time to adopt a toddler and teach them a thing or two. This is especially helpful to newbies.

Bob 101 · 2019-02-20 23:36:14

For me I just walk around town for a bit until I find something the town hasn't done. First thing I find is usually neglected farms or lack of tools.

Their is only so much one person can fix. If the damage is real bad, I just suicide for a better town. If nobody else is doing anything its not worth saving.

Last edited by Bob 101 (2019-02-20 23:37:50)

DestinyCall · 2019-02-20 23:41:59

When you hit fifty years old, assuming you are not in the middle of something time-sensitive, it might be worth thinking about looking for an apprentice. This is especially true if you are doing a critical job, like baker or shepherd or carrot farmer or stew maker.

You can usually find a new kid who is interested to learn in the village nursery. Just get them a little clothing and a bowl of goose berries so they are less likely to die during the lesson. And maybe an extra bowl of berries or pie for yourself, since old age is rapidly approaching. Your twilight years are the best time for talking and passing on complex information because of the higher text limit. And working into old age increases your risk of starving when you approach 60. Darn silent hunger bell.

Just remember to stop for snack breaks and prompt your pupil to feed him/herself too.

Last edited by DestinyCall (2019-02-20 23:44:54)

pein · 2019-02-21 07:36:09

simple: tools
i always check the tools to see what generation are we on

i mean, it differs, like gen 4-5 can simply have a pen and mine
when i see trees, rooms and paited clothes i know is older town

when i see broken baskets and ragged clothes is decayed town. that is kinda boring and straightforward: baskets, compost and clean up.

but generally:the first thing you do is collect tools together, if something missing make it.
then check if there is a pen and there are tools for it
i generally make an apron too
fixign tools then compost and checking if we got water, upgrade wells, make a mine, make carts

generally you need plates for more pies, wheat farm, milkweed for ropes
i try to task others with board cutting and milkweed farming while doing the more complex stuff like rubber and higher tech
when we got steady supply of compost, ropes, boards i start making straw hats, bread, feeding sheep in mass scale and making pies in mass scale.
for each hat a bread. then generally just dig bushes, make boards around it, in new update this changed to making rooms.

you need to see the level of civ and the pop can support.
if its ok town but we deep in baby boom, i just explore, make outpost, get a girl there, wait famine, move back.

breezeknight · 2019-02-22 12:08:19

i think i ought to write some guides

this game needs guides, cause it seems so complex to a new player while it actually isn't

& tx to @pein, you're being quite helpful ^^

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2019-02-20 17:27:12

Just had the best experience! Also new player question.

#2 2019-02-20 18:17:19

Re: Just had the best experience! Also new player question.

#3 2019-02-20 18:35:37

Re: Just had the best experience! Also new player question.

#4 2019-02-20 18:43:56

Re: Just had the best experience! Also new player question.

#5 2019-02-20 18:49:54

Re: Just had the best experience! Also new player question.

#6 2019-02-20 19:03:32

Re: Just had the best experience! Also new player question.

#7 2019-02-20 19:17:05

Re: Just had the best experience! Also new player question.

#8 2019-02-20 19:21:47

Re: Just had the best experience! Also new player question.

#9 2019-02-20 19:24:13

Re: Just had the best experience! Also new player question.

#10 2019-02-20 20:01:47

Re: Just had the best experience! Also new player question.

#11 2019-02-20 23:00:14

Re: Just had the best experience! Also new player question.

#12 2019-02-20 23:36:14

Re: Just had the best experience! Also new player question.

#13 2019-02-20 23:41:59

Re: Just had the best experience! Also new player question.

#14 2019-02-21 07:36:09

Re: Just had the best experience! Also new player question.

#15 2019-02-22 12:08:19

Re: Just had the best experience! Also new player question.

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