Vedaeni's thousand most asked questions in help, l1-l18 incl trading and guilds
Verdaeni's guide based on the four million most asked questions in the
help tab. Version Three (2/18/13)
Updated for the new 'tutorial'/quest system and Trade Office
Good playing
Verdaeni
THINGS YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOW BEFORE THE TUTORIAL
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1. There are chat commands. The system will recognize any line started
with a slash (/) at the BEGINNING of the line as a command.
a The most important command is /ignoreadd username. This is for
people who are being annoying. Its a little confusing that you ADD
them. But what happens is there is a list in the system you are
ignoring. So you are adding their name to the list of ignored people..
b. You can also remove from the list, i.e. see them again them with
/ignoreremove name
c. To see who is on your ignore list it is /ignoreshow
Note that it is held that the ignorelist has no limit but I ran into
trouble with it at one point. I could only use ignoreshow, which will
not fit neatly into any window and use a textfile to make each of
those name into a command to ignoreremove until I was down to very
few names. This isn't so bad as it seems as most of those people are
very likely no more playing.
d. People who are seriously breaking rules, who say will not stop
spamming or writing in all CAPS when asked, (you should give them
a chance if you are going to get serious) people who are being
hateful, racist or belligerant, should be reported, it is best to
include a cut and paste of one or more of their posts. This is done
with /report username reasonwhy. The point is that one report only
could be a grudge or a mispelling. But they will take care of the
worst offenders first, so report them even if you think someone else
has done it.
e. It is said that one should always warn someone before reporting them
but mostly I find this gets me nothing but a lot of hostility and even
mentions to my guild leader so I frequently dont bother to warn them
at all.
2. If like most people you clicked the 'agree to terms of service'
witHout reading it, there is a 'code of conduct' in the forum.
There is a 'why should I have to do such and such' whine that people
do and the reason is that 'you already agreed to it'. The other
part of that is if you think the game needs to quit some of their
rules, you should feel free to get the startup millions and make you
own game with your own rules.
forum.castleempireonline.com/threads/12805-Official-Castle-Empire-Code-of-Conduct
forum.thesettlersonline.net/threads/16901-Ubi-Official-Global-1-and-Help-Tab-Guidelines
3. Next off the tutorial has a few things wrong.
a. There is a bug where when you reach your population cap it tells
you to increase your warehouse storage amount. Upgrading the
storehouses does NOT increase population creation or cap and it seems
to be a side effect of trying to put the population in as one of the
storehouse items.
b. Your general can wander into another bandit camps redzone without
being attacked. If it enters the red zone of the targeted one first
it will not get intercepted, if it enters the non-targeted one’s red
zone first it will get intercepted.
4. Lets be clear about population issues. There are two matters, the
rate at which they are made. Then there is the population cap, or
total allowed.
a. Population cap: This is how many people you can have in the
game, working or not. It starts out very small and to increase it
you must build residences. Note that putting up a residence does
NOT pop in more people that second. It just raises the cap. If your
population reaches the cap no new settlers will arrive and any settlers
made in the provision house always go to star menu. You will be unable
to place a batch of settlers in the Mayor's House if they will exceed
the population cap. This can be unfortunate if you made a batch of
100 and you only have space for 95, none of them will go in.
b. If your population cap gives you room, settlers arrive one every fifteen
minutes. Additionally you can 'bribe' settlers to show up by
using the production house. You do this with bread, but we tend to
talk about it as 'making' settlers from bread and sometimes as
'bread zombies'. Bread zombies do not however want brainS, they
like cinnamin toast. The more sugar the more they like it. They do not
enjoy sugar substitutes and may get angry if offered them.
You can also 'bribe' more settlers by using the gems (It is recommend that
you save your gems for licenses later). A small amount
of gems show up for rewards, usually on daily login, but mostly they
have to be bought with cash. Its possible you can trade them, but all
trade related issues will be under the level 17 area.
5. Daily Quests
The game has recently come up with daily quests which does make play more
interesting at higher levels. However let me hit a few points.
a. Please remember that a daily quest is a quest, not an adventure. It may
seen all the same to you at this time, but it is very confusing if you ask
for help on something that doesn't exist. It only becomes more confusing
if your QUEST asks you to complete an ADVENTURE, which happens.
b. Daily quests are sent out randomly with no idea if completing that quest
is possible at your level at all. And some cost more to complete then the
reward is worth. Which brings me back to when the Quest asks you to complete
an adventure, its not worth it if you don't have that adventure or can't
easily get it.
c. The system will also put out a waiting quest often which causes no end
of questions in help. You can complete the terms of the waiting quest but
it can't be finished as it is not active, i.e. it is inactive, until the
daily quest is finished or canceled. Then it can move up and once it becomes
the daily quest it can be finished. Sometimes more questions are asked as to
why it can't be finished and the answer is simply that its WAITING.
SO YOU ARE IN THE TUTORIAL (note the tutorial is really more of a long term help
system now but for the early stages it is basically a tutorial)
---------------------------
1. Don't deviate. The tutorial provides you with just enough resources to reach
the next step. I've seen it give me money and even lower the price of a hire from
the tavern to finish a step. If you get creative you can get stuck. Actually
the tutorial does a very good job of creating for you a good base of the correct
workbuildings for the next steps.
With the new side quests and things, there is a lot more room to do things. And
in some cases, with the 0 production quests, it wants you to. I have my link for
levels 1-26 and what I built to do the quests, without over building. Note that
there are two ways to approach the 0 production quest, how to get it just done,
and better in the early stages, its trying to guide you to expand your production
and you are really better off trying to do so. I'll post my link here and giogini's
guide.
forum.thesettlersonline.net/threads/17416-Verdaeni-s-new-tutorial-guide-with-some-added-help-comments?highlight=verdaeni
forum.thesettlersonline.net/threads/17502-Gio-s-guide-to-the-dreaded-0-production-quests?p=200347#post200347
2. I've messed up my tutorial, how do I restart? Unfortunately there is no restart
button, although the gang at the help tab really all think there should be one.
Best idea now is to ask support to let you remove your account and then remake it. Or
have people look at it. There are so few buildings early on its probably not as bad as
you think. I've never looked at one yet that was really that bad.
(note that now that we can move buildings its even easier to fix a game)
3. Don't just make a second account. The CEO crew is trying to prevent a practice
called 'farming' where one account sits idle and is used to feed resources to the
main account. Also you need another email address. If you DO have more thAn one
person playing at your IP you need to send a ticket to support registering that.Then
they run checkers to make sure one account doesn't push another (also a called a
farm account). Then as long as trading and buffing is two way, you will be okay.
Someone just asked about helping guildies. Guildies (members of your guild) are
normally not on your same IP. If you have say a family member who you want to help
that IS a guildie, maybe another guildie should do it.
There has been a lot of talk about this. Two people on the same router report the same
IP. There are apparently ways around it and one of them got permantly banned from the
game. CEO hires experts to catch novices. If you think you are really THAT good I suggest
you try to get hired. If they find your resume lacking you will know for sure.
Someone reporting people were in help telling everyone how to beat the system. Note
that in the rules encouraging people to cheat is a bannable offense.
4. Building placement:
One of the most complained about things is that people's islands get put in all whichway
before they tell you the important things. Since we can not move buildings its important
to know things long before we normally find them out.
a. There are buildings that need to be near on top or resources. The true mines, copper,
iron, coal, and gold. You have no choice at all on placement. Unfortunately after they
mine their stuff they need to put it in storehouse. I'll get to that.
b. Untrue mines. Stone and marble are deposits only. The work building is the one that
does the mining. People have asked me what is a work-building. It is as I said, one that
does work. A house does not do work, or a well, field, or flowerbed. Please don't make
me list every kind. In the case of stone and marble the mason building needs to be close
to the resource (the stone or marble deposit) and the storehouse. Since they go both
ways it really doesn't matter where between the deposit and the storehouse it goes.
As strange as it sounds hunters work the same way. They visit the meat deposit and put
the meat back in storage. You get hunters at a higher level.
Foresters are much like this, although they put down a resource. They will go to the
storehouse to get seedlings and then visit the stumps to put them there. Fishers are
the same. They take from a fish resource and put the fish in the storehouse.
c. Some things need to be near storage ONLY. Sawmills get their logs from any storage
(the storage are all magicall linked by tunnels) saw wood, and put it back in storage.
You can tell how long it takes them to go back and forth to storage by clicking on the
'details' screen. They not only don't near to be near the trees, they don't need to be in
same sector they got it from.
d. Everything else has to strike a balance to be near resources and Storehouse. There
are different opinions, but actually if the marble mine is 3 inches from the storehouse,
you can place the mason anywhere in that 3 inches. Either way, coming or going, the
little man is going to walk the same distance. (Yes they are all men, so far no women
seen. I suggest they are all at home with the men slavishly taking care of them.)
e. So how do I place the storage? It depends on the sector. Some are fairly squarish,
others long. You want to locate your resources which the geologist find first and place
on or two storehouses so they are somewhat close to the resources. Build a hub of
workhouses that dont need anything else right around the storehouse. The build squares
are not a perfect grid. I believe they have the gaps trying to make sure all sectors have
the same number build spots.
f. I also built a square using the roads (just for organization) in the middle of my sector
one. Very close together are my specialists that you don't want to be constantly looking for.
Mayor's house, tavern, barracks, provision house, trade office, and I didn't leave space
for a guild house but I'm probably never going to build it. I managed to squeeze my White
Castle in there when I finally got there.
Now the trade office (TO) is just to sit there and its presence is to allow trading but it
looks better with the other big buildings. And its possible we might have more to do with
it later. I left a ring of residences around the square, purely because it then looks more
like a town, with the workshops then further away.
Others recommend having them put the barracks/provision house/TO and tavern if they
keep it (it can be demolished to get the license back and only built to get a new specialist
when needed when a mine is empty before rebuilding it) away from their storehouses/mayor’s
house as they don’t need the access and instead use the shortcuts. Barracks= “B”,
Provision house= “P”, mayors house "H".
I just happen to like it my way and since I buy building licenses I can afford an extra
storehouse here and there. I figure since I have to look at it so often I'd rather just
have it look the way I want and more realistic, as a town would. Its a matter of personal
taste.
g. Warning on roads.
They are 'only' decorative. However I lately found out at the veteran level of 30 that
they can use up part of a space and then you can't build there! So don't go all crazy
with them. One thing they are very good for though is if my buff partner is reading my list
I will say follow the north road from the townsquare and right where it turns east are my
sawmills. And when I'm buffing myself or checking for what upgrade is next I follow my
roads around the island.
h. Buffing vs. Upgrading
The quintessential question is how do I make more resources faster. There are two ways.
Buffing, which stands for... what does it stand for? Anyway it allows your workhouse to
operate at double, for various amounts of time depending on the buff. The implication
is that the good food enables the workers to work harder, but the thing with buffs is
that it doubles the output without increasing the input, or ingredients. Some people
will point out though that the buff does not increase production, and it is true the
production cycle takes the same time. However if you go from producing 3 widgets per 6
minute cycle, to producing 6 widgets per six minute cycle, the second produces double
the output per hour. Which is one way of measuring speed.
Note that buffing though increasing the output does NOT use more resources. Apparently
the workers work more efficiently.
The second method is upgrading a workhouse. The advantage is that it is permanent. Upgrading
say a sawmill to level 2 is like having 2 level 1 sawmills, except that you only need the 1
worker, and 1 license. And no, there is no way to increase workers to increase production.
Your unemployed will sit there doing nothing until you create a new job.
While I talk about unemployed, there is no downside to it. In some games workers become unhappy
if there is high unemployement. Here is a temporary condition till you get used to your army
gobbling up all the umemployed and you have to worry about getting more unemployed.
SO YOU FINISHED THE TUTORIAL TRADE!!!
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1. Public Trade
With the advent of the new Trade Office (TO) my long section has been removed. And before I got around to
updating it, we have this spiffy new link from one of the BBs. THANKS!!! Also note the icon for
the TO is the scales at the bottom of the screen.
forum.thesettlersonline.net/threads/16822-Ubi-Official-Trade-Office-Guide
Note that none of my guides ever have pictures. I'm an old prior to graphics unix person and I still am
amazed games have gone past using x's and o's. This guide however has nifty pictures and I've read
through and so far I can no reason to add anything.
2. Private Trade
Private trade between friends works pretty much the same as the TO. Except that there is now imposed a 24
hour restriction on trading with a new friend to stave off the scamming. Unfortunately this has mostly
ended the ability to hold auctions, which they used to do in an unused global channel.
When you go to put a trade in, it takes the stuff out of your storehouse and holds it in 'escrow' until
accepted or denied. I suggest that most of the problems people have with this go away if you make sure
the person you are trading with has already agreeed to the price and is online.
Making friends to send them unasked for trades makes people very grumpy and they will usually cancel your
friend spot.
3. Off the books trading
This is non tracked by the system and is way open for scamming. One of the things you can choose when you
click on a friend is 'gift'. The system will only gift through the gem menu. Like I had a few gems left
one time my buddy seriously needed a few tools, so I clicked gift, and it allowed me to choose tools,
where upon I paid for the tools and he received them. This works for some buffs and some adventures, but for
some reason not licenses ** any item with a max amount buyable can not be gifted**.
The problem comes in where one player says 'hey gift me some tools and I will pay you 50 gold for it'. So you
gift them the tools and they don't pay you. Recourse? None. People complain that BB should do something
but the point is that if you choose to go beyond the game tools, you are beyond the game tools. Yes they
could write a tracker to follow the email, but it would have 5,000 bugs and then people would b.. err
complain about that. I agree with BB that if you do this fine, but you are on your own. If you don't agree
why don't you design a tracker and offer it to them. Actually it would be a possible project, but the
very meaning of 'nightmare'
I suggest if you are going to 'trade' in this matter that you deal only with known people and trade very
small things to smart.
WOODS
Let me take a second on the subject of wood description. Its comes up all the time in help though
its gotten a little easier.
Wood in the real world comes in the main categories of softwood and hardwood. In colder climes the
majority of softwood is fir. (Note that they have switched the softwood from fir to pine. In the real
world pine is a type of fir but it seemed that there were scores of people who could not figure out
which trees were fir. So they have changed it to pine having figured that most people can figure
that one out. The pine trees are shaped conelike, like say christmas trees. I actually found out
this is an adaptation to make the snow fall off. Its called softwood because its lighter and easier
to cut then hardwood.
Hardwood comes as oak, elm, ash, apple, and endlessly on. They don't specify, I consider the game trees
to be 'scrub oak'. Anyway this is why we have hard wood planks (HWP) but no soft wood planks. We do, its
just fir (FWP) or now PWP for pine wood planks.
Note at level 18 you will be able to use hardwood. It is produced the same way that pine is. Forester,
cutter and sawmill. No, you can not cut hardwood at the pinewood sawmill. Sure in RL you might, but since
they have gone to the trouble of tagging the sawmill as pine wood only, you'll have to build a hardwood
sawmill.
A note about exotic wood. It comes from loot, adventures and so forth only as logs already cut. It does
not grow here and therefore there is neither an exotic wood forester or cutter. The crossbowman will use
the logs but for upgrading buildings they wish planks so having your own exotic sawmill can be a good idea
especially if run buffed. At times someone desperate for logs will even send an even trade to get your
planks for an equal number of logs which will allow you to double the number again.
EXOTICS
Granite and Saltpetre are also not available from on the island. You get it from adventures, explorer
loot and maybe the new quests. Also you can buy these things, including ewood on the trade tab or
(except for saltpetre) on the gem menu with gems.
GUILDS
This is at the end because the tutorial used to end at level 17 with the newfound but unexplained ability
to host a guild. I'm not sure what level it is at now, it won't tell me now that I'm over the limit, but
its a good enough place to put it.
One of the most asked about issues is if one needs to build the guild house in order to join a guild. You
don't and in fact I have no idea why they put it in the menu so early. You only need one to start a guild
and you really want more experience before considering that. Now some people ask why you would want to
join one and people will say that by the time you would think about it, you will know. Which I don't agree
with. You'll find out why by asking questions. The information does not just rush into your brain unaided.
Guilds are a lot more necessary when there is PvP. But they can still be helpful here. They can help set
up buffing partners, mentor, answer more questions, and give you this faq. I've heard of games and trivia
contests, and it gives you a private venue to chat on with your special friends.
Being in a guild also gives you the potential to run an adventure before being lvl 26 due to them inviting you.
This can be very good exp, for example in “dark priests” two camps taking 125ish recruits and only
killing around 50-60 of them can get you roughly 1,100 exp. But it all depends on the guild.
The reason many of them charge 400 gold to join is because that is what the game charges them for user slot.
Another note, people come on the help chat to be for materials. This is not allowed, see the links I posted
earlier. Its considered a form of trading. There is only one help channel per server and its not the
places for thousands of members to beg for materials. Begging older members for help is one of the things
guilds are designed for. Their channels being restricted to max 100 members can handle help, chat, trade
and begging at the same time.
So how do you join a guild? First you find a guild to join. I suggest you make friends with people in global
or help and then ask them how they like their guild. That way you will be in the guild with the people you
most want to be with. So what you do is you send a email to the guild leader and convince them you are
worth having. To do this you find the guild name in the list and it tells you the leader.
Someone asked recently how to find a guild in the list. Which is actually painful. The only help is to
know how many members they have which is how the list is organized.
(find me at forum.thesettlersonline.net/threads/15096-Vedaeni-s-thousand-most-asked-questions-in-help-l1-l18-incl-trading-and-guilds?highlight=verdaeni
