LISTEN UP FAGGOTS
A DRAGON HAS BEEN SPOTTED
What does this mean?
IT MEANS WE NEED TO MOBILIZE. WE CANNOT TAKE IT ON RIGHT NOW IN OUR CURRENT STATE.
EVERYONE MUST TAKE TIME TO RAISE THE FOLLOWING
Fighting Skill
Weapon Skills
Archery Skills
Stance Skills
Shield Skill
Shield bashing skill
WHAT WEAPONS?
You need to select the weapons you want to specialize in. You should have weapons suitable to cover these three categories.
1-handed weapon and shield
2-handed weapon
Bow (preferably made out of willow)
The recommended loadout is this.
Longsword and large metal shield
Huge axe
Willow long bow
Now no one is saying you can't use other weapon types instead. If you have a hard-on for halberds or small maul and shield, then fine. But here is the reasoning for the choices above in case you change your mind.
Why longsword and large metal shield?
The purpose for this set-up is defence. A longsword give you the greatest parry chance and a large metal shield gives you the greatest block chance. If the dragon targets you in combat, you need to have a means to defend yourself so you do not immediately get incinerated. Equipping these and switching to defensive stance gives you the greatest chance of survival.
Why HUEG axe?
Pure offensive power. With training and aggressive stance, you will be able to cleave normal enemies with ease. When hunting it kills things fast which gets your fight skill up fast. After you get past the initial hurdles, training with this will be a delight.
Why long bow? And why willow?
Willow bows (and fishing poles) have their strings break much less often than bows of other materials. A bow user must always carry some extra bow strings with them in the event that one snaps. Long bows allow you to effectively engage at maximum distance of well over 20 tiles. As a general rule, the farther away an enemy is, the better a long bow will perform. If you're fighting a powerful foe (Like a dragon) and they charge towards you, the distance the enemy will need to cover gives you time to switch to appropriate melee gear to meet the enemies charge.
WHAT ARMOR TYPE?
You may notice that Wurm has no skills directly about armor usage, only armor-making. Allegedly, leather armor (as well as cloth and being unarmored) gives a 30% buff to archery while chain and plate give a -15% and a -30% debuff respectively, so if that's true and you want to train archery, it is something to keep in mind. That said, we have plenty of iron so use chain for now.
Above chain, the most feasible armor that can be made widely available to everyone is plate armor, which cannot be made out of iron and requires steel. This leads us to our second dilemma.
WE NEED COAL.
IF YOU ARE GOOD AT COAL-MAKING you are literally our savior because high quality coal leads to high quality steel which leads to high quality plate armor which leads to NOBODY DIES.
IF YOU ARE NOT GOOD AT COAL-MAKING, find someone who is and help them make piles. If everyone tries to take up coal-making on their own at the same time we'll wind up with a lot of logs wasted on garbage coal.
Cedar piles produce the same amount of coal as other piles but take longer. I don't know if this has any positive effect on skillgain.
Walnut piles increase the quality of charcoal produced by 10%
Oak piles produce more charcoal.
PILE TYPE IS DETERMINED BY THE LAST LOG ADDED. YOU ONLY NEED ONE LOG TO MAKE A SPECIFIC PILE TYPE.
Continued in Part 2: HAHA. TIME FOR TRAINING.
