Basic definitions and concepts
escape menu: the main menu accessed by pressing the escape key.
troop: otherwise known as player "class", defining certain stats for your character.
scene: the game world, otherwise known as a "map" in other games.
scene prop: an object placed in the scene by the creator, as opposed to items dropped or created by players.
info / use popup: a floating box containing a short phrase or list of stats shown when aiming at an interactive scene prop.
hold use: press and hold the "use" key, defaulting to "f", until the progress bar fills up.
tap use: quickly press and release the "use" key, not waiting for the progress bar to fill.
sheath weapon: press the M&B control to put your weapon in the sheath, at your side, or on your back; the default key is "\".
stock pile: an interactive scene prop that is used to buy, sell, or craft weapons, armor, tools, or resources, often appearing as a static version of the item.
castle: in this mod it can mean any fortification, town, village, or hideout that has interactive scene props grouped into the same "castle" by the scene maker.
Joining the game
When connected to a server, an information window will be shown with a shorter summary about game features. You can either click the "Join Game" button to spawn your character, or you can press the escape key twice to just be a spectator for a start - once you want to join, bring up the escape menu and select "Join Game".
Factions
When connecting to the server for the first time after the current mission started (after a server restart), your character will be the peasant troop in the "Commoners" category. In every scene, there are two factions that are just loose categories of players, "Commoners" and "Outlaws":
Troop training and joining factions
Training station scene props are often located in towns or castles: an info popup will appear when aiming at them, listing the cost, troop stats, and the associated faction. The standard way to train is to aim at the station and hold use; after completion your character will respawn as the new troop at the same position, belonging to the associated faction, and carrying the same items if possible. The cost will be taken from the player's money, but a percentage of that will be added to the money chest of the associated castle: currently 50%, so half disappears from the game world, and half goes to the castle chest.
It is not possible to switch between castle owning factions directly; you must become a Commoner for transitioning. For certain training stations, the "peasant", "ruffian", "brigand", and "mercenary" ones, it is possible to "tap use" on the training station to change faction without waiting or paying the training cost: you will keep the current character with troop type until you die, but then your troop will be reverted to the training station type or stay the same, depending on which is judged worse (currently the code keeps your current troop if its strength is less than 10, to prevent peasants upgrading to brigand or mercenary for free). If you have tapped use on a peasant commoner training station to leave your faction, you can tap use on a training station of another faction's castle for the same troop: this allows switching factions without paying the training cost and time, as long as you can travel to a commoner station and then to a castle of the other faction that has the same type of training station, without dying along the way.
Most training stations are linked to a particular castle, switching faction association when the castle ownership changes, except for the "mercenary" troop: those training stations always stay linked to the faction they started the mission with, but are disabled unless that faction owns no castles. They enable a faction to rebuild from scratch if all its castles are taken and members leave.
Spawn points
After dying, a presentation will be displayed that counts down the approximate number of seconds until it is possible to respawn; network lag or timer drift between the server and clients might make the timer inaccurate. While the timer is counting down, you can press the keys from 1 to 5 above the alphabetical keys to select from the spawn points available to your faction: Commoners and Outlaws can only choose from the static 5 for each placed by the scene maker, but members of a castle owning faction can also press the tilde ("`" or "~") key to switch between owned castles to spawn at, or to respawn as a commoner peasant, leaving the faction. If your faction owns no castles any more, you will spawn at the Commoner points.
Immediately after spawning your character will be unable to attack or be attacked for approximately 10 seconds, to allow a short time to become aware of and prepare for your surroundings, or run away. After the spawn protection has ended, your character will be given the troop's default weapons, if any.
Using stock piles
When aiming at a stock pile, the info popup will display the item's stats, the count of items in stock, buying and selling prices, crafting refunds and rewards, and stat reduction modifiers if you don't meet the requirements. To buy from a weapon, armor, or tool stockpile, sheath any held weapons so your hands are free, then tap use while aiming at it: bought weapons, shields, and tools will appear next to the stock pile, but armor and clothes will be equipped on your character, replacing any currently worn items (so you might want to sell or store those first). To sell to a stock pile, hold the weapon in your hands or wear it, then tap use.
Faction lords
The lord of a faction can be voted in by the members, using the poll selected from the escape menu, which costs money to start. Players are not able to start a poll for themselves as lord, so at least two members in the faction are required. The lord player has exclusive access to a special "lord" troop, if that training station is included at a castle owned by the faction.
The lord can use a "Faction administration" sub menu of the escape menu, which allows changing the faction name and banner, kicking and outlawing members (the player must have an outlaw rating greater than 0 to be outlawed), give or take keys from players to the faction's doors, item storage chests, and money chests, allow other members to use faction chat announcements, and manage friendly / hostile status with other faction lords.
The "hostile" status is in effect when either of the two involved faction lords chooses that setting, and both faction lords are required to choose "peace" for it to be in effect: this feature is to allow factions to work together if they choose, in various types of alliances or pacts. It is not designed to protect a faction from having war declared on it; the default status is hostile, with peace as an option.
Administrators can use a tool to lock the faction which they are currently a member of, which prevents lord polls from being started; so no-one else than the current lord can change faction attributes until an admin unlocks the faction again.
Equipment requirements
Each item can have a required character skill level: for all horses it is riding skill, for bows it is power draw, and for all other items and armor it is strength. If your character's troop type does not have the required skill level, various character attributes could be decreased based on the skill level difference between actual and required: weapon damage dealt, movement speed, ranged weapon accuracy, and reload speed.
Per level, subtracting from 90%: excessive head armor primarily affects accuracy (50%), secondarily reload speed (20%), and less so for movement speed and damage (both 10%); body armor affects accuracy (30%), movement speed (20%), reload speed and damage (both 10%); foot armor mostly affects movement speed (30%), damage (10%), and less so for accuracy and reload speed (5%); hand armor affects accuracy (30%), reload speed and damage (10%), and movement speed (5%). For armor, the movement speed factor also affects the protection of the armor against attacks, allowing a random amount of damage up to the maximum possible for their weapon to "bleed through" because your character can't wear it effectively. For melee weapons, damage is primarily affected (25% per level) with movement speed less so (5%); crossbows mostly have accuracy and reload speed affected (30%), with damage (15%) and movement speed (5%) less so, but also a crossbow proficiency below 100 additionally affects accuracy and reload speed; for bows the reload speed cannot be affected as an engine limitation, so mostly the damage is affected (30%), with also accuracy (20%) and movement speed (5%). For melee weapons and bows, if the required skill level difference is greater than 3 your character will be unable to swing it at all; for crossbows the difference limit is 4 levels.
All the factors for your equipped items will be combined together, so if you try wearing full plate armor with a large two handed weapon and shield as a low skilled troop, you will probably be unable to move, unable to attack or deal little damage, unable to aim, very slow to reload, and the armor could be less effective protection than other items your troop meets requirements for. The item information pop up will show how the factors would affected if you wielded that item additionally to your current equipment in other slots.
Wood cutting
Various trees around the scene can be cut down to gather wood: for each tree the scene maker can choose to place the active type which can be cut down, or the static type that is purely scenery. The type that can be cut down has a use popup "Cut down".
Wood cutting requires labouring skill, with higher levels gathering the wood faster and destroying the tree earlier; each tree type has a fixed amount of wood available. Using the correct type of tool increases the damage dealt and therefore gathering speed: examples are the Hatchet and Woodcutter's Axe. Using side swings rather than stabs or overhead strikes also increases damage (on top of normal combat system calculations). If the character has eaten plenty of food (filling up the yellow "food bar" superimposed on the health bar), the damage will be increased causing faster wood gathering; but the effect is less noticeable than for iron mining (because trees have a low "hardness" value in the code). Trees will regrow eventually, some time after they disappear.
When the tree is standing Branches can be gathered, which can be refined at a wood processing bench with 1 engineering skill into Wooden Poles, which can be further refined into Short Wooden Poles and then into Sticks. When the tree is felled on to the ground (about half way through the hit points bar) Wood Blocks can be gathered, which can be processed into Boards. Certain small trees ("stick bushes") can be hit with any weapon to gather Sticks directly.
Mining
Resources which can be mined are iron, silver, gold, and salt (not necessarily all included in each scene). Look for rocks with reddish brown streaks for iron, silver or gold flecks for those resources, and a white pile for salt; all with the use popup "Mine".
Similarly for trees, mining requires labouring skill, with higher levels increasing the gathering speed. The correct tool type increases damage: examples are the Small Mining Pick and Mining Pick; it doesn't matter which swing direction is used. Your character's "food bar" affects damage as it does for wood cutting, but with a greater effect: greatest for silver and gold mining (higher "hardness"). Mines respawn in the same place after a fairly long waiting period.
Some iron mines produce the normal sized Iron Ore, while another type produces Small Iron Ore. At a forge with 2 engineering skill Iron Ores can be processed into Iron Bars, while Small Iron Ores produce Small Iron Bars; also at the forge Iron Bars can be combined or split, determined by the side of the forge your character is standing at: the left side enables splitting Long Iron Bars to Iron Bars to Small Iron Bars to Iron Pieces, doubling the item count at each step, and the right side enables combining the items in the opposite progression, 2 of the smaller type for 1 of the bigger type. Anvils can only be used to split iron bars into smaller sizes.
Gold Nuggets and Silver Nuggets can be combined and refined at a forge into Gold Bars and Silver Bars, which are worth proportionally more money; 4 nuggets are required for each bar.
Building or repairing structures
Certain structures in the game can be destroyed and rebuilt: currently just wooden doors, walls and stairways made of rough logs, and siege ladders. They can be slowly destroyed by attacking with any weapon, but are destroyed twice as fast by weapons with the "bonus against shields" attribute (such as axes); once the hit points bar is depleted, the structure will either disappear through the ground or lie flat against it.
To repair, your character must be a troop with the engineering skill (damage is repaired faster at higher levels), and be carrying some of the appropriate resource item type (wooden branch, block, stick, pole, or board for current wooden structures): with a "Repair Hammer" tool, hit the structure if it is lying on the ground, or a linked "building station" box if the structure has disappeared. As the repair progresses while being hit with the hammer, the resources that you are carrying will be consumed as needed: when more resources are required to continue, an error message will be displayed. Once the repair is complete, the structure will be raised back into the closed position. It is also possible to repair structures before they are totally destroyed, in the same way; but doors must be in the open position to be repaired while standing (so you could access both sides to repair properly). To easily hit a structure lying on the ground with the short repair hammer, you should get closer to it by using the "crouch" control (the key is customisable in the game options).
Fishing
Herding
Linen making
Wine making
Ale brewing
Sailing
Preserving food
Looting and managing armor
Carts and packs
Money bags and chests
Wound treatment
Chat interfaces
Capturing castles
Poison
escape menu: the main menu accessed by pressing the escape key.
troop: otherwise known as player "class", defining certain stats for your character.
scene: the game world, otherwise known as a "map" in other games.
scene prop: an object placed in the scene by the creator, as opposed to items dropped or created by players.
info / use popup: a floating box containing a short phrase or list of stats shown when aiming at an interactive scene prop.
hold use: press and hold the "use" key, defaulting to "f", until the progress bar fills up.
tap use: quickly press and release the "use" key, not waiting for the progress bar to fill.
sheath weapon: press the M&B control to put your weapon in the sheath, at your side, or on your back; the default key is "\".
stock pile: an interactive scene prop that is used to buy, sell, or craft weapons, armor, tools, or resources, often appearing as a static version of the item.
castle: in this mod it can mean any fortification, town, village, or hideout that has interactive scene props grouped into the same "castle" by the scene maker.
Joining the game
When connected to a server, an information window will be shown with a shorter summary about game features. You can either click the "Join Game" button to spawn your character, or you can press the escape key twice to just be a spectator for a start - once you want to join, bring up the escape menu and select "Join Game".
Factions
When connecting to the server for the first time after the current mission started (after a server restart), your character will be the peasant troop in the "Commoners" category. In every scene, there are two factions that are just loose categories of players, "Commoners" and "Outlaws":
- The Commoners faction serves as a catch-all group for players that just joined, players moving from one castle owning faction to another, players that want to sneak around anonymously without the protection of a group, players that want to play as a lone "bad person" without that reputation.
- The Outlaws faction serves as a category for known and notorious bandits and criminals, outside the protection of an organized criminal group - if you want to create a "bad" faction, mob, or gang you should use a proper castle owning faction, taking the appropriate responsibilities with the benefits. When killing a member of a friendly faction (one not at war with yours), your "outlaw rating" will be increased; over time it decreases slowly, but if you exceed a certain rating you will be forced from your previous faction to the Outlaws, with no way to leave until your rating drops down to 0. You might also be able to join this faction by choice at certain training stations, to play alone against all comers.
- The other factions are the proper "castle owning" factions, able to capture castles, have lords, locked doors and chests with faction keys, a customizable name and banner, and more. There can be any number from 0 to 8 castle owning factions, depending on the current scene.
Troop training and joining factions
Training station scene props are often located in towns or castles: an info popup will appear when aiming at them, listing the cost, troop stats, and the associated faction. The standard way to train is to aim at the station and hold use; after completion your character will respawn as the new troop at the same position, belonging to the associated faction, and carrying the same items if possible. The cost will be taken from the player's money, but a percentage of that will be added to the money chest of the associated castle: currently 50%, so half disappears from the game world, and half goes to the castle chest.
It is not possible to switch between castle owning factions directly; you must become a Commoner for transitioning. For certain training stations, the "peasant", "ruffian", "brigand", and "mercenary" ones, it is possible to "tap use" on the training station to change faction without waiting or paying the training cost: you will keep the current character with troop type until you die, but then your troop will be reverted to the training station type or stay the same, depending on which is judged worse (currently the code keeps your current troop if its strength is less than 10, to prevent peasants upgrading to brigand or mercenary for free). If you have tapped use on a peasant commoner training station to leave your faction, you can tap use on a training station of another faction's castle for the same troop: this allows switching factions without paying the training cost and time, as long as you can travel to a commoner station and then to a castle of the other faction that has the same type of training station, without dying along the way.
Most training stations are linked to a particular castle, switching faction association when the castle ownership changes, except for the "mercenary" troop: those training stations always stay linked to the faction they started the mission with, but are disabled unless that faction owns no castles. They enable a faction to rebuild from scratch if all its castles are taken and members leave.
Spawn points
After dying, a presentation will be displayed that counts down the approximate number of seconds until it is possible to respawn; network lag or timer drift between the server and clients might make the timer inaccurate. While the timer is counting down, you can press the keys from 1 to 5 above the alphabetical keys to select from the spawn points available to your faction: Commoners and Outlaws can only choose from the static 5 for each placed by the scene maker, but members of a castle owning faction can also press the tilde ("`" or "~") key to switch between owned castles to spawn at, or to respawn as a commoner peasant, leaving the faction. If your faction owns no castles any more, you will spawn at the Commoner points.
Immediately after spawning your character will be unable to attack or be attacked for approximately 10 seconds, to allow a short time to become aware of and prepare for your surroundings, or run away. After the spawn protection has ended, your character will be given the troop's default weapons, if any.
Using stock piles
When aiming at a stock pile, the info popup will display the item's stats, the count of items in stock, buying and selling prices, crafting refunds and rewards, and stat reduction modifiers if you don't meet the requirements. To buy from a weapon, armor, or tool stockpile, sheath any held weapons so your hands are free, then tap use while aiming at it: bought weapons, shields, and tools will appear next to the stock pile, but armor and clothes will be equipped on your character, replacing any currently worn items (so you might want to sell or store those first). To sell to a stock pile, hold the weapon in your hands or wear it, then tap use.
Faction lords
The lord of a faction can be voted in by the members, using the poll selected from the escape menu, which costs money to start. Players are not able to start a poll for themselves as lord, so at least two members in the faction are required. The lord player has exclusive access to a special "lord" troop, if that training station is included at a castle owned by the faction.
The lord can use a "Faction administration" sub menu of the escape menu, which allows changing the faction name and banner, kicking and outlawing members (the player must have an outlaw rating greater than 0 to be outlawed), give or take keys from players to the faction's doors, item storage chests, and money chests, allow other members to use faction chat announcements, and manage friendly / hostile status with other faction lords.
The "hostile" status is in effect when either of the two involved faction lords chooses that setting, and both faction lords are required to choose "peace" for it to be in effect: this feature is to allow factions to work together if they choose, in various types of alliances or pacts. It is not designed to protect a faction from having war declared on it; the default status is hostile, with peace as an option.
Administrators can use a tool to lock the faction which they are currently a member of, which prevents lord polls from being started; so no-one else than the current lord can change faction attributes until an admin unlocks the faction again.
Equipment requirements
Each item can have a required character skill level: for all horses it is riding skill, for bows it is power draw, and for all other items and armor it is strength. If your character's troop type does not have the required skill level, various character attributes could be decreased based on the skill level difference between actual and required: weapon damage dealt, movement speed, ranged weapon accuracy, and reload speed.
Per level, subtracting from 90%: excessive head armor primarily affects accuracy (50%), secondarily reload speed (20%), and less so for movement speed and damage (both 10%); body armor affects accuracy (30%), movement speed (20%), reload speed and damage (both 10%); foot armor mostly affects movement speed (30%), damage (10%), and less so for accuracy and reload speed (5%); hand armor affects accuracy (30%), reload speed and damage (10%), and movement speed (5%). For armor, the movement speed factor also affects the protection of the armor against attacks, allowing a random amount of damage up to the maximum possible for their weapon to "bleed through" because your character can't wear it effectively. For melee weapons, damage is primarily affected (25% per level) with movement speed less so (5%); crossbows mostly have accuracy and reload speed affected (30%), with damage (15%) and movement speed (5%) less so, but also a crossbow proficiency below 100 additionally affects accuracy and reload speed; for bows the reload speed cannot be affected as an engine limitation, so mostly the damage is affected (30%), with also accuracy (20%) and movement speed (5%). For melee weapons and bows, if the required skill level difference is greater than 3 your character will be unable to swing it at all; for crossbows the difference limit is 4 levels.
All the factors for your equipped items will be combined together, so if you try wearing full plate armor with a large two handed weapon and shield as a low skilled troop, you will probably be unable to move, unable to attack or deal little damage, unable to aim, very slow to reload, and the armor could be less effective protection than other items your troop meets requirements for. The item information pop up will show how the factors would affected if you wielded that item additionally to your current equipment in other slots.
Wood cutting
Various trees around the scene can be cut down to gather wood: for each tree the scene maker can choose to place the active type which can be cut down, or the static type that is purely scenery. The type that can be cut down has a use popup "Cut down".
Wood cutting requires labouring skill, with higher levels gathering the wood faster and destroying the tree earlier; each tree type has a fixed amount of wood available. Using the correct type of tool increases the damage dealt and therefore gathering speed: examples are the Hatchet and Woodcutter's Axe. Using side swings rather than stabs or overhead strikes also increases damage (on top of normal combat system calculations). If the character has eaten plenty of food (filling up the yellow "food bar" superimposed on the health bar), the damage will be increased causing faster wood gathering; but the effect is less noticeable than for iron mining (because trees have a low "hardness" value in the code). Trees will regrow eventually, some time after they disappear.
When the tree is standing Branches can be gathered, which can be refined at a wood processing bench with 1 engineering skill into Wooden Poles, which can be further refined into Short Wooden Poles and then into Sticks. When the tree is felled on to the ground (about half way through the hit points bar) Wood Blocks can be gathered, which can be processed into Boards. Certain small trees ("stick bushes") can be hit with any weapon to gather Sticks directly.
Mining
Resources which can be mined are iron, silver, gold, and salt (not necessarily all included in each scene). Look for rocks with reddish brown streaks for iron, silver or gold flecks for those resources, and a white pile for salt; all with the use popup "Mine".
Similarly for trees, mining requires labouring skill, with higher levels increasing the gathering speed. The correct tool type increases damage: examples are the Small Mining Pick and Mining Pick; it doesn't matter which swing direction is used. Your character's "food bar" affects damage as it does for wood cutting, but with a greater effect: greatest for silver and gold mining (higher "hardness"). Mines respawn in the same place after a fairly long waiting period.
Some iron mines produce the normal sized Iron Ore, while another type produces Small Iron Ore. At a forge with 2 engineering skill Iron Ores can be processed into Iron Bars, while Small Iron Ores produce Small Iron Bars; also at the forge Iron Bars can be combined or split, determined by the side of the forge your character is standing at: the left side enables splitting Long Iron Bars to Iron Bars to Small Iron Bars to Iron Pieces, doubling the item count at each step, and the right side enables combining the items in the opposite progression, 2 of the smaller type for 1 of the bigger type. Anvils can only be used to split iron bars into smaller sizes.
Gold Nuggets and Silver Nuggets can be combined and refined at a forge into Gold Bars and Silver Bars, which are worth proportionally more money; 4 nuggets are required for each bar.
Building or repairing structures
Certain structures in the game can be destroyed and rebuilt: currently just wooden doors, walls and stairways made of rough logs, and siege ladders. They can be slowly destroyed by attacking with any weapon, but are destroyed twice as fast by weapons with the "bonus against shields" attribute (such as axes); once the hit points bar is depleted, the structure will either disappear through the ground or lie flat against it.
To repair, your character must be a troop with the engineering skill (damage is repaired faster at higher levels), and be carrying some of the appropriate resource item type (wooden branch, block, stick, pole, or board for current wooden structures): with a "Repair Hammer" tool, hit the structure if it is lying on the ground, or a linked "building station" box if the structure has disappeared. As the repair progresses while being hit with the hammer, the resources that you are carrying will be consumed as needed: when more resources are required to continue, an error message will be displayed. Once the repair is complete, the structure will be raised back into the closed position. It is also possible to repair structures before they are totally destroyed, in the same way; but doors must be in the open position to be repaired while standing (so you could access both sides to repair properly). To easily hit a structure lying on the ground with the short repair hammer, you should get closer to it by using the "crouch" control (the key is customisable in the game options).
Fishing
Herding
Linen making
Wine making
Ale brewing
Sailing
Preserving food
Looting and managing armor
Carts and packs
Money bags and chests
Wound treatment
Chat interfaces
Capturing castles
Poison
