This is no Game, this is work

[Corpsificator]

i have to admit, that i really like the aesthetics of the game . Building is nice and progression seems to be ok. But, there is just too much to do so you cannot focus on anything or just took your time and build or even rebuild your village without heavy time investment. Thats just my feedback after a while playing with my family. This game is just stressing us out more than any game did before so we just stopped playing till maybe one day there is options for your own server to tinker server settings to your own pace.

[Pivotal]

it's really more of a village simulator with a sprinkle of exploration and combat.

I think the game is really fun still, but if you fall behind the curve the stress catches up to you real quick.

A quick tip is that you shouldn't be afraid to start over to find a better seed, plan better etc once you learn the ropes of the game. Me and my GF had wayyy more fun the second time because we know what we did wrong and how to plan it better.

[[ROTBS] Silverhawk]

Originally posted by Pivotal:

it's really more of a village simulator with a sprinkle of exploration and combat.

I think the game is really fun still, but if you fall behind the curve the stress catches up to you real quick.

A quick tip is that you shouldn't be afraid to start over to find a better seed, plan better etc once you learn the ropes of the game. Me and my GF had wayyy more fun the second time because we know what we did wrong and how to plan it better.

True, but you were also 2 ppl, that is 50% the workload of a soloplayer, that makes a huge difference.

[Mr Combover]

Well, I was under the same impression initially: so many things to do at once. This is not a game but some multitasking hell. ASKA's somewhat contemporary presentation and Viking theme suggest that it would be like some other recent games that look and feel similar, but it has some serious learning curve. I would say it is an automation-focused village survival rogue-lite... You need to try and try again and eventually, with n+1 iteration, you will be rewarded with an automated village that gets set up and populated in no time.

Only to get frustrated with the lack of some of QoL features or a bug like I did, but this is another matter entirely.

[Koj]

101% It's a second job. All we are right now doing are always preparing for the next winter invasion. Than doing something important in game, like exploring and do crafting. Occassional killing monster are just fine. But the winter invasion is like a full time job.

[Koj]

Originally posted by Pivotal:

it's really more of a village simulator with a sprinkle of exploration and combat.

I think the game is really fun still, but if you fall behind the curve the stress catches up to you real quick.

A quick tip is that you shouldn't be afraid to start over to find a better seed, plan better etc once you learn the ropes of the game. Me and my GF had wayyy more fun the second time because we know what we did wrong and how to plan it better.

A village simulator should be a village simulator. But the winter invasion are killing the so called village simulator game. Instead of us doing crafting making our base bigger it's like we are doing all things are to prepare for the next invasion. That goes us nowhere. Repeat and rinse.

[Djsstorm]

I am hoping they implement some options to tweak the game settings to help with single player experience. Let us be able to modify some of the gameplay/timers etc to make things more fun while playing solo, and this could become a very fun game to pass the time. It could also make things harder for those who want more of a challenge.

[batterytoenail]

I built a perimeter of of raised earth/moats around my settlement. Earthen bridges with 2 gates on either side of the thin “bridges”, one for each compass direction. This makes the blood moon raids more controlled and manageable. The day before the winter invasion, I collapse all but one of the bridges, leaving the most fortified access point open.

Placing a patrol marker and assigning archers to that specific marker(s) essentially creates automated turrets that rain hell down on the attacking force, and camping some melee defenders behind the last gate in case they happen to break through.

This strategy has worked well for me, and allows the settlement to grow and thrive for the most part. It is a little tedious to build the earthen mounds/moats, but expanding the settlement incrementally makes it less of a burden over time.

I’ll typically have a mine in the center of the settlement so I can use the height for setting the walls up. Also, using the rain collector to clean up the leveling tool’s deficiencies is a good trick, too; just break it down after the leveling phase.

Loving this game so far! Looking forward to seeing where it goes.

[R³]

The answer is more villagers.

You have to have enough of them and you have to rely on them to cover all of the basic tasks. Since they're stupid af, however, you need to fully man all workstations including warehouse and workshop. Don't try to micromanage them much. Just get more of them.

What that means in practice is: Until at least the first winter your Eye of Odin should be cooking almost non stop. You can collect jotun blood with a basic pick at first. Start with 5 to 6 shelters in the beginning to house the first few. Every new villager's first task should be building a shelter for the next.
After the 5th or 6th villager start building cottages. Keep one villager as a builder. Whenever you have a cottage in progress and closer to finished, go and fetch some thatch so you can put 4 beds in it when its done. You want three cottages with 6 beds each for a total of around 18 villagers by the time winter comes.

With enough villagers you can keep all of your essential workstations manned and you'll be able to have a farm that puts out enough fiber to make clothes and rope (which is always in heavy demand). Make that farm as early as you can.

Resource wise, fiber and sticks are the main bottleneck. Hence the flax farm.
For food, you want to rely on either meat or fish, using whatever veggies your gatherers collect as a bonus. Make the cooking station right after the farm. Have a villger on it as a cook for meat soup. Soup is significantly better food than raw or BBQ'ed stuff i.e. makes keeping everyone fed much easier.
This also means you need to worry about massing a stockpile of meat or fish by summer. A hunter's cabiin with two hunters, or a fishing hut gets you there. Have warehouse storage for meat hunks or fish.

One last thing: Make roads! They're a huge efficiency boost.

Edit: About invasions, they're very easy to handle. Note where the spawn comes from. Aggro all the mobs as soon as you can. They're dumb. Like... even dumber than your villagers.
With some halfway decent dodge roll timing you won't get hurt. Not even by the bear (just dodge roll *towards* it when it pounces).
The bear is actually the easiest, since it will stupidly keep trying to pounce on you, but contrary to the other invasions it will actually get bored and leave after a few minutes. So if you can't outright kill it, just kite until it leaves.
Bottom line: Make liberal use of dodge to avoid getting hit and just be patient. Dodge away, get in a hit or two, rinse and repeat until the mobs are dead.

[ThunderfulPaige | Community]

Thank you for the feedback!

[Goatflap]

Originally posted by Pivotal:

it's really more of a village simulator with a sprinkle of exploration and combat.

I think the game is really fun still, but if you fall behind the curve the stress catches up to you real quick.

A quick tip is that you shouldn't be afraid to start over to find a better seed, plan better etc once you learn the ropes of the game. Me and my GF had wayyy more fun the second time because we know what we did wrong and how to plan it better.

I agree 100%. and pro-tip, you can sleep 10+ people in one cottage, just add more beds:P I built like 8 cottages before finding that out!

[Jesus Jones]

The more vikings you put in the cottage the bigger "penalty" to the housing value you get. The stat is called agent or something it's a static multiplier that is between 1-0.1. If you stuff 8 people in there they might not be unhappy but they certainly wont gain any happiness/morale from it. This can be the difference between a low morale vikings and high. Houses next to water, monuments, fires etc make the housing value higher and vikings will get a morale boost if that housing value gets high enough. Otherwise rotate unhappy vikings into the barracks or archery range, who knew they like fighting ALOT ;)

[✠19GaMoR83✠]

Originally posted by Koj:

101% It's a second job. All we are right now doing are always preparing for the next winter invasion. Than doing something important in game, like exploring and do crafting. Occassional killing monster are just fine. But the winter invasion is like a full time job.

I finished my run. So, i later didn't care so much for the village no more and explored. I came to the conclusion that the difficulty is intended and also that you are always occupied by the village because the truth is, there is not much to do beside. And all the things thrown at you look a little bit like lazy last minute game design decisions to cover it up. It depends if the devs will continue working on the title I’m pretty sure it will change if not.... yeah, we know how it goes.

[ThunderfulPaige | Community]

I can assure you all the devs are working tirelessly to improve AI systems, optimisation and fix bugs as well as thinking about the new content they wish to add to the game and how your feedback is shaping parts of that.
Please do keep it coming! And be reassured that the difficulty sliders/world options are very much being worked on!

[R³]

Originally posted by ThunderfulPaige | Community:

I can assure you all the devs are working tirelessly to improve AI systems, optimisation and fix bugs as well as thinking about the new content they wish to add to the game and how your feedback is shaping parts of that.
Please do keep it coming! And be reassured that the difficulty sliders/world options are very much being worked on!

One of the things I think should be high on their list is streamlining the villager management into a more coherent and intuitive UI that is based on job assignments, rather than fixed building assignments.

This is particularly important because of the randomness of the villager traits.
There's not much use to having a villager with lumberjack and crafting talents when you can only have them work on one particular job because they can only be assigned to one building at a time.
Manually re-assigning villagers to other buildings is just not feasible as soon as you go beyond 15 or so. It becomes a micromanagement nightmare.

Hence, the jobs (woodcutting, stonecutting, gathering, cooking, etc.) should be managed via their own UI, and you should be able to assign a villager to work on those jobs, with the ability to assign multple jobs to one villager and then set priorities for the jobs and finally, choose which buildings the villager should use for those jobs.

The chain should be: Assign villager to jobs > set priorities > choose buildings.
Boom. Now you have a system where you can easily configure villagers to have them intelligently prioritize what they do.

This would also eliminate most of the really annoying inefficiencies you have right now. Currently, whenever a builder has nothing to build, he will just sit there and do nothing unless you manually assign him to some other building, which is stupid and annoying.