the riverwood guards are suddenly hostile just because of one visible mutation (lizard tail). could i have some story explanation from this?
(edit, including why everyone else in riverwood seems to not care)
say, this is only kinda about gameplay and a little more lore related, but whatever makes the food in this game mutate you doesn't seem to have an effect on other people even though they have likely lived there a significant amount of time. is there something about the player characters biology that is somehow different? (and might also explain why her organs fail in the ending (havent gotten rich enough for a doctor that can treat that))
This is mostly gameplay concession, but the simple explanation is that you are small and light and most adults are heavier an bigger so they are at no risk of mutating, unless the stuff their face 24/7. They also have access to anti-mutation herbs and potions from Tadeas and other alchemists so food mutation is not really a concern for them. There are other sourcess of mutation that could affect even adults.
As for the last part, I don't want to spoil this since this will be a major plot point in the game, but yes. Main character is different from other people on the island in more ways than one.
You need to rank up in the church faction. You should have new church related jobs in your schedule. You should also be able to pray at the shrines. Doing jobs and praying at shrines should increase your standing. Once you get enough, you will get a letter telling you that you are ready for rankup. You can find your faction standing and rank in one of the tabs in the status menu.
It is, but you can get that rather quickly. Praying at shrines gives you 1 or 2 standing, depending on the amount of money you give. The church job gives you 1. This means that you can get 9 standing per week if you really set your mind to it.
Faction ranking is supposed to be kinda slow, so that it doesn't end up like in bethesda games, where you can become a faction leader in a matter of days.
what is the intended rate of progress? because playing about as optimally as i can in about half a year i'm capable of doing about 100 damage with a hatchet, have 120-140 in my physical stats (180 hp) am a full member of the church, and have about 12000 in silver. (my trade skills are relatively low though, highest is smithing at 13)
All you really need is to clear the main story dungeon. The rest is optional / intended for post-game.
I try to balance the game around gaining 1 in each physical atribute and 1-2 HP per week. You can get much more (and less), but unless you really mess up, you should be able to clear the main dungeon before the first year ends.
Money is not something that is balanced yet. It is way too easy to get if know what you are doing, but it is not that useful in the end game, since most of the good stuff can be found (Mr. White's shop is an exception, but that is going to get removed once the game world gets big enough).
All trade skills give you the last skill at level 50 right now.
Most of the unlock challenges, fighting Mr. White and the endgame dungeon can be cleared in the first year only by experienced players. Everyone else will have to wait a few ingame years to get stronger, or unlock the imprint system and start with stronger character.
That's it. Now you just have to clear the dungeon.
That's the internal way I measure things. The game doesn't skip one week, it skips 7 days in the game engine. For the player, everything in game is measured in weeks so you don't have to worry about days at all. Just divide the numbers I gave you by 7 and round up.
It gives me more flexibility and option in the future. The intro I'm working on is a good example.
The game starts, you meet Billy and you spend the night at his house. This passes time by one day. I have few planned features that will also require moving time in lower increments than one week, or even higher increments. It even supports time passing in smaller increments, like hours or minutes. This is used for minor activities like mining or working out.
Morality right now doesn't do that much. It mainly affets if you lose or gain mood for killing certain types of enemies. If The higher your morality, the less mood you lose when encountering abominations. You will even start gaining mood once it is high enough.
Low morality will make mood loss from killing humanoids lower and you will start gaining mood once it gets low enough.
Aside from that, you get some minor perks, like lower addiction mood loss and things like that.
You gain or lose mood mainly by killing different enemy types. Killing humanoids lowers it while killing abominations raises it. Using Ichor will lower your morality every week.
Cave crawlers are counted as animals. Animals also lower morality, but much less than humanoids.
You can follow these rules to find out if something is animal, humanoid or abomination.
Partialy. Both Helena and George are not balanced properly yet, but Helene is supposed to be damage dealer and George is supposed to be a tank. I will be adding seperate classes and class advancements to them in the future, so you can customize them to some degree, but their current stats are definitely not final.
True, but I like to think that's one of the things that make this game unique.
You start as an absolute looser and you can't kill anything. Not even the basic scavenger (Unless you pick some combat related traits). And with hard work and training, you can become one of the strongest beings on the island. Most RPGs usualy start you at already somewhat decent power level, or they have level scaling and you stay pretty much at the same strength level through out the entire game. That's why I like gothic so much and why I want this game to have similiar feel in progression.
That is still partialy intentional. I still want the player to be able to get way too strong at way too young age even after I fully balance the game. I just want it to be much harder to do and I want it require a lot of game knowledge. Getting so strong so quickly without even really trying is ofcourse not intentional.
Pretty much. Every major faction choice, except for Suong, will result in you turning into killing machine to some degree. Russians and Germans will make you part of their expeditionary forces and white will train you and give you chemicals and artifacts to make you stronger. Only Suong wants you to stay normal.
The game isn't finished yet, so there are not that many consequences for being a mutant. Right now, some NPCs will refuse to talk to you and mutant hunters will come after you.
In future versions, playing as a mutant will be quite harder. Not only will more people attack you or refuse to talk with you, but there will be some health related issues you will have to deal with.
Right now though, you can enjoy those traits as free points, if you know what you are doing and get the church robes early.