 |
| Screenshot from Fire Emblem Heroes |
This post assumes that my army and I spawned on a large landmass containing trees.
It's pointless to try to swim to bigger land after spawning on a small, isolated island, even if there are a lot of edible fish to punch to death. It takes WAY too long, and we don't know exactly how dangerous Hytale's oceans are.
It's funny how I reread some of my blog posts—including my first Hytale play style post—more than 5 times, yet I miss out on some major errors, and in particular, I found that my Hytale play style has no backup plans.
Wow. Just wow, I exclaim to myself. Calling myself a tactician and leader of an army without a backup plan for a hugely ambitious plan.
After all, even if everything seems according to plan and the situation seems consistently positive, there's always a chance it could turn upside-down in a split second.
What if Mom, Dad, or my younger brother need me immediately for a long or complicated task at an unexpected time? What if resources like food and building materials are heavily limited? What if I can't find a cave even after roaming the land for hours? What if I take damage?
So here are my backup plans because I suck at introductions:
#1. Overwhelmed by real-life interruptions? Hide underground, disconnect/close Hytale, then make sure everything is OK.
I do a wide variety of tasks in the house and in my store, such as graphic design, sales management, tech support, cleaning, lifting, delivering, and rarely cooking.
Therefore, all of my family members regularly ask me for help...which is extra annoying when I'm gaming, especially since I'm about to play what could potentially be the greatest video game of all time.
I'm just paranoid that, even after multi-checking (not just double-checking) that my family members are OK and don't need my help, one of them may inevitably rush towards me in intense fear or anger and demand help as if it's the end of the world.
"I'm too tired to clean the house. You do it."
"YOU! FIX THIS F-ING GLITCH!"
Honestly, there's only one viable option: Hide underground or retreat to my base, disconnect from our server (if applicable), close Hytale, and help out the family. No one else can or will do it except me, and this is my duty, even if I hate it sometimes.
They'd hopefully be grateful that, when I get interrupted while playing Hytale, I become so angry that I work extra quickly. However, for the love of all that is good, please don't tell me "you're not using your brain" or similar statements if you want me to maintain my work performance. Just calmly point out what is wrong with what I am doing.
(am i suppressing others' freedom of speech? i hope not (intentional bad grammar))
What about customers? In addition to hiding and asking them to write down their orders, I'll leave our store's cellphone loading program open, even if it costs more processing power. (I normally close other programs so my PC can focus on gaming.)
Maybe I should also make a lot of cardboard signs showing product prices because I'm too lazy to tell customers the prices with my voice, but then again, many of our customers and neighbors are senior citizens...
And let's not forget a non-human menace: the mosquitoes. Again, I am paranoid of either playing Hytale so long that I forget to re-apply citronella lotion to repel mosquitoes, mosquitoes finding unprotected areas of my skin (like sneaking inside my shorts) to bite, or mosquitoes somehow becoming resistant or immune to citronella.
Mosquitoes can go screw themselves over because, 15 minutes before I play Hytale, I'm gonna KILL them with my bare hands!
By the way, mosquitoes frequently bite me on the legs, which I often keep under the desk. I couldn't see them fly away from my skin because the desk's underside is so dark that the mosquitoes' small black bodies camouflage them. I'm gonna put a lamp under the desk while hunting mosquitoes.
Edit: Mosquitoes bite me on the elbows now because my electric fan under the desk is so strong even at low power.
One problem with being interrupted big-time in the middle of multiplayer is abandoning my army. Unlike video game death which still allows the tactician to assist their army using programs like Discord, having to do real-life tasks (mostly) disables the tactician. Besides, wouldn't it be ridiculous to tell an army to "besiege the Trork encampment" while a customer is around? "Uh, sir, what do you mean 'besiege the Trork encampment'? I want chocolate chip cookies."
I'd tell my army to stay in our base while I'm stuck doing real-life work, but I know that BoltOLightnin and YoSquid are bloodthirsty adventurers who crave battle, and, while they know a fair bit of tactics, I don't trust them to survive without me. They hardly know each other besides a short discussion of anime while we were playing Krunker and knowing the fact they use magic and bows, respectively.
It's even worse if I'm told to get off my seat while my army and I are far away from our base. Unexplored areas are often dangerous since hazards like lava or hostile mobs can be devastating when the explorer is not ready for them, either due to careless mining (like moving too fast while staircase-mining or strip-mining) or a lack of light allowing hostile mobs to blend into the darkness.
You know what? I'll just stop the server if I have to get off my seat and my army refuses to play defensively.
then again, i sound too authoritarian—i need to bond and train with my army some more (intentional bad grammar)
(#2 not included; a backup plan for Hytale research is not applicable)
#3. Can't help but take damage (even in pathetic, easily avoidable ways)?
Unlike single player, I can't just rage-quit as soon as I take damage; of course, as the tactician and leader, I have the responsibility of maintaining and improving my army, and the best way to do that is being on the field.
Monitoring an army is tough with just Discord since I can't see my officers—I can only hear them. Sometimes they can get so focused in a fight that they stay silent. I've talked during fights before, and those fights didn't end well because of my divided attention.
Monitoring an army is tough with just Discord since I can't see my officers—I can only hear them. Sometimes they can get so focused in a fight that they stay silent. I've talked during fights before, and those fights didn't end well because of my divided attention.
I need to remember that taking damage is not the end of the world.
Video games have health systems for a reason: it doesn't make sense that a character would die in one hit to something as trivial as touching an enemy, and it affects a player's play style, whether they would play aggressively with high health or more cautiously with low health.
Besides, what's the big deal if I've only lost 20 health and I have 100 max health? If the threat is not too difficult, I can still survive and recover HP afterwards, either through food or healing magic.
Video games have health systems for a reason: it doesn't make sense that a character would die in one hit to something as trivial as touching an enemy, and it affects a player's play style, whether they would play aggressively with high health or more cautiously with low health.
Besides, what's the big deal if I've only lost 20 health and I have 100 max health? If the threat is not too difficult, I can still survive and recover HP afterwards, either through food or healing magic.
If I do take damage, I'll back off a little and do chip damage with ranged attacks so melee attackers can't reach me and I have more time to dodge incoming arrows or magic bolts.
If I can't do a ranged attack, I'll do hit-and-run attacks. A spear would come in handy for this because of its reach—I can strike from the farthest possible range and quickly back away before the enemy can counterattack. (Hypixel Studios pls let players throw rocks so they can do long-range attacks without a bow. jk you don't have to—it'll probably break the game anyway :p)
If I can't do a ranged attack, I'll do hit-and-run attacks. A spear would come in handy for this because of its reach—I can strike from the farthest possible range and quickly back away before the enemy can counterattack. (Hypixel Studios pls let players throw rocks so they can do long-range attacks without a bow. jk you don't have to—it'll probably break the game anyway :p)
After fighting, I'll either retreat to our base or make a mini shelter so I can calm down by distracting my brain with chores like crafting, cooking, or farming.
A mini shelter, in particular, will allow an army to safely take a break in the middle of the field. While we're at it, I'll bake some bread, set up a wooden table, and chat with my officers. (I sound like a housewife—I hope I'm not a soy boy :p)
After all, my main survival rule still stands: STAY ALIVE.
I've won boxing fights in real life despite being super tired, so I can survive difficult Hytale monster battles too.
After all, my main survival rule still stands: STAY ALIVE.
I've won boxing fights in real life despite being super tired, so I can survive difficult Hytale monster battles too.
#4. Can't get reliable food and shelter?
We know Hytale has a diverse wildlife, ranging from ambient mobs like frogs, to farm animals like chickens, to mounts like the ram, to predators like sabertooth tigers.
But we're not sure how many of these animals there will be at any given location, especially ones that are important to survival like the farm animals.
I'm assuming that Hytale will also have random worlds like Minecraft. With that randomness comes uncertainty and variation; some worlds will have LOTS of animals (I've seen at least 15 sheep gathering in a small area in Minecraft), while others will have almost no animals—looking for two of the same species in order to breed would be a huge struggle.
To further exacerbate the possible scarcity of farm animal spawns, there are Trorks, common mobs in Orbis which love meat. Although it's currently unknown if they attack animals in general or what their entire diet consists of, I assume they do attack animals judging by their carnivorous diet and hostility towards the player. (Only birds are confirmed to be attacked by Trork sentries, but only because they're distracted by the birds. It's unknown if Trorks also eat other birds besides human-edible ones like chickens.)
Actually, there's not much we can do with farm animal spawns, other than kill predators and Trorks.
Predators are a challenge though because I assume many of them have their real-life abilities (take this with a grain of salt).
According to the University of California Museum of Paleontology (UCMP), "[Smilodon] probably charged from ambush, waiting for its prey to come close before attacking." This is somewhat similar to Hytale, where packs of sabertooth tigers take cover in grass before striking their prey. Although sabertooth tigers are annoying when we're hunting animals, first-person shooter players like me, YoSquid, and BoltOLightnin are trained to spot tiny details, allowing us to spot camouflaging enemies. We can destroy them just fine even if we are their targeted prey—two of us are ranged attackers, while my spear out-reaches them.
I'm just worried about bigger and/or faster predators, especially those in the Felidae family. I'm not trained to fight animals—I always get rekt by them in the Mo' Creatures mod.
Edit, August 9, 2019: I can't even navigate my narrow corridor without my brother's pet puppy bumping into me while trying to scratch and bite my foot.
Of course, the next best thing is food produced by plants. In Minecraft, seeds and a hoe are very easy to get early on, but seeds take a LONG time to grow, especially on small farms. I'm not sure how Hytale's hunger mechanic will work (if a hunger mechanic will exist), but from Minecraft 1.7.2 to 1.8.9, hunger can drain quickly in many ways including jumping (especially when climbing hills), dealing and taking damage, and mere walking—I've gotten hungry many times on the first night, a time when I usually have newly planted crops.
(Considering how I make farms in a 9x9 square with water in the center and same-type seeds everywhere else, the slowest speed my crops will grow is about 103.54 minutes, or more than 5 Minecraft days, assuming that an update occurs once every 68.27 seconds. See Tutorials/Crop farming.)
If my Hytale farm takes too long to generate food and I don't have a proper shelter, I'll hide either on a tower or in a 1x2 pit and do some other activities in real life while keeping Hytale and the server open. I'll only come out if I need to water my plants. (I hope this stall tactic doesn't kill my PC)
 |
| If crops take too long to grow and I get too hungry, I'll hide in a tower or pit. Glass is used for illustrative purposes and can be replaced with any block. |
Honestly, I'm not a fan of crops in the early game—I prefer fish. In the Hytale trailer, a lot of different fish species were shown. I admit that I'm unfamiliar with many of them (I need to go to a museum again), but, with a game that has a lot of different food from animal meat to various vegetables to even popcorn (something that's not associated with fantasy or medieval settings), I think it's very likely that certain fish will be edible.
I'll mostly catch fish from zone 1 rivers—they're not as deep as oceans and zone 1 water is colored a bright turquoise, so I can easily see edible fish and avoid predators and aquatic monsters.
BoltOLightnin, prepare your lightning magic. We need to electrocute lots of fish.
As for shelter? That's unlikely to be a problem—we can either settle underground or build a quick wooden shelter since zones 1 to 3 have lots of trees on the surface. (Zone 4 is impractical in the early game since we may need to dig deep to reach the subterranean forests. Zones 1 to 3 provide a more immediate source of wood.)
Although a simple shelter doesn't meet my standards, we can always settle for less so we can reach for more later on.
Although a simple shelter doesn't meet my standards, we can always settle for less so we can reach for more later on.
 |
| A basic tower shelter with a safe landing for quick escapes. Hiding here keeps me out of mobs' aggro ranges and shove them off one-by-one. |
#5: Mitigating Mining Mishaps
It's unlikely that I would encounter problems with mining since, by the time I complete step 4, I'll be ready to survive caves, combined with my cautious exploration style and the fact I like bringing lots of wood.
I know that caves can be hard to find sometimes, so I'm willing to walk around the world for a few days while making mini shelters until I find a decent cave. Staircase mining is not very reliable when looking for ores, from my experience.
Thankfully, some mine entrances are big and easy to spot from the surface, such as in zone 3.
Unlike the other backup plan steps, which are designed to handle the unexpected, I think most of our mining problems can be caused by human error. In Minecraft, like in my video in this post, careless mining can reveal hazards like lava or hostile mobs very close to the player, or can cause the player to fall into a pit or deep cave, sometimes with not enough time to react with a water bucket. In the case of Hytale, I could fall into a cave chamber that is home to a unique and dangerous mob like in Hytale's monster design post, or even a boss mob.
I know how thrilling it is to find ores while mining, so, considering my combat formation of me in front and YoSquid and BoltOLightnin behind me, I'll take the lead in exploring unknown areas while my officers mine the ores along the way. Taking the lead lets me warn my officers of incoming threats that they can't see at first, then buy them time to safely use their ranged attacks. Only letting officers mine ores in explored areas reduces the chance of accidents, and if an accident does happen, the familiar terrain will improve our evasion.
#6: Nothing but clothes and weaksauce fists?
In Part 1, I stated that I will craft lots of cheap melee weapons. This ensures that we're always ready to defend ourselves and kill hostile mobs reasonably quickly.
However, no matter how many weapons we craft at home, there can be a time when our weapons break from excessive fighting and our inventories are so full of treasure from the field that we can't stop to craft new weapons on the fly. In other words, these situations can only allow us to use fists. (I count non-weapon attacks as fist attacks, similar to Minecraft.)
Thankfully, I'm not just good with cheap weaponry. I'm great with fists, and I don't care how weak they are; I've killed groups of Minecraft mobs with just my fists.
YoSquid and BoltOLightnin are decent swordfighters, but I'm not sure how good they are with surviving fistfights in Minecraft.
Of course, I'll take the front lines again, and if my officers wish to join the beatdown, I'll assign us to attack one enemy each so that we don't accidentally knock the enemies towards me or my officers. If it's against one enemy, I'll have us all attack the front so we can cooperatively push it away, preferably to somewhere dangerous like a ravine.
However, if our enemy is a flier, then screw it, I'm running away. I can't fight fliers very well. Melee-attacking fliers are slightly tolerable since I can wait for them to approach before counterattacking, but fliers with only ranged attacks are completely untouchable by melee attacks without a means to force them to the ground.
By the way, if I'm the only one with no usable weapon, I still won't ask YoSquid or BoltOLightnin for their weapons unless they either have unused weapons or I need it for an emergency.
Plus, I'm not very good at magic, even though I've read and watched Harry Potter.
By the way, if I'm the only one with no usable weapon, I still won't ask YoSquid or BoltOLightnin for their weapons unless they either have unused weapons or I need it for an emergency.
Plus, I'm not very good at magic, even though I've read and watched Harry Potter.
