So there's a lot to be said but for this post I primarily want to focus on one thing: butchery.

The way you increase your skill at butchering is pretty user unfriendly at the moment.

1. There's no indication of whether or a not a particular mob will increase your skill. You have to hope that after x number of butchery attempts you'll see the skill up message. It would very nice if there was a message like this when you butcher a mob that will no longer teach you: You can learn nothing else from butchering parts off this type of creature.

2. The rate at which you increase your butchery skill seems to be somewhat random. Sometimes two butchery attempts in a row will increase your skill, and sometimes you can go for several minutes of constant butchering between seeing skill-up messages. I think it would be a nicer system overall if either every butchery attempt taught, or none did, depending on your skill versus the strength of the mob.

3. The quality of parts you get doesn't seem to scale very well with mob strength. I would think that by the time I can get 'passable' parts from mountain giants, I should be getting perfect parts from rats and hogs, which is the exact way it works with the harvest ritual. I understand that butchering whole parts off of a creature is a more complicated task overall, but it's the lack of appreciable scaling that feels odd, not the difficulty.

4. Increasing your butchery skill is very slow and seems to cap out on mobs too soon. I started off at 'slight' skill, and after two hours of sitting in mountain giants with USOL up, constantly butchering and getting semi-regular skill up messages, I finally reached a point where I went 15 minutes without seeing a single skill up message, so I left. When I asked the NPC what my butchering skill was, it was still 'slight'. Is that normal?

5. The grandfathering is all over the place. Some people in the 700-800 range of Thanatology/First Aid started off with perfect butchery skill, while other people with 1000+ in those same skills started off at below average. Some people with 100-300 more ranks than myself started at the same place I did, slight skill.

6. Butchering requires that both of your hands be free. For anyone who hunts with weapons, or a TM focus, this is a nightmare of putting away whatever you're holding every single time you kill a mob.

P.S. It seems that since Risen went live dirt constructs will no longer engage in combat. They rarely perform their special stun move against whatever you are facing, but they will not advance and attack. I bugged this in game but thought I'd mention it here for visibility.

>>5. The grandfathering is all over the place. Some people in the 700-800 range of Thanatology/First Aid started off with perfect butchery skill, while other people with 1000+ in those same skills started off at below average. Some people with 100-300 more ranks than myself started at the same place I did, slight skill.

If this is the case, you may well be seeing a bug here and not how butchery actually works. I'll make sure the tech folks know, but nobody should have started with a perfect butchery skill and should assist if they think they have one.

-Persida

> I think it's kind of silly that butchering is it's own, random gain, unknown aspect, sub-skill when every single other perform/ritual is based on thanatology vs critter level.

Seconded. I see where you're coming from, but a hidden skill is annoying, devalues thanatology, and missed the boat on giving FA a purpose that you can grow into. Especially if it's more of a "nice to have" purpose than a "required" one.

I haven't yet fiddled with Risen creation in this instance, but as a data point for Butchery, I started with 'below average skill at butchering', and have not yet had my butchery skill improve. I spent about 20m hunting critters at or slightly above my range, 20m hunting critters about 75% my range, with USOL up, just butchering constantly.

Should I be training butchery on creatures 'of appropriate range'? like, 'No skill in butchery' needs to be trained on critters up to about 50 ranks, 'slight skill' needs to be trained on critters from 50-100, etc, etc?

<I haven't yet fiddled with Risen creation in this instance, but as a data point for Butchery, I started with 'below average skill at butchering', and have not yet had my butchery skill improve. I spent about 20m hunting critters at or slightly above my range, 20m hunting critters about 75% my range, with USOL up, just butchering constantly.
Should I be training butchery on creatures 'of appropriate range'? like, 'No skill in butchery' needs to be trained on critters up to about 50 ranks, 'slight skill' needs to be trained on critters from 50-100, etc, etc?>

I have been straight USOL + butchering for 5+ hrs, and still at Below Average.

Has anyone seen an increase in their butchery 'skill'?

Why was it decided this needed a separate skill we can't really check other than asking guild NPCs about? Why wasn't Thanatology/FA sufficient? Is there any other precedent in the game for something like this?

Very minor bug note:

If you type the command to get a list of all of your known rituals, Fetish now appears twice on the list with two different descriptions.

Good catch - also, probably a quibble, but ARISE suggests that it is used to make a Risen, not zombies. I don't believe ARISE is used in the process of making Risen.

>> We are in the final steps of getting it resolved and should have it fixed today.

Should we be waiting to work on our butchery until this fix goes in?

As a note from Plat side where we have had Risen since Thursday, I started at Below Average and am currently at Fair skill. This is an improvement of 2 steps, its not meant to be a fast process.

>Furthermore, I accidentally put two torso's on the table, thinking my project would be dumped when I left the room the first time cause I forgot to get a piece of material for the fetish. Now I have two torsos, can't cut, stitch, or pull the body to remove anything from the table to start over.

You are allowed to leave the room and keep your progress. This is helpful if you forget to bring a piece of harvested material for the Fetish which I have done at least twice in Plat. Also, PULL should have worked. And, if all else fails you can FLIP TABLE to ragequit your risen.

Elusive
mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur

>>Should we be waiting to work on our butchery until this fix goes in?

To be safe I'd avoid working butchery for the sake of working butchery right now. I'll have a more detailed post hopefully within the next few minutes (assuming no delays crop up, there may be delays, no guarantee is meant by this reply, void where prohibited, etc etc).

-Armifer
"Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong ... or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters." - Italo Calvino

The bug surrounding Butchery has been fixed. This will have the following noticeable effects:

1) Butchery should no longer jump all over the place during grandfathering.
2) All irregularities in the already occurred grandfathering were corrected.
3) If you did wind up with excessively high butchery during the bugged time, you were reset to the correct original grandfathered skill, as there was no way to decouple what you might have learned from what was part of the bug.
4) Luckily, if you did not have the portion of the bug that made you have excessively high butchery, we were able to work it out that you will retain any ranks you gained during the bugged time.

-Armifer
"Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong ... or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters." - Italo Calvino

For as much griping we are doing, we appreciate the development that is being done. I think there are a few take aways for future QA iterations, but this has been a great addition to the game. Once the bugs with this framework are squashed, the foundation is going to set up so many great features. Great job Devs! Can't wait to see the direction you take it.

>Does Butchery cause DO?

It was mentioned in plat that it doesn't.

>Does making an Abomination cause more DO than making a "Normal" looking risen, that is passable in town?

I believe the gods don't care what type. The act of creating a risen is what they hate.

Elusive
mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur

>>Tool bonding with astrology comes to mind as a similar mechanism.

Kinda in the same ballpark myself, but I related it closer to that hidden prediction counter itself.

---

Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

I have a Gnome Peasant with a limp, a Dwarf Tallyman, a Human Assistance, and a suspicious figure. Loving the system so far, I expect its going to get crazy when abilities are release!

Thanks all involved!

Elusive
mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur

I spent some time butchering all the bipedal creatures I could find to see if their parts were considered humanoid. The following list is comprised of mobs that are all currently considered creatural. I may have accidentally overlooked some and others were outside of my skill range or on the islands. As an side, maybe the word creatural should be changed to bestial? I think it would sound a bit better.

Goblin Shaman -- Other types of goblins are considered humanoid.
S'lai Scout -- Small humanoid lizard people with vestigal wings.
Kelpie -- The description of them is vague, but says they stand on two feet and are small 'like a dwarf'.
Arbelog -- Bigfoot.
Blood Dryad -- Blood Nyads are considered humanoids so these probably should be too.
Stone-throwing Imp -- Most depictions of imps are humanoid.
Malodorous Bucca -- The game describes them as looking like a mix between goblins and kobolds, both of which provide humanoid parts
Atik'et -- They look like small s'kra women.
Young Cave Troll -- Other trolls (rock, wood) are considered humanoid, and these aren't much different.
Scavenger Troll -- ^^^^^
Swamp Troll -- ^^^^^
Blight Ogre -- Other types of ogres (dusk, young) are considered humanoid. These should be too.
Adan'f Warrior -- More lizard-like than S'kra but still humanoid.
Adan'f Mage -- ^^^^
Adan'f Dancer -- ^^^^
Orc Bandit -- Orcs may be ugly as hell but they're definitely humanoid.
Orc Reiver -- ^^^^
Orc Raider -- ^^^^
Mountain Giant -- Very big humanoids. Makes me think of giants from Norse legend.

I also found two mobs that turn into other things when they die. Dragon Priest Sentinels become dummies and Dragon Priest Purifiers become piles of ash. You can butcher off 'dummy' and 'ash' body parts, which are considered humanoid.

P5 doesn't have an npc, which makes sense thematically, but where do we get the locker key for that province from?

>>I'd find it funny if there was a table that sold them with a "if you don't leave payment I'll murderface you" message included, but in the meantime I'm pretty sure locker keys are universal, so the keys you can buy in P1 work at every locker you come across, right?

On test I thought they were split by province. IE. stuff stored in one province's locker wasn't available in the others.

I'll double check on that in prime.