Robbers ruin my early game

[Kaleva]

The robbers show up eventually and rob everything. There is no point playing. I am disappointed time after time. Can you put option to exclude the robbers.

Imagine if in FIFA football game you would lead late in the game By several goals and the game would randomize you to lose for no reason.

[trento007]

Well, you may want to try having save-states by copy/pasting the folder with your character's name into a different location.

Broken arrows are useless, maybe add them to your campfire. There are different types of rocks, a rock weighing 1 pound, a stone weighing 15 pounds, and a boulder that is not able to be picked up. The type you are looking for in the quest is the boulder that cannot be removed from its location.

[MrMotorhead]

I agree robbers are pretty harsh.  I really wish they showed up differently on the overland map, where you could see that there are multiple figures instead of just looking like a single guy who is gonna give you a quest to lead him back to a village.  I'd rather not have them disabled, but maybe if some areas of the map were safer than others, that would be a good solution.  My first guy was ruined by robbers, I think because he was too slow to run away, he could only move 5 km/h, my new guy can hit 8km/h and I had no trouble running away from them.

Thankfully they never seem to track you down when you're zoomed in.  Can you imagine how bad it would be if you were making a shelter or tanning a hide and they just walked right up behind you.

Here is a picture of my current character with his posse upon finishing the homeland robbers quest.

[JEB Davis]

...snip...
Thankfully they never seem to track you down when you're zoomed in.  Can you imagine how bad it would be if you were making a shelter or tanning a hide and they just walked right up behind you.

They can do this. If you like, check Mik's story (page 4, Reply#55 on Feb.14th)

"There is a new cave to explore, it's early morning and still dark and Mik is gathering branches to make a torch. Suddenly, a man moves into view quickly approaching and he doesn't seem friendly! Mik begins running away but he was already somewhat fatigued because of the nearly knee-deep snow and can't outrun the man, who was joined by another carrying a bow."

[Dungeon Smash]

I agree robbers are pretty harsh.  I really wish they showed up differently on the overland map, where you could see that there are multiple figures instead of just looking like a single guy who is gonna give you a quest to lead him back to a village.  I'd rather not have them disabled, but maybe if some areas of the map were safer than others, that would be a good solution.

i definitely agree with this.  honestly, i'd prefer if the robbers were re-vamped completely and made to be less hostile.  as it stands, it basically seems to be a "survivor tax", since running into them is almost unavoidable on a long enough time frame, and combat is very rarely feasible. 

but, if we must have robbers in the game, your suggestion certainly makes more sense than the current situation.  certainly your survivor would be able to differentiate between one "human-shaped figure" and 5 or 6.  even if the graphic can't support this, the description could make it clear when you "look" at them.

[PALU]

Robbers rob. That's what they do (and did historically). If you won't yield they make you. The unrealistic part is that they don't kill you if you manage to seriously harm or kill any of their number, as that's what robbers typically do in retaliation.

However, I agree they're a pain because if the (improved but still) broken combat mechanics where any missile equipped companion will be as great a danger to your group as the enemies are (but still a bit of a threat to the robbers). It also doesn't help that it's so blastedly hard to round up a posse to deal with them, as 90 % of those asked to help you won't (including more or less everyone employed earlier), and it gets progressively harder as villagers get killed.
It doesn't make sense that the villages give you a quest to deal with robbers, but then have everyone refuse to help you deal with the threat.

It would help if you could report robber presence to villagers and thus generate a quest to deal with them (together with helping you with providing people to do so).

Being able to see that they're multiples rather than singles certainly would help as well. I treat every "adventurer" as a potential robber gang (and the same as Njerps) and try to move to the tile next to them and then move in gradually to find tracks, skipping any such threats in spruce infested terrain as I'm unlikely to see them in time to zoom out and retreat.

[Kaleva]

Robbers rob. That's what they do (and did historically). If you won't yield they make you. The unrealistic part is that they don't kill you if you manage to seriously harm or kill any of their number, as that's what robbers typically do in retaliation.

it is a Computer game. If the player keeps getting frustrating set backs that are unavoidable, the game sucks. This applies to all games in the world. No matter what happened historically. Good game feels fair.

Even with 3 dogs I didnt get alert in zoomed-out map of 5 robbers, how realistic is that?
They were allready on my face and the game zoomed in. Couldnt run away.

I totally agree with it being a "survivor tax". Becouse of that I dont play URW anymore.

[PALU]

You can't really make robbers less aggressive ("You don't want to hand over your stuff!? OK, get lost then!" would make for very poor robbers (in two senses of the word)).

You can do other things, such as reducing their frequency, reducing the size of the groups (2-4?), increasing the chances of detecting them so you can avoid them (a bit unrealistic as robbers you can easily avoid won't rob many, but could be argued for in the name of "game balance", or could be a game setup parameter).

In terms of it being a "survival tax", there aren't exactly huge amounts of sinks for your wealth... You can get your gear back by recruiting a posse and kill the robbers, but that carries a cost that's probably higher than the losses to the robbery itself (but masterworks equipment is hard to come by, and getting rid of a some of those Njerp weapons you've collected probably doesn't come as a problem).

How realistic is it that a group of robbers looking for travelers are able to set up an ambush for spotted travelers without being detected? Fairly realistic, I'd say (fortunately, I don't have any real life experience of it). Real world robber victims often get robbed through ambush. The robbers hide and one of them steps out into the path of the victim while the others surround the victim.
The unrealistic part here is UrW's zoomed out map travel and that NPCs don't know how to hide, so the ambushing is abstracted. Also, real world robbers tend not to try to rob heavily armed groups of travelers outnumbering them, while UrW robbers fall into that counter trap every time (once you've found them).

Different games have different target audiences. UrW is not aimed at the power fantasy fans, but more towards the simulation/rogue like audience. Life isn't fair, and nor are those kind of games. That said, the games shouldn't be overly unfair, at least not without a good reason.

In terms of unexpected encounters, I'd take robbers over bears, wolves, and Njerps any day. I've had characters killed by wolves and Njerps, but never by robbers (badly beaten, yes, but I had a choice in fighting them). With bears I've been lucky (my current character survived with serious injuries as the bear attacked (and killed) the newly purchased dog, allowing my character to crawl away (literally)).

[JEB Davis]

Even with 3 dogs I didnt get alert in zoomed-out map of 5 robbers, how realistic is that?
They were allready on my face and the game zoomed in. Couldnt run away.

I totally agree with it being a "survivor tax". Becouse of that I dont play URW anymore.

Contrast this with how easy it is to get close to animals when encountering them on the world map and you see this works both ways. In your favor with the animals, in the robbers' favor in the other case.

Life isn't fair sometimes, and this is a game that attempts to simulate life. Look on the bright side: the robbers don't kill you if you don't fight them. In r/l this is not necessarily the case, so the game is actually being too nice.

[primuspaul]

How do you get "robbed?" Is that a special mission event? I encounter, Finns, Njerps, and foreign traders on the overland map. Only the Njerps are immediately hostile, and even then not always.

[Privateer]

How do you get "robbed?" Is that a special mission event? I encounter, Finns, Njerps, and foreign traders on the overland map. Only the Njerps are immediately hostile, and even then not always.

 Robbers, they also roam the world

[PALU]

Robbers come in groups of 3-6 and are of any of the Finnish tribes (vagabonds is particular, I think). Typically you run into them when traveling on the overland map as e.g. running into a Njerp, but sometimes you can see them in the distance, where they look like a single adventurer.
There is a special mission to eliminate robbers, but you can encounter them without a mission (and that's a fair bit more common, in my experience). I think the robber mission is exclusive to members of the same tribe (i.e. your character has to be of the same tribe as the quest giver, and you probably have to be well known).

[Bakkat]

@Kaleva

    I recall once i had a streak where my characters always were getting robbed.
Some young ones and others with more in-game time as well.

   Once i got robbed 3 times while travelling straight south. The third time they said to me something like "You've got nothing worthy, so go away quickly".

   Most died over starvation and the rest seriously wounded trying to fight.

   The point is that i stopped playing the game for a while and then played it back.
   Got more than ten characters since then in many areas and different "professions" as well. No sight of robbers.

Edit:
 

Spoiler: show

Also facing death is something that changes over time. The first times i played i got really upset when my character died. It seemed a lot of effort for nothing, just a simple page in the ancestors that didn't reflect all the energy i've had spent on the character.
  Then, after a while, you realize that death is part of life, part of the game. It's great that the game doesn't have Save & Load stuff. You could have lost a great cabbin, masterpiece objects, a lot of skills upgrade, etc, etc, but you take it differently. Mostly learn from them, that fight back 5 robbers it's quite suicidal or that going after an sleeping bear could end with a lucky hit in the head and a brand great bear fur or it's the recklessly thing you can do. After a while each character's death it's part of their story. There will be great characters to remember, and others not so.

  Finally, you could do as previously advice, get a back-up folder each time you quit the game.

[primuspaul]

@Kaleva

    I recall once i had a streak where my characters always were getting robbed.
Some young ones and others with more in-game time as well.

   Once i got robbed 3 times while travelling straight south. The third time they said to me something like "You've got nothing worthy, so go away quickly".

   Most died over starvation and the rest seriously wounded trying to fight.

   The point is that i stopped playing the game for a while and then played it back.
   Got more than ten characters since then in many areas and different "professions" as well. No sight of robbers.

Edit:
 

Spoiler: show

Also facing death is something that changes over time. The first times i played i got really upset when my character died. It seemed a lot of effort for nothing, just a simple page in the ancestors that didn't reflect all the energy i've had spent on the character.
  Then, after a while, you realize that death is part of life, part of the game. It's great that the game doesn't have Save & Load stuff. You could have lost a great cabbin, masterpiece objects, a lot of skills upgrade, etc, etc, but you take it differently. Mostly learn from them, that fight back 5 robbers it's quite suicidal or that going after an sleeping bear could end with a lucky hit in the head and a brand great bear fur or it's the recklessly thing you can do. After a while each character's death it's part of their story. There will be great characters to remember, and others not so.

  Finally, you could do as previously advice, get a back-up folder each time you quit the game.

You should be able to handle robbers if you take spear skill. Then just make some javelin as soon as the game starts. I did this and was actually able to clear out a Njerp village with barely any armor while starving no less.

[PALU]

Only extreme characters can take on robbers single handedly without resorting to extreme tactics.

A basically unarmored suicidal character has to be extremely lucky to wipe out a Njerp village without getting hit by bow wielding ones, or run down and get pinned by civilians until the warriors show up. Of course, it's not particularly hard if you're using extreme save scumming, but that's playing UrW in a way it isn't designed to be played, and thus isn't balanced for. A very fast character can use speed to whittle opponents down to wheezing bags of exhaustion, but still can't outpace an arrow (although bow wielders can be kept at a safe distance, you need to go in for the kill at some time).