Exploits

Swim-Camp.

Sometimes you find the perfect spot for a skill training retreat. For "swim-camp" that's a a fortified village right next to a lake. Climb up the fortifications and run around the village once for your 3 ticks of daily climb gain, then jump into the lake or river and carefully build up your swimming skill by 3 ticks as well. You will of course drown rather unceremoniously when your fatigue is 1 higher than your swim skill, so stay close to the shore. The cool thing here is that you can fit this training plus resting and eating into a day.

For a touch less realism level up your timbercraft skill by 3 a day as well and build yourself a massive trap fence to run around on beforehand. To get the most skill gain out of that build-up day, spend some time making senselessly large piles of javelins about 12 tiles apart from one another and throw them from one to the other. That'll get you some +3 points of spear a day pretty much for free as well. Later on add axes, knives, swords, flails and what have you to those throw piles. You get the idea.

Containers

Grab a tub from a settlement. It does not count as stealing and will give you a container that can hold 8 liters of milk even before you can afford a sheep. Or use up a Bag of Flour and use the empty bag to hold up to 12 liters of liquid. Either will last you days, but if you are trying to stay abundant with only milk it will take a lot of key presses because when you are not thirsty, you only drink 0.1 lb of milk per sip. (Note: As of 3.50b2 it appears that taking tubs is now considered theft.)

Double your money

If you have two empty tubs or an empty bag you can grind store-bought grains into flour which will buy you almost two new bags of grains. This works in the south-west where there is much farming going on of course. Turn your profits into arrows or bags of salt to make them portable.

Park your loot on the overland map

Since you don't want to be superman in this game, you'll frequently need to make a few trips from where you slew something to your base and for that you'll need to be able to find your way back to where you were. You can of course build a shelter, or put traps over fallen warriors to help you do that, but simply loading up all the loot on your person, then zooming out and dropping it on top of the map will do fine as well.

Wild animals can eat from the wilderness map (confirmed by Sami privately), but they cannot pick with ; so you can push them onto a tree and then use a loop snare (to create a trap marker for the F6 map) or a hide or spruce twig or something dropped on the wilderness map to mark your place.

Understand Noah's Ark Syndrome

Related to parking things on the overland map is the reverse case where you've loaded up a raft with lots of logs (Transport vehicles can carry up to 200 times their weight) and are about to strand your self on a scenic mountain top by pressing Enter to zoom in on your landing site. Since neither you nor your trusty Bull can not carry logs, you can't get them from the local back to the overland map. So.. you're stuck up high and dry and unless you want to build a completely useless mountain palace with a breathtaking view, you'll have to move the logs down to the water by hand.

Hauling heavy loads

At least in winter, you can move a single log as fast as you can ski. Once you try moving any two of something the mechanics seem to respect the weight of multiple items and they come up with sensible times, but if there's just one item... you can pretty much fly to your destination unhindered.

Landing a watercraft

Just to come back to Noah's Ark for a second, you'll want to take advantage of the fact that the game remembers exactly where you were when come back to where you zoomed out from. This means that you zoom in on the water-tile closest to your destination, then land on shore from there. If you want to come back there more often, build a shelter on the land zone close to the water and zoom in and out from there. You'll sometimes get transported back just a little bit away from where you were, so experiment and move your shelter so that you're nearest to the water. Once the works, start your overland journeys by zooming out from the shelter and to go the water, push off a few squares, zoom out and go from there.

Rafting over stuff

Rivers curve and you do not need to follow every twist and turn. As long as the river flows past them, you can raft right over 2 tiles wiggles strutting out into the water. That's notable because you can cross only 1 tile ice-floats or land-segments. So cut down a bit on steering and let this save you a few turns.

Rapids and Deep sea tiles do not freeze

Build by them. If you build a kota with a cellar facing one of these tiles with ever-flowing water you'll never have a bear problem there and no njerp is ever going to spawn in there. Or build a house there with a boat landing right in it. In fact, now that you know this, why would you ever not build on one of these.

Take some screenshots!

Sure, you could just cheat your way into a revealed map, but then you give up the ability to make notes on the best map of the land that you will ever get .. the one displayed during the creation of a new character. Zoom in all the way and take a screen shot of each cultural area as well as the unincorporated villages and the difficult to traverse bits slightly to the east. Save them as .gif or .png and you'll even have a reason to learn some new software to annotate your images so that you can remember where the good healers are, who sells what animals, who's having the trade-goods you want to come back for etc.

If you play it slow you can even look for maps with the rare ocean tiles near where you might want to land. Planning on red-shirt raids right from the start? Then pick a map that has a good connection to open water and some deep green hunting grounds on an isthmus where you can later also do some trapping. Don't find Ocean tile near the Driik and Reemi? Call up a new world and document that.

Free Food

If you get lucky and start near a village with sheep, buy one and pick up free food from their fields afterwards. Just leave 2 tiles between you and the village and you'll get by with a warning the next time you go there. Pick everything and park it on the overland map and you can pretty much survive a year on the raw food from just one such raid. Meeh, Meeh!

Spoiled Meat and Fish

They can be stored indefinitely with no worry. You can use them to General Sacrifice with no problem. Companions can be recruited with spoiled food.

Easy robbery in villages - 3.18 game version

First technique explained in Playing With UrW Files

Another way: when you find a village with something you need, first find a villager (e. g. an adventurer who already has some weapons and food) who is able to be your companion. Pick useful items, then go back to that villager and pay him for taken stuff. After that, talk to him again and hire him. Take him away, kill him and you will get back your items used for payment. However, pay to villager with something that is very light and valuable, because villager will want at least food in order to be your companion. But if you pay with many and heavy items, sometimes he can't take even 1 piece of food, he will say: "I'm sorry, can't carry so much" but he will stil want food.

If you go back to the same village, you can't hire another villager, they will say: "No. Not until we see the villager who left with you again". People there must forget you (your reputation must be reset), so don't enter this village for many (perhaps 6, not verified) game months. If you don't care about your reputation in villages, delete name.VIL file which contains reputation data and you can get another companion in this village.

Meat Flipping

Ever lose a bunch of food trying to hire a companion? Get revenge by following this list:

1. Gather a large amount of meat, 20 or 40(don't worry, you will get it back shortly)
2. Hire NPC(if morbidly inclined, ask his name for later meat labelling).
3. Lead the NPC away, preferably to a punt with a bunch of javelins, and kill him.
4. Recive initial meat plus the meat of the NPC.
5. Invest the meat in tools, animals and/or go to 2

If you have enough trade goods, you can do this trick with cattle. Buy animals from one peasant or adventurers in the village. Then hire them away to do your stuff. PROFIT!

Lots of meat in first game day gives scenario Unfortunate Hunting Trip. Take everything of father's inventory, cut his carcass to get meat and then start Meat Flipping.

Indefinite storage

It seem the game doesnt spoil the food carry by NPCs. You can trade them to one specific NPC (preferably Shaman) in a village then later trade back with javelin, torch, etc... as foods are of very low value. One bonus feature is that when you hire that character away and he check his food, they are counted. Shaman are easy to find, but peasants has their use.

Slaughtering a village

Get a bunch of food. Hire one of the villagers; take your food back. Repeat and hire all the avaliable villagers, leaving the sage, shopkeepers, women and children. Slay them with your new friends. Dismiss one of your hirings, slay him with the rest. Repeat until the whole village is dead.

Lightweight Bandage

Physician skill check the presence of bandage only, not the weight or the quality. Therefore it's of convenience and utility to do this trick:

Make several bandages like normal. Like 9, ie 9 pound of bandage. Make ONE cord from that bandage, then you will have one cord and ONE half-use bandage. Repeat that will the rest of the normal 1-pound bandage. At the end of it you will have a normal number of half-use bandages, ie half the weight at the start. in this case 4.5 pound of bandage but of 9 use.

Micro-house

Not an exploit per se... This is the smallest house you can build in URW.

W##
WF#
WF#
###
   
   W=Wall
   F=Floor/Fireplace
   #=Fence

This micro-house, not counting the fences, will take 8 slender tree trunks + 17 trees to build, as well as 35 stones for the fireplace. In contrast, even a 2x1 cabin will need 48 trees and 8 slender tree trunks.

It's possible to replace one wall to door. This is requires only 13 trees.

Note: this is to serve the minimal definition of a house/settlement. It's not fitting for smokehouse. You will want a complete house, with door(s), for that. The only shortcut is to build four doors:

WDW
WFW
DFD
WDW
 
 W=Wall
 F=Floor/Fireplace
 #=Fence

Macro-house (15 logs for unlimited amount of floor / ceiling tiles)

You can create lots of floor/ceiling but you don't need more than 15 logs for this. To build such house, look at step-by-step f/c building progress:

Make 3 e.g. northern walls (you need 15 logs for). With 3 wall tiles you can start contructing floor/ceiling:

1.  W W W       W = wall
1.    F         F = floor/ceiling

For building more floors/ceilings these 3 initial walls and 1 floor/ceiling are enough:

2.  W W W     3.  W W W     4.  W W W     5.    W W W       6.  x W W W x 
2.  x F x     3.  F F F     4.  F F F     5.  x F F F x     6.  F F F F F     etc....
              3.    x       4.  x F x     5.    F F F       6.  x F F F x
                                          5.      x         6.    x F x
W = wall
F = floor/ceiling buit in previous step(s)
x = where you can build next f/c

If you have enough floor/ceiling tiles, you can freely deconstruct those 3 walls, you won't lose your floor/ceiling. However if you want to cook smoked food, you have to establish "heated room" and for this you need at least two northern (or southern) walls above (or below) a fireplace. Heated room now must have all doors, floors, walls, no shortcuts.

If you want to be really cheap you can even replace the middle wall with a door.

Item Duplication

This is a major cheat which will trivialize game challenges. Use at your own judgment.

To duplicate an object, start by holding it in your inventory and saving your game. Browse to your save folder and copy the three files with your character's name (NAME.OBJ, NAME.CRS, and NAME.URS) to a separate backup folder. Load your game, drop any objects you want to duplicate, and save again. Copy your three character files from your backup folder into your main folder and load your save. You should see the objects you dropped at your feet, with their original incarnations back in your inventory.

There are more ways to duplicate items. Playing With UrW Files page contains info about this.

You can also duplicate stacks of items. To do so, repeat the above strategy until you have about 10 of the item you are duping. While duplicating the item, never drop the original item you're holding, and always save and backup your game after every duplication. If you do it right, you should have 10 items stacked onto your held item slot. Save the game, backup the three files mentioned above, load the game, and drop all 10 items. Replace the files in your game directory with the ones you just backed up, and load the game. If everything went as planned, 10 items should be on the ground, and you should still have 10 stacked in your item slot.

Hex Editing Your Stats

To do this you will need a hex editor and a means to convert from decimal to hexidecimal. I use xvi32 and the standard windows calculator. Open the file NAME.URS with your editor. Stat locations are below (you can press CTRL+G in xvi32 to jump to a particular address, don't edit at random unless you are prepared for weird effects in game).

Values with ranges greater than 0-255 (1 byte) are stored in little-endian. For example, to change weight to 0x011F (287 in decimal), beginning at address 0x0AB0 write 1F then 01 to 0x0AB1.

Skills - These go from 1% to 100% and are self-explanatory. 100 is 64 in hex, if you want to use another value, consult your calculator. You can set these higher than 100%, but any skill gain will reset them back to 100%.

2AA - Dodge
2AB - Agriculture
2AC - Shield
2AD - Knife
2AE - Sword
2AF - Club
2B0 - Axe
2B1 - Flail
2B2 - Spear
2B3 - Bow
2B4 - Crossbow
2B5 - Unarmed
2B6 - Physician
2B7 - Climbing
2B8 - Stealth
2B9 - Cookery
2BA - Ritual
2BB - Skiing
2BC - Swimming
2BD - Timbercraft
2BE - Fishing
2BF - Weatherlore
2C0 - Carpentry
2C1 - Herblore
2C2 - Hideworking
2C3 - Tracking
2C4 - Trapping
2C5 - Building

Data section before these values is learning values for these skills, they range to 1 to 18(12 in hex).

Attributes - These range from 1 to 18 20 (which is 12 14 in hex). You can set them higher for fun times (carry thousands of pounds, run circles around njerpez, etc) but the game behaves oddly.

AC2 - Strength
AC3 - Agility
AC6 - Dexterity
AC7 - Speed
AC9 - Endurance
ACA - Smell/Taste
ACD - Eyesight
ACE - Touch
ACF - Will
AD2 - Intelligence
AD3 - Hearing

Misc. Values for your amusement

574 - Skin Temperature (Decimal values are from 1 = Freezing to 10 = Sweating A Lot)
A88 - Heading (Decimal value starts as 1 = North East)
A9C - Time of day
AB0 - Weight (lbs)
AB4 - Height (in)
AB8 - Physique ( in range 1 to 5)
ABC - Phobia
AC0 - Starvation
AD0 - Month
AD1 - Year
AA4 - the total "Injury" stat, which directly affects your Mobility
A5E - the amount of damage on the first wound (the bar)

Values For Phobia are
01 - Acrophobia
02 – Agoraphobia
03 - Ailurophobia
04 - Cynophobia
05 – Demophobia
06 – Equiphobia
07 Haemophobia
08 - Hydrophobia
09 - Martiophobia

---

Thanks to dialate for starting the chart, Kuchcik for finding the Injury and Damage codes, and Varka for update/finding new codes

Circumventing Permadeath

You can create a backup of your character by simply going into the game directory, finding the folder named after your character, and copying it. Now you have a more permanent "save" to which you can revert if you die or suffer other unfavorable outcomes. If you have failed to do this in advance, and are a Windows user, you may be able to get yourself out of hot water with good old Ctrl + Alt + Del. Open Task Manager and end urw.exe. When you reload, you may find you have gone back in time to just before you made your big mistake.

The Power Play Guide

With the idea that you'll completely ruin your game and show nothing other than you have no clue about how URW is about 'being among not above' the rest of the folks in the world, here's a link to Nicool's Power Play Guide consider knowing this stuff a means of learning how to have and keep your fun unreal ;)

Food Storage

One of the most vexing problem is food storage. You dont want them to spoil, as spoiled foods is only good for Offerings. Or eating in famine situation.

The best way to store is is a Njpez camp, or a depopulated village. There's a hidden mechanism that prevent food spoilage there so that you can purchase good foods five month after you saw them.

Note that once you destroy every structure in that village, their worldmap F6 icon will change to Ground and losing that special feature.

This is a very good use of a camp. Another use is for unprepared farming fields, since we dont have to clear them of trees, and can plant crops even among marshlands.

(this is fixed in version 3.20)