Salem
Current Status: Open Beta
Salem is a fully open sandbox MMO with deep crafting elements. The game features permadeath as one of its main gimmicks, along with an in-depth character development system without classes and set roles, where the player can chose which kind of game to play. Taking place in the time of the first Pilgrims, Salem lets you live as an explorer in the new world; building your settlement, learning new skills and maybe fight with your neighbours.
The only place in Salem not built by the players is the main city Boston, which is a safe-zone where one can meet other players, trade, converse and enjoy the social aspects of the game. Outside of Boston only wilderness awaits, and the further you come from civilization the darker and more dangerous the world around you becomes. Until you reach the deep lumberwoods and no longer have to fear Pilgrims but instead witches and hidebehinds...
+ Show Spoiler +
+ Show Spoiler +
N/A
+ Show Spoiler [Original Thread by alfyma] +
This is the game I am most excited about in the near future, especially since beta is hopefully starting soon.
http://www.paradoxplaza.com/games/salem
Salem is set in a fantastical New England and offers free form massively multiplayer gameplay in a persistent, mutable and online world. With players taking the roles of intrepid colonists from the Old World seeking to make lives for themselves in the New, Salem provides them with unique crafting, farming and building systems inspired by 17th century alchemy.
Cast in a mold of cute-gothic Salem's lighthearted art style makes for the perfect contrast to the otherwise grim realities of open player-versus-player combat and permanent death. Experience Squonks, Hidebehinds, Witchcraft and the fullest freedom of a sandbox conceived in Liberty.
Features
Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game.
Persistent and mutable world.
Crafting, farming and building.
Open PvP combat with permadeath.
Free to Play.
Cast in a mold of cute-gothic Salem's lighthearted art style makes for the perfect contrast to the otherwise grim realities of open player-versus-player combat and permanent death. Experience Squonks, Hidebehinds, Witchcraft and the fullest freedom of a sandbox conceived in Liberty.
Features
Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game.
Persistent and mutable world.
Crafting, farming and building.
Open PvP combat with permadeath.
Free to Play.
very old trailer:
+ Show Spoiler +
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvZH0g3yKXw&feature=player_embedded
totalbiscuit interviews salem devs:
+ Show Spoiler +
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3nxcjaTUbc
crafting an enchanted broomstick & discussion of witchcraft:
+ Show Spoiler +
For those of you who know about it, this game should be relatively similar to Seatribe's previous creation Haven and Hearth ( http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=184466 and http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=201351 for more info on some TL people who have tried this).
This will be a really fantastic game - while to some of you permadeath may seem like a turn-off, it actually makes you care about your character, and is a very effective way of preventing griefing, especially with the ranging mechanics implemented in both Haven and now Salem. The fact that death matters means that players experience genuine emotion when they or their friends dies, which creates an unprecedentedly cool roleplaying experience, not to mention the possibility of rather realistic social interaction (both cooperative and confrontational).
If you like the idea of a game where everything is built by the players, for the players, you should definitely check out Salem.
BETA HAS STARTED! I'll try and keep improving this post. Thanks to Serejai for an explanation of the skill system:
+ Show Spoiler +
On April 25 2012 22:24 Serejai wrote:
A few people have been confused about how skills work in this so here's a short guide.
For this we will use an imaginary curio item, an apple, and some imaginary stats and skills (Eating, Peeling, Cooking for stats and Johnny Appleseed for skill).
Now, let's say that the skill Johnny Appleseed has the following requirements to learn:
500 Eating
600 Peeling
500 Cooking
When you hover over Johnny Appleseed you will see three red bars pop up. These bars represent the above numbers. In the case of Peeling, the bar will be bright red. This signifies that you don't meet the level requirement (as Peeling requires 6, but you're only at level 5 right now).
Our apple curio provides the following stat gains:
530 Eating
780 Peeling
400 Cooking
If you mouseover the apple icon it will do two things. First, it will display in the tooltip the actual numbers it provides to each stat. Secondly it will display blue bars over the skills (same information, but these bars don't contain the numbers like the tooltip does).
In this example the apple curio would show a full Eating bar, a full Peeling bar, and a partial Cooking bar.
Before we can learn our Johnny Appleseed skill we need to level up Peeling to 6. After using the apple curio we will have two green bars (Eating and Peeling) and one unfinished blue bar (Cooking, since it only provides 400 out of the 500 needed to level). At this point we can't learn our skill yet because a) We need 100 more Cooking, and b) We need one more level on Peeling.
If we click the green bar for Peeling, it will spend our 500/500 points to increase Peeling to level six. This is how you level up stats. After reaching level 6 the bright red bar will turn to dark red and you now meet all the requirements to learn Johnny Appleseed. What's next?
Well, we use another apple curio. This once again fills our Eating and Peeling bars (because the apple curio provides more than 500 Eating and 600 Peeling) but still leaves our Cooking bar unfinished, as the apple only provides 400/500 Cooking. This leaves us with two options:
1) We can use another apple to fill the remaining 100 Cooking, thus allowing us to learn Johnny Appleseed. This is a bad choice because the apple would be wasting 500+ Eating and 700+ Peeling points since we're already capped on those. A better option would be...
2) Use a different curio to fill in the remaining 100 Cooking we need. Let's say we have an orange curio that provides 50 Eating, 50 Peeling, and 800 Cooking. We also have a potato curio that provides 150 of each stat. In this case the best choice would be to use the potato curio to finish our skill requirements because it wastes the least amount of stats overall (only 350 total stat points wasted) compared to the orange curio (800 wasted) or the apple curio (1,000+ wasted).
Once all three bars are full, we click on Johnny Appleseed to learn the skill.
Basically, curios all provide different benefits and it's best to mix and match them to waste the least amount of exp. Tumbleweed is a curio that provies 2,000-3,000 exp to about six different stats. Using this at the start of the game is a terrible idea because your stats only take 500 exp. Likewise using this to level a single stat is also a bad idea, as it would be much more valuable to use this to train a skill that needs 3-4 of the stats it provides.
A few people have been confused about how skills work in this so here's a short guide.
For this we will use an imaginary curio item, an apple, and some imaginary stats and skills (Eating, Peeling, Cooking for stats and Johnny Appleseed for skill).
Now, let's say that the skill Johnny Appleseed has the following requirements to learn:
500 Eating
600 Peeling
500 Cooking
When you hover over Johnny Appleseed you will see three red bars pop up. These bars represent the above numbers. In the case of Peeling, the bar will be bright red. This signifies that you don't meet the level requirement (as Peeling requires 6, but you're only at level 5 right now).
Our apple curio provides the following stat gains:
530 Eating
780 Peeling
400 Cooking
If you mouseover the apple icon it will do two things. First, it will display in the tooltip the actual numbers it provides to each stat. Secondly it will display blue bars over the skills (same information, but these bars don't contain the numbers like the tooltip does).
In this example the apple curio would show a full Eating bar, a full Peeling bar, and a partial Cooking bar.
Before we can learn our Johnny Appleseed skill we need to level up Peeling to 6. After using the apple curio we will have two green bars (Eating and Peeling) and one unfinished blue bar (Cooking, since it only provides 400 out of the 500 needed to level). At this point we can't learn our skill yet because a) We need 100 more Cooking, and b) We need one more level on Peeling.
If we click the green bar for Peeling, it will spend our 500/500 points to increase Peeling to level six. This is how you level up stats. After reaching level 6 the bright red bar will turn to dark red and you now meet all the requirements to learn Johnny Appleseed. What's next?
Well, we use another apple curio. This once again fills our Eating and Peeling bars (because the apple curio provides more than 500 Eating and 600 Peeling) but still leaves our Cooking bar unfinished, as the apple only provides 400/500 Cooking. This leaves us with two options:
1) We can use another apple to fill the remaining 100 Cooking, thus allowing us to learn Johnny Appleseed. This is a bad choice because the apple would be wasting 500+ Eating and 700+ Peeling points since we're already capped on those. A better option would be...
2) Use a different curio to fill in the remaining 100 Cooking we need. Let's say we have an orange curio that provides 50 Eating, 50 Peeling, and 800 Cooking. We also have a potato curio that provides 150 of each stat. In this case the best choice would be to use the potato curio to finish our skill requirements because it wastes the least amount of stats overall (only 350 total stat points wasted) compared to the orange curio (800 wasted) or the apple curio (1,000+ wasted).
Once all three bars are full, we click on Johnny Appleseed to learn the skill.
Basically, curios all provide different benefits and it's best to mix and match them to waste the least amount of exp. Tumbleweed is a curio that provies 2,000-3,000 exp to about six different stats. Using this at the start of the game is a terrible idea because your stats only take 500 exp. Likewise using this to level a single stat is also a bad idea, as it would be much more valuable to use this to train a skill that needs 3-4 of the stats it provides.
Salem wiki: http://salemwiki.info/index.php/Salem_Wiki:Community_portal
Server status: http://plymouth.seatribe.se/ss
TL salem irc: irc.quakenet.org/tlsalem
Salem irc: irc.synirc.net/salem