Serpentius: Not everybody has a mic so that would be great. Thank you, everybody.

Snipehunter: Yeah, cool.

Serpentius: You can also follow up on your question with your mic if you like, just kind of keep it going along. If you happen to have a follow-up, try to limit it, and let other people get a chance to ask as well.

Snipehunter: Okay, so got a couple of questions here, I think I'm going to start with Sulu’s who asks for any info on how building buildings is going to work.

Alright Sulu, so there isn't a lot that I can talk about here right now. The architecture tool which is sort of the foundation of the whole building chain is still under development, and so we're not really there in production yet, but I can tell you the basics of how the system itself and the mechanics will work.

An architect is going to have a blueprint you're going to take a blueprint to a site, using for lack of a better word, surveying stakes with the stakes laid out, you understand now the foundation of the building. So the first step then is to clear the space and build the foundation. Once the foundation is laid out according to the architect's blueprint then there's a ton of materials that need to be brought to the site to build all of the various fixtures, walls, stairs, etc. Think of the stairs, the doors, the walls, the windows, the floor treatments as the components of crafting, [or rather] the equivalent of crafting the components of crafting a weapon for a blacksmith.

So it all follows the exact same framework to lay down stairs is a series of techniques you're going to have to learn as a constructor and so you'll apply hammering nails and stuff as you're going through the construction experience, but again it's techniques. You start with blueprints which are the equivalent to recipes, and then those blueprints will define the sub-assemblies which are equivalent to components and the sub-assemblies will dictate which techniques are necessary to build them. But you will build them in-place and on-site; we don't do the modular construction thing, nobody is going to be shipping half a house down the road. Hopefully that answers your question, let me know if there was more otherwise I'm going to move on.

Sulu: I do have more, this is Sulu.

Snipehunter: Hi!

Sulu: Hi! So I was thinking more along the lines of granularity, am I hammering individual boards in the wall or am I hammering up a section of wall at a time?

Snipehunter: Section of wall at a time. You will be hammering nails in to boards and things as part of the experience, but the experience is basically building the sub-assembly in one step, and then raising the sub-assembly and installing it into place.

Sulu: Alright, thank you!

Snipehunter: Alright another question came up and actually it's dual, both JonWarren and Immaculate wanted to know about reverse engineering. Immaculate are you around do you want to go into more specifics about that question?

ImmaculateDeception: Yeah I'm here, okay so say you have this item on you like say for instance a DE item that is only one person can make it and you maybe killed him and you steal it from him. Can you look at that if your skill is high enough and figure out how to make it or how to say make the recipe for it?

Snipehunter: Gotcha, so the short answer is no and the long answer is y-yessss? Let me explain: so you can't reverse engineer an object just by looking at it, however you can examine an object and learn a lot of things about it. You can understand its condition, you can understand what sort of properties have been imbued into the object by the crafting process, you can even get a sense of its value and I suppose some day if there were other things (Recording is corrupted here) you would also be able to (Recording is corrupted here) but that doesn't mean you'll get the recipe, the recipe has to be taught to you or learned through a recipe book or somehow otherwise added as a piece of discrete information to your character.

However, knowing that something exists means that you now have something you can push towards in research and as part of the research mechanic, let's say for example somebody saw a Kypiq with a flamethrower and you were like how the hell or what the hell is that, right and so you hunted that poor little Kypiq down and you took their flamethrower and you examined it and you learned all about the flamethrower that you could learn from the examination, you learned what it's made out of, you learned what properties it has and you've broken it down to its components.

So you even in a sense understand what it is made out of but you don't have the recipe yet but now you can go if you understand the skills involved like this is a tinkering object obviously you can then through tinkering research push yourself towards that goal and unlock your own version of that recipe. Behind the scenes they are basically functionally equivalent, it's the same recipe but in this case as a unit of information it's a recipe that originated with you rather than passed down from the original line of the object so you can reverse engineer objects, kind of, you can reverse engineer for inspiration and then research towards your own version of that object.

ImmaculateDeception: Cool, so basically yes, but it's a very long term process.

Snipehunter: Correct.

ImmaculateDeception: Thank you.

Snipehunter: Alright, let's see. So Jorunn asks "Snipe in terms of crafting how will a player be able to build a sort of fort or maybe even a castle?" Ah this is kind of a construction question, "I'm primarily asking this question for my barony as I want to have a playstyle where I can access a fort in Medieval terms whereas if there was to be an invasion of the county or dookey uh dookey, duchy I want to be in they would have to get past the fort first to reach the more unprotected settlements." I totally get you, so you know to streamline the question a little bit, what is involved in building say for example a motte & bailey.

And so that actually goes back to the first question that was asked which was kind of about how building buildings will work, so short answer is an architect will... let me back step even further, a cartographer will survey the site where you want to build your fort that information gets passed on to the architect, the architect uses that information to build a blueprint and site plan which is then given to the constructors who go back to the site, lay out all of the stakes necessary to begin the process when the stakes are laid down they then start building the fort and they'll build it by laying the foundations down and then building all the various sub-assemblies, wall segments, stairs, doorways, portcullises, etc. and raising them in place and they have to build them there. Hopefully that answers your question for ya.

Snipehunter: Alright, Lee/Leo asks, "If you're a blacksmith will you become dehydrated from being near the fire for extended periods of time? If that's the case then will you build immunities to heat? Or if you're an alchemist and work with poisons will you build resistances to poisons or fumes?"

Okay, that's a great question and it's a tricky question for me because there are things that we want to do and things that we've actually already done so let me start with the things that already done first if you are a blacksmith who stands near the fire all the time or if you are an alchemist and you are tasting your own potions as you're developing them to see if they're poison or not, you will be exposed to these hazards and they will affect you so you will get dehydrated you might get overheated, you will get poisoned if you mess up badly enough, however at the moment the system for building up immunities and resistances like the Dread Pirate Roberts and his resistance to iocane powder isn't actually finished yet and so it is something we want to do but it isn't something in the game yet and so I'm loathe to kinda go into any more details there but if you have a follow-up question feel free to ask it.

Lee/Leo: No, I think that pretty much answered everything, thank you.

Snipehunter: Yeah, no problem. Now I am trolling for another question. Ah yes, Governor Bourneh asks "Is this why CoE is taking so long to develop because your internet crashes so much?"

Yes, absolutely it's not just my internet though we have similar problems throughout the region to be fair.

Snipehunter: Alright let's see Malephite asks "Will there be a mechanic or a meta behind breeding animals and if so how complex can we expect it. For example will breeding animals with their family members result in similar effects as players with genetic defects, etc." That's a great question, so animal husbandry isn't an entire trade craft in and of itself, it is an aspect of the ranching craft. Which means we don't have to build a crafting experience for that part of the business and so what's going to happen is that your animals will simulate all of the sort of mechanical aspects of reproduction themselves, they'll know when it is their time and if they're together we will sort of hand wave and they will produce new offspring but there's not going to be a breeding mechanic or anything like that, however they will possess traits and those traits are passed on just like the player genetic system so all of the same problems, pits, hazards, benefits, bonuses, and blessings all apply. If you have a follow-up I'm happy to answer it otherwise I'm going to read another question.

Snipehunter: Okay, Switchblade asks, "I recently watch a video of a guy using ferrets to scare rabbits out of their holes and then using a hawk to catch it. Will this be possible in CoE with taming and training animals?"

Holy crap, Switchblade I want that video, but yes if you are a very good trainer and you have trained your pets to work this way and you can support controlling two pets at once that is absolutely something that you can do. there's a whole spectrum of skill involved though so don't expect that to be easy. You don't get to be the beastmaster over night basically. Did you have a follow-up Switchblade? Nope, alright let's see.

Snipehunter: Teradactylman asks "How does one build a road?" Ooh that's a good question, "Does a player or a group of players need to have a blueprint or do they simply flatten and clear the land where they wish to place the road? I would assume that for bridges a blueprint would be needed, thanks."

Yeah so it depends a lot on what kind of road you want to make, however to some degree paths and the like sort of happen naturally because you're going to, the more trafficked an area is the less the wildlife grows there and things like that and so trails are going to clear on their own. In fact you'll find game trails that animals use as you go through the forest, however if you want to lay down for example paved road then you're going to want to plan for how to lay down the paving, now the plan isn't necessarily I need a plan to goes from the shore of the western coast all the way to the shore of the eastern coast but you do need here's a plan for you know a hundred length of road or a hundred feet of road or a hundred yards of road for example and then you can replicate that plan over and over and over and over in one-hundred length segments basically because the blueprint doesn't go away when you're done using it.

They in most cases are specific to the site that they're built on for big structures so for example your bridge would be a one-off blueprint that would only work for that bridge because you have to take into account the contours of the shore, the depth of the water, that kind of thing but for things like roads it's really more about clear the road down to this level, replicate this plan, and go. Did you have a follow-up?

Teradactylman: Ah, no. That's all, thank you.

Snipehunter: Yeah, absolutely. Alright so let's see Shamus says, "More regarding fighting and learning different combat styles, will you be able to learn from fighting? Like say I fight in Neran territory for awhile will I eventually learn their combat style? Also will it be possible to teach other people once you have learned?"

Okay, so there’s a few different things in there, hold on just a second. That’s a great question though, you can’t reverse engineer a combat style just by facing it, well your character can’t as a player you certainly can in fact half of the game is figuring out how their style works so you know the appropriate moves to counter it effectively regardless of the disparities between the two of you. So to some degree there’s a certain amount of like player involvement that does allow that to work but it doesn’t mean you gain their style for use themselves, they have to teach it to you or you have to use the observation mechanic and you can’t, you can’t fight yourself against them with the observation mechanic running and expect to win, well I dunno if you were really good actually huh anyway.

The way observation works is you’re not at your best while you’re observing because you’re spending a bunch of your resources to actually observe and learn from the style and so my original thought was that as you were getting your ass kicked in combat using the observation would just make things worse but I suppose player skill could make up the difference and so in theory you could over time in multiple bouts against a style learn it by engaging combat while you were in active observation, however I would expect that you would meet defeat more often than not under those circumstances because that’s really meant for sparring inside of a school or a dojo if that makes sense. Did you have a follow-up?

Shamus: No, that was great. Thank you.

Snipehunter: Yeah, no problem. Felidae asks, “Are taming and training a part of the taming skill tree as well, do you have any other examples of ranching?”

Absolutely, training animals, breaking stallions, training dogs, raising animals, caring for them, breeding them, well not exactly breeding them as I explained earlier but husbandry and also identifying and learning animal behaviors are all aspects of the skill tree that ranching is itself a part of, ranching is not the top of that skill tree, the top of that skill tree is I want to say Animal Lore, I may be wrong about that I’ll have to double check but ranching is basically the first sub skill right off that because it’s domestication. Did you have a follow-up? Alright.

Snipehunter: So then moving on Katlynna Oakheart asks, “Totally not related to my personal knowledge and interests, how in-depth have you gone with the various crafting skills? I know you are looking for subject matter experts to help build things out but do you have the overall mechanics down pat and are you just looking for specific information from community members, more specifically bowery?”

Ah okay, so we have a framework for each of the crafts and we have an understanding of the feel that we want to capture but as we go through and specifically implement each of these crafts on our schedule we’re going to be consulting with the subject matter experts from the program to figure out which pieces of the, for lack of a better word, the feel that we’re trying to capture are important to the actual mechanical craft and which of them aren’t so that we can better adhere to the knowledge of the actual world so that everything sort of progresses and makes a logical sense and allows somebody who has some knowledge to sort of get a, I don’t want to say a leg up because it’s not really what I mean but to get a sort of like head start in acclimatizing themselves to our system.

We don’t exactly want to capture reality, like I mentioned in my crafting journal I prefer versmilitude over veracity it’s more about capturing the feel of crafting than it is about being 100% accurate but at the same time we want to know what 100% accurate is so that when we’re capturing the feel we can be as accurate as possible so that we know what to streamline and what not to so we don’t make stupid cuts that make everything feel wrong basically and so that’s what we want our subject matter experts for and so that’s the purpose of the program is as each of these crafts go into their own implementation phases we need to bring them, we need to pick their brains and bring their information into our sphere so that we can make sure that the system feels right and accomplishes all of the right goals. Did you have a follow-up?

Katlynna: No, that’s perfect. Thank you.

Snipehunter: Alright, let’s see. Count Esbon asks, “Will combat deviant skills be structured the same in some respects as crafting skills, i.e. techniques for pickpocketing or stabbing someone in the face?”

Absolutely, it’s kind of a core way of thinking about the distribution of information in the game more than it is a specific crafting mechanic but the breakdown of information as one piece of the information is the actual recipe of a thing, one piece of information is how you implement the steps of that recipe, so you know the recipe for a sword versus the techniques necessary to produce the components of a sword or the stance of a combat style versus the various combat techniques necessary to perform them or the grift of a deviant skill set versus the actual techniques necessary to accomplish that con. Did you have any other questions?

Snipehunter: Ah Switchblade, you had a follow-up question? What’s up? I see, it was a lie hah ha ha. Alright well now that I’ve got to the end of the list let me scroll back up and pick some other questions. Yes, ChroniclesofCaspain asks, “Is that slapping I’m hearing?”

[Slap noises] Yes it is. There’s no one to stop me here. Ha ha.

Let’s see Ranulf asks, “What percentage of the world is water?”

Ehhh, approximately three-quarters, give or take 5%. Any follow ups to that?

Ranulf: No, that works, thank you.

Snipehunter: Yeah, no problem. Zalfira asks, “Is there any available information on scribing skills and the actual thing itself or even paper making?”

So I assume and correct me if I’m wrong I’m assuming you’re asking less about what can paper makers and scribes do and more about what it’s like to be a scribe or paper maker, that’s an excellent question and I can tell you right now that one of the experiences that we replicate as closely as we can, or that we intend to because we haven’t actually implemented paper making yet, let me be clear, but our goal here is to implement actual paper making in the sense of pulping and pressing but also in the sense of actual book binding. You know as in making courses, covers, and binding them together into books and things like, and then also the production of quill and ink and then also the production of vellum and parchment and then finally, last but not least, the application of ink to parchment or paper and that actually comes in two forms there’s actually like writing and scribing and then there is, I don’t want it call it drawing exactly, but then there’s what cartographers do with mapmaking. Any follow-up questions?

Zalfira: So are you saying that scribing itself could tie in with cartography?

Snipehunter: Yeah we generally try to make our crafts, not necessarily interdependent so much as interconnected generally where they’re connected if you wanted to go broad on a bunch of skills instead of deep on one you can cover them yourself if you really wanted to it would just be labor intensive, but there is absolutely a sort of chain of interconnectedness between all of our various skills so that there isn’t an instance of a crafting skill or profession that doesn’t have some sort of link to another so there’s always a demand for them basically. Anything else?

Zalfira: One last question, will the quality of the paper that’s made affect the contracts that are written upon it in like attributes or whatever?

Snipehunter: They can though more generally, when I say they can I mean in the like exceptional cases in that, you know a, for example a contract at a level of a king writing a treaty for a king, because of the clauses and stuff that are necessary to produce such contracts we want them on the highest quality paper but fictionally that’s more represented, and even to some extent mechanically in the game, that’s more represented by the quality of paper affecting the durability of the record of the contract or how much detail can be placed upon it rather than saying, you know, “This is king contract paper.” It’s more like only the best vellum can take the inks necessary to reproduce the various coats of arms and things like that.

Zalfira: Alright, thank you very much.

Snipehunter: Absolutely. Okay, I'm going to read Epicface's question next, "As far as I can tell, it seems like there will be various topics for different skills to allow for distinct methods. What sorts of techniques can we expect for the forensic skill? How might it work?"

Oh, this is a great question! I was actually kind of hoping it would come up in my stream earlier because it's actually one of my favorite skill games is the by-play between deviants and you know man-catchers for bounty hunters and investigators. And a big piece of that is the tracking skill on one side, once you know who you're looking for and the forensic skill on the other side, while you're still trying to figure out who the culprit of the crime was, and so it doesn't work exactly the same way. There are techniques. Um, let me rephrase that so you understand what I'm saying there is, it all fits the same framework of information that I've been talking about all day; there are techniques, those techniques are gathered under things like recipes called methods.

But what you're doing instead is you're going to a crime scene and you're applying these methods together, clues that will help you reveal information that will lead you to the person who committed the crime that you're investigating, which is difficult because you might not even have anything other than the sketchy report of a witness, and so you have methods of interrogation, then you have methods of investigating the scene of a crime, methods of analyzing a boot print,methods of analyzing a poison, right? And these each give you different pieces of information that feedback into the object in your journal that is the record of the crime. Eventually, if you find enough of them, they're going to reveal the culprit. And once you know who you're looking for, then you switch over to the tracking skill and its methods. And there you know, they're similar methods.

There's methods for tracking, tracking movement to the city, methods for tracking someone across rough terrain, methods for flushing someone out who's in hiding, things like that, right? And they all have techniques that can be applied inside intimidation, a soft sell, things like interrogation or a reading broken bushes, or tracks or spoor on the other side. So all of that together basically creates a suite of mechanics that are as detailed as any of the craft skill mechanics. So it's still a crafting trade skill in a way, they're all applied in situ in the world in real time at the places where they need to be applied, rather than that crafting stations. Instead your crafting stations are the scenes of crimes, or the witnesses of crimes, or the trail that you're following. Do you have a follow-up question?

Epicface: Um, you've kind of answered it. In the game guide, it says that in the bardic description it is the category of skills that deal heavily in social interactions from crime investigation, to other things, so forensics that influences both like interrogations and also like analyzing clues.

Snipehunter: Correct. Exactly.

Epicface: Okay, thank you. Thanks.

Snipehunter: Absolutely. Okay, let's see, I am running more questions, how about that? So let's pick one well, I guess, huh? Dreamer asks, "will there be different appearances for animals based on their region, shorter, longer coat, names, etc or will it be just surface, i.e coat color? Also will it be possible to use some kind of method of selective breeding for animals? I.e. for foxcelots to make them fluffier in the northern areas?"

That's a great question. Um, so couple of things. First of all, the adaptations for each of the biomes' specific versions of animals that we have are full-blown adaptations in most cases. There are a few animals where just because that's actually the kind of adaptation that would have happened anyway, it's mostly just a coat change. Um, and in some cases these are even the pet animals, not necessarily the foxcelot, but for example, however that said, will be breeding towards a particular goal is absolutely possible one way or another provided that you can find animals that starts to exhibit the trait, right.

We have the idea of genetics and the idea that you pass down traits and so you absolutely can breed towards a goal. The trick is finding the stock to start from and that really depends on the animals. For example, you're never going to make a hairless Chihuahua fluffy unless we somehow had a fluffy Chihuahua somewhere out there in the world that you could breed from or an animal compatible with a Chihuahua that was fluffy. And right now we don't have that sort of sub-species thing going on with the exception of the biome differentiations that already exist. So it would be hard to push for trait that didn't exist anywhere yet basically. Did you have a follow-up question? Awesome, Dreamer.

Serpentius: And Snipes, you know, feel free to finish up whenever you're ready to finish up. You know, nobody's expecting this, but we're all appreciative and you know, stay as long as if you want to stay.

Snipehunter: Yep, I'd figured I stick around for a couple more questions. Then I'm gonna get on with the rest of my day here. And so let's get to it, let me scroll randomly and find a good question that I missed earlier.

Snipehunter: Okay, so here's a question about resources. Malephite asks, "Is it safe to assume that a viable way to supplement non-renewable resources is with recycled material, and if so, will similar craft skills help to break down and decrease material loss, etcetera?"

Yes, absolutely. So objects are assembled from components which are themselves made from processed raw materials which are themselves made from harvested raw materials. So you harvest raw material, process it into something like a billet, or a powder, or an extractor, or an essential oil. And then through the use of a pattern, turn that into a component then in a recipe, it will call for certain components of various types to be used. And then you take the components that you produced with those patterns and you assemble them into the object. You can disassemble an object as well, and then you can recycle the components that disassembled from the object.

How much you get back from the recycling is an aspect of the skill used to originally produce the object or harvest the material it's made from, either one of those will produce a bonus to how much you get back from the recycling attempt. Some things can even give you 100 percent back because, for example, iron is a really good example of this. If you do it right, you can get all of the iron back. It might not be in a form that's useful to make steel. You'll have to take that iron and reprocess it to mixed steel, but you can at least get all the iron back with no loss. Under most circumstances. How much processing you have to deal to make it usable again is entirely based on your skill level however. Do you have a follow-up question?

Malephite: Yeah. Just to touch up on the potential loss of material. Um, for example, you said with the iron, if say a sword was rusted to a certain degree, where would that constitute a loss there? Before smelting it back down?

Snipehunter: Yeah. So the condition of the weapon can cause some loss. Even in the case of fully recyclable materials like metals. That said, if you maintain your weapon, a little bit of rust isn't going to take enough away to matter. It's more like if you let your weapon to degrade, degraded to the point where it's broken or can break, you're going to suffer some loss in the recovery.

Malephite: Perfect. Thank you.

Snipehunter: Yeah, absolutely. All right, last question. Let me do another random scroll here. Let's see, I already answered that one, that was a good question though. Ah Okay, here we go.

My last question, Arieus asks “Will natural weather erosion be a part of the system, that perhaps, every real life year the natural waterfall may erode backwards, causing loss of land over the ten year game so that bridges and roads will need to be rethought out, etcetera?”

Generally speaking, the terrain is fixed. However, I say generally speaking, because it's not a static world. Um, and so things can change however doing something that changes the terrain is sort of a major thing for us. And so we're going to save those things for, you know, say for example, a volcano explodes, or a flood happens or something like that rather than try to simulate, you know, year after year erosion because the game scope isn't really long enough for that to be particularly effective for us.

That said major events, you know, a storm surge suddenly pushes a million gallons of water in because of the tidal surge, that kind of thing. We're probably going to also go in and make changes to the terrain around when they happen, and those kinds of things you'll see as conditions in the server necessitate them, um necessitates is a weird word, trigger I guess would be a better way to say it. But as the world state sort of makes that obviously going to be what's going to happen, but also things like the ten year story like for example, in one of the demos we showed massive comets striking Elyria if we ever did something like that, you can bet that they wouldn't just be rocks sitting on the same terrain that had always been there. The terrain itself would take the brunt of those impacts if we were to push that off in the live environment. Did you have a follow-up question?

Arieus: No, that's pretty much it. With the eight, nine, ten or including prelude a thousand years. Ish worth of time from beginning to end. Yeah, yeah. I was just curious. Thank you.

Snipehunter: Yeah, absolutely. All right, well thanks for hanging out guys. I am off, however, I will talk to you all later.

Noslim: Hey, Snipe, this is Noslim. I just want to thank you for being on the stream, I'm going to post a link in the community notice board on Youtube if you guys missed that and want to watch it. But that's super awesome for you to come out and, answer questions, and appear on the stream. We appreciate it tremendously.

Snipehunter: Absolutely, happy to!

Noslim: Yep, thank you.

Serpentius: Thanks everybody being awesome, have a wonderful night!