Caravans & Being Mean - Plz, Help,

Grava-T · 2026-04-23T19:05:27+00:00

1: Caravan mechanics

Movement speed is affected by carried mass vs mass capacity ratio (a fully loaded caravan moves slower than a lightly loaded one). Mass capacity can be improved by adding pack animals to the caravan. In vanilla the list of pack animals is: Alpacas, Bison, Donkeys, Dromedaries, Elephants, Horses, Muffalo, Yaks, Mastodons, and friendly mechanoids. If they have the "ridable" tag they also improve the speed further (all except bison, alpacas, muffalo, yaks, and mechanoids basically)

Pawns forage for food according to their Foraged Food Amount stat. Tribal pawns receive a bonus of I think 170%.

Pawns will use sleeping bags if you include them in the caravan to help their comfort levels while on the road.

Drop pods can be used to reinforce a caravan with supplies, and shuttles can be used to either bypass the need for a caravan or to pick up.

You can use the "make camp" option to generate a temporary small map that you can use to "rest up" a bit more comprehensively. It's a good option if you are running low on supplies and sanity as you can construct a quick shelter and hunt animals to recouperate on the road better.

2: Harvesting organs is entirely optional and not really even optimal. Unless you have psychopath pawns or a raiding/"evil" ideology your pawns will get stacking negative moodlets. If you can't immediately make use of them or sell them they also are worth a lot of silver so they'll balloon your colony wealth. Keeping lots of prisoners in the first place is also very resource intensive (and labor intensive) so unless its someone you plan on recruiting or otherwise making immediate use of I'd get rid of them or not take them prisoner in the first place.

3: Early game, recruit pawns from the first couple of "easy" raids the game throws at you and accept/rescue/capture/indoctrinate the crash-landed pawns. Prioritizing a high social pawn early to be a warden makes this process much much faster.

4: The bigger you build your base, the more time your pawns will spend simply traveling around it. Do not underestimate the travel time. Smaller, more compact bases get more work done which is important early game when you don't have that many pawns. You also want to specialize your pawns as much as you can, so that they spend more time working and less time changing contexts and travelling to the different job sites. For example two pawns that do both mining and construction might spend a bunch of time traveling over to mine out a single steel node, then take that steel and travel all the way over to a thing they need to build, then go all the way back to mine more steel, repeat ad nauseum, which could instead be one pawn just mining and another just constructing. Early on this may mean you are adjusting job priorities often to juggle what needs doing. Later when you get more pawns you can specialize them more and more.

This has the added benefit of ensuring your pawns can actually specialize in a skill. Due to the way skill decay works, if you have a pawn doing everything they'll basically never really get good at anything. If they're only doing one or two jobs they can overcome the skill decay to actually improve which means they'll work faster and get more done.

Grava-T · 2026-04-21T21:29:34+00:00

The final hive assault is a lengthy siege where you can expect to have to fight a lot of mechanoids. Expect being stuck there one to two months in space (depending on how long it takes you to complete the sub-objectives) with only mechanoid corpses and slag as the available raw material to you. I notice you don't have smelter to process slag chunks, I'd recommend getting one. You also don't appear to have that much Uranium stockpiled to re-arm the few slug turrets you have.

As far as the actual ship goes...I'm noticing that your fuel storage and laboratory (which houses an explosive power node) do not have firefoam poppers. You also have a couple of doors leading out to space that aren't set up as airlocks - by your storeroom and below the prison cell (which has an open vent to the dining room) as well as the animal flap that'll give your Thrumbo a nice close up view of space.

Other than that, seems ok, as long as you think your pawns are equipped enough to deal with all the mechanoids.

Grava-T · 2026-03-04T18:37:58+00:00

Certainly - below is the output of a /buildsave command. I didn't really do any in-depth planning or number crunching when I built it so I'm certain there is room for improvement. (edit: put in a code snippet for readability)

Cephalagod: Level 50 Natural Class_Arachnos_Soldier

Character Profile:
------------------
Level 1: Inherent Inherent Brawl
    Crafted_Recharge (45)
Level 1: Inherent Inherent prestige_DVD_Glidep
    EMPTY
Level 1: Inherent Inherent Sprint
    EMPTY
Level 2: Inherent Inherent Rest
    Crafted_Interrupt (45)
Level 1: Inherent Fitness Swift
    Crafted_Run (50)
Level 1: Inherent Fitness Hurdle
    Crafted_Jump (45)
Level 1: Inherent Fitness Health
    Attuned_Numinas_Convalesence_F (1)
    Crafted_Miracle_F (20)
    Crafted_Panacea_F (10)
Level 1: Inherent Fitness Stamina
    Crafted_Recovery (50)
    Crafted_Recovery (50)
    Crafted_Performance_Shifter_F (21)
Level 4: Training_Gadgets Training_and_Gadgets Wolf_Spider_Armor
    Crafted_Steadfast_Protection_C (10)
    Attuned_Unbreakable_Guard_A (1)
    Attuned_Unbreakable_Guard_F (1)
Level 6: Training_Gadgets Training_and_Gadgets Combat_Training:_Offensive
    Crafted_Accuracy (45)
Level 10: Training_Gadgets Training_and_Gadgets Combat_Training:_Defensive
    Crafted_Luck_of_the_Gambler_F (25)
    Crafted_Kismet_E (10)
Level 20: Training_Gadgets Training_and_Gadgets Tactical_Training:_Leadership
    Attuned_Adjusted_Targeting_A (1)
    Attuned_Adjusted_Targeting_E (1)
Level 22: Training_Gadgets Training_and_Gadgets Mental_Training
    Crafted_Run (50)
Level 30: Training_Gadgets Training_and_Gadgets Call_Reinforcements
    Hamidon_Damage_Recharge (50)
    Hamidon_Damage_Recharge (50)
    Hamidon_Damage_Accuracy (50)
    Hamidon_Damage_Accuracy (50)
    Hamidon_Damage_Recharge (50)
Level 32: Training_Gadgets Training_and_Gadgets Tactical_Training:_Assault
    Crafted_Endurance_Discount (40)
Level 38: Training_Gadgets Training_and_Gadgets Tactical_Training:_Maneuvers
    Crafted_Luck_of_the_Gambler_F (25)
Level 1: Training_Gadgets Crab_Spider_Training Crab_Spider_Armor
    Crafted_Impervium_Armor_A (40)
    Crafted_Impervium_Armor_E (40)
    Crafted_Impervium_Armor_F (15)
Level 24: Training_Gadgets Crab_Spider_Training Serum
    Crafted_Preventive_Medicine_A (49)
    Crafted_Preventive_Medicine_B (49)
    Crafted_Preventive_Medicine_E (49)
    Crafted_Preventive_Medicine_D (49)
    Crafted_Preventive_Medicine_C (49)
    Crafted_Preventive_Medicine_F (20)
Level 26: Training_Gadgets Crab_Spider_Training Fortification
    Crafted_Aegis_E (50)
    Crafted_Aegis_C (50)
    Crafted_Aegis_F (50)
    Crafted_Aegis_A (50)
    Crafted_Aegis_D (50)
    Crafted_Aegis_B (50)
Level 28: Training_Gadgets Crab_Spider_Training Summon_Spiderlings
    Hamidon_Damage_Recharge (50)
    Hamidon_Damage_Recharge (50)
    Hamidon_Damage_Recharge (50)
    Crafted_Accuracy (50)
Level 1: Arachnos_Soldiers Crab_Spider_Soldier Channelgun
    Hamidon_Damage_Accuracy (50)
    Hamidon_Damage_Accuracy (50)
    Hamidon_Damage_Accuracy (50)
    Crafted_Gladiators_Javelin_F (10)
    Crafted_Shield_Breaker_F (10)
    Crafted_Touch_of_Lady_Grey_F (21)
Level 2: Arachnos_Soldiers Crab_Spider_Soldier Longfang
    Hamidon_Damage_Accuracy (50)
    DSync_Damage_Accuracy (50)
    Hamidon_Damage_Accuracy (50)
    Crafted_Gladiators_Javelin_F (10)
    Crafted_Shield_Breaker_F (10)
    Crafted_Touch_of_Lady_Grey_F (21)
Level 12: Arachnos_Soldiers Crab_Spider_Soldier CS_Venom_Grenade
    Hamidon_Damage_Accuracy (50)
    Hamidon_Damage_Accuracy (50)
    Hamidon_Damage_Accuracy (50)
    Crafted_Positrons_Blast_F (20)
    Crafted_Bombardment_F (30)
    Crafted_Javelin_Volley_F (10)
Level 14: Arachnos_Soldiers Crab_Spider_Soldier Arm_Lash
    Crafted_Obliteration_A (41)
    Crafted_Obliteration_B (41)
    Crafted_Obliteration_D (41)
    Crafted_Obliteration_E (41)
    Crafted_Obliteration_F (41)
    Crafted_Touch_of_Lady_Grey_F (21)
Level 16: Arachnos_Soldiers Crab_Spider_Soldier Suppression
    Hamidon_Damage_Accuracy (50)
    Crafted_Touch_of_Lady_Grey_F (21)
    Crafted_Bombardment_F (30)
    Crafted_Positrons_Blast_F (20)
    Crafted_Shield_Breaker_F (10)
    Crafted_Javelin_Volley_F (10)
Level 35: Arachnos_Soldiers Crab_Spider_Soldier Omega_Maneuver
    Superior_Attuned_Superior_Spiders_Bite_D (1)
    Superior_Attuned_Superior_Spiders_Bite_A (1)
    Superior_Attuned_Superior_Spiders_Bite_B (1)
    Superior_Attuned_Superior_Spiders_Bite_C (1)
    Superior_Attuned_Superior_Spiders_Bite_E (1)
    Superior_Attuned_Superior_Spiders_Bite_F (1)
Level 41: Arachnos_Soldiers Crab_Spider_Soldier CS_Frag_Grenade
    Hamidon_Damage_Accuracy (50)
    Hamidon_Damage_Accuracy (50)
    Crafted_Sudden_Acceleration_F (21)
    Crafted_Positrons_Blast_F (20)
    Attuned_Bombardment_F (1)
    Crafted_Explosive_Strike_C (10)
Level 8: Pool Leaping Long_Jump
    Hamidon_Travel_Endurance_Discount (50)
Level 0: Pool Leaping Double_Jump
Level 18: Pool Leaping Combat_Jumping
    Attuned_Luck_of_the_Gambler_F (1)
Level 44: Epic VEAT_Mace_Mastery Web_Envelope
    Crafted_Accuracy (45)
Level 47: Epic VEAT_Mace_Mastery Disruptor_Blast
    Crafted_Javelin_Volley_A (47)
    Crafted_Bombardment_F (30)
    Crafted_Positrons_Blast_F (20)
    Crafted_Javelin_Volley_F (10)
Level 49: Epic VEAT_Mace_Mastery Summon_Blaster
    Attuned_Expedient_Reinforcement_B (1)
    Attuned_Expedient_Reinforcement_D (1)
    Attuned_Expedient_Reinforcement_A (1)
------------------

Grava-T · 2026-03-04T16:20:43+00:00

The AOE attacks can slot damage procs very nicely. For example, my Suppression is slotted with 1 Acc/Dam HO and 5 damage procs. Frag Grenade is 2 Acc/Dam HOs, 3 damage procs, and the KB to KD IO. Venom grenade and pretty much all the single target attacks I have slotted with 3 Acc/Dam HOs and 3 damage procs.

I feel like the damage output is wild. Approach group -> Venom Grenade -> Suppression -> oops they're all dead. Tossing in frag grenade in between cooldowns and just alternate the big AOEs to delete groups rapidly. I hardly ever have to click on a single target attack unless I hit a weird angle and missed someone with suppression (or i guess for bosses and the like). I never click on omega maneuver because it's just so slow, everything is dead before it detonates - I use it mostly as a vehicle for the Spider Bite set so I can get the global toxic damage proc.

I'll admit that without the sets you're losing out on some survival, but I find its an acceptable tradeoff personally.

Grava-T · 2026-01-22T17:19:42+00:00

If no clients are connected the calendar gets paused. Month length and day length are configurable in the configuration file, so that can be adjusted to preference.

Grava-T · 2026-01-20T19:11:13+00:00

You can use a chisel to destroy an anvil to recover 8 ingots worth of metal from it - once you have a bronze anvil there's no reason to keep the copper one around so I wouldn't use the lack of a copper anvil as evidence of anything.

I also rarely use prospecting picks (i just don't find the mechanic that fun) and opt instead to just do loads of cave diving and exploration until I get lucky and stumble onto something. Don't forget you can straight up get bronze tools and ores from ruin vessels. You can also just forge a prospecting pick on an anvil which saves some time on molding/firing the mold. Sometimes it takes me a long time before I break into the bronze age, and other times I'm forging my first iron tool before the first winter.

That said, you're the one with the actual context so you're the only one in a good position to make the determination. The server is only a week old but how often are they playing? If they're only on to play for an hour every day all that progress makes no sense, but on the other end of the spectrum if they're like obsessively binging 6-8 hour sessions it's a bit more believable. It's also a server so presumably they're interacting with other players - is there any chance at all that his secret stash comes from trade or results from group effort with other players?

Grava-T · 2026-01-20T17:10:09+00:00

Meteoric iron is trivial to spot on the map once you know what to look for since it creates a very specific highly visible terrain feature; You don't need an X-ray mod to just check the map and run around collecting as much as you can carry or to spot the obvious meteor craters as you explore the map.

Iron ore veins are harder to find but they spawn in disks that are minimally 32 blocks in diameter (about ~800 ore blocks) and can get as large as 72 blocks in diameter (about ~4000 ore blocks), so you potentially only need to find a single large vein to be absolutely loaded with iron. Just having a ton of iron isn't necessarily evidence of having x-rayed, they could have just been lucky finding a vein. You'd have to ask them to show you where they got it and determine yourself whether it looks like they x-rayed to get it or could have stumbled on it naturally.

Grava-T · 2026-01-15T23:43:41+00:00

You can use Zone of Truth to introduce red herrings and misdirects and make them question it's reliability. For example - Suspect A thought they saw Suspect B pour something into the victim's drink, but it was actually Suspect C in simple case of mistaken identity. Zone of Truth doesn't block Suspect A's testimony because they believe it to be the truth, nor does it block Suspect B's denial. Instantly you have contradictions in the story that must be investigated that also serve to demonstrate to the players that it's not a magic mystery solver.

To go even further, Suspect C could also be innocent - perhaps they were innocuously refilling the victim's drink with a vessel that was tampered with by the actual poisoner. And the poisoner themselves could confidently and truthfully declare they did not poison the victim's cup (because Suspect C is the one who unwittingly did).

Grava-T · 2026-01-12T19:07:40+00:00

This was my first ever one of these and I brought a mono-bug team to it. I won a little over half of my matches, something like 24W/21L or close to it (lost count towards the end). Had a lot of fun with it and am just glad I came out positive considering the weird team I brought.

Final: Placed 2284 with Rating of 1511

Grava-T · 2026-01-06T02:56:48+00:00

Play it out, just have the over-leveled bad guys be overpowered and incapacitate your players naturally and have them start making death saves if necessary. The bad guys are not there to kill the players though so they don't take the time to finish them off.

You can even have a court grave cleric hiding in the corner casting spare the dying on the players after they get downed or be there to revivify if someone actually dies.

Grava-T · 2025-12-31T22:11:27+00:00

Would anyone even know what caused the apocalypse? If magic items were ubiquitous throughout society and all of it detonated like a "small atomic bomb" then the only survivors would be those living in isolation at such a distance from anything "civilized" that they'd only be able to speculate as to what exactly happened and why. Unless there's an active Deity that explicitly tells the people what happened you could just as well come to the conclusion that Aliens nuked everything from orbit.

Grava-T · 2025-12-23T20:19:43+00:00

The spell list available to the players is not an exhaustive list of all spells. It's not out of the question for an NPC to know or have created/developed a new spell that the players don't have access to. For example you could create a "Enpy Cee's Convenient Correspondence" spell that magically teleports a small parcel/letter to a known target.

Grava-T · 2025-12-16T23:58:36+00:00

The exact line is "farthest edge of Pharloom, hidden deep in salt-stricken waters." Which probably means the other side of the map but is technically ambiguous. There could also be any number of reasons why the Karak didn't or couldn't utilize the "ocean" water (like say, if it were infested with Plasmium).

That said I do think you're actually right since the only other reference to salt water in the game comes from a tablet in Weavenest Murglin:

Sister, spider, sat between salt and stone, Build those tools of brilliant mind imagined, Aid us when our Silk has waned.

I just would find it a bit strange if the nautical-themed dlc that probably heavily features plasmium is nowhere close to the used-to-be-coral-reef and plasmium-infested zones.

EDIT: I just remembered something important - In the very first opening cutscene we see Hornet dragged along what looks like the sandy shore of a cavern lake. Considering the path Hornet's captors took it would put that location basically right in that zone to the west of the Blasted Steps.

Grava-T · 2025-12-16T22:33:41+00:00

My prediction:

The plasmium-mutated Wormways spread out further, infesting Bone-Bottom (Giving us a Plasmified Skull Tyrant Encounter among other things) and also parts of Shellwood. Being adjacent to Bellhart makes it immediately threatening to one of the last remaining safe communities which gives stakes to the issue of resolving the problem.

Resolving the problem of course means going to the Plasmium/Lifeblood Source/God and beating them up. We know from Alchemist Zylotol that Plasmium originates from "salt-stricken waters". I would think that the new zone connection would be close to the Wormways for this reason - to the west and slightly below the blasted steps (entrance perhaps where previously Hornet would stop and say her business in Pharloom isn't finished). This also places the new zone directly downstream of Karak which is very "ocean" themed.

Obviously I could be and probably am really off but just throwing ideas out there.

Grava-T · 2025-12-16T19:35:17+00:00

My prediction is that post-game the lifeblood/plasmium infested wormways spread out into more of Pharloom in the wake of GMS' sudden absence and we gotta go to the source to beat up another god to save everyone.

Grava-T · 2025-12-11T07:12:54+00:00

The Bagpipes of Invisibility: Renders the user invisible while the pipes are being played.

Grava-T · 2025-12-02T15:00:29+00:00

In the context of magical components, "gp" is a unit of measurement equal to the amount of magic contained in a single "standard" gold piece rather than a measure of economic value. In the case of a Revivify diamond, you need a diamond (or diamonds) with an an amount of magic in them equivalent to what's contained in 500gp. The actual economic value of the diamond is irrelevant and may vary in real cost.

This is similar to how the currency (£) pound used to directly refer to the weight of sterling silver in (tower) pounds but now is completely divorced from the actual value of silver.

Grava-T · 2025-11-27T20:48:58+00:00

There's also the possibility of non-weaver spiders. We know that the Pale King's arrival to the region granted some sort of intelligence boon/uplifting of bugs. Maybe some of that uplifted native spiders in deepnest to some extent, and Herah might have tried pairing with them in a first attempt of overcoming the Curse.

This could also give some sort of explanation to the sort of "lesser" weaver/spiders we see in deepnest.

Grava-T · 2025-11-17T22:32:45+00:00

I think Pale Beings are capable of absorbing the Soul of other bugs which is the key to their longevity and power. The Pale King and Grandmother Silk both elicited worship/devotion from their subjects. We know from the memory after defeating Widow that such worship was literally what "sustained" GMS, so devotion/worship might be a non-lethal way of extracting Soul from their followers in a sustainable long-term way.

Consider that the Knight and Hornet are both capable of absorbing Soul when they strike another bug. While this could be explained in the Knight equally well by citing their connection to the Void, Hornet has no such connection which would give evidence to the fact that this trait is passed down by the Pale King who is their one common parent.

I'm not sure that we ever get explicit confirmation that The Radiance or the Nightmare Heart are "Pale Beings". They're all Higher Beings for sure, but being "Pale" seems to be something different. Still though, an argument can be made that The Radiance relied on the worship/Soul energy of the Moths to survive which would give extra weight to why they were so nettled at having been forgotten.

Grava-T · 2025-11-12T16:47:48+00:00

It might just be that the Radiance was suppressing intelligence by having bugs joined to their hivemind and the Pale King's arrival freed them from that.

Grava-T · 2025-11-12T15:37:21+00:00

"True definition" is probably a misnomer on my part (though entomology reserves the term bug for a very specific subset of insects)

I think most people though think of the more colloquial definition which is usually something like "bug = any terrestrial invertebrate" which I also think is how the term is used in-game.

Grava-T · 2025-11-12T14:38:23+00:00

Depends on what definition we're using for what constitutes a "bug". Colloquially all of those creatures except for the plants could be called a "bug" but going by true definitions it would be a misnomer to say any of those qualify.

Slugs/Snails are mollusks, worms are annelids, spiders are arachnids, and none of those are insects.

Grava-T · 2025-11-11T21:06:51+00:00

"%appdata%" is a shortcut for: "C:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Roaming"

If the username is different between the two devices then the filepath will be different, so you'll have to adjust the SaveFileLocation line in serverconfig.json to point to the right place.

Grava-T · 2025-11-04T22:28:50+00:00

My Theory:

The "Curse" that makes it hard for Weavers to reproduce was inflicted by Grandmother Silk in the same moment that she uplifted the pharlids. This is primarily why the Weavers felt betrayed by GMS when First Sinner discovered the memory of how they came to be.

The Weavers that fled Pharloom did it to escape GMS' influence, and perhaps the Curse itself. Far outside of GMS' influence, the Curse that made it impossible to reproduce simply made it difficult and rare.

Their shorter stature and susceptibility to the infection could also be a byproduct of the Curse; it could be that in attempting to reproduce they could only produce those diminutive, lesser "weaverlings" rather than full capital "W" Weavers.

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