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Welcome to UnReal World!
aka the obligatory overcomplicated character creation first update
UnReal World is a unique low-fantasy roguelike game set in the far north during the late Iron-Age. The world of the game is highly realistic, rich with historical atmosphere and emphasized on survival in the harsh ancient wilderness.
As that description suggests UnReal World (URW) is a roguelike focused almost entirely on wilderness survival and is set in late Iron Age Finland (so roughly 700-1000 years ago, though Finland at the time was less advanced compared to other parts of Europe). Alongside Cataclysm DDA it is one of the most detailed and expansive survival Roguelikes out there (not that there are too many, unless you count games like Don't Starve and Neo Scavenger). This game has been around in some for or another for over two decades and is a labor of love for its creator, Sami Maaranen (who, I believe, actually does traditionalist survival/living stuff as a hobby).
I picked the game up a few days back after getting bored of Cataclysm and decided to give it a try. So yeah, I'm still somewhat inexperienced! But I have read a couple useful guides and completed the Basic tutorial the game provides, and played a character for a good 4-5 months, so I should be good to go. Didn't play until my first winter though, so yeah, we'll see about that! Anyways, without further rambling, let's get started with character creation. For the record, I'll be going with "Easy" start selection (though not stooping to "too easy") and also cheesing my charactergen options a bit. My goal is to show off the game afterall, and the game can be difficult enough at times even still!
Our first choices are our name and what culture we hail from. For the name I just brought up a random name generator, selected Finnish names and jammed refresh until I found something amusing sounding, Miska! For the Culture I'm picking the "easiest" (according to what I've read anyways) culture, the Kaumolaiset. Here is what the game has to say about them:
Next up we get to pick our portrait from a collection of cosplayers period actors and what season we start in, I select Summer. This should give us plenty of time to prepare for winter. Next up we get to roll our randomly generated stats. In true munchkiny roguelike style, I mash that reroll button until my patience wears out and I get a stat block that fills everything as much as possible. My patience didn't last long, but I still got a good result. After accepting our stats the next screen shows us what two rituals we start out with. Miska starts out knowing a Hunting Incantation and a ritual for assisting creating a fire. In my experience with learner characters, Kaumo always seem to start out with Hunting Incantation and one other random ritual.
Next we get to modify our starting skills. We get 5 points to boost skills with and can get more by reducing other skills. I immediately gain more skill points by reducing flail (because why would I use a flail?), unarmed (if I'm completely lacking weapons, I'm probably fucked anyways, tracking (because reasons), and skiing (cause it won't do me any good until winter and I'm told it raises fast anyways). Yes, you can go skiing in this game, and I'm told its an extremely valuable thing for wintertime hunting and other activities. Anyways, using the 9 points I now have at my disposal I put points into various useful skills: Cooking, fishing, hideworking, timbercraft, physician, trapping, carpentry, spear, and bow. This gives me decent essential skills for making a living our there while the points in bow and spear, combined with my Kaumo heritage means I'm awesome with spears and pretty good with bows, both vital for hunting and defending one's self. Here is Miska's final skill distribution:
Next up is world generation. It generates an entire peninsula about 150-200km long and fills it with wilderness and pockets of civilization. I don't think the map is supposed to be an exact mirror of Finland's topography, even with liberal interpretation. Whatever though, this is a fantasy game anyways! After the world is generated you can either reroll it or randomize your starting location. Again I take advantage of being able to reroll by rerolling until I end up in the southwest part of the land, near the teal/blue territory that belongs to the Driik. They're a fairly prosperous people and will have a good selection of useful goodies in their settlements for me to barter for. Worth noting as well is the culture in the south east part of the land, the Njerpezit. The Njerpezit are a hostile, violent, and some even say caniballistic culture that cannot be reasoned with. All they have to offer other civilizations is murder and thievery, and the closer we get to their lands the more likely we are to run into their camps and raiders.
With our starting area chosen we next get to pick our background, there are various options here, but I select "I want to be a Fisherman". This means we'll start off with some fishing related gear and fishing is pretty useful for feeding yourself early on. The main draw of this start is that it tends to start with fishing nets, which are awesome compared to trying to spearfish or even using a fishing pole. After this selection, we get to pick one of three game courses. The first one is just free play with no objectives, while the other two are pseudo-tutorials that teach various aspects of the game. The "Living in the Wild" course at the least also gives you a few minor rewards as you progress through it. Since it provides some goodies (some pretty useful) and gives a good framework for slowly showing off the game, I'll be going with the Living in the Wild Course for the LP.
With these final choices made, character creation is over and its time to step into the UnReal World.
