A flint spear is available very early and is quite cheap, it serves as a precursor to the harpoon for skill even if you don't intend to use spears in main battles. It has a few, non-obvious uses.

A spear, thrown at the ground, immediately returns to hand and the sound it makes alerts mobs nearby, especially neckers and boars. This makes it quite useful for farming neckers for use in later recipes.

Further, if you want to practice blocking, particularly with tower shield vs multiple opponents, make a cheap wooden one, summon a few neckers and/or boars as above, and block them as they attack. Not only will it increase your skill, it will help you to get a good feel for the shield's area of affect, the way knockback works, and how valuable having something safe and solid at your back can be.. especially inner corners.

I learned this from someone on these forums a long while ago and still use it all the time.

If you have no weapon equipped you will see in the bottom right of your screen when you are near a critter. This is especially helpful for getting the jump on deer early game.

Originally posted by blprice61:

Originally posted by Megahurts:

I would skip the hut altogether. Just sneak through the portal when you need to...as long as you are 'undetected', nothing will bother it.

Of course, if say a drake and a stone gollem are squabbling nearby it could take some collateral damage so there are risks...but a couple stake walls aren't going to help much in that situation either.

Most of the time an undefended portal by itself is fine, but it is really easy to be distracted and either forget to sneak or not realize something detected you at the last moment. On top of that, the chest, workbench, and/or roof can come in handy in some situations

I suppose it's something of a matter of taste, but I'm in the 'better safe than sorry' camp.

Unless you're playing multiplayer and there is another player nearby, nothing happens on the other side of a portal once you jump through.

I don't use portals anymore, but I've probably left hundreds of undefended portals pretty much everywhere and never had an issue. I even hopped through a portal with half of a fuling village right behind me. Spent several minutes collecting myself, hopped back through and finished the job.

The only time I've had a portal go dark was when a fuling berserker was taking a swing at me as I jumped through. It must have hit the portal just as I went through because it went dark just after I got through.

FWIW, I just tested this to make sure it was still the case. All I could find near the other end of my test portal were a couple of greydwarf, but I went through the portal while they were attacking me, let it sit for a game day, went back through the next day and there was no damage to the portal or the crafting table next to it. The greydwarf just continued their attack.

Originally posted by Complaintdesk:

Change the name of your portal.

I make a portal in my main portal hub called "Explore" when I go out to discover new areas of the map. Once I have established a base at a new location I will change the name of its portal, usually I name it based on the nearest world rune.

To change the name of a portal, stand in the mouth of the portal then press "e" to edit the name. The second you hit Okay, quickly enter the portal, then once through change the name of the portal on the other side. Game portals maintain their original pathing for a fraction of a second after renaming them.

I do a similar thing. I also have a portal called ICE (In Case of Emergency) that I leave unconnected in case I get stuck somewhere without a portal. I can just find the mats to build one, set it to ICE, and get home.

I used to have a ICE chest next to my ICE portal with spare armor, food, etc., in case I had a more pressing emergency. :-)

In solo play it is a tiny bit faster to keep an unnamed portal at your home or hub for emergencies. That way you don't have to take the extra time to name the portal in an emergency. Of course this doesn't work so well in group play.

In re protecting portals, there are two times an unprotected portal is vulnerable - one when you dive through with a mob that has an AoE in close pursuit. The other as you are coming through. There is a brief period while you are still 'in transit' but the destination is loaded and active. I have had a portal collapse just after I stepped through.

[edit] Three times.. an unprotected portal is vulnerable as long as you are close enough for the zone containing it to be active.

PS: there have been, over time, some updates that have affected this situation.

for beehives, just shoot them with a bow from a distance. the bees are like an AOE around it and once they fade away go grab the goodies.

Change the name of your portal.

I make a portal in my main portal hub called "Explore" when I go out to discover new areas of the map. Once I have established a base at a new location I will change the name of its portal, usually I name it based on the nearest world rune.

To change the name of a portal, stand in the mouth of the portal then press "e" to edit the name. The second you hit Okay, quickly enter the portal, then once through change the name of the portal on the other side. Game portals maintain their original pathing for a fraction of a second after renaming them.

After you switch to medium healing meads; keep your remaining light healing meads to use when a raid catches you at low or wrong food mix - after eating combat foods use the light healing to speed up getting your health up to snuff.

Originally posted by blprice61:

Originally posted by Megahurts:

I would skip the hut altogether. Just sneak through the portal when you need to...as long as you are 'undetected', nothing will bother it.

Of course, if say a drake and a stone gollem are squabbling nearby it could take some collateral damage so there are risks...but a couple stake walls aren't going to help much in that situation either.

Most of the time an undefended portal by itself is fine, but it is really easy to be distracted and either forget to sneak or not realize something detected you at the last moment. On top of that, the chest, workbench, and/or roof can come in handy in some situations

I suppose it's something of a matter of taste, but I'm in the 'better safe than sorry' camp.

Along those lines, it's good to have a sheltered portal in the mountains. I've gotten the wet debuff before from portaling in from another biome where it was raining, even when the first portal, the one actually in the rain, was covered. Seems that it takes a bit for the game to realize that the rain should be snow and by then you're already wet.

Unrelated, using a pickaxe along the steep side of a mountain is an easy way to make your own personal highway along otherwise impassible cliffs. Make sure you mark the entrance and exit ramps on your map.

I would skip the hut altogether. Just sneak through the portal when you need to...as long as you are 'undetected', nothing will bother it.

Of course, if say a drake and a stone gollem are squabbling nearby it could take some collateral damage so there are risks...but a couple stake walls aren't going to help much in that situation either.

Originally posted by Megahurts:

I would skip the hut altogether. Just sneak through the portal when you need to...as long as you are 'undetected', nothing will bother it.

Of course, if say a drake and a stone gollem are squabbling nearby it could take some collateral damage so there are risks...but a couple stake walls aren't going to help much in that situation either.

Most of the time an undefended portal by itself is fine, but it is really easy to be distracted and either forget to sneak or not realize something detected you at the last moment. On top of that, the chest, workbench, and/or roof can come in handy in some situations

I suppose it's something of a matter of taste, but I'm in the 'better safe than sorry' camp.

Ya that's all true, just saying' it's another option.

Let me add a small tip. You can place more than one cooking spit over a campfire. I like placing 5 of them so I can cook 10 items at a time.

Dig out below a silver vein. Not only will the steep sides keep wolves and golems from getting to you, and the silver itself will protect you from some drake fire, but if you can get the silver vein 100% exposed, so it is floating in air and not touching the ground anywhere, you can then jump on top and break the center, and the entire vein will explode all at once, giving you all the silver, with less wear on the pickax (usually)

Copper goes WAY deeper than the stuff you see on the surface. Arguable if the time to dig it out is worth it, but if you can't find many veins, or find a vein sticking out into grasslands, digging down may be a good option.

Bring a hoe to the swamps, and use it to keep yourself out of the leech-waters. Stagbreaker is also a perfect anti-leech weapon, able to hit them when they cannot hit you.

Break everything in frost caves... You'll get fine wood, Iron, Bronze, Entrails, Bone, and far more red jute and Fenris hair then if you leave the background furniture alone.

Easy wild beehive removal: Drop a workbench and deconstruct the building the beehive is on. Also works for hard to reach chests. Later, in the plains, this can be used to get massive amounts of materials, including iron, by deconstructing Fuling villages.

Lean-tos in the grasslands have 3 core wood pieces each. Deconstruction lets you use core wood before the black forest. Sunken longships are made of fine wood, use an axe (any type) to get it before you forge bronze.

When fighting Abominations: Stand in front of its right front foot (your left), and use an ax. Axes do extra damage, and in that position it will miss with it's left foot stomp, and not use it's body slam, leaving you to only have to parry the swipe, which is the weakest of its attacks. You can also lure them to the flames that are found in the swamp, and fight them there... they take huge burning damage, and die in seconds.

Those flames in the swamp summon suturlings. Suturlings die when they contact water, so use a pickaxe to submerge the land around the flame... they will spawn in and die right away, letting you jump in the water and loot the cores and coal.

Obliterators give coal for materials destroyed in them. Some of the best things to use to get lots of coal: Trophies, coins, and seeds,as well as anything you have too much of.

Originally posted by Megahurts:

Ya that's all true, just saying' it's another option.

Let me add a small tip. You can place more than one cooking spit over a campfire. I like placing 5 of them so I can cook 10 items at a time.

I just saw that the other day... now I have 4 cooking spits, and a cooking pot, all over one fire, all working just fine.

Appreciated. Thank you.