Changes

You may have noticed that your water and food bar are slowly decreasing while you play Wurm Online. Don’t be worried too much: you cannot die from hunger or thirst! However, having full bars is always a good thing, because the lower they are the slower you will regain stamina. Drinking water regularly is more important than keeping your food level up, because your body is able to “fast” several times if you become too hungry. “[[Fasting]]” will restore your food bar (while lowering your nutrition value; but you don’t have to worry about that for the time being). Getting water is easy: just find a well or fountain, or go to the sea coast or any lake shore and drink! (Yes, you can even drink sea water!) Getting food is a bit more difficult. You can either [[forage]] at [[Resource nodes]] for vegetables or berries (which are not very nutritious), go [[fishing]], or try to cook a simple meal from fresh meat (look for animal corpses) and vegetables, using a campfire.<br><br>

Later on, when your skills have increased, you will be able to ride horses and drive carts. For now, you will probably just walk! (Technically, even as a new player you could ride a cow – but they are pretty slow. Donkeys are a good alternative.) There is no “magical” way of fast travelling in Wurm Online, so no teleporting. One exception: When you decide to join an existing village, you will have a one-time option to teleport to that place.

:Technically, the game will allow you to settle almost anywhere – unless you are on someone’s property. You will not be able to chop trees, open a mine or build your first shack on land that has been claimed (“deeded”) by another player. To check if the land you are on is already claimed you double-click the ground near you. If you see messages like “''This is within the village of xxx''” or “''This is within the perimeter of xxx''” you cannot (or should not) build your place there. It is also not allowed to build a house on a highway.  Apart from that, there are some unwritten and self-evident guidelines of politeness and courtesy. For example, it usually is frowned upon if you settle too close to other players’ structures or property without asking. Generally, if you see houses and structures around, try to talk to the locals and make sure it is ok for you to settle. You don’t want to annoy your future neighbours, do you? As a general rule: try to be as polite and considerate as you would be in real life. If you are unsure, always ask.<br><br>

:Every house in Wurm Online must be built on flat ground. If you cannot find a suitable flat spot, please read the section about ground flattening below, or read the Wurmpedia article on [[Flattening]]. Making a house requires two steps: planning and [[House_(general)House#Creation|Building]]. You need a mallet to plan your house. With the mallet activated right-click a flat tile and select "Plan building". A structure plan (which looks like a wooden framework) will appear on that tile. You can repeat the process on adjacent tiles to enlarge your house plan, until you are satisfied.  Start small (1x2 tiles or 2x2 tiles) - you will be able to expand your house later. When you are ready, right-click one of the planned tiles (with your mallet still activated) and select "Finalize build plan". Now, all you have to do is to actually build the doors and walls and finally a floor and a roof. Refer to the Wurmpedia article about [[Wooden_house|wooden houses]] to learn more.

:Technically, a [[deed]] is a document of land ownership. In Wurm Online you can purchase an area of land for in-game silver, usually for the sake of founding a settlement. This specially protected area is therefore called a “settlement” or a “village”, but most commonly referred to as a “deed”. So, while technically the “deed” is only the document you own, you will usually hear Wurm players talk about the land they own as their “deed” or about things happening “on deed” or “off deed”.  Having a deed gives you a number of benefits: control over actions other players may perform, the ability to hire “spirit templars” as guards, easy access to your in-game bank account, no decay on structures, fences, lamps and decoration, a safe place to respawn, the ability to brand and protect animals, and many others. Founding a deed is simple: just use the “deed stake” you found in your inventory and fill in the various forms. Placing a minimum sized deed requires you to have at least 4.21 silver coins on your bank account. This money will be used for deed foundation, and it includes the upkeep for 3 months (1 silver per month).<br><br>

:You activate your hatchet by double-clicking the hatchet in your inventory, right-click a tree and select “Cut down”. Repeat this until the tree falls and you see a “felled tree” on the ground before you. In order to use its wood (for the creation of wooden planks, for example) you must then chop the felled tree and produce wooden logs by using your hatchet on the felled tree. Please note: “Activating” a tool is not the same as “equipping”. Tools to be used in crafting must always be “activated” (by double-clicking), whereas weapons, clothing, pieces of armour, or jewelry are “equipped” (using the right-click menu).<br><br>

:Usually, [[crafting]] items is done by combining various parts and components, sometimes using a tool. (For example: to make a hammer you would first use a small anvil and a glowing iron lump to make a hammer head, then combine that with a wooden shaft.) You can open a “crafting window” (press “B”) and a window with “crafting recipes” (press “N”) to help you with the process of crafting.<br><br>

:When trying to craft items you will notice that you fail very often and have to repeat the same action again and again, until it finally succeeds. This can be annoying, but it is normal for a beginning player. The reason is that your crafting [[skills]] are still very low! If you open the “skill window” (press “F2”) you can see a complex list of skills. These skills determine how well you can perform certain actions, how long they will take and how successful your actions are. The higher the skill the better you perform! While you are using your skills they will gradually increase, and you will become more and more successful until you become an expert.<br><br>

:Being able to change the landscape is one of the outstanding features of this game! The land around you is not a static environment – you can use your shovel to raise or lower the ground! This process is called “[[terraforming]]”. In a nutshell, terraforming works like this: the terrain consists of dirt “tiles” (the outlined squares you see on the ground when moving your mouse pointer over them). A tile, which can also have grass, a tree or a bush growing on it, has four corners, and each of those corners can be raised or lowered. To lower a tile corner use your shovel (stand next to the corner, activate the shovel, right-click the ground and select “dig”). You will notice that each digging action will lower the corner you are standing on by a little amount and you will find 1 piece of dirt in your inventoryor on the ground. Therefore the amount that corner is lowered by one digging action is called “1 dirt”. So, for example, if you repeat the digging action 4 times, you will find 4 pieces of dirt in your inventoryor on the ground, and the tile corner will be lower than before by “4 dirts”. You created a little slope! To raise the corner again, you can just drop the dirts from your inventory: right-click the dirt and select “drop on ground”. Please note: A corner does not belong to a single tile! Actually, there are always 4 tiles sharing a corner, so ''when you dig or drop dirt on a tile corner you will always affect all 4 tiles''!<br><br>

:To make a flat tile you have to know what its current slope is. Move your mouse pointer over a ground tile, and you will notice that the tile has 4 “borders” around it. Stand on one of the tile corners, look at the slope and right-click a border. Selecting “Examine” you will see a message like “''The border is 16 slope up''”, meaning you would need to drop 16 dirts on that corner to make the border flat. If it says “''The border is 10 slope down''” you will instead have to dig 10 times to flatten the border. Keep in mind, that the “other border” (the one connected to the corner you are standing on) will also be raised or lowered by your action, so you may have to stand on the other three borders and repeat the process several times, until all four borders say “The border is level”. All this sounds too complicated? Well, there fortunately is an easier way! Just activate your shovel, stand on a tile, right-click the tile and select “Flatten”. The game will automatically try to remove and add dirt to the tile corners in order to make the tile flat for you!<br><br>

:Finding [[iron]] during your first days is important, because you will need it for many items you want to craft. There are several ways to get iron: you You can either [[forage]] on grass tiles "[[Mineral debris]]", "[[Rubble]]" or "[[Lichen]]" [[rummageResource nodes]] on rock tiles with that have a chance of finding providing “iron rocks”, which can then be smelted into iron lumps. Or you You can use an underground [[mine]] to find an iron vein, which will give you iron ore when you mine it using your pickaxe. Most of the starter towns have public iron mines in their neighbourhood – just walk around and explore the surroundings until you find an open mine entrance with a sign saying “Public mine”. Walk inside and carefully study the tunnel walls until you find a wall segment that looks different. Right-click the wall, and if it says “Iron vein” you can use your pickaxe to mine pieces of iron ore. Then use a [[campfire]] or a [[forge]] to smelt them into iron lumps.<br><br>

You can play Wurm Online for free as a non-premium player as long as you wish. However, becoming a [[premium]] player will grant you a lot of benefits: you can raise your skills above 20 (meaning you will be able to perform many tasks that you wouldn’t be able to as a non-premium player, like building stone houses, riding horses, using sailing boats and driving carts, becoming a priest, and many other things), and you can invite citizens to your village, and your account will never be deleted even after a long period of inactivity. So, in a nutshell: If you want to enjoy all of Wurm’s features and “really play the game” you should become a premium player!

'''If''' you access Wurm through Steam, while in game press Escape and then "Shop " from the menu to access the Steam shop.

You can also buy 15 or 30 days of premium time for in game silver coins at any settlement token in-game, no matter which launcher you use. The price is 5 silver coins for 15 days and 10 silver coins for 30 days.