So i thought the purpose of the Bell Tower is to unit eves and other family members.
Please correct me if im wrong with my first assumption.
For me the Bell Tower seems redundant at this state of the game because it lost its purpose.
Most of the players get born to an eve and make a permanent marker, if they want to stay at this place.
So im not quite sure, which players the bell tower is for.
The eve spiral is so big you can’t reach an old town just by walking one life long.
So in the second life you get born to an eve or you spawn to your permanent marker anyway.
So i thought maybe its for players in early stage of camps.
But to built a bell tower you need 5 steel tools (hammer, shovel, adze, mining pick and a chisel), a forge, bowls, a bellow, 2 gold, 6 stones and 4 milkweed. This is so much material.
And to build a bell tower it needs 18 hours anyway to build all the stone block rows.
So i guess a bell tower is not ment for early camps. And later in game you don’t need it because the spawns in the eve spiral are too far away.
My suggestion is: Can we make the built of a Bell Tower easier, so early camps can use it?
I think the idea for the bell tower was as a monument to the persistence of your village. Having it take all those resources and (mostly) time for the base to settle was a way to show that your settlement had lasted for a great amount of time. I agree that the Rebirth Mechanic has done away with that aspect of the bell tower, with the player just respawning over the course of the time required for the bell base to be established.
I still think it has a need though. I think it gives the player the ability to find other villages and also to know that they are not alone. You are right that the villages are so far from each other that it maybe impossible to achieve the trip on foot, but that’s why we have other means of transportation. The horse cart and the car might to be able to make the trips. Maybe it could be an argument for implantation for an even faster form of travel (cough, cough… plane). The bell tower gives the ability to unite villages. It is also a permanent achievement to ones effort.
It would be nice to have a distance indication to know how far the bell tower is, wether it be a visual number or a general, unspecified indication (with a large bell meaning within a general walking distance and a small bell meaning very, very far away).
I do like the idea of having new eves spawn near the bell tower, though that could lead to problems like unintentionally summoning griefers with the immediate ability to use lethal means or forcing new eves to play in a region stripped of resources (eliminating the early game that some players like). It is a pleasant surprise when an eve spawns in a village, though.
In summary I don’t think we should make it easier to build a tower. I think it should be hard and resource intensive because it’s a challenge to build something meaningful. But I do think this games needs a way for early villages to know where the other villages are… maybe using something like smoke signals? (This requires a large fire that can only be achieved after an axe is made or you come across firewood)
i agree that would be helpful to have a indication how far it is. also thank you for sharing your thoughts on the bell tower. i see your point. it gives you orientation in this wide world.
i like the idea of smoke signals. so e.g. when you put a butt log on the fire it triggers the smoke signal. so you have a new compass with a fire icon.
I also think their radius is too big. I once walked half a life long to reach a belltower after my mother, the only woman in our camp (I was a boy) died. I started actively warning players to ignore the bells whenever I heard them, but I still lost some children to their siren song.
I also think at this point the bell tower can’t really be used for its purpose. I tried several times to reach one and saw others trying as well. I never made it. So indicating the distance would be nice, or you can just hear a bell within a specific radius. So when it rings you always know you will be able to reach it at some point.
That eves will spawn near when it rings is also very interesting! But the eves should know that a bell rang before they spawned, so they know what’s up. I understand that it can lead to some problems, but on the other hand it could also help populate a town again. Imo it’s worth a try
So i thought about the Bell Tower again. It lost it’s purpose of some kind due to the respawn mechanism with peace lily’s marker. I’ve already built several bell towers and some of them already vanished due to the server resets.
So i thought i could be nice to exclude the Bell Tower from reseting the server. So if someone actually find and old camp, the Bell Tower is still there. And you can bring players in to revive the town.
(I would only exclude finished Bell Towers. No bell tower base.)
What do you think? Should the Bell Tower be excluded from the server resets?
not quite right. there is always stuff there. so for example i try to revive a town on eu-2. the reset didn‘t kill the beehive, the farm, clay crocks, plates, bowls and other clay products, the wells of different kind, oil tanks, butt logs, kindling, sheeps, pigs and steel tools. so you have a pretty good start. the other stuff like buildings, roads and sheep pens got deleted and all the trees are there again.
i see the bell tower would lose it‘s status as an indicator for a big camp. but it would still have the purpose of bringing players together.
so a town i made like 2 month ago is completely gone beside the 2 signs i made and some crocks. the signs have still the locks on it but there is no text anymore.
idk why the reset does leave stuff behind and other stuff is gone so fast.
idk if its still 7 days for the reset happening. @Christoffer how often is the reset happening?
The map cleanup only happens at server restart and then the condition is that a certain area must not have been “seen” by any player for a given number of days. The number of days can be set individually per server. It used to be 7 days as standard, but due to player feedback, it was bumped to 30 days on some servers.
That the cleanup sometimes leaves some stuff behind is probably a bug we inherited from OHOL.
It’s not supposed to be for early camps, it’s supposed to represent a fully developed town that is open for new people , a town that has had its development with iron and all that other stuff it’s not supposed to be for people who just smacked two kilns together and called it a day.
so it serves its old purpose uniting players. And on top we don’t need to make the built easier.
