u/BackstabFlapjack

In the first biome I learnt my lesson: max out your gear ASAP.

Moving to the second, I think I've spent about as much time grinding and trying to grind resources as I have spent in the first biome at all, and I've been sitting at lvl6 for longer than on any other level prior. I'm not even counting the time I'm spending on building my new base, which is the only good thing in this game right now.

So I find an island with an Iron node, which is guarded by 2 wolves. Because they are in a tight area and their hitboxes are bullshit, I make a platform and shoot them. That the devs could be arsed to code counter-sniping behaviour into the AI but not to fix the hitboxes is also poor form, to put it mildly. Each run gets me 38-42 Iron Ingots. I just spent 40 only to get my lvl6 cannon up to lvl10. My weapons, clothes, and the rest of the ship is lvl5, and of course, the crafting station upgrades cost a truly ridiculous amount of materials, which are a pre-requisite to doing said upgrades in the first place.

That island is also my source of hardwood, which necessitates navigating an island whose inhabitants are usually 2 levels above me, often 3, and the goats and wolves regularly have stars on top of that. If it's a 1v1 I'm usually okay but usually it's not, so I'm constantly on the back foot against goats and wolves, who seem to have better reach than I do with a fucking halberd.

>!A detour for those typing "git gud": combat is stupidly simple, you get close, bait out an attack, dodge out of the way, land your attack, recharge stamina, repeat until you win. What makes this difficult is that hitboxes don't always match the model, and the more enemies you are fighting at the same time, the smaller your window of opportunity to attack. The way this game is designed, food is useless, because you're either good enough to dodge every attack consistently, which I'm not, or the amount of damage you take even with the maxed gear for your biome means that you can take only a few hits before you die - and of course, potions slow you down, bandages slow you down, and have their own cooldowns. In my experience, food is there to give you a little more wiggle room and if that's not enough then I'm screwed.!<

Said upgrades also cost silver via the faction merchant exclusive item they require. Silver from what I've seen is best gained from boarding. Boarding is an atrocious experience, because again, despite having a polearm, I'm bodyblocked from fights without being able to contribute, while also catching strays from sabers because that clearly makes sense. Of course, my crew's fighting prowess is conditional on their boarding gear, meaning that the moment they are not fighting down their level or equals, they're gonna get chopped up, leaving me to fight a mob in a tight space, which the asthma-based combat system does not allow, because apparently holding up my weapon to block stops me from breathing. And because someone thought it is a great idea, I'm going to respawn not on the ship to have a second shot at the fight but back at base, so to avoid avoidable stress, I'm stuck with boarding lower level ships, which makes the silver income a slow drip.

With my lvl10 cannons on a Brethren Frigate my damage is pretty good when the game feels like allowing my shots to land, which is already difficult when the indicator doesn't accurately depict where your shots are coming from, what angle they'll traverse, and where they will land. Meanwhile the AI has a solid 70% accuracy, so in a recent 1v3 fight, I managed to destroy 1 ship before mine was sunk as well.

What is so atrocious about this is that I know that once I have my gear maxed out, these problems will either disappear entirely or will become somewhat less painful because I'm overleveled against anyone who isn't lvl10 - and then the same thing is going to happen going into the third biome.

This isn't my first rodeo, I played Valheim, V Rising, and Enshrouded, I don't have a problem with putting in the work but this isn't about effort, this is poor implementation, plain and simple.

If I think of Draco from the 1996 movie Dragonheart, who sings in one scene, then it seems possible, but then I look at a dragon with a longer jaw and I can't see it work. This is primarily relevant to me from a musical perspective but fire breathing would also be affected by how air would escape the mouth, which would then dictate the shape of said fire breathing.

>!I'm sorry if this isn't 100% your thing, I tried looking for a fantasy anatomy sub but most I found was porn, the rest was normal human anatomy, have mercy.!<

I apologize in advance if I'm in the wrong place for this question, it seemed the best place to ask.

I'm doing some worldbuilding for a fantasy setting where alternate technological development paths is an important part. In that process, I do some superficial research then zero in on something that I think fits - that's how I found out about solar furnaces and Fresnel lenses.

Then I got to thinking: what level of technology would be necessary to create a lens that could be used to melt the kind of metals you'd see used in, say, 15th century Europe? The culture in question is very interested/invested in optics as a science, how light works and can be put to use, so I figured solar furnaces would be right up their alley.

What I'm imagining with my very limited knowledge is this horseshoe-shaped structure (or like the Circus Maximus' race track) with a segmented glass "roof" that channels sunlight into a stone "riverbed", which at specific points has places where you can put the ore in, and others where the molten metal can be poured out at will.

I have *some* wiggle room with magic but I want to handwave as little as possible. It has been my experience that working with reality produces better fiction than disregarding it.

Thank you for your time and patience.