Salem FAQ

Salem FAQ by Sevenless

Will there be a Wipe? And what happens to stuff I bought with real money if there is one?

There is no intended wipe according to the devs. If there is a wipe, purchased goods for your account will be given to your next character after the wipe with some time delay. So don’t worry about that when making a purchase.

This does *not* mean if you get yourself killed for any reason you get your stuff given back to you. There are no refunds for purchases due to the nature of salem.

I just starting out and need humour XXXX, how do I raise it?

If you don’t mind a bit of reading, my guide explains things in depth here: Salem Humours and Gluttony Guide

For the short story:

Blood:

Berries on a Straw, Crikebob

Phlegm:

Rabbit cuts, Rabbit steaks, Lean Rabbit, Turkey cut, Milkweed

*Wild Salad is really good for phlegm as a beginner, but needs the skill Flowers and Berries. The above options require little skills in order to get*

Yellow Bile:

Lavender Blewits + Shrooms on a Stick or Fish in the Reeds

*You must eat both lavender blewits and either SoaS or FitR to get this to work. Just blewits gives blood, just SoaS or FitR gives either BB or YB.*

Black Bile:

Blackberries (gobbling these will get you up to 10 BB easily), Crispy Cricket, Witch’s Cap, Garlic Spit-roast

What do I do?

This is a sandbox game. What that means is, there are no set goals in the game at all. Explore the mechanics the devs have created and figure out if something’s your calling. Want to bake a million pies? Terraform the world and build a giant church? Make oodles of silver trading? Feed the blood gods and become a raider? It’s all up to you.

If you’re not the type that likes in depth explanations, here’s a really quick and dirty account of a noob playthrough I did on my way to getting a claim:

Four hour Playthrough and what I did along the way to getting myself established with a small claim:

Childish things
Survival Skills
(Abuse rock maracas and flint as much as possible)
Foraging

[Got black bile to 10 by eating blueberries, lots of em. 5B, 5P, 5YB, 10BB] – Max stat is the amount of points required for all stats to be raised next go around, don’t go more than 5 points above your other humours if possible.

Self Defense

[Got a tumbleweed for it, otherwise wait for Lore of Lumb to get with lumberwood figurine]

Lore of the Lumberwoods (Keep black bile topped up to study faster)

[Found Large Autumnal Forest (looks like orange puke on the minimap), living off Waxing toadstools for filler food, always use forage mode in forests]

Nuts and Seeds (if in a forest for more chestnuts)
Exploration (More forageables, unlock good skills)
Hiking (Ability to make leanto)

[Made leanto, don’t have to go to boston if a snake kos me now, and I can teleport there with stuff in my inventory to sell for silver]

Indian Tracking (For silver income, feathers almost impossible to see otherwise)
Colonial Tradesmanship

[Made an Axe]

Whittling (Spinning top and Simple Crucifix a must have for literacy)

[Found first savage charm materials, 30s and a pilgrim purse for me]

Literacy (difficult but worth it, study faster)
Small Game Hunting (punch cricket/rabbit, walk away until they walk at you, line up punch as they come in, repeat)
Simple Cooking

[Most foods for low level stats are grassland related, so I’m being lazy while working on skills in the forest. What to do for stats: Berry on Straw for Blood, Lean rabbit for phlegm, Lavendar Bluets for yellow and Witch caps for black. Current Stats: 6B, 6P, 7YB, 13BB]

Backyard pugilism (Easier rabbit/cricket kills with the unlocked uppercut. Used Lumb Figurines & Taste of Autumn. Takes work)
Mushroom Hunting (Pain to get, but I’m living off mushrooms and the shrooms on a stick recipe is awesome for early YB)

[Raised Phlegm to 8 with lean rabbits, sizzled slug, roasted rabbit cut. 6B, 8P, 6YB, 13BB]
[Can’t find Lavendar Bluets in the Autumnal forest, need to go to grassland for blood/YB now.]
[Found a swamp! Sweet Bluets are all mine :> Forage mode on grassland seems to find more of these if you’re in a pinch, but the movespeed loss is brutal.]
[Current stats: 9B, 8P, 8YB, 13BB]

Settling

[I didn’t need to because of savage charms, but if I needed more silver: Killing crickets and making cricket teams for silver would be the way to go]
[Time to hunt for a good living location. Big forest, Big grassland and water nearby is a nice minimum to have in mind when looking. And avoid ridges if you want easier foraging, or try to live in the mountains to avoid people]
[Make sure you’re at least a 1 hour walk from boston! 2 hours is better. If you saved your free port and aren’t going to a friends place feel free to use it now and start searching for a new place to live from there. It’s almost guaranteed to get you a decent distance from boston]

This took me roughly 3-4 hours of gameplay, and I never used my free port to do it. My final stats were 9B, 8P, 8YB, 13BB.

~You’ve got the basics now, beyond this it’s up to you what you need/want to do. Some even stick with the nomad life and just wander the lumberwood, it’s really up to you!~

Edit: What Next?

Get working on two layers of stone hedge while leaving ample room on the inner layer for a Plank Wall. Get plank production going. Get your farms running as I suggest in my agriculture guide (click the link in my sig and navigate to the agriculture section) and get good foods producing for each of your humours. 20 in every stat is liveable, but 40 in all is best.

That’s about all to endgame right now. Content updates are flowing fast though, so don’t be discouraged by that. There’s also PvP type interactions like trading and raiding to get involved in if that’s your thing.

Help! It says you can’t build there when I try to place a building

Check that the area isn’t a clay pit (digging will give you a lump of clay in your inventory). Also check that the area is perfectly flat 1 tile further out than the size of your structure, and pave the ground just for good measure. Many buildings can’t be build on a tile that is “forest” floor, and nothing can be built on clay pits.

I’m new and trying to raise proficiency XXXX. What should I use?

Go to this page: http://salemwiki.info/index.php/Inspirationals

Scroll down to study values. Hit the arrow keys beside the skill you need so that the largest numbers are on top. Figure out which of those inspirations you can make.

Make sure you’re using variety curiosities and understand how that works.

Is there a world map?

Check here for info on Roa and James: link

I got knocked out but my guy isn’t getting back up! Help!

There are two specific situations that cause this. Most common is someone turned on criminal acts and wandered onto a claim. This causes a steady drain on your BB, and if it reaches zero you are knocked out. Because it was a crime, your character will stay knocked out for 24 real time hours before he gets transported back home (doesn’t matter if you’re online or not). You can still use your account to play another character, and the owner of the claim can send you to boston if they’re merciful. Alternatively, anyone can walk by and murder the character if they have the skill and don’t mind leaving a scent.

The second situation happens when you settle on the very edge of the darkness. The speed of your healing depends on the level of your current humour, and healing (even if you’re not actually gaining stats) is what counter-acts the darkness drain. Get your stats too low, and the darkness will KO you. But you’re living in it, and your stat stays at zero when you wake up at your leanto, so you will keep getting knocked out. The cure is to spam the port to boston button when you wake up. Eventually you’ll get it and be able to heal your stats enough to return to your homestead without being KOed by the drain.

What happens when I die?

Your character will remain as a corpse in game for roughly 6 hours (correct me if I’m wrong). During this time, anyone can steal items off it with the appropriate skill, but I do not believe your descendant can take items without said skill. After this time the corpse will turn into an unidentified skeleton (in haven skeletons retained names of the deceased if you had them on your kin/memorization list) and I believe all items remaining on the corpse will be dropped to the ground. I have not been raiding in salem so please, someone with experience weigh in if my knowledge is correct here.

During the character creation process, you can inherit claims. Keys however will not be transferred and as such you should keep master keys on alts with in order to deliver them to your new character. This is most critical for hermits who will not have others to help them if they die.

Any items bought through the item shop but as of yet unclaimed (money in the bank or items in the post office) will not be lost as they are account wide and not character specific. If you purchase silver, only withdraw what you need immediately so that the rest is truly safe from character death. Anything you do claim and use on a character will not be recoverable though.

Is it possible to lock houses?

Not currently. There’s no method to handle a locked house like lockpicking or bashing a door in, so it’s simply not doable. Build a wall around your house and lock that if you desire the security. This may of course change over time.

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