How do I ______? The beta guide to Balrum.

[Selwyn]

Hey guys, I am new to the forums but have been following Balrum's development for a while. I made this thread for people to use as a quick and easy access point to find answers to common questions. Mark Rushow has been doing this around the forum so I will collect any answers of his I can find and put them in here first.

As for how to contribute, add any questions you have to the thread, and when they are answered, I will put them into the OP. Also, if you know the answers to any of these questions, please post them!

Thanks everyone!

How do I _______?

Technical:

Get the game working? Something's Wrong!
"Balrum needs the java runtime environment to run. (minimum JRE version is 7)You can download the java runtime environment (JRE) from oracle: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/j...33155.html

If the above link does not work simply visit:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/j...38363.html and press the JRE 8 or the JRE 7 download button and select your platform.After installing the java runtime environment a restart is recommended.

Now that you have java installed on your machine you can run the Launcher.jar by double clicking it. Press the Launch button and Balrum will start to load. The first startup will take a little more time because the engine is creating the needed caches.

If the Launcher.jar does not work you can try to run Balrum with the following files:
On OSX: start_osx.command
On Windows: start_win.bat"

-Mark Rushow

Report a bug?
If you get a game crash click the 'send debug.txt' icon from the Launcher window.
Any other bugs you notice e-mail to Balcony Team at: info@balconyteam.com or at: balcony.softworks@gmail.com

Combat:

Attack?
"You need to put abilities/spells into your main bar (at the bottom of the screen). You can find your spells/abilities in your spell book 'S'. You can select one melee ability and one magic to be your main attacks (left click is the melee, right click is the selected spell). There will be tooltip informations everywhere in a future update." ~Balcony Team

Use a bow?
A bow is used by first equipping it (this can be done even if you already have a melee weapon equipped, and then by equipping arrows (right click on a stack of arrows, as the paperdoll slot does not glow like it does when you hold a weapon, to show you what slot it goes in), and then dragging the "Shoot" ability icon from your spellbook to your hotbar. From what I understand, right clicking on this icon in the hotbar will set your right-click attack to your bow, so it shares an autoattack slot with your magic abilities (as in, you must choose one or the other to be your right-click attack). To fire the bow, just right click on your target with the shoot icon active. ~Rafa

Some people may experience a "Spell is not ready!" message when they try to use their bow. There is no known fix for this currently, and it is likely a bug. If anyone finds a workaround please post it here.

Survival:

Drink something?
You can drink directly from a well (although not the one with the red roof on it in the middle of town, that has a different purpose) to slake your thirst. Additionally, there is an item called a "water sack" that you can make with two bear leathers, or find in the world, which apparently will be able to hold water, though no one is sure how to fill it yet. Also, you can eat fruits and vegetables, or drink potions to stop your thirst from overwhelming you, though this is the least efficient way to do so, as you lose the items that would otherwise be put to better use. Food and potions both only work until you get the "Full Belly" Debuff, which stops you from being able to ingest anything for a few turns (if in combat) or a few seconds (if not). ~Mark Rushow

Eat something?
Right click on it in your inventory. You can eat (And drink) things that are in different sections of your inventory, not just the "Food" tab. Eating medicinal herbs can heal you for about half as much as they would if you turned them into potions, but I have found Rosehips (the pinkish bushes that you can gather from) to be the best source of non-potion, non-food healing, as I have not found any recipes requiring it, and they are fairly plentiful.

Set up camp?
At the bottom right of your hotbar, there is an icon that looks like a camp fire. Click that, and you will be able to choose to place a tent or a campfire. They both happen immediately, and you can then click on your tent to rest until morning.

Put out my torch?
Click on the torch icon at the bottom left of your hotbar (it's tiny!) This will toggle your torch on or off, and is a useful way to conserve torches during the daylight hours, as your stack of torches will slowly be used up as the burning continues. ~Mark Rushow

Crafting:

Use the crafting stations?
Each station is slightly different, but they all follow the same principle. They have multiple components to them, such as, for the anvil: "Smelter", "Anvil", "Cooling Barrel", and "Wood Tray". Each component part has its own space to put items in, and not all components require use for everything you can make at the station. For example, if you want to make leather gloves, putting the required leather in the Anvil's "Anvil" component slots and then clicking "Create" will work fine. Whereas if you want to smelt iron ore into glowing iron bars, you must add the ore to the Anvil's "Smelter" component slots, then add wood to the wood tray. As long as the fire burns, the smelter will melt through your stack of ore automatically, providing you with iron bars.

"You must hurry when crafting if you need glowing bars. They cool very quickly. Don't try to do too much at once else you must re-heat the bar. 'Iron bar' when re-heated becomes 'glowing spotted iron bar' and 'spotted iron bar' when cooled. It is unusable for anything requiring just 'glowing iron bar' or 'iron bar'.

An entire stack of ore all smelts at the same time. Be sure to split the stack and only smelt what you can use at once if you require 'glowing'." - Mark Rushow

Play around with the options and see what you can come up with. If anyone wants to test the differences between smithing a sword with and without using the cooling bucket, that would be cool! Post results to this thread, and I will add them.

One last note to this answer is that often the crafting stations can get weird and buggy. You will open an oven and be greeted with a mess of icons and windows showing you the contents of containers that you cannot see in the world (like a skeleton corpse or a blueberry bush). This makes it very confusing to see what is going on, and if the UI looks crazy to you, it is probably bugged. To fix this, save the game to a new slot, exit the game, and relaunch... oh, and cross your fingers.

Gathering:

Gather materials?
Your character automatically carries and uses the tools he needs to gather resources. All you have to do is get into an adjacent tile from the item you want to harvest, and then click on it. Your character will display a quick animation, and the results will cascade into your backpack. You can also often find good materials in the crates, barrels, and bookcases around the town.

Quests:

Feed the pigs some corn?
Take the 4 ears of corn that the farmer gives you, and place them all in a stack into one of the pig troughs. Then go back to the farmer and inform him that you have done so. He will give you two sausages, which launches another quest to go share one with your Grandpa. ~Chris Chen

Training:

Train in a skill?
In order to train in a skill, you simply must use it. You will gain skill points quickly in the beginning, and soon enough "fill up" your level 0 at that skill. You will then need to find a trainer who can teach you the level 1 version of that skill. The trainers are scattered about town, and you will run into most of them in the course of doing your quests. They will charge you one "Learning Point" and some Thalers in order to teach you, so learning points will be very valuable, as you only get one each time you level up (through combat or questing, not the kind of leveling you get by building skills)

Another item of note is that training in combat techniques seem to be bugged in a few ways. Some people are unable to get the training at all, and others, myself included, are able to purchase combat skills that they already know if they happen to visit another person who also teaches the skill.

Farming:

Plant Crops?
Drop a seed onto a patch of dirt prepared for farming

Water Crops?
Click on your seedlings and choose "Water" from the menu. You must have a bucket of water in your inventory, and you can keep an eye on the plant's "Moisture" level to determine if you should water it or not. *hint* If it is raining, don't water your plants.

Fertilize Crops?
Click on your seedlings and choose "Manure" from the menu. You must have a pile of manure in your inventory (You can find these around the farms in the area), and you can keep an eye on the plant's "Fertilization" level to determine if you should fertilize it or not.

Harvest Crops?
Click on the fully-grown plant and choose "harvest" from the menu. Also, pick them when they're ripe.

Get Seeds?
Mystery! I wish I could get them from the harvest itself.

Items:

Use traps?
Apparently, you can just click them and place them on the ground ~Mark Rushow. I was not able to get this working. Any help testing this and an explanation of how you did it would be appreciated.

Useful Hotkeys

E - Take All (from container/harvest node)
F - Zoom in (kinda fun, good for people with small screens)
I - Inventory Toggle
C - Character Info / Skills Toggle
S - Spell/Ability Book Toggle
M - Map