New person, first impressions

[Homestead]

First off, WOW. What an awesome concept, and the alpha is fantastic! I'm very happy I purchased this, and hopefully my little bit of money will help fuel this game into a full version.

There is no but. What a great game. I do have a couple of suggestions for future updates, if anyone wants my opinion.

1. A compass. Maybe I'm missing something, but it's a bit tricky to orient yourself.
2. Long distance travel. I'm not sure it fits into the overall theme the creators have, but being able to easily travel to an explored location outside of visual range on your map would be handy.
3. Mounts or vehicles of some kind. Can you tell I'm big into travel?

There are plenty of other things I'm looking forward to that are clearly planned for future updates (such as female characters, more robust economy / selling options, armor smithing, etc) or have already been requested in the bit of forum scanning I've done (waypoints!), but I don't want to write more of a book than I already have for my first post so I'll leave it as is.

Again, this is a FANTASTIC alpha! Thanks, creators!

[Homestead]

Oh, also, it took me longer than I want to admit to figure out that certain armors only protected certain parts of your character. At first I was irritated, then I got over it and was all "Wow.. that's cool." Yes, that pair of spiffy green plates on your chest and shoulder look very Mad Max, but are they really practical?

[lotsofpaper]

And then you realize that they also have coverage percentages for those areas that they do cover, and so 50% coverage on only 2 body parts, only 1 of which is 1 of the 3 vital body parts... is not that great.

I would LOVE a compass. Currently I orient myself by looking at the map while sprinting to see which way I am going...

Creator has said there will be no vehicles. There MAY be a form of transport for heavy goods, but it will not significantly speed transport.

[Homestead]

Thanks for the reply. The way you say "Creator" makes me think this is a one man show. If so, I'm even more impressed.

I orient myself the same way, if I can't triangulate it off of nearby landmarks (funny terrain, towns, and what have you.)

I did notice the percentages, though I do have a question about them (and please excuse me if they've been asked a million times). Do the percentages = the percent chance that the armor will block an attack hitting that spot, or is the armor only as effective as the percent displayed (i.e. 5 armor at 50% = 2.5 armor on that spot)?

[Tolwrath]

To my knowledge, the coverage means that it has that % of a chance of applying your armor to a strike on that location. Like 80% coverage on the left arm means that there's an 80% chance a strike to the left arm will have the armor's 5 dampening/resistance applied.