We have just recently started playing Stonehearth and are absolutely in love with it. Not only is it an easy to learn survival-lite and builder like Minecraft that is beloved by so many, but it’s so cute it brings my 5 year old to tears. Literally.
He just can’t stand it that our trapper takes the adorable little foxes, bunnies and raccoon out of the little cages and poof they suddenly become little boxed Hearthling happy meals (his term for the jerky). He … just.can’t.
When your five year old’s giant blinky eyes (reminiscent of hearthlings eyes) well up with tears, you have few choices as a gaming parent other than to take drastic measures. Is it possible for our little village to become vegans? I’m laughing but I kid you not, this boy of mine can’t stand the ‘senseless slaughter’ of insanely cute little critters in this game. I sense a PETA uprising in the Stonehearth universe.
So other than the fuzzy animal eating, we love the game - keep up the great work! <3
Yes, we have happy farms. I was just curious if you get penalized for not having a trapper and meat. It’s for the kid mind you. I’m fine with my Hearthlings making happy meals out of those rabbits that keeps nibbling on our stockpiles of turnips!
Also, don’t you need leather for certain things in crafting later on?
Uh, yes it will limit you slightly. Meat wise not so much as long as you are growing corn. For crafting you’ll need it to craft armors and weapons. Oh, but with leather and thread you can make fluffy stuffed bunny dolls. Not much else other then that I don’t think.
Right, it’s the armor and weapons I’m thinking will really be a necessary evil for the cute animal slaughter. Perhaps I’ll have to do all that trapper stuff when he’s sleeping and the pelts that show up mysteriously in the stockpiles the next day are just magical gifts from passing traders! We will find a way to overcome this struggle of cuteness overload.
If your really worried about it. I have 3 kids of my own, so I get ya. You still need the trapper, to get your shepard. Do like I do sometimes. Set the trapper further out from your town, so your 5 yr old doesn’t see what they are doing. Or you could tell him/her about the needing of hunters and gathers, and What ranchers do in real life.
Ah yes, I tried the “practical explanation” tactic. I mean, we eat meat so he ‘gets it’ … but his response to that tactic in this particular game was “But this isn’t real life Mom, it’s JUST A GAME!” which somehow justifies killing of fantasy creatures like goblins but not those cute little fuzzy animals, haha!
Your idea of moving the trapper area further away and just making sure we steer clear of it with the camera as much as possible is probably doable and may be easier than me trying to ninja in some trapping while he’s sleeping.
It’s so fun to game with your kids and I’m glad there are more and more family-friendly games out there now that gamers are creating their own new generations of little gamers!
[quote=“Vexed, post:7, topic:11043”]
“But this isn’t real life Mom, it’s JUST A GAME!”
[/quote] HAHA, yup been there. And your like Uhm, (They got me there.)
Yeah I typically move them out farther, and build a warehouse to hide all the furs and hides . My kids never see a thing, especially my littlest one.
It really is a funny story, thanks for sharing with me that your own kids are shielded from the ‘horrors’ by your sensible tactics, haha.
Oddly enough, he’s much less vocal about us killing animals in Minecraft. He won’t let me touch his farms full of rainbow dyed sheep (he is the Shepherd in that game …or a professional carpet installer) but he tolerates me killing pigs and cows and will eat the ‘jellybeans’ we cook out of their meat (LOL) but he won’t do it himself - what a pacifist! He will make bread, and eat enough carrots and watermelon to cause an imaginary internal explosion instead of cook meat. What a soft-hearted little guy. I should have known this game would up the cuteness factor!
Typically I never game when I have my 3, they are lil chaos’s especially my youngest. But sometimes we take relax time, or my kids want to see some games. So just giving advice where I know I can
I can imagine it’s tough to get any meaningful gaming done with three rambunctious little ones too! I play my ‘adult’ games long after little guy’s in bed but this is one like Minecraft I enjoy sharing with him. Do you ever play Minecraft multiplayer with your three? I highly recommend “The Sandlot” server, built by parents for playing with their kids together. They have ‘jobs’ addons which give kids incentives for doing things like mining, hunting monsters, etc and an ‘easy mode’ survival that makes things much less stressful for little people while not being entirely creative mode. We’ve been playing off and on there for months as he’s learned how to play the game.
As for Stonehearth, I see it being a game young ones can pick up easily - probably a little older than mine since it does require some reading to understand what’s going on with the hearthlings and their professions and traders, etc.
To save some poor animal’s life, I’ve thrown a few mixintos in a mod. It makes the shepherd independent of the trapper (and adjusts its description) and adds (… untested) a new shop that sells whatever is declared as “animal_part” (i.e. leather, wool, jerky, …). Simply put it into the mods/ directory and you should be good to go.
The trapper still works and sheared sheeps can still be butchered, but now it’s kinda optional.
Cool, thanks for the mod creation and suggestion! I use mods in other games so I’m not shy of them. We’ve just been learning our way around the game vanilla for now and I’m sure modding will become as much fun as it is in Minecraft for us. Do you still need the leather for weapons/armor with this mod? I’m thinking if it sells all ‘parts’ immediately you’re still in the same problem of not having them for required crafting components.
It’s not touching that aspect. However, weapon and armor can be crafted using metal too by the blacksmith. It’s just not as readily accessible as leather.
Well, it’s not immediately. As with all shops, in order to get spawned you need a certain net worth (1500 I believe) and there’s one shop per day (24 hours +/- 2). You only get the crafting components (leather and jerky I believe) and rugs, which are tagged as “animal_part” too.
Lol, I don’t minecraft, I know weird that I like this game, but I like the fighting, the trading and the upcoming features, ie Titans, being able to build towns with a thriving community. But I EQ Landmark. My 2 girls only like to watch, My son on the other hand (He is my mid child) doesn’t like building games. But loves lego games (weird).
If you like Building games and survival, check out 7 days to die. Completely like minecraft with full fledge zombies.
[quote=“Newf, post:18, topic:11043”]
I love this term.[/quote]
I know! He’s so adorable, he said they looked like little happy meals since the food made them happy… I was like “Awww…hearthling happy meals!”
He really does like the goblins and just as @BrianNZ said in his reply, little ones get confused on ‘bad guys’ and ‘good guys’ and are just sorting out morals in games much as they do in their own imaginary play with friends. He loves them but at the same time, they’re stealing the hearthlings stuff so they are “bad” and have to be punished. He calls the stone maul the “Goblin Bonker” and we send our footman to bonk them on the heads. It’s too cute. I think his soft spot is mostly for the animal critters. If we can can someday make a zoo he’d be the happiest Hearthling Representative ever, haha.
Also, when they put the rabbit race in, I know that’s the only thing he’ll ever want to play.
You’re missing out on a really great cooperative play experience with your kids not playing Minecraft together.
I played EQ Landmark when it first went into Alpha and was amazed at the incredible things players could build. I personally wasn’t very good with the voxel magic and when they started going into micro voxels and all sorts of complicated game building physics, I just gave up on my sad little cabin in the forest hah.
I actually play 7DTD and have been since last summer. I’ve shelved it for awhile recently. It’s one of those ‘grown-up’ games I mentioned I only play after my son is in bed, it would terrify him. Heck it terrifies ME! Good game though and a good builder too. Highly underrated in the whole DayZ, Rust, H1Z1 fan world.
. My kids never see a thing, especially my littlest one.
