We did it this past weekend.  We started back in a fresh world with fresh characters in Enshrouded.

Of course, there were hiccups.

We host our shared world over at G-Portal and I could not find anywhere on their site instructions for how to restart your world over.  There was only the option to delete your server instance, which felt like it would do the job, but which I was still hesitant to use lest it delete more than I expected.

But then it was Sunday and we were all on and I wanted to get us a fresh world to play on, so I hit the big red trash can button and boom, our old world was gone.  And our settings and roles and all the other stuff.  It was, as I somewhat feared, a complete wipe of everything.

Fortunately I had been paranoid enough to back up everything via FTP to my local system.  But still, I had to then scramble to install and initialize a new server instance and setup roles and passwords and fiddle a bit with the settings… we had modified the setting on our old instance quite a bit, tuning xp and the day night cycle… so I am pretty sure I didn’t get them all right on the first pass… or on the second pass when I was fiddling with it and hit save and kicked everybody off the server as it restarted.

But I got the name of the server and the password set again and put out the new IP address and we logged in, each emerging freshly from our capsule.

What is this place?

Unfortunately, the game doesn’t necessarily accommodate multiple people running through the opening sequence in quick succession.  We had to go back for Ula because we took all the torches for that first dark cave and you can’t really get through there without trouble in the dark.  But once beyond that, we were greeted by a fresh new world.  A VAST fresh new world, according to the text.

Getting closer to Vast with every update at least

Then was the strange part, at least for three of us.  Skippy was on his first run through the game, but Potshot, Ula, and I were suddenly in a raw new world with all of our past abilities stripped from us… like double jump.

Oh, you get so used to double jump so quickly.  It is such an essential element to exploration in a game where exploration is a focus that there is an ongoing controversy about it being something you have to spend skill points on to obtain.  You need 7 skill points to get it and, unless you were going up that track anyway, they steer you away from what might be the core of your character plan.

I know, when do I ever have a plan.  But still.

There were other comic moments, like coming upon a grapple and not getting the “E” that tells you that you can use it.  Oh, right!  Have to make the grappling hook!  And the glider!

Oh boy, and once you’ve sailed half way across zones with the epic glider and used the uplift skill to extend the initial glider barely seem like more than slow falling.  You can barely get anywhere.

Also, with four of us picking over the starter area, we were coming up short on supplies.  I think I may have had the mob density set up a notch on our old server, because I couldn’t find a wolf to fight for ages.  Eventually though a level was had.

I am no longer level 1

You can see I am still not wearing even the basic cloth rags you can make.  Back on our old server I was throwing cloth drops away.  Now I am begging for cloth.

Still, it was interesting, weird, fun to go back and start fresh.  It was a chance to remember how primitive things start out.  We have to begin with storage boxes made out of sticks… and they aren’t even magic boxes you can draw from remotely.

We pressed on a bit, made it over the bridge, farmed in the shroud enough to get spores to make everybody a grappling hook and a glider.

We then pushed on past the bridge, to find a little house to start our first base in on the far side of a hostile settlement… a settlement with multiple chests to farm as we get ourselves set.

Our first outpost

We then grabbed the blacksmith, who was just over the hill, and got access to our first round of upgrades.  You can see I am actually holding an update shield and there is the kiln, the forge, and two magic boxes.  Huzzah!

Next up will to be to press on into the shroud and get that first elixir well knocked out.  The blacksmith won’t shut up about it and it is the first real quest goal in the game.