Since there is no NDA on the current state of Life is Feudal (purchased stand-alone early alpha) I thought I would share information with those who have not been on Raid Call hoping to gather enough forces to take on Trials in ESO.
LiF is a full sandbox, with a variety of differences from many of the other MMOs recently. Death does have issues, although those with a bad reputation will feel it most severely. As the game does not involve levels, but rather skills that go up, skill loss is the mechanic involved. Well, that and full loot, so keeping spare stuff at a relatively safe location is a very good idea. Most people will be mildly inconvenienced, supposedly spawning won't place you in the middle of an assault over and over again. Much of this has yet to be fully implemented and tested.
Reputation is a rating from -1000 to 1000, which can go down from crimes and up from general daily goodness (there is a prayer mechanic available to bump you 1 point every day.) The higher your reputation the less skill points you lose on death, and the more you can involve yourself in certain other game elements... there is an entire church hierarchy system that is in development. The reputation cannot go past a certain lower limit without killing somebody, and if it does go past that limit the character is permanently branded as a criminal. Since the designed system requires hours of work to get past being a pathetic peasant who can barely survive in the game world, rolling new characters is not a great way to get around the system (also, there is a pay wall per character to get into the game, but you shouldn't really want to spend time on more than 1-2 characters with the system as it is.)
Crafting has a variety of goals and skills, many of which are chained behind other crafting skills. Due to a limit on skill points, specialists will be needed. Everybody can specialize in one field, and maybe part of another, with some military skills. You might manage two fields if you completely avoid military skills, and rely on friends or lords to protect you. Crafting is very important in the game. There are finite resources, so trade becomes a major area of concern. Each crafting skill builds together with others to create what you really need, such as making an outfit requires a tailor who has to have cloth and other resources from earlier trades in his line... but building the tools and equipment he needs requires a smith who can make nails and metal bracing, a herdsman who can deal with animals and/or a hunter-gatherer to bring in skins, somebody to supply them all food, etc.
For major buildings you need a lot of work, each section of castle wall takes ~9000 stone, and each person can get about 30 stone every 10 seconds, and carry no more than about 300 rock/stone at any time... further efforts to mine/dig up stone do nothing. This is in addition to other materials.
Buildings can be owned, and things placed inside (inside placement is not yet implemented.) This allows you to own a house, a keep, a wall gate, etc. In general, each type of building requires a different level of authority, which is gained by claiming buildings and requires skill points to level. Thus it makes sense for some people to completely avoid claiming property, but others claim and build up to make a town, region, or even kingdom.
Combat is real physics driven, aka you must make contact when you swing, and motion plays a part in damage done. It doesn't feel nearly as smooth as similar combat systems just yet, but this IS early alpha. Since each entity has both hard and soft levels of health and stamina, a target may fall down and take a little bit to get up. It is not always dead, just it bled enough to force it to stop and recover... similarly running out of stamina forces you to stop and catch your breath, and hard stamina recovers only via rest time or potions/preparations (preparations are the easier to get to level of care, but it seems to require use on another person as with the doctoring skills, while potions allow for self-use.) There are different injury types, which provide debuffs and which may be shortened or removed entirely by a doctor or curative. There are also poisons, although I haven't figured out a means to use them yet (may be not yet implemented.) Ranged combat with bows, crossbows, slings, etc. is also feasible, and fortifications are designed to give you places to fire from (arrow loops, crenelations, and kill holes in gatehouses are all examples currently in game.)
Here's a link to a few pictures made on my current private server (I used GM mode boosts and insta-build capabilities to reduce the time this took.) Link opens in a new window, and has a shot of my build site as forest, followed by several images showing the buildings and a night image showing some lighting effects at night.
Lifscreens on photobucket new window
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