4thewords Promo

[quillpunk]

4thewords is a writing game; it features quests, monsters, and lore.

The gist is simple; write a specific number of words in a specific amount of time in order to beat a monster. Sometimes quests requires items monsters drop, sometimes the quest is killing a certain number of monsters. There's a main quest line that, as you advance, will progressively unlock new areas with new quests and monsters. Sometimes there are special time-limited events (there's one starting Apr 4!) with monsters and quests that aren't available outside of those events.

Playing 4thewords requires an active subscription, though you can still access the things you've already written without a subscription, you just can't write any more. The subscription is about 4USD/month, though they have sales (that has historically coincided with NaNoWriMo events) where it might be a little cheaper.

There's also a community pool you can put your account into where you might get free subscription time. I'm not sure how it works, but users can buy subscription time and donate it to the community pool. Users can also directly purchase subscription time for other users or gift it as a redeem code.

I wanna be very clear about this; the subscription isn't automatic. It won't automatically pull money from your account. You purchase a number of crystals from 4TW in one-time purchases, which you use to pay for the amount of subscription time you want. I think it might be slightly cheaper to buy a lot at once, but I haven't done the math at that. 1 month's subscription is 44 crystals, 1 year is 528 crystals.

4thewords comes with a 15-day free trial period for new accounts, and right now there's a special code (valid until Apr 4, I believe) that will get you another 10 days of free subscription. The code is Starfall, and you wanna put that here once you've made an account.

I've also got a referral code! You and I both get free extra crystals upon your first purchase of crystals if you use my code (WBPJE10994) when you sign up.

Below the cut I'll go into more details about what 4thewords offers, and some bug issues you might wanna be aware of, and some recent changes they've made (so if you've bounced off it before, now might be a good time to retry!)

Recent Changes

Barrier of Entry

Currently, 4TW is making an effort to be more approachable (i.e. lowering the barrier of entry) for new users and part of this is lowering the needed word-count on a lot of monsters in the starting areas of the game. For example, a monster that previously needed 1800 words to beat now only needs 1000 words, one that was 250 is now 50 and so on. Some quests have also changed with this.

However, this effort has produced a number of bugs recently. Personally I've not found a bug that can't be solved by reloading the page, but sometimes that means a lot of reloading in a very short period of time. It can be annoying, so if this is something that bugs you (pun intended, lol), you might wanna give it a week or so before you try it (but also the Starfall code will expire, so keep an eye on that if you want the extra time!)

Goals

4TW has also introduced the ability to make word-count goals. You can now make goals for specific projects, for specific files within those projects, and for your whole account. (I've currently got an account goal of one (1) million words, lol.)

Daily Challenges

There are now daily challenges that are automatically applied to your account. These are write a certain number of words (up to 5k, I believe) and beat a certain number of monsters (up to 25) in a day. These reset automatically every day, and comes with in-world coin rewards.
I think this is also part of 'lowering the barrier of entry' plan, since more coins means it's easier to finish quests sometimes.

Co-Op Mode

A while back, 4TW introduced co-op mode for battling monsters. Basically, there's now a lobby where you can either create of join somebody else co-op battles – there's not typically a super lot of activity, and personally I've never tried it. For optimal usage some coordination so that somebody else also actually joins you (because I don't think it works solo?) might be needed. 4TW has a discord server where you can keep an eye out for other people opening a co-op room, or you can advertise your own. (And also where discussions of bugs sometimes happen, if you like keeping an eye on those things.)

Mind; the co-op monsters aren't the same monsters as the rest of the game, i.e. you can only play co-op for specific monsters. There are quests for these monsters as well, though!

Forums

4TW has a good old-fashioned forum (this is also where bug reports should officially go!). I mention it because I think the longing for the return of forums is rising (at least in me, lol).

4TW Wikia

There's a comprehensive wiki for 4thewords. Here, you can learn about quests, about areas, about monsters. You can strategize, if that what's you like (I don't strategize at all for 4TW, which is why I have written a total of 380k words on it and still am only on Riza Rivertown, not even halfway through the game—you can get a lot farther into the game a lot more quickly if you don't get distracted by side-quests like me, lmao).

And on the wiki there's a start here guide for newbies to 4TW! :D

Miscellaneous

A couple of miscellaneous things about 4TW that might be useful to know:

• You have the ability to dis/allow copy-pasting into files on 4TW. This is done on your account settings page.
  • When opening a co-op room, you can control if CP should be allowed for everyone.
• You can level up your character, and you can use weapons, armor, companions and accessories to change your character's stats.
  • If you raise the attack stat, you won't have to write as many words to be beat a monster. So instead of needing to write 500 words, you might only have to write 450, and so on. The higher the stat is, the greater the difference.
  • If you raise the defense stat, you'll have more time to beat monsters. Instead of 10 minutes you might have 13 minutes, and so on. The higher the stat is, the greater the difference.
  • If you raise your luck stat, you'll get more/rarer drops when you beat monsters (all monsters drop something). I don't actually know how much difference this one makes.
• There's actually a 4thewords category on Twitch, if you like/want to write on stream.
• There's a journal page where you can track your writing streak (444 words/a day for it to count, this is unchangeable), your game history, your total stats, and your questbook and more.
• There's a friend system! Friends can chat :D This might also be useful for co-op battles. (If you wanna be friends on 4TW, I'm quillpunk :D)

I'm sure I've forgotten something, lol, but at the core 4TW is very simple.

Write, write, write to level up, beat monsters, and finish quests!