Constantly losing sanity but nothing is happening?

[Danny97]

Hey,I just started a new world after not playing for like 3 or 4 updates so i'm not sure if what's happening to me is a bug or something very specific i missed in the patch notes.

I'm in a constant state of insanity,like,always between 9% and 7% and it keep dropping further.

I'm not in the dark.

I'm well fed.

There are no storms or enemies near by.

I was wondering if maybe because my house is made from the cobblestone i took from a church,maybe the stone is cursed or something?

But then why is it going down even when i'm far away from my house and it's all nice and sunny outside?

Did the game add character traits? 

Did i roll the first dude with schizophrenia?

Oh btw this wasn't happening while i was looking for a spot for my house,it happened AFTER i built the damn place.

 

Thanks in advace.

[Maelstrom]

Based on your screenshot and description it looks like you may have let your temporal stability drop to near zero; at which point you experience a personal temporal storm and need to stay in an area of high temporal stability (or murderize a bunch of drifters) until the low stability effects are alleviated.  

How did you get there?  Probably built your home in an area of negative temporal stability and spent too much time at home.  While scouting you may have wandered through the area with little impact before you left and what little stability you lost returned.  Once you built your home and spent more time in a low stability area the problems began.

[Danny97]

54 minutes ago, Maelstrom said:

Based on your screenshot and description it looks like you may have let your temporal stability drop to near zero; at which point you experience a personal temporal storm and need to stay in an area of high temporal stability (or murderize a bunch of drifters) until the low stability effects are alleviated.  

How did you get there?  Probably built your home in an area of negative temporal stability and spent too much time at home.  While scouting you may have wandered through the area with little impact before you left and what little stability you lost returned.  Once you built your home and spent more time in a low stability area the problems began.

Here you can see that rift activity is at medium at the moment but when i moved in it was at low.

That's the whole reason i decided to build my base here.

[Streetwind]

Rift activity is unrelated to temporal stability. It's just about how many drifters are likely to spawn at any given time. Low rift activity = few spawns; high activity = you'll get mobbed. It'll change over time and is not bound to any given area.

Only the spinning cogwheel in the center of your hotbar tells you whether a region is stable or not. Counterclockwise = unstable, clockwise or holding still at maximum fill state = stable. Temporal stability is bound to the local area and never changes over time.

 

Edited November 27, 2023 by Streetwind

[Danny97]

21 hours ago, Streetwind said:

Rift activity is unrelated to temporal stability. It's just about how many drifters are likely to spawn at any given time. Low rift activity = few spawns; high activity = you'll get mobbed. It'll change over time and is not bound to any given area.

Only the spinning cogwheel in the center of your hotbar tells you whether a region is stable or not. Counterclockwise = unstable, clockwise or holding still at maximum fill state = stable. Temporal stability is bound to the local area and never changes over time.

 

Yeah it was the land itself...

Died and respawned far away and my guy started feeling better almost instantly.

F*ck me and I literally just finished the roof.

[Maelstrom]

You just need to spend time away from home doing things like foraging for plants (flowers for bees, bees for that matter, seeds, fruit bushes/trees, etc), prospecting for ores, deforesting the local geography, etc.

[Karmauh]

Sorry for your struggle, man, but you've just saved my life with this thread. Thanks to all of y'all. I was going completely bonkers for like three days and kept trying to distract myself doing stuff like building a cellar or pretending I wasn't hallucinating.

[Echo Weaver]

Areas of surface instability seem to cause a lot of confusion for folks. I remember when it hit me -- I was digging up medium-quality soil and doing some shallow mining, and I started to hear drifters moan. I thought to myself, "There must be a cave close to me with drifters in it, but it seems like I should have run across it by now." 

I didn't realize my gear was going down until I was in the rust world. And it was, of course, night with high rift activity. I ran all the way home with drifters around me. By the time I got to my base, I was stable enough that I could close the door behind me and be safe while I waited to stabilize the rest of the way. 

I'm glad that world isn't the one I've been playing in recently, where the whole area I'm in is swiss-cheese stability, and I'm not even sure my spawn point is completely stable. I made sure my stone age hovel is on stable land, but even my farm across the pond is slightly unstable. If that had been my first world, I'd've been completely baffled.

[Kaldo]

I honestly don't get this mechanic at all. What is its purpose? What does it accomplish? Why is it not telegraphed and explained properly ingame? 

It's just a random fuck-you to players that want to build in a specific spot, or dont notice until it's too late. You can't even turn it off in the settings despite being able to turn off rifts and storms. whyyyyyyyy does it exist

IIRC there's a mod that removes it but does in a hacky way and might not be updated

Edited September 30, 2025 by Kaldo

[Echo Weaver]

22 minutes ago, Kaldo said:

I honestly don't get this mechanic at all. What is its purpose? What does it accomplish? Why is it not telegraphed and explained properly ingame? 

It's just a random fuck-you to players that want to build in a specific spot, or dont notice until it's too late. You can't even turn it off in the settings despite being able to turn off rifts and storms. whyyyyyyyy does it exist

IIRC there's a mod that removes it but does in a hacky way and might not be updated

Well, it IS telegraphed with the spinning gear. We just have to learn to check it. It's one of those things where you get screwed by it once, you learn, and then you adjust the way you look at your HUD and you're not surprised again. I think it's an interesting and different mechanic. My stone age game spawned in a lush paradise with high quality soil right by spawn and tons of clay, but the stability in the area is all over the place. It makes for really different gameplay than my "forever" game, which spawned in an arid, very stable area where the big challenge was getting a productive farm going.

For your situation, if you love your base, there's a way to save the structure and plonk it down someplace else. I haven't done it before, but I know it's a thing. If you're deeply in love with your location, then maybe the mod is the right thing. 

ETA: It does seem like there should be a way to turn off surface instability in settings.

Edited September 30, 2025 by Echo Weaver

[Maelstrom]

On 9/30/2025 at 7:32 AM, Echo Weaver said:

 It's one of those things where you get screwed by it once, you learn, and then you adjust

[LadyWYT]

On 9/30/2025 at 8:12 AM, Kaldo said:

I honestly don't get this mechanic at all. What is its purpose? What does it accomplish? Why is it not telegraphed and explained properly ingame? 

As @Echo Weaver noted, the mechanic is already telegraphed clearly in the game by the big teal gear on one's hotbar. There's also an entire handbook page on temporal stability as well. However, it is a feature unique to Vintage Story, so it's also something that will probably catch new players off-guard quite easily.

As for why the mechanic exists...it's mostly just an extra challenge for the player to deal with, and it can be turned on and off in the world creation settings or via console command after world creation(make sure to reload the world for the change to take effect). The lore reason for the mechanic's existence, without spoiling too much, is that someone in the past essentially scienced a little too hard and tampered with things they shouldn't have tampered with in order to save humanity from being wiped out. The result was some sort of cataclysmic event that allowed humanity to survive extinction, but broke the world in the process and caused all the chaos the player encounters in the present day.

[Maelstrom]

17 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

As @Echo Weaver noted, the mechanic is already telegraphed clearly in the game by the big teal gear on one's hotbar. There's also an entire handbook page on temporal stability as well. However, it is a feature unique to Vintage Story, so it's also something that will probably catch new players off-guard quite easily.

As for why the mechanic exists...it's mostly just an extra challenge for the player to deal with, and it can be turned on and off in the world creation settings or via console command after world creation(make sure to reload the world for the change to take effect). The lore reason for the mechanic's existence, without spoiling too much, is that someone in the past essentially scienced a little too hard and tampered with things they shouldn't have tampered with in order to save humanity from being wiped out. The result was some sort of cataclysmic event that allowed humanity to survive extinction, but broke the world in the process and caused all the chaos the player encounters in the present day.

In a most Lovecraftian way because other dimensions.

[Forks]

20 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

As @Echo Weaver noted, the mechanic is already telegraphed clearly in the game by the big teal gear on one's hotbar. There's also an entire handbook page on temporal stability as well. However, it is a feature unique to Vintage Story, so it's also something that will probably catch new players off-guard quite easily.

As for why the mechanic exists...it's mostly just an extra challenge for the player to deal with, and it can be turned on and off in the world creation settings or via console command after world creation(make sure to reload the world for the change to take effect). The lore reason for the mechanic's existence, without spoiling too much, is that someone in the past essentially scienced a little too hard and tampered with things they shouldn't have tampered with in order to save humanity from being wiped out. The result was some sort of cataclysmic event that allowed humanity to survive extinction, but broke the world in the process and caused all the chaos the player encounters in the present day.

I believe they're talking about temporally unstable zones not being able to be disabled on their own without disabling all temporal stability mechanics.
Personally I enjoy the extra challenge of dealing with dropping stability while doing deep underground mining/exploration, but having random temporally unstable chunks just adds... nothing. 
I've played on multiplayer servers where we've built a whole town before finding a portion that is extremely unstable and it just feels awful to be told by the game, oh yeah two of your friends aren't allowed to build their houses here tough luck. 

[Thorfinn]

1 hour ago, Forks said:

having random temporally unstable chunks just adds... nothing. 

It adds something. It's just a different something than you are used to in other survival/builder games. It's another thing to check before deciding whether this is a good place to settle. Kind of like IRL. Don't settle next to people who have a Harley or play polka music way too loudly at 2AM if it bothers you. Or move. There are a massive number of places very similar to the one you chose, for whatever reason you chose it. Find one.

[Forks]

1 hour ago, Thorfinn said:

It adds something. It's just a different something than you are used to in other survival/builder games. It's another thing to check before deciding whether this is a good place to settle. Kind of like IRL. Don't settle next to people who have a Harley or play polka music way too loudly at 2AM if it bothers you. Or move. There are a massive number of places very similar to the one you chose, for whatever reason you chose it. Find one.

Maybe "nothing" is too extreme of a word here, but imo it just feels so tacked on.
There's no trend, it's completely random and doesn't affect the game world in a physical sense.
I would appreciate it as a feature if there were tells, maybe bad stability is more common around ruins? Maybe have some scattered gears in the chunk or the grass is barren, just something instead of a nope don't be here.
And in our case it would have been a massive inconvenience to move, we had a town of 50+ hours of development and didn't discover the chunks until so late because it was a hotspot for wolf spawns, so we had kept our distance until the newbies had good enough armor that they could reliably beat wolves.
And it sucks to explain that to new players, oh yeah we can't expand the town that the direction cause the game says we're not allowed to, best we can do is throw down a farm there and call it a day.

[Echo Weaver]

2 hours ago, Forks said:

having random temporally unstable chunks just adds... nothing. 

I don't agree either. I'm playing in an area swiss-cheesed with temporal instability, and it's making for a very interesting and different playthrough. I had to scout out a base location that was stable, but my farm is slightly unstable, and I need to pay a lot of attention to the state of my gear when I'm out and about. The downs where I spawned also has a large number of ruins. It gives the place a really eerie feel. 

I do see that surface instability it's not everyone's cup of tea, though. For more building-focused players, it's pretty frustrating. You're far from the only folks to complain on the forum about it.

[LadyWYT]

2 hours ago, Forks said:

I've played on multiplayer servers where we've built a whole town before finding a portion that is extremely unstable and it just feels awful to be told by the game, oh yeah two of your friends aren't allowed to build their houses here tough luck.

If you're building a town, why not turn the unstable areas into storage? No need to hang around storage, just drop off materials or grab what you need and go elsewhere. Or build a jail or asylum as set pieces, because hey, decoration is cool, and those are two places no one wants to be anyway.

[Forks]

9 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

If you're building a town, why not turn the unstable areas into storage? No need to hang around storage, just drop off materials or grab what you need and go elsewhere. Or build a jail or asylum as set pieces, because hey, decoration is cool, and those are two places no one wants to be anyway.

We did end up doing something similar, purposefully damaged the two houses and covered them in vines and foliage to make them look abandoned, it went from being the wolf swamp to the haunted wolf swamp.
My major issue was just that it completely knocked the wind out of their sails, they were both brand new players, one did eventually decide to build the town bar, but the other one was so discouraged because he had loved the location and never found the desire to rebuild.

[Maelstrom]

That is discouraging.   It's incumbent upon us seasoned vets to warn new players about how difficult this game can be.  Just have to watch seasoned MC players go into VS blind to see how much of a learning curve VS has.

[LadyWYT]

3 minutes ago, Maelstrom said:

Just have to watch seasoned MC players go into VS blind to see how much of a learning curve VS has.

I'm not sure but what part of the learning curve of VS is just learning to let go of things sometimes. Depending on settings, it's very possible for the player to end up dying and being unable to recover their stuff. Too high of rift activity might mean sleeping or working indoors at night, instead of running around outside. The temporal stability mechanic means that underground bases aren't that feasible in general, and that sometimes there will be a beautiful area that's unsuitable for a permanent residence due to being too unstable. Get complacent about food stores and suddenly everything's rotted and you're scrambling to find something edible. And the list goes on.

That's not to say that any of those situations aren't frustrating, or that there's not room for improvement. But I do think a big portion of Vintage Story is knowing you will get punched, and learning to roll with those punches when they happen.

[Maelstrom]

The devs warned everyone
 

Quote

 

Edited October 2, 2025 by Maelstrom

[Thorfinn]

The Amityville Horror and several other movies warned of the dangers of building on Indian burial grounds. This is kind of the same thing. Except presumably the tenants of your on-line town didn't get killed for the negligence of the developer of the community.  

I get it, @Forks. You got the quick overview, thought, this would be a great game for an on-line community, and found what seemed to be a fantastic place for a town. But you've got to do the due diligence. Unstable regions are not that uncommon. You have to have encountered them if you've spent any time in the game. 

I do have a suggestion, though. Scope out your world and find a good place for your town. Then just move the buildings. It's pretty easy -- forummer @ArtGnat has a short youtube on it.

[Gazz]

I have a related question. (no mods affecting sanity that I know of)

Should sanity go up if the gear is rotating clockwise at a brisk pace? Because it sometimes does and sometimes does not.

The indicator isn't indicating. Is this normal?

[Maelstrom]

Clockwise spinning of the gear will increase the percentage of temporal stability until it reaches 100.  The color should also turn from grey to green/teal as it fills.  Temporal stability levels of 25% or lower will have increasing temporal storm affects starting with the rot vision on blocks, Dave appears and when it below about 10% drifters begin spawning, with similar rules as storms (i.e. anywhere and everywhere near you!)