Temporal storms... just... why?

[AngryRob]

Hello

 

It seems that after nearly a year of being away, that this is STILL a topic of discussion. 

They remind me a bit of the 7 days to die bloodmoon, but without the organization. I am not a fan of them, as there is nothing you can do to keep the drifters out of your house, and you can't sleep through them. A storm shelter would be nice for those that are not prepared for them. 

 

Also, what is so temporal about them? crops don't grow, trees don't grow, food does not spoil: time neither goes forward or backward. That's another issue i have with them, they have NOT time element. A temporal storm should be the best time to plant crops as they instantly grow, animals should grow up and age, it should be a twilight zone time travel horror moment. 

 

If they were renamed as "rust anomalies" i would be ok with that. They are this disruption to the game, that has no obvious purpose. 7 days to die uses the blood moon to force your progress. You have zombies that can destroy blocks. Temporal anomalies? i don't know what purpose they have in the game, what benefits they serve, or anything. 

 

It needs a reward  of some sort, a reason for us to put up with them. Either some sort of resource that can only be gathered during the event, or some benefit. 

[DejFidOFF]

1 hour ago, AngryRob said:

Hello

 

It seems that after nearly a year of being away, that this is STILL a topic of discussion. 

They remind me a bit of the 7 days to die bloodmoon, but without the organization. I am not a fan of them, as there is nothing you can do to keep the drifters out of your house, and you can't sleep through them. A storm shelter would be nice for those that are not prepared for them. 

 

Also, what is so temporal about them? crops don't grow, trees don't grow, food does not spoil: time neither goes forward or backward. That's another issue i have with them, they have NOT time element. A temporal storm should be the best time to plant crops as they instantly grow, animals should grow up and age, it should be a twilight zone time travel horror moment. 

 

If they were renamed as "rust anomalies" i would be ok with that. They are this disruption to the game, that has no obvious purpose. 7 days to die uses the blood moon to force your progress. You have zombies that can destroy blocks. Temporal anomalies? i don't know what purpose they have in the game, what benefits they serve, or anything. 

 

It needs a reward  of some sort, a reason for us to put up with them. Either some sort of resource that can only be gathered during the event, or some benefit. 

- Light up your house and they will spawn less

- You can sleep trought the storms and skip that like the night ( it´s your choice when set up new map )

- At my servers I have installed mod sleepvote ( set to 75% - you can choose whatever ) so if 75% of players are sleeping they can skip storm or night.

- Temporal storms are about fun from fight, gaining gears I really like that.

- With some mod like UsefulDrifterLoot you can get more stuff from them

- Killed few doubleheaded - you can gain some Jonas parts ( which is hard to get )

- Lore

- Maybe more idk

 

Edited September 25, 2024 by DejFidOFF

[Ketoth]

On 9/25/2024 at 7:08 AM, AngryRob said:

but without the organization. I am not a fan of them, as there is nothing you can do to keep the drifters out of your house

This is my biggest problem with temporal storms personally, the way they spawn makes building any kind of defensive structure just... decorative work.

(this is also true of bears running up 5m tall vertical stone walls, but that's a different problem, I made a mod for that one which...  needs updating)

If the drifters were to spawn something like at the edge of entity render distance and run towards the player, even if it were more of them, that'd probably be a much more fun and interesting event to "defend from" since that would mean building some kind of a fortress and trying to actively plan for the storms would be an interesting and involved activity rather than "wait until clock giraffe, run around and stab with spear for 10 minutes"

sure you could argue current drifters would be too easy to defend against, but hell, make some capable of breaking doors (or even slowly trough wood and cobblestone so only stone blocks are TRULY safe, reason for a big late game castle) and some of jumping gaps to get at the player and you have an event that's actually semi-fun.

IMO taking inspiration of something like project zomboid hoarde defense would probably be the best way of going about it, nothing you build is TRULY safe, but it should hold back most basic enemies fairly well, they probably won't even break anything unless you build out of dirt or let them pile up in a late game max difficulty storm, so they turn into more of a building ingenuity challenge rather than a grind.

[Thorfinn]

Welcome to the forums, @Ketoth!

You are correct that defensive structures don't serve much of a purpose. Since the lore of the game is that the world is basically deserted (the exception being traders who haul their wagons all over the world just for your convenience, no matter how inconvenient those places might be for you), I don't see that the game intends for defensive structures to serve much of a purpose in storms.

What you suggest would have been easy to implement. Tyron chose to do it differently, for whatever reason. Maybe that there are a great plenty of tower defense games out there already, so I'll try something different?

[EDIT]

If storms bother you that much, you can always shut them off. A tower defense mod should not be that hard to write. There are plenty of mods that add creatures to use as a model. I don't know that there are any that do block destruction, but there are several items that do. You could give one variant of zomb invader the abilities of picks, another of axes, another of shovels, others that are combinations, and even ones with the properties of ore blasting bombs.

Edited September 27, 2024 by Thorfinn

[Ketoth]

17 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Welcome to the forums

Finally figured out I had to link my account, thanks!

4 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Since the lore of the game is that the world is basically deserted

Tyron has mentioned actual villages being planned for sometime in the future more than once though, even that he'd like for you to be able to live as a trader, going between them and buying/selling items for profit.

And even disregarding that, it's not because ultimately defenses couldn't save humanity that they were useless, there's a couple lore tidbits talking about people being "the last ones standing after everyone else is dead" meaning people didn't all die at once, some places are safer, even if ultimately drifters will break trough every defense.

I think in the end, the concept of the temporal storms is good, but it's executed in a way that is very unfun, even people who like the difficulty of temporal storms don't tend to like the event itself, just the risk it poses, and I think it's fair to say it could use a rework into literally anything that doesn't involve lvl 4 drifters being impossible to block and spawning directly behind you while you make soup.

[Thorfinn]

I don't know. Until you can start hiring men-at-arms or building automata (IYKYK) I don't see how tower defense would be any more exciting. Stand atop the ramparts and "Pew, pew, pew" until they break through, make your escape, return after the siege is over to repair the damage and maybe replace what was looted. Since the fallen will despawn before you get back, even the "Pew, pew, pew" was pointless, other than to give you an excuse to forge more arrowheads.

If defensive structures worked, where are all the blockhouses? Keeps? Motte-and-baileys? Your seraph is the first to have imagined such a thing?

[-Glue-]

I always dread Temporal Storms. They are cool at first, but really don't offer anything other than an annoying visual effect, and drifter spam. I ended up enabling sleeping through them, because I would always just hide inside anyways. I was never hurting that bad for temporal gears, and they block you from venturing out, or building.

They really need to have something of value to offer. Something you can't get anywhere else. Like unique enemies that drop unique or rare loot. Or maybe special rifts spawn, and you need to go out to find them for loot. Just, some sort of benefit to sticking it out.
I know its a very different game, but Terraria has a lot of events that can really disrupt your activities, but they are typically met with excitement, as they offer new items, and can help with progression. They feel worth while. You can also find items to summon them when you actually need them.

The chat log notifications are also a pretty lame way to announce them. There should be other, more immersive signs of one approaching. SFX, sky color, short bursts of that shifting effect, slowly getting stronger and more frequent, etc.
This is all off the top of my head, but overall, the benefits need to outweigh the annoyance.

[Veil]

(edit)
1. Since writing this post, I got the chance to play on a Multiplayer Server with the more frequent storms, and it's a real chore.
Your entire existence revolves around preparing Food and Bandages to survive storm sanity damage, because
the temporal gear bottoms out and you just take damage the entire time. It's distracting, and isn't fun - even for someone like me
who kills Drifters for sport.

2. The Default setting for Storm frequency should be once every 30 game days.
The Storm choices should be: Off, 15days, 30days, 60days, 120days.

_________________________________________________________________________

Temporal Storms don't bother me at all, I'm a Hunter Class, and outside killing Drifters for sport!

The thing that really REALLY bugs me about storms is, the seasick wavy blurry screen for absolutely no reason!
It greatly affects your ability to use Ranged weapons and Spears too...

Vintage Story need to add a Jonus Facemask slot item to wear that cuts the seasick wavy screen out, and gives you a
"Jonus Vision" green tint to the screen instead. Something players can create in the early-ish to mid-game,
out of Jonus Basics, Metal Plates, Glass, etc. No Cupronickel ingots!

Edited October 5, 2024 by Veil

[LoveWyrm]

It just needs to be reversed. Make temporal storms (which aren't storms anyway it's just a global effect) an opportunity to invade the rust world for goodies via special, timed rifts.

After all, the drifters come from there and they got all that cool stuff.

So, you enter the timed rift, the rust world is the same as the real world. But everyone inside it gets a spooky rust world name over their head instead of their given name. This name could be hash based or something ,whatever it should just somehow be permanent for that session. Chatting via text would also speak in a completely different language.

 

The ones who do not step into rifts to invade the rust world, see the ones who do as some sort of alternate, ghostly form, and they cannot understand the language of the ones inside, but they can hear them, they also see the rust world names. This is of course just for flavor.

 

Anyway, the voxels of the realworld and rust world are the same, so the goodies in the rust world are not voxel based, but free standing entities that can be stood in. If you stand in it, depending on the flavor of the goodie, you get your armor repaired, you can breathe underwater  for a few days, your items get repaired, one of your temporal gears manifests as a 'true' temporal gear and can be plugged into machinery and generates a small amount of power/wind (enough to turn a quern at a slow but steady pace, maybe), maybe you can jump higher for a while, maybe you get angel wings for a while that act as a better glider, whatever.

 

 

And for everyone who isn't going into the rifts, they are stuck in a world that is shrouded in an unnatural darkness and a MILD rust warping effect makes it easier for normal rifts, which still spawn, to spit out drifters).

All permanent and held lightsources have half their strength, all placed torches get snuffed (but not burned out), and that's for mild storms, medium and heavy ones could have further effects. Ores and metals in your pockets heat up (to a point where they're too hot but not smelting on their own).

Things in molds don't cool down. Hailstorms in the darkness. Super low gravity, super high gravity, whatever.

Something that's a BIT annoying but also kind of moody, and the rust world of course has the standard current temporal storm effects.

I think I'd like that more than the current pop up diorama that you gotta sit out, and instead venture into the rust world if you are daring for cool stuff.

 

P.S.: The timed rifts trap you inside and you can only get out via death (the rift you enter in acts as your respawn point for 'respawn radius' calculations. Or by sacrificing a temporal gear, which would not restore stability but get you out of rust world and back to where you entered it.

Edited May 11, 2025 by LoveWyrm

[Rat Doctor]

And then there’s me, annoyed by the temporal monsters, rifts, and all that from the moment I started playing. It breaks the flow of the game, doesn’t make much sense, adds nothing interesting, is just incredibly annoying, and isn’t scary at all.

[Broccoli Clock]

Scary? Nope, not for me, but then I find absolutely no game scary. I'm bemused by the whole horror/reaction genre on YT. It's a game, it's programmed, it's entirely predictable, it's not scary in the slightest, but then that's just me I suppose. I don't find horror films scary either. After all it's just melodramatic screams and lots of fake blood, if I wanted that I could just have sex...

Annoying? Sort of, I mean it really depends. If you are time poor and don't want to waste 10 minutes sitting in your mud shack then sure it can be annoying but start extending that logic and it can also cover "why have mobs at all, they are just annoying". I leave storms on because "that's the way the world is meant to be". I'm not gatekeeping here, turn storms off, turn mobs off, hell go and turn temporal stability completely off, you do you, but I wouldn't find much enjoyment in that, you are as well playing creative at that point.

[Aksha]

3 hours ago, Rat Doctor said:

And then there’s me, annoyed by the temporal monsters, rifts, and all that from the moment I started playing. It breaks the flow of the game, doesn’t make much sense, adds nothing interesting, is just incredibly annoying, and isn’t scary at all.

"De gustibus non est disputandum", as the ancient Romans said. Personally, I love the visual effects during temporal storms. From my first days playing, I've been building a trap shelter where I can farm loot from drifters in comfort and relative safety with a simple stone spear... and at the same time admire the gears rotating in the sky.
In essence, a primitive shelter-trap can be quickly constructed even while traveling, during the time between the first warning and the storm. The simplest shelter is a vertical hole the height of a seraph, topped with a block of earth. It takes half a minute to dig, and it's perfectly safe, just boring.))))

But the settings offer a variety of options to completely disable thunderstorms or tone them down; there's even a "Homo Sapiens" game mode without thunderstorms, temporal instability, or drifters. I don't get it, isn't that enough?

There's been an idea floated here about a "Rust" dimension that can be accessed through rifts, just as drifters from there come to us. I find that idea very interesting.))))

Edited December 12, 2025 by Aksha

[LadyWYT]

4 hours ago, Broccoli Clock said:

I'm not gatekeeping here, turn storms off, turn mobs off, hell go and turn temporal stability completely off, you do you, but I wouldn't find much enjoyment in that, you are as well playing creative at that point.

I wouldn't say creative, as much as I would say it's more just the other block game, but with a couple extra steps and a different artstyle. If that's the way someone really wants to play, that's totally fine! But it's worth bearing in mind that Vintage Story does have a specific story to tell, in a specific setting; the temporal stuff is one of the things that helps set it apart from the competition. And in regards to the other block game, one common criticism is that there's nothing in that game that actually poses a threat to the player.

 

4 hours ago, Broccoli Clock said:

Annoying? Sort of, I mean it really depends. If you are time poor and don't want to waste 10 minutes sitting in your mud shack then sure it can be annoying but start extending that logic and it can also cover "why have mobs at all, they are just annoying". I leave storms on because "that's the way the world is meant to be".

Pretty much. There's quite a lot that can be done indoors in relative safety as well during temporal storms; collecting gravel prior to the storm and panning it during will net a decent bit of copper to work with after, for example.

 

4 hours ago, Aksha said:

But the settings offer a variety of options to completely disable thunderstorms or tone them down

There's also an option to just sleep through them, which is useful if one enjoys the atmosphere but doesn't always want to deal with every storm.

[Loosebearings]

On 7/29/2024 at 9:27 PM, Zane Mordien said:

Temporal Storms need some variety but the concept is good for me.

I feel that the whole temporal mechanic needs a reason for the player to interact with it. Be it a reward or something else the devs can come up with.

Right now it only exists to make the game harder, but for most it's by the enemies and storms being something annoying that you want to avoid instead of being a satisfying challenge to overcome.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

3 hours ago, Loosebearings said:

I feel that the whole temporal mechanic needs a reason for the player to interact with it. Be it a reward or something else the devs can come up with.

Right now it only exists to make the game harder, but for most it's by the enemies and storms being something annoying that you want to avoid instead of being a satisfying challenge to overcome.

So should the devs remove the butterflies then? They serve no purpose other than the fact that Saraty loves butterflies so Tyron added them. Or every other non-essential block like the ferns and other plants that are just decoration or cheap fuel, should those be removed because there's no reason for the player to interact with them?

I'm just trying to understand how the whole "it needs a reason for the player to interact with it" thing makes sense. Do players need a reason to interact with rain clouds and hail for them to exist? Like, developing the world atmosphere to make a believable story and providing a significant obstacle the player has to plan around isn't enough reason for Temporal Storms to exist??

Edited December 12, 2025 by Teh Pizza Lady

[Teh Pizza Lady]

4 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

But it's worth bearing in mind that Vintage Story does have a specific story to tell

it's almost like it's in the name or something...

[Maelstrom]

9 hours ago, Broccoli Clock said:

I don't find horror films scary either. After all it's just melodramatic screams and lots of fake blood

There's a difference between fright and horror.  Horror can have fear associated with it, but that would be more from thinking through the implection of the horrifying event or scene.  I will point you to two excellent horror films that have little if any blood and not very much screaming.  Alien and Poltergeist.   Neither are screaming slasher fear mongers, but the build a sense of dread in the way that Bram Stoker or Mary Shelley did in their classic horror works.

 

[LadyWYT]

18 minutes ago, Maelstrom said:

There's a difference between fright and horror.  Horror can have fear associated with it, but that would be more from thinking through the implection of the horrifying event or scene.  I will point you to two excellent horror films that have little if any blood and not very much screaming.  Alien and Poltergeist.   Neither are screaming slasher fear mongers, but the build a sense of dread in the way that Bram Stoker or Mary Shelley did in their classic horror works.

 

In the videogame category, there's also Subnautica. It has little, if any, blood, and no gore. Aside from perhaps a couple of somewhat colorful ways the main character can die, there's not really any violent animations either. With one exception, all of the creatures in the game behave like actual animals. However, the game is considered a "horror" game due to the excellent atmosphere present in the world. Dark environments are legitimately dark, and some places in the game are very claustrophobic and easy to drown in. The creature and plant designs are familiar enough to be believable, but esoteric enough in sound and appearance that the player doesn't quite know what to expect from some of them either at first sight.

[Zane Mordien]

5 hours ago, Loosebearings said:

I feel that the whole temporal mechanic needs a reason for the player to interact with it. Be it a reward or something else the devs can come up with.

Right now it only exists to make the game harder, but for most it's by the enemies and storms being something annoying that you want to avoid instead of being a satisfying challenge to overcome.

I made this post prior to 1.20. Before bowtorns and shivers. The temporal storms were too easy when you figured out to just run around and kill drifters with spears. They needed an overhaul.

Nowadays the storms are a lot harder. I think they are too hard for what they are worth. To me they add nothing but a time out to be bored unless I build a cheese factory of some sort. I don't feel any horror.

The lore is that you cannot die, so basically the game expects you to die multiple times and thats fine. I personally don't like dying over and over to a teir 4 shiver or bowtorn in a temporal storm so I don't care for that mechanic.

1 hour ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

should the devs remove the butterflies then?

Actually yes, they just sit in the water most of the time and flap around helplessly. 

 

1 hour ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

I'm just trying to understand how the whole "it needs a reason for the player to interact with it" thing makes sense.

It's a game and one of the major mechanics of the game is a time out. You can argue it until your fingers fall off, but thats what it is to me. 

[Loosebearings]

9 hours ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

So should the devs remove the butterflies then?

Butterflies aren't annoying

[TFT]

1 hour ago, Loosebearings said:

I feel that the whole temporal mechanic needs a reason for the player to interact with it. Be it a reward or something else the devs can come up with.

Right now it only exists to make the game harder, but for most it's by the enemies and storms being something annoying that you want to avoid instead of being a satisfying challenge to overcome.

It needs an overhaul at some point. It wasn't so bad when all we had were drifters and the worst you could call it was an undercooked work in progress. They were dangerous but you had enough space and could kite them around with practice. Then your reward was temporal gears from the double headed drifters you could only get from storms. Now we have a very deadly ranged mob and a very fast mob to make that near impossible. Nothing wrong with changing up the "meta" since it was too easy as Zane and others said, but it's too far in the other direction where the chance of getting a temporal gear is not worth it when you pay for it in an equivalent amount of respawns and broken armor such that the actual reward for surviving your timeout is not losing either of those things. Of course you can build an arena of fenceposts and dirt blocks so you're only dealing with drifters (assuming your storm spawns them), but now you're just back to where we were a few versions ago.

I really like the idea of temporal storms and lore justifies its addition, but I am not so delusional as to gaslight myself to think it's perfect and without flaw, or that it's feature complete and nothing can be changed in this early access game. It's silly to be able to run around outside without a care in the world like before, but being confined to a closet for 10 minutes isn't exactly riveting gameplay and mass logoffs in multiplayer servers is a common occurrence. A mod like Weather The Storm at least lets you use the functions of your house and do more than pan without a tier 4 drifter spawning up your ass.

12 hours ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

So should the devs remove the butterflies then? They serve no purpose other than the fact that Saraty loves butterflies so Tyron added them. Or every other non-essential block like the ferns and other plants that are just decoration or cheap fuel, should those be removed because there's no reason for the player to interact with them?

I'm just trying to understand how the whole "it needs a reason for the player to interact with it" thing makes sense. Do players need a reason to interact with rain clouds and hail for them to exist? Like, developing the world atmosphere to make a believable story and providing a significant obstacle the player has to plan around isn't enough reason for Temporal Storms to exist??

TL;DR straw man argument.

[Tabbot95]

On 9/27/2024 at 3:53 PM, Ketoth said:

Tyron has mentioned actual villages being planned for sometime in the future more than once though, even that he'd like for you to be able to live as a trader, going between them and buying/selling items for profit.

 

I think the problems with storms and rifts more generally will be exacerbated by villages & villagers

[hjvtdev]

I don't actually mind the temporal storms. On the other hand, the god damn world temporal stability is a completely pointless nuisance. Oh, that nice meadow by the lake? Rifts spawn there all the time for no apparent reason.

And it is not a thing you can disable without disabling sanity mechanics entirely, which makes caving a breeze.

Edited December 18, 2025 by hjvtdev

[Zane Mordien]

19 hours ago, hjvtdev said:

Oh, that nice meadow by the lake? Rifts spawn there all the time for no apparent reason.

Rifts are random, so anywhere is the same. Now if it is temporally unstable near the lake and you can't build your base there, then yes that is a pain for trying to find the perfect place for your base. For me there are no shortage of interesting places to build so I don't have this issue, but I understand why it can be frustrating if you have a place in mind.

[CastIronFabric]

On 7/8/2024 at 7:28 PM, LadyWYT said:

Welcome to the forums! Out of curiosity, have you tried the Homo Sapiens game mode? It removes the temporality mechanic, traders, and the rest of the lore stuff in favor of a pure survival experience. You could probably pair it with the Outlaws mod(and others) to have a more "realistic" survival experience without the supernatural elements.

Personally, I've found the temporal mechanics an interesting take on the survival/adventure genres, as it's not quite science fiction, but it's not resorting to the "magic" excuse that a lot of games tend to. And while the drifters and automatons are creepy, the game doesn't feel like it really delves into horror territory. A lot is left up to your imagination, and the pieces of lore that do exist have to be found and pieced together by the player themselves.

As for the drifters...they do annoy me, but they've become oddly endearing as well. I light my base fairly well, so they don't tend to spawn indoors, and the way the rift activity works means that they don't always spawn at night either. Much less hassle to get things done when it's dark out.

I'd also say don't be shy about using console commands when needed or modding the game to fit your personal taste. The game was built with that in mind.

I do not think the solution to 'no temporal storms' is 'not having any ruins, traders, translocators'. 

The solution is just to turn off that option in the settings.