Temporal storms... just... why?

[LadyWYT]

1 minute ago, sushieater said:

There are 2.5 options for temporal storms - skip them (sleep / hunker down in tiny space and hope for best), cheese/exploit things as far as possible, resorting to some form of killbox/spawn manipulation (that requires FAR more game mechanics knowledge than 99% of the players have) or being ok with dying quite a lot.

There is also just going out and fighting--no cheese or exploits needed. I do this frequently, and the general difficulty I play is Standard. As long as the player has appropriate gear and decent skill, they shouldn't be dying. When seriously wounded, that is the time the player needs to step inside and heal themselves, before continuing to fight, or just remain indoors in safety if they cannot heal for some reason. If the player keeps trying to fight in the storm despite being at low health, then whatever happens is on them.

[pigfood]

53 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

There is also just going out and fighting--no cheese or exploits needed. I do this frequently, and the general difficulty I play is Standard. As long as the player has appropriate gear and decent skill, they shouldn't be dying.

Good for you that you can do this. However, none of the content creators that I've watched can accomplish the same.

There is a lot of VS video/play-through content out there these days. Can you point to anyone, who accomplished the same on the record? The only thing I'm seeing is a lot of deaths.

\\

I have no idea, what kind of magic you are employing. But generally, there is an either/or choice between good damage reduction and mobility. If you have insufficient mobility, you will get killed sooner or later.

Edited December 30, 2025 by sushieater

[LadyWYT]

22 minutes ago, sushieater said:

Good for you that you can do this. However, none of the content creators that I've watched can accomplish the same.

There is a lot of VS content out there these days. Can you point to someone, who accomplished the same?

My friend can, as we often play together. I would wager that most forum veterans have accomplished it at least once, and players who are inclined toward combat probably manage it just fine if they choose to fight.

Now if you're asking for specific examples from content creators on social media, those you are not going to get from me, as I don't watch that kind of content save for once in a blue moon. For the most part, I prefer to play the game myself, not watch other people play it for me.  The occasional video I do watch is going to be from a creator/series that is focused on building, so there's obviously not going to be a focus on combat. What content is included in the video also depends heavily on what happened during recording; there's a lot that gets cut from the final edit, as while it might have been fun gameplay it's not really entertaining to watch.

[LadyWYT]

41 minutes ago, sushieater said:

I have no idea, what kind of magic you are employing. But generally, there is an either/or choice between good damage reduction and mobility. If you have insufficient mobility, you will get killed sooner or later.

For better context, the key to survival in VS combat is knowing your limits and keeping an eye on your health. My general strategy for temporal storms is to never fight unless I have tier 2 equipment, minimum, though tier 3+ is definitely preferred. I make sure that I have food and healing items available indoors, so I can step inside as needed to eat and heal. Aside from that, it's just a matter of keeping an eye on my health and retreating to safety when it starts falling into the 25-50%(also depends on what kind of armor I have), as well as ensuring I don't stray too far from base.

The general results are some loot at the storm's end, as well as having fun seeing how many monsters I can kill. Once in a while I do miscalculate and die, but it's not very often. The last time it happened I got jumped by three high tier shivers on my doorstep before I could scramble inside.  Obviously, this isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea, but to each their own.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

41 minutes ago, sushieater said:

However, none of the content creators that I've watched can accomplish the same.

Content Creators are just the new gaming journalists imo. Their opinion is crafted to meet a very specific need: follower engagement. They will do or say anything to keep the views going. They can be trusted about as far as you can throw them, which... isn't very far with some of them.

And to anyone reading this who is a content creator, yes this is my candid opinion of you at least until I know enough about you to change my mind. There are very few who I trust enough to actually consider their opinions about games as valid. Why? Because they actually care about the games that they play enough to learn how to play them and get good on stream, instead of just playing easy games to seem like they're a good gamer to drive up follower numbers and view counts.

1 minute ago, LadyWYT said:

My general strategy for temporal storms is to never fight unless I have tier 2 equipment, minimum, though tier 3+ is definitely preferred. I make sure that I have food and healing items available indoors, so I can step inside as needed to eat and heal. Aside from that, it's just a matter of keeping an eye on my health and retreating to safety when it starts falling into the 25-50%(also depends on what kind of armor I have), as well as ensuring I don't stray too far from base.

The general results are some loot at the storm's end, as well as having fun seeing how many monsters I can kill.

My storm strategy is to sit in the outhouse and let the monsters get distracted with me while my friends beat them up unopposed. Then when the storm is over I exit and start looting.

[Zane Mordien]

3 hours ago, CastIronFabric said:

comments like this one is a full stop for me, is what I am trying to say given the context of what I say saying. not having it.

I don't even know what this means. In general I think you are trying to discuss this with me like I'm @LadyWYT which I am not. We do not hold the same lore beliefs. 

You have referenced these TV shows. My point is, lore or not, I've spent more hours in this game than I've spent watching those shows, so maybe the devs haven't gotten it all wrong. I don't think the storms are particularly interesting they way they are now and I hope they change, but I know it is futile to try and argue them away. They seem pretty fundamental to how Tyron wants the game to be experienced. 

Don't get stuck on the lore, because ultimately its what the devs want that we get. Lore can be retconed at any time they feel like it.

Edited December 30, 2025 by Zane Mordien

[pigfood]

The thing is, as far as I can tell, 99% of the people besides you won't reliably survive a temporal storm (without hiding). That's not a fun mechanic.

[Zane Mordien]

1 hour ago, sushieater said:

Good for you that you can do this. However, none of the content creators that I've watched can accomplish the same.

There is a lot of VS video/play-through content out there these days. Can you point to anyone, who accomplished the same on the record? The only thing I'm seeing is a lot of deaths.

\\

I have no idea, what kind of magic you are employing. But generally, there is an either/or choice between good damage reduction and mobility. If you have insufficient mobility, you will get killed sooner or later.

The same magic Thorfinn uses to dodge bears in permadeath. 

I feel your pain. Even in my tier 3 armor it isn't worth the effort IMO.

Edited December 30, 2025 by Zane Mordien

[LadyWYT]

9 minutes ago, sushieater said:

99% of the people besides you won't reliably survive a temporal storm (without hiding).

Maybe, but I do think that several players are more capable of surviving the storms than they might realize. Just my opinion here, but I suspect that some players just look at whatever they perceive the meta to be, and then copy that instead of trying out new things/playing the game in a way they enjoy. 

I also don't view hiding as an entirely bad thing. Avoiding combat that one isn't equipped for is smart, as is making sure that there's a clear line of retreat in case the fight takes a turn for the worse. Vintage Story is very much a game where it's quite easy for the player to bite off more than they can chew, whereas other games tend to either warn the player of such scenarios beforehand or otherwise have guardrails to prevent players from getting into those scenarios before they're ready.

[Thorfinn]

GGBeyond used to stream storms, at Wilderness settings, but he quit when the new critters dropped. Rather than spend time trying to figure out how to deal with the new reality, he just shifted to other games that had not recently upped their difficulty. Which kind of reinforces what others have said about content creators being more interested in getting eyeballs than in getting gud.

FWIW, a grove is a fantastic "arena". There's always a tree trunk to hide behind, or to use to scrape off foes so you can meet them 1:1. If you use a "random" pattern rather than simply rows, it also breaks up the pesky diagonals they can use against you. No, you can't get a grove in place for the first storm in the most aggressive settings, but if you go with the fast-growing trees and standard storm settings, it's no problem.  And if you place a lot of 2x2 pits in your grove, you can engineer exits in each corner that enemies cannot pursue if you need to get away to heal. Plus it catches a lot of them, so they don't run off, and it thins the herd. Plus, you look down into a pit and it's only weaklings, you can just leave them alone and go after the ones you really want.

But, really, storms are only there for mid to late game, IMO, when you want to start amassing Jonas parts. Which presumes you want some of the Jonas devices...

Edited December 30, 2025 by Thorfinn

[Zane Mordien]

1 hour ago, Thorfinn said:

GGBeyond used to stream storms, at Wilderness settings, but he quit when the new critters dropped. Rather than spend time trying to figure out how to deal with the new reality, he just shifted to other games that had not recently upped their difficulty. Which kind of reinforces what others have said about content creators being more interested in getting eyeballs than in getting gud.

Is he really in it for the views though? He grinds the game out for 100 episodes and ends up with <100 views per episode. If he was just going for views I think he would stop somewhere around 20 and start something new. He ground through the 7D2D afterlife mod and let's be honest that was brutally hard to watch content. 

[LadyWYT]

40 minutes ago, Zane Mordien said:

Is he really in it for the views though? He grinds the game out for 100 episodes and ends up with <100 views per episode. If he was just going for views I think he would stop somewhere around 20 and start something new. He ground through the 7D2D afterlife mod and let's be honest that was brutally hard to watch content. 

As a general rule, most content creators are going to be after views, but there are some out there that just do whatever they want without worrying about views. In regards to chasing views...there are some things that one would think would be common sense, but simply playing a popular game isn't enough to pull in viewers. The creator in question needs to be interesting to watch, as well as have a relatively high quality video/audio at minimum, especially since the media outlets are so saturated with various creators to watch. That being said, a creator can basically do everything right, and still lose thanks to whatever algorithms are governing what videos/stream actually show up in search results.

I'm not saying that's happening, of course, just that it's something to consider. But I do agree with @Thorfinn and @Teh Pizza Lady, it's not unusual at all for content creators to play games that they can easily excel at, or even edit the footage/stage gameplay to make themselves look more skilled than they actually are.

2 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

FWIW, a grove is a fantastic "arena". There's always a tree trunk to hide behind, or to use to scrape off foes so you can meet them 1:1. If you use a "random" pattern rather than simply rows, it also breaks up the pesky diagonals they can use against you. No, you can't get a grove in place for the first storm in the most aggressive settings, but if you go with the fast-growing trees and standard storm settings, it's no problem.  And if you place a lot of 2x2 pits in your grove, you can engineer exits in each corner that enemies cannot pursue if you need to get away to heal. Plus it catches a lot of them, so they don't run off, and it thins the herd. Plus, you look down into a pit and it's only weaklings, you can just leave them alone and go after the ones you really want.

I don't have a grove or an arena, but I have been mulling over similar concepts of late when it comes to base design. I'm not really one for building traps or exploiting the enemy AI too much, as to me that feels too cheap to be fun, but I have been in some situations that, while they didn't end in disaster, didn't go all that well due to how I designed my buildings. It's a very good idea to have two different entry points, since having just one is just asking for a pile of monsters to loiter. Having some decorative trees and statues can provide cover from bowtorn, while having alleyways and overhangs can help trip up whatever is trying to chase you. Likewise, having some arrow slits or other ranged vantage points is good for softening up enemies from a distance.

As a side note, I've also noticed that while enemies are capable of climbing up ladders, they don't seem to understand how to climb down.

[Thorfinn]

56 minutes ago, Zane Mordien said:

Is he really in it for the views though? He grinds the game out for 100 episodes and ends up with <100 views per episode. If he was just going for views I think he would stop somewhere around 20 and start something new. He ground through the 7D2D afterlife mod and let's be honest that was brutally hard to watch content. 

Dunno. I only ever watched a few different streamers and only to see if they had any techniques I could learn. There was one streamer I watched at 25% speed every time he went caving to figure out his mad parkour skilz. The rest of his gameplay was nothing special, so I skipped over it.

I spot check from time to time, but I don't know of any CPs with good, engaging gameplay. There are a lot who make nice looking buildings, and I learned a lot about sneaking a couple months back that I have put to use, but I just don't have the patience to watch anyone who doesn't have the sprint key superglued down. And even then I can't watch at less than 2x except for small bits where I wonder how he did something.

[Broccoli Clock]

Maybe it's just me, but I find fighting outside during a temporal storm to be fine. It's not risk free, of course, and a decent weapon, shield, and armour, along with a stack of heals should see you alright. That said, I don't do it all that often, I've normally built some sort of "horde base" within the first month.

With that said, I wouldn't want to take on a temporal storm underground, that's where my problems lie (heh, well... game related problems at least!), I'm fine with surface stuff but the lack of movement beneath the surface would f*ck with me (and does, quite often).

 

I believe there is some scaling in terms of the enemies, but I've not checked for myself. Something about higher tier enemies being spawned based on how low your sanity is, and as higher tier enemies drop better loot, you can sort of game the storm a little. Not that I've tried that, this is all sort of on the "trust me, bro.." level. I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong..

 

[LadyWYT]

3 hours ago, Broccoli Clock said:

I believe there is some scaling in terms of the enemies, but I've not checked for myself. Something about higher tier enemies being spawned based on how low your sanity is, and as higher tier enemies drop better loot, you can sort of game the storm a little. Not that I've tried that, this is all sort of on the "trust me, bro.." level. I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong..

I'm not going to say you're exactly wrong, as I've not really tested the theory myself, but I don't get the impression that it's correct based on my storm experience. The enemy spawns seem more tied to the strength of the storm itself, as light storms will spawn fewer and heavy storms will spawn more. Storm strength doesn't really seem correlated to enemy strength though, as high tier enemies will still spawn regardless.

Stability level I think operates in a similar fashion, in that once it drops low enough monsters will start spawning nearby, but it doesn't seem to affect what strength of monsters will spawn. In any case, the main reason I don't think it's a way to game the system during a storm, is that it takes a while for stability to drop that low, while it's incredibly easy to restore a good chunk of that stability by killing a single nightmare level monster. At best, you're looking at killing maybe 2-3 monsters per storm, which is going to result in much less loot than you would have gotten just by seeing how high you can make the kill counter go.

3 hours ago, Broccoli Clock said:

With that said, I wouldn't want to take on a temporal storm underground, that's where my problems lie (heh, well... game related problems at least!), I'm fine with surface stuff but the lack of movement beneath the surface would f*ck with me (and does, quite often).

I've not tackled a storm underground, but I've dealt with stability low enough to spawn monsters. It's all fun and games until a trio of nightmare drifters spawn in the tunnel to block the way out. On the surface it wouldn't be much of a concern, but that lack of movement is the real killer.

[Thorfinn]

5 hours ago, Broccoli Clock said:

I believe there is some scaling in terms of the enemies, but I've not checked for myself. Something about higher tier enemies being spawned based on how low your sanity

Don't believe so, at least as of the last time I did a deep dive in the code. The spawning code simply lifted parameters from the .json, and there was nothing in the .json to adjust for stability. That said, it's possible that you get multiple types of spawns -- storm spawns and low stability spawns. I don't recall seeing any indication it was either/or.

[Cryo Stratos]

On 12/30/2025 at 5:08 PM, sushieater said:

I 100% disagree with you. The new enemies are utter f.... you BS. There are 2.5 options for temporal storms - skip them (sleep / hunker down in tiny space and hope for best), cheese/exploit things as far as possible, resorting to some form of killbox/spawn manipulation (that requires FAR more game mechanics knowledge than 99% of the players have) or being ok with dying quite a lot.

If VS didn't have a huge amount customization options and mods, I wouldn't play it. IMO, without mods, on default settings, it's a bad game that I wouldn't recommend to anyone.

Given the current state of things with the new BS enemies, I likely would have stopped playing right away (with default settings). I'm not looking for some '7 Days to Die experience'. 7 days has problematic combat mechanics, but it's light-years ahead of the exceptionally poor VS combat.

\\

For anyone claiming temporal storms are remotely reasonable without EXTREME amounts of cheese/game mechanics exploits - prove it. I've watched a lot VS content and none of the 'professional' gamers can do it.

I agree with that opinion. Thankfully, much can be tinkered in the game, I hope more will be possible to customise in the future.

[MKMoose]

7 hours ago, Broccoli Clock said:

I believe there is some scaling in terms of the enemies, but I've not checked for myself. Something about higher tier enemies being spawned based on how low your sanity is, and as higher tier enemies drop better loot, you can sort of game the storm a little. Not that I've tried that, this is all sort of on the "trust me, bro.." level. I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong..

1 hour ago, Thorfinn said:

Don't believe so, at least as of the last time I did a deep dive in the code. The spawning code simply lifted parameters from the .json, and there was nothing in the .json to adjust for stability. That said, it's possible that you get multiple types of spawns -- storm spawns and low stability spawns. I don't recall seeing any indication it was either/or.

Both storms and low stability do seem to increase the tier of spawned monsters.

There are two separate spawning mechanisms:

1. The base mechanism that works at all times and is responsible for spawns on the surface from rifts as well as for underground monsters (a bunch of spawn conditions are in this method, tier increase is in this method). Monster tier is only affected when below 0.25 stability, or during heavy storms (light and medium storms have practically no effect). It actually replaces a spawned monster with a monster of the same or higher tier, which allows them to partially circumvent their spawn conditions (e.g. normally only surface rotbeasts can spawn on the surface, and at low stability they can be replaced with higher-tier monsters that can't normally spawn at these Y levels, but all the conditions for the initial spawn like light level and proximity to rifts still apply). I'm not sure how much this mechanism matters during storms, frankly.
2. The special system that causes extra spawns during storms while ignoring regular spawn conditions and is the only way for double-headed drifters and deepsplit shivers to spawn (mostly defined in this method). All tiers of monsters can spawn at any storm strength, and stronger storms only increase the chances to spawn T4 ones. Additionally, higher storm strength increases the maximum number of enemies that can be present at the same time, as mentioned by @LadyWYT. Additional rare spawns (double-headed drifters and deepsplit shivers) have a small chance to replace T3 and T4 spawns, and as far as I can tell at most one of each is allowed to appear during a single storm. Both of the maximum spawn counts apply per-player, not on the entire server.

And keep in mind that this is mostly just me reading the code, and there's always a chance that I misread something, so I wouldn't mind to hear if any other experimental results confirm or contradict it.

 

Other notes:

• there's actually at least three spawning systems and not two, because there's one for the second story location as well, which kinda makes me want to ask the devs some questions,
• it seems that it's only possible to get at most two rare spawns per storm, and they have a 40% chance to drop a Jonas part or sub-assembly, which yields a very optimistic average of 0.8 Jonas components per storm per player assuming each player gets both rare spawns (I've only had one in three storms so far, which makes storms seem like an extremely inefficient source of Jonas components - bellhead and stilt shivers that spawn deep underground can at least be fought at any time, which is more convenient than occasional storms),
• everything I've found while looking through the code suggests that gearfoot bowtorn cannot spawn at all as of now, so I'd be curious to know if any of you have seen one recently.

Edited December 31, 2025 by MKMoose
Clarify that the maximum counts for spawns are per-player.

[LadyWYT]

12 minutes ago, MKMoose said:

Additional rare spawns (double-headed drifters and deepsplit shivers) have a small chance to replace T3 and T4 spawns, and as far as I can tell at most one of each is allowed to appear during a single storm.

It's possible to have more than one deepslit shiver or double-headed drifter spawn in a single storm, but it's a rare occurrence. Most of the time, you'll only end up getting one per storm.

I will also note that it's possible to find at least one deepslit shiver outside of a temporal storm, but that's a special case.

15 minutes ago, MKMoose said:

it seems that it's only possible to get at most two rare spawns per storm, and they have a 40% chance to drop a Jonas part or sub-assembly, which yields a very optimistic average of 0.8 Jonas components per storm assuming you get both rare spawns (I've only had one in three storms so far, which makes storms seem like an extremely inefficient source of Jonas components - bellhead and stilt shivers that spawn deep underground can at least be fought at any time, which is more convenient than occasional storms),

Two is the highest that I've seen for sure, but I want to say that I've been able to obtain more Jonas parts than two from a single storm, at least in multiplayer. In multiplayer, however, you have the advantage of friends to help you mow down the monsters, so the chances of finding the special ones are likely much higher since more monsters are spawning in general(thanks to the higher kill rate).

As for finding Jonas parts, I would still consider temporal storms the better method to obtain them rather than the underground, simply because it's much easier to fight in the open spaces on the surface than it is in the cramped underground conditions. Jonas parts in general, I think, are supposed to be rather difficult to come by regardless of how one obtains them.

21 minutes ago, MKMoose said:

everything I've found while looking through the code suggests that gearfoot bowtorn cannot spawn at all as of now, so I'd be curious to know if any of you have seen one recently.

I've never seen one outside of creative mode. To my knowledge, they don't spawn in storms, as I've never seen one there and my friend hasn't mentioned seeing one either the times he's cleaned out the post-storm bowtorn herds with the admin blade(thankfully, such instances don't seem to happen anymore). I've not poked around in the deep underground that much, but the underground in general doesn't seem like the best place to find bowtorn in general.

My guess would be that you might find one wandering around in a certain story location, but it's also possible that that particular enemy might not be implemented at the present time. Or perhaps it was meant to be able to spawn, but is currently bugged, similar to how there was a certain mushroom that was in the code but unable to actually spawn during worldgen.

[MKMoose]

4 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

I will also note that it's possible to find at least one deepslit shiver outside of a temporal storm, but that's a special case.

4 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

My guess would be that you might find [a gearfoot bowtorn] wandering around in a certain story location, but it's also possible that that particular enemy might not be implemented at the present time. Or perhaps it was meant to be able to spawn, but is currently bugged, similar to how there was a certain mushroom that was in the code but unable to actually spawn during worldgen.

Could you clarify which story location you mean? I've seen a stilt shiver in the first location of chapter 2, so I'd imagine it could be this one?

I'm not sure how spawns are defined in story locations, but either way gearfoots don't seem to appear anywhere normally, which might warrant a bug report. The double-headed drifter, deepsplit shiver and the gearfoot bowtorn cannot spawn using the regular system, but rare spawns during storms don't include the gearfoot bowtorn:

rareSpawns: {
	variants: [ {
		code: "drifter-double-headed",
		groupCode: "boss",
		chancePerStorm: 1
	}, {
		code: "shiver-deepsplit",
		groupCode: "boss",
		chancePerStorm: 1
	}]
}

 

6 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

It's possible to have more than one deepslit shiver or double-headed drifter spawn in a single storm, but it's a rare occurrence. Most of the time, you'll only end up getting one per storm.

6 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

Two is the highest that I've seen for sure, but I want to say that I've been able to obtain more Jonas parts than two from a single storm, at least in multiplayer. In multiplayer, however, you have the advantage of friends to help you mow down the monsters, so the chances of finding the special ones are likely much higher since more monsters are spawning in general(thanks to the higher kill rate).

Ah, I forgot to note that the limit of one of each rare spawn applies separately for each player (with a bunch of extra caveats that also might benefit from a bug report, but that's another matter). I've edited in a clarification.

In multiplayer, spawning frequency seems to be effectively multiplied by the number of players, but the maximum count is evaluated separately when trying to spawn monsters for each player, which makes multiple rare spawns possible if the players are far enough away. The chancePerStorm property in the JSON for rare spawns above defines the maximum quantity of each per player. I'd be curious if you've also seen more than one double-headed drifter or deepsplit shiver when playing solo or when separated from other players (at minimum ~50 blocks apart) throughout the entire storm's duration.

[LadyWYT]

2 hours ago, MKMoose said:

Could you clarify which story location you mean? I've seen a stilt shiver in the first location of chapter 2, so I'd imagine it could be this one?

Spoiler

The special shiver in the Lazaret is actually a deepslit shiver. I've not seen a stilt shiver spawn there, though I have seen stilts down near the mantle.

The location I was referring to earlier is the Devastation. It's a very large area, and capable of spawning tier 3 enemies at least. I don't recall seeing any nightmare enemies or special monsters there, but I wouldn't rule it out either. 

 

2 hours ago, MKMoose said:

I'm not sure how spawns are defined in story locations

To my knowledge, the spawns for story locations are static, save for the latter location mentioned above.  It's why there are always certain monsters in specific places, and why locust spawners in story locations don't spawn hordes of the mechanical menaces. I'm guessing that most story locations are built this way in order to help better illustrate the narrative for that location, while still keeping the challenge for the player reasonable.

 

2 hours ago, MKMoose said:

I'd be curious if you've also seen more than one double-headed drifter or deepsplit shiver when playing solo or when separated from other players (at minimum ~50 blocks apart) throughout the entire storm's duration.

I'm glad you asked, because I was just fixing to note that before getting to this question. I'm certain that I've seen more than one of those special enemies in a storm, though I would note that only one of each seems to exist at any given time. That is, you can encounter a deepslit shiver and a double-headed drifter at the same time, but not two of the same at once. However, the chances of getting more than one per storm in singleplayer are rather low, and the chances of seeing two specials at once lower than that. As for the chances of getting more than two per storm...I don't think that's even possible in the vanilla game.

After seeing that code snippet though I'm going to need to pay more attention to what those shivers are labeled as in the game. I swear the nameplate says "deepslit", but if they're marked as "deepsplit" in the code then perhaps there's a typo that needs reporting.

Edited December 31, 2025 by LadyWYT

[MKMoose]

3 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

I'm certain that I've seen more than one of those special enemies in a storm, though I would note that only one of each seems to exist at any given time. That is, you can encounter a deepslit shiver and a double-headed drifter at the same time, but not two of the same at once. However, the chances of getting more than one per storm in singleplayer are rather low, and the chances of seeing two specials at once lower than that. As for the chances of getting more than two per storm...I don't think that's even possible in the vanilla game.

Yeah, that seems consistent with the source code, appreciate it.

 

3 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

The special shiver [...] is actually a deepslit shiver.

3 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

After seeing that code snippet though I'm going to need to pay more attention to what those shivers are labeled as in the game. I swear the nameplate says "deepslit", but if they're marked as "deepsplit" in the code then perhaps there's a typo that needs reporting.

Just checked, I probably just misremembered something with that stilt shiver. And I'm pretty sure that the other one is consistently referred to as "deepsplit" everywhere. Though "deepslit" admittedly rolls of the tongue better, I think "deepsplit" makes a lot of sense if you compare its appearance with other shivers. Name and spawner in the story location in the screenshot below, but for appearance comparison I'd recommend just jumping into creative and spawning a few shivers.

Spoiler

 

3 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

It's a very large area, and capable of spawning tier 3 enemies at least. I don't recall seeing any nightmare enemies or special monsters there, but I wouldn't rule it out either. 

Additional spawns for this area are implemented mainly in this method, if you're interested, and the JSON data is in assets/survival/config/mobextraspawns.json (alongside storm spawns), so I don't think a gearfoot can be found there. We have Vintage Story's bigfoot now, it seems. 

Spoiler

devastationAreaSpawns: { 
	quantities: {
		drifter: 1,
		shiver: 2,
		bowtorn: 2,
	},
	variantGroups: {
		drifter: ["drifter-tainted", "drifter-corrupt"],
		shiver: ["shiver-tainted", "shiver-corrupt"],
		bowtorn: ["bowtorn-tainted", "bowtorn-corrupt"]
	},
}

 

6 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

As for finding Jonas parts, I would still consider temporal storms the better method to obtain them rather than the underground, simply because it's much easier to fight in the open spaces on the surface than it is in the cramped underground conditions. Jonas parts in general, I think, are supposed to be rather difficult to come by regardless of how one obtains them.

I would disagree that finding Jonas components underground is less optimal. Sure, combat may be more difficult (I don't know if I even agree with that, to be honest), but at least you can find more than two rare spawns per storm. Either way, while I can appreciate that they are supposed to be difficult to come by, it is also worth mentioning that:

• low drop rates tend to encourage tedious grinding and cheesing,
• people don't complain about the drop rates too much probably because a lot of Jonas components can be found in story locations to kickstart the collection process and sometimes provide all the components that the player may be looking for, and they just aren't particularly useful as of now,
• any consumable items risk being completely impractical with drop rates this low - the base return teleporter takes 8 Jonas components, not even counting the other resources, which would take 10 storms assuming the very optimistic 0.8 average, and assuming you only get the components you need, which would be a frankly somewhat absurd investment even if the reward was much better.

While they aren't a priority as of now, I think they will have to be adjusted in some ways whenever more Jonas tech gets added.

Edited January 1 by MKMoose

[LadyWYT]

25 minutes ago, MKMoose said:

Though "deepslit" admittedly rolls of the tongue better, I think "deepsplit" makes a lot of sense if you compare its appearance with other shivers.

It's also very similar to another term that also rolls off the tongue easily--a term that I won't be repeating here, but it aptly describes the situation the player finds themselves in when they encounter one of these things. 

 

27 minutes ago, MKMoose said:

low drop rates tend to encourage tedious grinding and cheesing

I do agree here, but a drop rate that is too high can also make the item feel rather cheap. Diamonds in the other block game suffer from this problem; they're very valuable and the first set of diamond gear the player acquires feels awesome...until the player figures out just how easy it is to acquire diamonds en masse.

 

31 minutes ago, MKMoose said:

people don't complain about the drop rates too much probably because a lot of Jonas components can be found in story locations to kickstart the collection process and sometimes provide all the components that the player may be looking for, and they just aren't particularly useful as of now,

Also agreed. I'm not even sure if most players are really aware of what they can craft with the Jonas parts. 

 

32 minutes ago, MKMoose said:

any consumable items risk being completely impractical with drop rates this low - the base return teleporter takes 8 Jonas components, not even counting the other resources, which would take 10 storms assuming the very optimistic 0.8 average, and assuming you only get the components you need, which would be a frankly somewhat absurd investment even if the reward was much better.

That is a risk, for sure, but to use the base return teleporter as an example I'm not sure that kind of consumable is meant to be used frequently. That item in particular is best used for an expedition to the tropics or other very long exploration mission where you don't want to have to travel all the way back home. The drawback, of course, is that the item is expensive and requires the player to travel on foot, but if it's a trip you're only going to make once or twice it's not as big of a deal.

 

38 minutes ago, MKMoose said:

While they aren't a priority as of now, I think they will have to be adjusted in some ways whenever more Jonas tech gets added.

Also agreed. I think the temporal gear drop rate is probably fine, but the Jonas parts will probably need to have the drop rates tweaked, or otherwise have certain NPCs sell for, as a certain gem-obsessed bear would say, a "small fee".

[Broccoli Clock]

I said..

21 hours ago, Broccoli Clock said:

 I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong..

..and I got...

17 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

I'm not going to say you're exactly wrong..

15 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

Don't believe so..

14 hours ago, MKMoose said:

Both storms and low stability do seem to increase the tier of spawned monsters.

.. thanks guys! 

 

Also, @MKMoose/@LadyWYT very decent little deep dive discussion there. Liking it..

 

[Thorfinn]

On 12/31/2025 at 1:21 PM, MKMoose said:

Both storms and low stability do seem to increase the tier of spawned monsters.

OK, but both systems are not at play at the same time, are they? IOW, do a storm's foes scale by your instability? I think that was the question.