So I increased the difficulty...

[LadyWYT]

Typically I play on the standard Balanced setup, but this time I increased the hunger and food spoilage rate a bit, in return for a small boost to health. I thought it would be a nice little challenge with a small benefit to go with it, without being too frustrating.

Oh boy did the game decide otherwise. Spawn into the world, and there's nothing but granite for miles it seems when it comes to the stone type. Fewer food options than normal, fewer surface copper spots than normal, and quite a bit of jagged terrain to make navigation difficult. Wolves outside my camp, there's a shiver somewhere close to my basement clicking around. The main positives are there are sheep nearby to corral, a surface tin deposit, a treasure hunter within reasonable distance, and several meteors.

I actually don't mind the granite maps that much; they're fun to play, so even if I end up rerolling I'll probably keep this map for tinkering with later. How's everyone else's adventures going so far in the update?

[Hall Effect]

Im restarting on a map, which has a lovely spawn. Seed: 285651055

There is an open area directly nearby. Its quiet an easy start. My goal is to build a farm.

[Echo Weaver]

1 hour ago, Hall Effect said:

Im restarting on a map, which has a lovely spawn. Seed: 285651055

There is an open area directly nearby. Its quiet an easy start. My goal is to build a farm.

I will probably check out your seed! I place high value on a beautiful spawn point. I'm not sure how ready I am to abandon my 1.19 game, which is hitting its second winter and is my first solo game. The struggle is real...

[Vratislav]

17 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

nothing but granite for miles it seems when it comes to the stone type.

Well, well, i like that such granite setup is not as uncommon. Whereas my longtime world depends on some mods that haven't been updated yet, I have tried new roll with Plains and Valleys mod and small additional challenges like landslides and cave-ins... and received Andesite only landscape with poor soil for thousand blocks. After random death and rage quit, the next roll was... peridotite landscape (there was sone claystone, but not in direction I went to explore). I have found some medium soil patch sized as a clay deposit after while, so maybe it is worth to settle there; but surely, which other funny stone may come around spawn?

(Maybe the P&V has some issues with world height actually, but I'd prefer calmer terrain. I know i don't deserve it probably  )

[Thorfinn]

Spent 2 days running through rugged gravel. Very few non-gravel spots. Managed to find enough berries to avoid starving but only enough reeds to make 1 handbasket. Dawn of day 3, I see a possible promising site. Turns out to be a huge plains and by noon, I have one linen sack and 3 handbaskets. Huge forest area with the large maples, walnuts and oaks.

By late afternoon, I have just shy of a full stack of flax seeds and spelt seeds, a half stack of rye seeds and onion seeds, a half dozen parsnips,  and curiously, no turnips. I see a huge mountain with what looks like limestone, granite and bauxite. What I thought was granite turned out to be halite. The mountain is topped by glacier ice, so no need for window or greenhouse glass, and it's not only a great place for a windmill, I can kind of pick out how to run a path up there. At the foot of the mountain is a huge, shallow lake, perfect for building a garden, which I do. On the other side of the lake is a huge stand of cattails -- several hundred, easily.

Come morning, garden done, I thought I'd start a charcoal pit, and stumble across copper nuggets at the entrance to a cave. Calm, so decided to take a look-see. Copper, tin and deep copper. Find another cavern with copper nuggets at the top. Still calm. Surface copper, black coal, fire clay, and I think iron. While trying to get a better look. my fingers end up on the wrong keys, and instead of backing up, I sidestep into a deep, deep hole.

Oh, well. Wonder what the next world will look like.

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, Thorfinn said:

Spent 2 days running through rugged gravel. Very few non-gravel spots. Managed to find enough berries to avoid starving but only enough reeds to make 1 handbasket. Dawn of day 3, I see a possible promising site. Turns out to be a huge plains and by noon, I have one linen sack and 3 handbaskets. Huge forest area with the large maples, walnuts and oaks.

By late afternoon, I have just shy of a full stack of flax seeds and spelt seeds, a half stack of rye seeds and onion seeds, a half dozen parsnips,  and curiously, no turnips. I see a huge mountain with what looks like limestone, granite and bauxite. What I thought was granite turned out to be halite. The mountain is topped by glacier ice, so no need for window or greenhouse glass, and it's not only a great place for a windmill, I can kind of pick out how to run a path up there. At the foot of the mountain is a huge, shallow lake, perfect for building a garden, which I do. On the other side of the lake is a huge stand of cattails -- several hundred, easily.

Come morning, garden done, I thought I'd start a charcoal pit, and stumble across copper nuggets at the entrance to a cave. Calm, so decided to take a look-see. Copper, tin and deep copper. Find another cavern with copper nuggets at the top. Still calm. Surface copper, black coal, fire clay, and I think iron. While trying to get a better look. my fingers end up on the wrong keys, and instead of backing up, I sidestep into a deep, deep hole.

Oh, well. Wonder what the next world will look like.

Oof, that's rough, considering that sounds like a super good setup.

I'm bearing down on iron tier in my world currently, with the first temporal storm due to hit any day now. The Resonance Archive isn't too far away, so I may be able to hoof it there by winter and at least pilfer some of the goodies prior to fighting my way to the library. My main goal right now is figuring out how to get my hands on an elk, heh heh. Something tells me it's probably not happening prior to completing the Archive, but one never knows. Still haven't managed to figure out where the shiver in the basement is...not that I've gone looking.

2 hours ago, Vratislav said:

Well, well, i like that such granite setup is not as uncommon. Whereas my longtime world depends on some mods that haven't been updated yet, I have tried new roll with Plains and Valleys mod and small additional challenges like landslides and cave-ins... and received Andesite only landscape with poor soil for thousand blocks. After random death and rage quit, the next roll was... peridotite landscape (there was sone claystone, but not in direction I went to explore). I have found some medium soil patch sized as a clay deposit after while, so maybe it is worth to settle there; but surely, which other funny stone may come around spawn?

Between granite, andesite, and peridotite, I think I'd rather have granite the most, if I had to choose. I actually like the blue tint of andesite more, but the neutral grey of granite offers a wider selection of colors to pick from when building and decorating. Peridotite is way too green for me to want to use it as much other than an accent color.

[Thorfinn]

10 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

Oof, that's rough, considering that sounds like a super good setup.

Yeah, pretty sweet. But I probably couldn't afford the property tax on the place anyway.

[LadyWYT]

Status update: I found my way out of the granite and into sedimentary layers when finding a route to the Archive. Spent a good couple of hours or so searching the claystone, sandstone, and conglomerate...not a sign of borax anywhere. Nor any limestone or bauxite, for that matter. Which is certainly going to be a frustrating bottleneck.

[Thorfinn]

Impressive progress, @LadyWYT!

If RNG is kind to me, I can sometimes bronze in May, but usually it's late June, early July.

[LadyWYT]

7 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

Impressive progress, @LadyWYT!

If RNG is kind to me, I can sometimes bronze in May, but usually it's late June, early July.

Thanks! I did almost follow in your footsteps though, and fall down a deep hole far from base. It wouldn't delete the world, of course, since I don't play hardcore, but it would still have been frustrating nonetheless.

[LadyWYT]

Finally got my hands on leather. Ended up opting to hunt for seashells...several many seashells later, and I come to find out that survival goods traders sell lime. Oops! That would've saved me a couple months of time, at least. As it currently stands, I've managed to make some basic iron brigandine, with a gambeson helmet, and hoarded several many meat pies and bandaids in preparation for the Archive. I'll have to tackle it in the dead of winter, it seems, but that should be fine...I'm just hoping there's no new nasties to deal with down in those tunnels.

Thoughts on the update so far:

Really enjoying it. Very glad that there's stuff to see underwater, especially since after spending so much time combing the lake bottoms for shells. Terrain generation feels a lot smoother, with proper highlands and lowlands along with the standard mountains and other strange bits. The more complex recipes for the quern and fire clay will take a bit of getting used to, but it makes sense for the quern. As for the fire clay, the flint processing felt all right as well; tedious, sure, but not too much hassle and gave a use for all the flint I inevitably acquire.

The new tong animations are very jank; items will either be clipping through the tongs at weird angles, or outright floating in the air.

Regarding the new monsters--so far they've been pretty fun to fight. Granted, I've not gone hunting them, nor have I encountered the really nasty ones yet, so I could always change my mind, but overall they feel nicely balanced.

Spoiler

The bowtorn so far are less accurate than drifters, and will actively try to run away if you get too close. They're quite slow though, so they aren't hard to catch

The shivers are unnerving given their sounds and overall appearance(provided they aren't swimming, anyway), and will sometimes employ a hit-and-run tactic. They're probably the fastest monster currently, though still slightly slower than the player it seems. The main weaknesses, aside from not being able to fit into very small spaces, seem to be that they can't climb over fences, and will spaz out in the middle of combat, allowing you to potentially get some free hits in.

The thing that's given me the biggest spook so far was the solar eclipse. I forgot those had been added, was out harvesting grass, and the lights suddenly went out. Pretty sure I jumped in my chair.

[Thorfinn]

10 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

spending so much time combing the lake bottoms for shells.

Really? I'm going to have to check that out!

My current world is very similar to the last. Four days and nights of running uphill and down through gravel, then late on the 4th, I see a huge plains on the horizon. Not quite as much copper (yet) and no halite, and a lake about half the size of the last. And, again, no turnips. For the first time in quite a while, I am using mushroom stew for veggie nutrition.

Incidentally, slabs again work to create a cellar. Which I'm probably going to use, since they probably had a reason for reversing the previous change. So that means going back to not building anything to get out of Apoc nights. I'm too lazy for my own good.

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, Thorfinn said:

Really? I'm going to have to check that out!

Indeed! I'm not sure if it's a new thing or not--they may have spawned in lake bottoms before, but there was no real reason to go diving either given that there was nothing to see underwater. I even found some ruins I wouldn't have spotted otherwise, which netted me a bunch of bony soil(but unfortunately no candles, so I'll probably be going to the Archive without a great light source).

1 hour ago, Thorfinn said:

For the first time in quite a while, I am using mushroom stew for veggie nutrition.

I mean hey, if it keeps you alive! One thing I've learned since increasing the hunger rate--in many cases it's better to slow down and walk unless you really need the extra speed for some reason. It could just be from picking Blackguard, in part, but I've found myself rethinking how I manage my stamina after making that change. Not that food is a huge issue for me currently, but the last thing I want to do is burn through too much of my stores before winter.

1 hour ago, Thorfinn said:

Incidentally, slabs again work to create a cellar. Which I'm probably going to use, since they probably had a reason for reversing the previous change. So that means going back to not building anything to get out of Apoc nights. I'm too lazy for my own good.

I lived out of my cellar for quite a while before building anything that qualifies as a house. I'm not sure that it's lazy as much as it is efficient. Personally, I don't really like building temporary structures if I can avoid it, so I'll usually live under a tree until I build a small house, and hide in the cellar when it's too dangerous outside. As far as storage...uh...I tend to scatter everything around outside where I can see it all at once, and wait until I have a really nice storage shed before worrying about anything resembling organization.

[Thorfinn]

10 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

unfortunately no candles, so I'll probably be going to the Archive without a great light source

Too far north for bees? Or just bad luck?

12 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

...in many cases it's better to slow down and walk unless you really need the extra speed for some reason.

The reason is that I'm personally a little hyper. No, a lot hyper. I'm not sure I could play without Sprint on almost all the time. Food is not the issue, even though this game is at 200% hunger. I've got plenty of fruit and meat and grain. It's just that those bars are already capped.

21 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

so I'll usually live under a tree

Me, too. When I say "lazy", I mean dig out a one deep hole, put in storage of whatever type, even just a firepit, and place a high slab over the top. If you sit to make deposits or withdrawals, you can create up to a 6xn "cellar" and never have to open it. Not sure why I put the berries in the "cellar" -- they are all going to rot, anyway.

When it's too dangerous to be out and about, that just means sprint. I generally don't get around to building enclosed spaces until I've finished the RA. Other than the fence around the farm, I mean.

[LadyWYT]

5 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

Too far north for bees? Or just bad luck?

I'm just lazy and focused my attention elsewhere. There are actually bees somewhat close to my base, but I've been pushing hard to get to the Archive and was banking on panning a candle or two out of bony soil. I usually have good luck with that, but then again I usually get better map generation as well.

5 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

I generally don't get around to building enclosed spaces until I've finished the RA. Other than the fence around the farm, I mean.

If you have issues with the shivers you might want to build a perimeter fence. Shivers don't seem to be able to climb over those.

[LadyWYT]

Finally cleared the Archive, and just in time for the next temporal storm as soon as I got home! It's now November, winter is here, I have my elk(there may have been shenanigans to help expedite this), and the next destination is 15k blocks to the east. Should be a fun trip! I'll probably pack light this time, at least regarding food, as I overdid it on the Archive and most of those supplies have gone to waste. It's maybe not the best idea to go in winter either, but I still need to locate a source of borax and bauxite if I'm going to get steel, and east is one direction I haven't really explored so here's to hoping I find those along the way.

Speaking of the Archive...I get the distinct impression that some serious knockback has been added to drifter attacks. The death message from fall damage is pretty funny though, and the shields make a much more satisfying sound when blocking.

[Krougal]

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

Finally cleared the Archive, and just in time for the next temporal storm as soon as I got home! It's now November, winter is here, I have my elk(there may have been shenanigans to help expedite this), and the next destination is 15k blocks to the east. Should be a fun trip! I'll probably pack light this time, at least regarding food, as I overdid it on the Archive and most of those supplies have gone to waste. It's maybe not the best idea to go in winter either, but I still need to locate a source of borax and bauxite if I'm going to get steel, and east is one direction I haven't really explored so here's to hoping I find those along the way.

Speaking of the Archive...I get the distinct impression that some serious knockback has been added to drifter attacks. The death message from fall damage is pretty funny though, and the shields make a much more satisfying sound when blocking.

Look at you using a shield

Still playing Blackguard?

[Thorfinn]

19 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

If you have issues with the shivers you might want to build a perimeter fence. Shivers don't seem to be able to climb over those.

Yeah, noticed that. They may have bumped the damage a bit on shivers. Possibly spawn rates on wolves, too.

Kind of at that awkward stage of the game. Ideally, I should be doing something, but I can't come up with anything I really want to work on ATM. I overdid the farm because I didn't have anything better to work on. It's around 1000 tiles tilled, though only a little over half that has anything planted on it. Yet. Forty-nine populated skeps (oops -- was shooting for 36, but lost count), about a day until the first honey harvest. This world has copper up the wazoo, but the best tin I've found is trace. Found borax and at least two iron deposits in a cave, so that's ready anytime. Lots of brown and black coal, plenty charcoal. A full stack of calcined flint is grinding now. Hides are soaking. Maybe 80-100 berry bushes transplanted. Two stacks of bauxite and one+ of quartz chunks laid in. Even "accidentally" trapped a family of sheep near my farm. Basically everything I care about is done except the quest for tin, but don't really want to head out too far until first harvest, which is a couple days from now.

It's that stage where I think the game expects you to put up a starter home, but as nice as this place is, inspiration hasn't struck yet. Might just have to slap together some temporary cobblestone atrocity. 

[EDIT]

Decided to go to the top of the mountain and collect all the glacier ice. I could tell from the ground that this world's mountaintop had far less glacier, but jeez, all that climbing for a piddly 29 blocks of ice? That's not even enough for an 8x8 greenhouse.

Edited December 9, 2024 by Thorfinn

[Echo Weaver]

1 hour ago, Thorfinn said:

A full stack of calcined flint is grinding now.

What is this?

[Thorfinn]

Oh, the new process for fireclay.

[EDIT]

The process is a little bugged. Haven't figured out what the exact bug is, but sometimes after the flint is heated up to 1300, you can remove the charcoal and replace it with peat, and the rest of the stack will process, even though it says it should be too cold to continue. Other times, it will just stop, like one would expect.

Edited December 9, 2024 by Thorfinn

[LadyWYT]

15 hours ago, Krougal said:

Look at you using a shield

Still playing Blackguard?

You know it! Though my face is my shield half the time.

4 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

Kind of at that awkward stage of the game. Ideally, I should be doing something, but I can't come up with anything I really want to work on ATM. I overdid the farm because I didn't have anything better to work on. It's around 1000 tiles tilled, though only a little over half that has anything planted on it. Yet. Forty-nine populated skeps (oops -- was shooting for 36, but lost count), about a day until the first honey harvest. This world has copper up the wazoo, but the best tin I've found is trace. Found borax and at least two iron deposits in a cave, so that's ready anytime. Lots of brown and black coal, plenty charcoal. A full stack of calcined flint is grinding now. Hides are soaking. Maybe 80-100 berry bushes transplanted. Two stacks of bauxite and one+ of quartz chunks laid in. Even "accidentally" trapped a family of sheep near my farm. Basically everything I care about is done except the quest for tin, but don't really want to head out too far until first harvest, which is a couple days from now.

And just when I thought I was good at the game.

4 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

It's that stage where I think the game expects you to put up a starter home, but as nice as this place is, inspiration hasn't struck yet. Might just have to slap together some temporary cobblestone atrocity. 

Build the ugliest house possible, maybe? Just to see how ugly you can possibly make it.

2 hours ago, Echo Weaver said:

What is this?

To elaborate on what @Thorfinn said--it is the new process for fire clay, since fire clay now only spawns under coal deposits, specifically black coal I think. You have to bake flint to get calcined flint, then grind that into powder and add it to red or blue clay to get fire clay.

[Thorfinn]

Heavy doses of luck this time. Cracked vessels gave me a tin bronze shovel and three(!) scythes.

The cattails on the north side of my lake were dense enough that I skipped any that I couldn't get at least 4 per swing. Probably averaged 5. 

The entire west side of the lake was very flat medium fertility soil with thick redtop grass.  Dig the dirt, get the flowers for free. All I had to do was place flowers wherever they weren't in the part I left untouched for my apiary. Still have several stacks of redtop I didn't need.

The farm was mostly in 1-deep water. It took less than 4 stacks of fences to hold up the dirt where it was deeper.

The wild hive I stumbled across on day 5, the first day I was in this area, and there were reeds and clay within a couple dozen blocks.

And while I was scouting the immediate vicinity for inspiration, noticed that several of the bands of peridotite are streaked with veins of... yeah, you guessed it. Lots of 2-high quartz veins showing in other cliff faces, too. Seriously? Everything for Tier 2 refractory bricks within about 150 blocks?

That's a whole lot of things that came together. All the stars and planets were in alignment. All except Jupiter (tin). Oh, and Saturn (lead). 

[LadyWYT]

HOLY SMOKES I LOVE THE STORY SO FAR!

Spoiler

I've just made it to the village, and was so happy to see how reactive the villagers are to both the world around them and certain things about you, the player. Current total travel time is about one in-game week so far, traveling exclusively by elk. Looks like the final destination isn't too far from the village itself, but there's one more stop to make before I get to go there, although I am tempted to go there now just to see what happens. In any case, here's to hoping I don't die completing my current mission.

It does look like there are some rough spots still. Some of the villagers don't have any dialogue save for telling you their names. Other bits of dialogue aren't positioned correctly in the dialogue box either(though these problem lines are few), and are therefore very difficult if not impossible to read.

It also looks like the villagers offer various goods and services that you can't get yourself, such as special fashions, or haircuts for your character. Now I'm not sure that some of these are implemented yet, like the haircut, given I was told to come back in a couple of weeks. I'm guessing it's probably just clever placeholder dialogue until those features are implemented.

In regards to the elk, it's a little janky, but rather fun to ride around on. It can outrun most anything and is rather durable, but perhaps the best feature is the fact that it can easily climb up to two blocks heights. So it can handle most mountains with relative ease, though you will need to slow to a walk in order to do this safely. Probably its weakest point is that it's ill-suited for traversing thick forest--you'll save much more time skirting these areas.

[LadyWYT]

Finished the story...man, I'm going to need some time to unpack my thoughts on everything, because there's just so much...

Spoiler

The Devastation was definitely the hardest part. There's a lot of cool mechanics there, though a couple places feel like they need a bit more of a polish. I really hope we see the time swapping again in the future--that's not a mechanic you see very often at all. The puzzle to get to the boss arena was quite clever. I'm also pretty sure I was undergeared for the boss fight too, and it's not a good idea to go tackle it in the dead of winter. Given that I was more interested in finishing the main story, there were a lot of shenanigans involved in order to get through it, so unfortunately I did not really do this area the proper justice this time around. Perhaps next time.

Poor Tobias though. It's interesting to see how close several of my past speculations have been to what's actually unfolded, though it's also interesting to see just how far off some of them were. Given some of his dialogue though(which in all fairness might be a placeholder until the next chapter is ready), I'm guessing that there might be short intermissions between chapters, both for a narrative break and to allow the player time to go home and work on other stuff before worrying about advancing the story. One thing that definitely caught me off-guard here though was Charlemagne. Well, that, and it was somewhat hard to take in a rather poignant discussion when Tobias has several lambs stuck on his roof.

The question that still hangs in the air is whether or not Jonas Falx is still alive. Reading through some of the older lore bits, I had a suspicion that he might have died, but now I'm not certain. It seems he might still be out there, somewhere, but perhaps loathe to show his face again after the uh...little incident.

Overall, very well done, and I enjoyed it greatly! Now I just have to return to base and perhaps tinker around with upgrading a few things, before likely setting this particular world aside as the testing ground for future updates and starting the process anew. One important thing I will note, is that while you can pretty much grind out the entire story arc in a single session, it's probably best to tackle it in smaller chunks to avoid some burnout. My best guess is that the entire round trip will probably take a couple of standard in-game months to complete(that includes your trip home).

[Thorfinn]

Two months seemed like a lot until I realized that's about 15 hours IRL. I can find an hour or two in the day, but I'm not sure I can do anything for 15 hours at a go anymore except nap. So maybe a week to do the new content? OK.