This game doesn't lack magic, but needs mysticism.

[Nimm]

I don’t think this game needs high magic—like firestorms, creating fake suns, traveling the multiverse, summoning high demons or gods, bending mountains, or creating meteor showers.

But I do think something is missing—a sense of wonder beyond the mechanical marvels and distorted beings we encounter. For me, mysticism could fill that gap. We could have rituals that add a grounded, spiritual layer to the game, something that feels like it belongs in this world while enhancing immersion.

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Rituals

Rituals could involve natural items, crafted tools, and specific environmental conditions to interact with the world in subtle but meaningful ways. Here are a few examples:

• Rain Calling (or Stilling):
  Use feathers, birch bark, and spring water at dawn or dusk. Light a fire in a stone circle and scatter the items to summon or stop rain, with weather changes happening gradually.

• Harvest Rite:
  Sacrifice an animal and combine its blood or bones with seeds and ash. Perform the rite under a full moon to speed up crop growth or increase their yield.

• Protective Totem:
  Craft a totem from wood, embed it with copper or gold, and place it on your land. Use smoke (resin or peat) during the ritual to protect your area from hostile creatures for a limited time.

• Health Bonding:
  Under an aurora or a new moon, perform a ritual using a crafted bone charm and a blood offering (from yourself or an animal). This could grant permanent health increases or temporary regeneration.

• Spirit Beacon:
  Use temporal shards or rare crystals in a ritual to create a spirit beacon. It could reveal hidden resources, spectral creatures, or even visions tied to the world’s lore.

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Runes and Arrays

Runes could act as a complement to rituals or work on their own.

• Runes: Engrave runes on tools, weapons, or blocks using chisels. They could have procedural shapes and effects, discovered as you explore your world. For example:

  • A rune that lets your axe absorb blood from kills, gaining a bloody edge that boosts damage and heals slightly.
  • A rune that sparks deep purple lightning with every strike.
  • A recall rune for thrown spears or arrows.

• Arrays: Combine runes in larger ceremonial patterns drawn on the ground with chalk or etched into stone to create advanced effects, like:

  • Faster crop growth.
  • Slower hunger in an area.
  • Health regeneration fields.
  • Protection barriers against hostile creatures.

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Mystical Creatures

Mysticism could extend to the creatures in the world:

• Runed Beasts: Animals or monsters born with natural runes on their bodies, could be in their furs, their bones or their organs, gaining unique abilities:
  • A fire rune boar could ignite the ground as it charges.
  • A water rune deer might purify lakes as it drinks.
  • A shadow rune wolf could vanish and reappear unpredictably.
• These creatures could drop rare rune fragments or reagents for rituals, giving players a reason to seek them out.

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The Shaman

To introduce these mechanics, you could encounter a Shaman deep in the wilderness. This NPC could teach you basic rituals and runes, sell rare reagents, or send you on quests to uncover powerful runes in ancient ruins. The Shaman’s guidance would tie the mystical layer into the game without overwhelming players early on.

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This kind of mysticism would deepen the sense of mystery and wonder in Vintage Story, giving players tools to interact with the world in subtle and meaningful ways. It fits the grounded tone of the game while offering a new layer of exploration and discovery.

What do yall think? Would rituals and runes like this work? How would you expand on the idea? Do you think this is ultra garbage?

[LadyWYT]

34 minutes ago, Nimm said:

What do yall think? Would rituals and runes like this work? How would you expand on the idea? Do you think this is ultra garbage?

First off, welcome to the forums!

They're interesting ideas, but they really don't fit with the world and lore of Vintage Story at all. While there are a few loose religious references in the story, that aspect has been left mostly up to the player's imagination and individual interpretation, and I think that's the best way to handle that. Without spoiling too much, the main "fantasy" elements the game presents are the steampunk constructs and tech, along with a mysterious plague that's referenced and the eldritch monsters that like to pop out of rifts and temporal storms. The rest is heavily rooted in real world survival techniques and technology from the late medieval period. Adding what you mentioned here would significantly shift the entire focus of the game, in my opinion, from a realistic survival game with steampunk eldritch horror elements, to another generic fantasy voxel game. Personally, that's not at all what I signed up for when I bought the game.

That's not to say the ideas don't have their place though. I think these would make a great mod, or series of mods, that would be enjoyed by players looking to add that sort of experience to their gameplay. I don't think anyone's made anything quite like this, yet, though I have seen a similar themed mod or two that were fairly popular.

[Bowmanoflight]

I like the idea of adding a low fantasy magic system into vintage story, mostly because I think it fits really well with how the game is already laid out.

Something akin to thaumcraft where, like OP said, mysticism not magic is desirable. Older versions of thaumcraft were way more about the resource intensive process of manufacturing magic and creating resource chains to make magic feasible. One of the major tenants of VS I think is that every item has a resource chain associated with it, whether it be simple like needing clay for cobblestone blocks or more complex like needing to make it to the bronze age to collect hardwoods for furniture or building. The Mysticism is already present in VS with the rust dimension, temporal stability and the entire main story of the game, utilizing jonas tech and cupronickle/ copper to create magic distilleries or apparatuses to do cool things would be an awesome addition that wouldn't change a lot of how the game functions.

[Dilan Rona]

Doesnt really fit the theme of Vintage Story. That said, for any low level, or primitive civilization, any technology from a more advanced civilization would seem like magic.

So anything regarding mystical items need to be connected to Jonas tech in some way. Same way with Runes. It can be seen as a long forgotten language, which would fit the theme of the game.