1.21 Update - ( Fan Predictions )

[Adnyeus]

Do you have any personal predictions? Share them here so we can discuss! Keep in mind, this is just for fun — nothing big or official, just your thoughts on what might come next. Looking forward to hearing your predictions. 

Edited December 17, 2024 by Divočák

[LadyWYT]

Well first and foremost, I don't expect to see any new lore pieces added, unless there's a new Jonas contraption or new tapestries/lore books to find. Lore stuff is generally saved for story updates.

I would expect to see coral reefs though. They were supposed to be in the 1.20 update, but weren't working correctly and got pushed back. So finishing them up and releasing them with 1.21 seems obvious. Going along with that might be some new types of fish or other aquatic animals, and perhaps a proper way to fish as well. It's a logical next step since the water has been made more interesting.

Another creature update is also very possible. We got updated wolves in 1.20, and I believe all the older creatures will eventually get updates as well in order to match the new style. Bears are likely, in my opinion, since they need some extra polish with sound design in order to let players have some prior warning of their presence before getting chomped. Bighorn sheep are also likely, as their models are quite chunky and stand out the worst as far as dated looks go. Boars are fine, as are foxes, raccoons, and chickens, so I wouldn't expect to see any updates to these until later.

Traders I also think might get a visual and audio update to match other human NPCs.

For game mechanics, I'll take a page out of your natural disaster suggestion, and suggest that changes could be made to the current weather patterns to allow hailstorms to damage crops and blizzards to reduce visibility even further. I think a change like this would pose a greater challenge for the hardcore players, while not being so punishing that more casual players never give it a shot. Likewise, both seem like they would be a bit easier to handle, and the penalties a lot more fair than losing an entire base.

More plant species or other natural decor like tree stumps and fallen logs could be a possibility. Now that we have better ways to travel, it only makes sense to add a few more things to see on your adventures. Some of these plants could be new crops, to give a bit more food variety. It's possible that surface ruins could receive a bit of an update as well, but I think what we have now is fine, and would rather see more natural stuff instead.

It's a longshot, but I could see a loom item or other method of fiber processing added. No more just slapping things into the crafting grid and getting cloth as a result. The main issue I see here though is how exactly it would work without the player needing to stand in one spot holding down a mouse button/key for long periods of time to craft, like what the manual quern requires. If there's a way to realistically automate a loom though using medieval tech, then it's not much of an issue.

Birds. I'm guessing that the systems used to create the bugs and frogs could probably be tweaked to accommodate a more detailed model(no one wants bird blocks), and used to spawn small songbirds and whatnot as ambience. To more ambitiously expand an already ambitious idea--add larger birds like crows to potentially eat grain crops. Placing a straw dummy in a crop field will protect crops within a certain radius from birds, and straw dummies could also be equipped with clothing items(not armor) for decoration.

A different angle on the birds idea: add more large birds similar to chickens. Ducks and geese would make good additions to the water, and could only spawn during certain times of year in certain climates to simulate migration patterns(birds already spawned would not despawn though). Turkeys, pheasants, grouse, quail, and ptarmigans could provide additional hunting opportunities. Turkeys, ducks, and geese could also be domesticated, which adds another livestock option that farming enthusiasts will probably enjoy. Warm/tropical climates could spawn ostrich, emus, and peafowl as well as potentially dodo birds since these didn't go extinct until the 1600s. Peafowl would also be a fun exotic to add to your livestock collection, albeit a very noisey one.

Some more cave clutter would be a great addition as well. More rock formations, cave pools with creatures, bats(which would obviously produce guano as a resource), and moss/mold would make the underground more interesting to explore.

[Irulana]

I would love to see rivers and watermills finally. So late in game and we have only one source of mechanical power.

[Adnyeus]

I would love to see, for example, air balloons or some gas balloons.

Edited December 18, 2024 by Divočák

[Maelstrom]

Given the boilers in the RA, I'd like to see steam power for more consistent mechanical automation; but it seems less disjointed if Tyron figures out rivers and water wheels before steam power.  I wouldn't be surprised if we might see the beginnings of alchemy show up.

Edited December 18, 2024 by Maelstrom

[Adnyeus]

2 hours ago, Maelstrom said:

Given the boilers in the RA, I'd like to see steam power for more consistent mechanical automation; but it seems less disjointed if Tyron figures out rivers and water wheels before steam power.  I wouldn't be surprised if we might see the beginnings of alchemy show up.

With that alchemy, we might also combine different flowers to get medicines and experience illnesses from nature, such as getting sick from the cold in winter without proper clothing, or contracting a bacterial infection from eating bad food. It would also be cool to see flowers and other natural elements being used to create medicines.

[Adnyeus]

+ Severe injury and bleeding resulting from combat 
+ improvement to combat systems

[Ryan Thomas]

I don't have any predictions, but I have a few hopes. I love the monsters and portals and temporal storms, but I hate the zones of temporal instability. It's kind of a bite in the butt when you find this glorious little chunk of land for a home or town, and you gleefully start building just to find your green gear spinning out of control. So, I'm hoping that someday we can plop down some type of gizmo or something that makes like a bubble of temporal stability.

A person might say "...blah blah such n such mod blah blah...", and while we have some awesome mod-makers out there, I try to use as few mods as possible, hence my hope to be able to put some sort of gizmo down. A person might also say "Build a town? In standard mode? Why don't you just freaking play in Homo sapien mode? Good God, man!" I do play in that mode, thank you. The thing with that mode, though.....I miss the monsters. I love frantically running my happy ass through my streets at sunset. So, I'm hoping to have a way someday to permanently neutralize temporal instability. I don't know about the new version, as I'm waiting for the few mods I do play with to update, but in 1.19, I was unable to get monsters and portals to work; I'm not sure it can work without temporal instability, too. So, I'm hoping for a way to neutralize temporal instability beyond using temporal gears as a quick, temporary fix. 

[Adnyeus]

1 hour ago, Ryan Thomas said:

I don't have any predictions, but I have a few hopes. I love the monsters and portals and temporal storms, but I hate the zones of temporal instability. It's kind of a bite in the butt when you find this glorious little chunk of land for a home or town, and you gleefully start building just to find your green gear spinning out of control. So, I'm hoping that someday we can plop down some type of gizmo or something that makes like a bubble of temporal stability.

A person might say "...blah blah such n such mod blah blah...", and while we have some awesome mod-makers out there, I try to use as few mods as possible, hence my hope to be able to put some sort of gizmo down. A person might also say "Build a town? In standard mode? Why don't you just freaking play in Homo sapien mode? Good God, man!" I do play in that mode, thank you. The thing with that mode, though.....I miss the monsters. I love frantically running my happy ass through my streets at sunset. So, I'm hoping to have a way someday to permanently neutralize temporal instability. I don't know about the new version, as I'm waiting for the few mods I do play with to update, but in 1.19, I was unable to get monsters and portals to work; I'm not sure it can work without temporal instability, too. So, I'm hoping for a way to neutralize temporal instability beyond using temporal gears as a quick, temporary fix. 

dang, you are right, i got that problem yesterday  but i think you can somehow turn it off from that region, but im not sure how.

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, Ryan Thomas said:

So, I'm hoping for a way to neutralize temporal instability beyond using temporal gears as a quick, temporary fix. 

You can disable the temporal mechanics, I do believe. If you do that, monsters will still spawn underground and in certain story locations since those are fixed spawns, but otherwise you don't have to deal with the hassle of stable and unstable chunks. The problem though is that I think it might also disable temporal storms as well, though I'm not sure. I just roll with the temporal mechanics as-is, though some sort of stability generator fueled by temporal gears is a great idea for a Jonas device.

If you're not opposed to tinkering a bit in creative mode every now and then, I think there may be some sort of special "command block" that overrides whether or not temporal stability affects players in certain regions. I have noticed that despite some story locations being very unstable, I never actually lose my stability while exploring them, so I assume that however those locations are built includes some sort of flag markers to both set their stability and allow the player to explore unaffected. How to actually use such a thing though, I'm not sure, but I'm fairly sure it's possible.

1 hour ago, Divočák said:

With that alchemy, we might also combine different flowers to get medicines and experience illnesses from nature, such as getting sick from the cold in winter without proper clothing, or contracting a bacterial infection from eating bad food. It would also be cool to see flowers and other natural elements being used to create medicines.

1 hour ago, Divočák said:

+ Severe injury and bleeding resulting from combat 

I'm still against adding disease to the game, overall, but these implementations would probably work. Getting sick because you decided to be a nudist in cold weather, or couldn't be bothered to make fresh food to eat is a fair penalty for situations that are rather easy to avoid in the first place, however since they're easy to avoid I also don't see them posing much of a challenge to the average player.

Combat injuries though are a bit of a game changer. I'd still make them rare, otherwise they're going to offer more frustration than fun. But suffering something like a broken limb that penalizes your movement speed/attack power would give more reason to done appropriate armor, even for experienced players. Likewise, it would also provide incentive to avoid fall damage.

However, I think maybe the simpler, safer method is to just rework how health is lost and recovered. Perhaps it could be lost two different ways: a chunk at once, or a bleed effect that may drain more health over a longer duration unless treated. Bandages no longer restore health instantly, but do stop bleeding when applied(may take a few bandages depending on bandage quality and severity of wound) as well as restoring health over time. For instant health, this is where alchemy and proper medicine comes into play: medicine is more time/resource intensive to make, but can instantly restore some health rather than needing to wait.

[Ryan Thomas]

Thank you for the replies. I think I'm just going to stick to standard mode. I finally built a whole city in Homo sapien mode. It was a lot of fun to build, especially my restaurants. I have a few from tv shows, like Ugly Nick's Meat Trench, and my own, like Hot Carl's Spicy Chili and I Swear to Salsa (a Mexican restaurant). I have sunglasses kiosks and t shirt huts, Quonset Hut, public pools, a meditation park, a casino; I mean, I just totally went all-out. And when it was all said and done, while it was fun to build, ..... it's just bland without NPCs. A town sucks without citizens and merchants. The college campus sucks without students and professors. CVS sucks without people to run the pharmacy. I think I'm going to just stick to sporadically placed homes in Standard, and keep the city life to games like Cyberpunk.  

[Guimoute]

The devs said that 1.21's focus was mechanical contraptions. Etho answered a comment about Vintage Story while playing Minecraft and Tyron left a Youtube comment under that video. Source: https://redd.it/1adpzae

[Guimoute]

22 hours ago, Maelstrom said:

Given the boilers in the RA, I'd like to see steam power for more consistent mechanical automation; but it seems less disjointed if Tyron figures out rivers and water wheels before steam power.  I wouldn't be surprised if we might see the beginnings of alchemy show up.

I would love to have gas appliances in the ultra late game. Imagine powering the gas lamps of your town at night.

Just for your information, the machine in the RA is a gas turbine rather than a steam turbine. It does not boil water, it heats up charcoal in an insufficiently oxygenated environment so that it pyrolyzes and you get methane (+ some other burnable stuff, see syngas) from it. The cool thing about that is that you don't need to add natural gas to the game to add the associated machinery so that's a lot simpler.

Edited December 19, 2024 by Guimoute

[LadyWYT]

3 hours ago, Guimoute said:

I would love to have gas appliances in the ultra late game. Imagine powering the gas lamps of your town at night.

Just for your information, the machine in the RA is a gas turbine rather than a steam turbine. It does not boil water, it heats up charcoal in an insufficiently oxygenated environment so that it pyrolyzes and you get methane (+ some other burnable stuff, see syngas) from it. The cool thing about that is that you don't need to add natural gas to the game to add the associated machinery so that's a lot simpler.

That would be nice to have, though I would hope the fuel would last a lot longer than the one that lights up the Archive library. If it's too much of a hassle with resources, I see a lot of players skipping that and sticking to lanterns, saving the coal/charcoal for steel production and other industry.

[RodinPandarex]

For me, two things :

• Wind mechanics, to finish sailboat like intended (works with wind, not with keyboard arrows) and maybe update windmill way to work
• Finishing oceans to be able to add fishing mecanics (and maybe add water flow and rivers)

And yes, no lore added.

Edited December 25, 2024 by RodinPandarex

[Adnyeus]

49 minutes ago, RodinPandarex said:

For me, two things :

• Wind mechanics, to finish sailboat like intended (works with wind, not with keyboard arrows) and maybe update windmill way to work
• Finishing oceans to be able to add fishing mecanics (and maybe add water flow and rivers)

And yes, no lore added.

 

agree

[Adnyeus]

On 12/19/2024 at 11:23 PM, LadyWYT said:

That would be nice to have, though I would hope the fuel would last a lot longer than the one that lights up the Archive library. If it's too much of a hassle with resources, I see a lot of players skipping that and sticking to lanterns, saving the coal/charcoal for steel production and other industry.

What is your personal stance on hot air balloons? Would you love to have them in the game as a new way of transport? Of course, it would be a late-game transportation option.

[LadyWYT]

2 hours ago, Adnyeus said:

What is your personal stance on hot air balloons? Would you love to have them in the game as a new way of transport? Of course, it would be a late-game transportation option.

I have mixed feelings about them; I prefer to keep flying devices out of medieval-type settings(aside from flying creatures, anyway), but as a late-game tech option they aren't unreasonable, especially with the crazy steampunk tech we already have. That being said though, they seem like they wouldn't be that useful when we have teleporter technology, at least in terms of efficiently traveling long distances. A small airship or flying machine might be a better option; expensive to build, but useful for transporting cargo over short-medium distances since it can just fly over terrain. It might still be useful for long distance travel too, but that might not be very feasible due to fuel cost.

The main concern I'd have is how a flying contraption of any sort balances against the other methods of travel. If it's too expensive for what it can offer, players aren't going to bother with it. If it's too cheap, then it can end up too easy to acquire and trivialize too many other things(especially parts of the story). One method of combating that is to make it require a blueprint, and then lock said blueprint behind one of the later story chapters.

Personally, I'd rather skip air travel and have better teleporters available instead. Ground and water travel stay relevant throughout the game that way, but it still allows for traveling quickly between two points of your choosing, provided you're willing to set up the infrastructure. I do expect to eventually see a mod or two though that adds in balloons or some other method of air travel.

[LadyWYT]

Another feature I could potentially see added--the ability to tame/domesticate wolves. While I don't think they would be useful as a method of travel, the mount system that 1.20 adds could be adjusted to add additional utility to tame wolves so that they aren't just a pet. Tame wolves could be equipped with a cooking pot, a lantern, and a leather/sturdy leather backpack(NOT saddlebags!), allowing them to carry some of your stuff in addition to defending you from enemies. For unique equipment, tame wolves can wear a variety of collars, including a spiked collar that will mitigate a portion of incoming damage and reflect it back to the attacker. An ownership medallion can be attached to a collar to allow a tamed wolf to be called via whistle, though only one wolf can be equipped with a medallion at a given time. A medallion is not needed, however, to command tamed wolves to follow you, stay put, or guard a specific area.

Tamed wolves will also scare away small creatures, so they can be stationed near crops or chickens to help defend them. However, chickens that are below generation 5 will be afraid of tame wolves, so you will want to make sure that your feathered friends are appropriately calm if you wish to keep raising them.

[Jacek Babiak]

I would be happy if recycling and recovering materials (e.g. from damaged clothes, blacksmithing, etc.) were added and automation was developed (water mill and steam engines, something like in the place of the first boss)

[Adnyeus]

17 hours ago, Jacek Babiak said:

I would be happy if recycling and recovering materials (e.g. from damaged clothes, blacksmithing, etc.) were added and automation was developed (water mill and steam engines, something like in the place of the first boss)

Yea, i think recovering materials from clothes would be amazing.