Help witth lighting my Base needed (mod or vanilla both is fine)

[Tam Hawkins]

Hello Everyone,

A TLDR as well as some pictures are attached at the end.

I have recently purchased Vintage story and this is my first time posting on this forum.

In my current game I have reached up to iron smithing and have started making leather. During my first winter (save file is currently mid january) I have decided to build a bigger, better base.

For that I carefully mapped out my wished for base layout on paper and then prepared a piece of land not to far from my original base. It contains a space for my Home and workshops (underground cellar underneath), 2 pastures for future chicken and sheep, a normal field, a greenhouse for crops and a greenhouse for bees and maybe a fruit tree depending on what trees I find and if one of them might need it.

The main point of the Base is not only to be functionla but also visually pleasing. As such some areas, especially the pastures are bigger than they need to be.

Now as luck wills it while finishing the pasture fences I found two sheep (mom + kid) right next to my pasture and lured them in (I hit the mom).

To disable them despawning I choose to put some lanterns up, something I wanted to do anyway to avoid having drifters in my base. This also lead me to check out the actuall mechanic behind light and spawns/despawns. Lanterns have a range of 18 (16 as I place them 2 squres above the ground for astethic reasons), that makes a diamond shape as a diagonal cube costs 2 range (instead of circle (radius) or square (cost of 1 range). That would force me to put a lamp every roughly 14 squares as well as additional lamps in between but moved up by 6 and 7 to the side (picture bellow).

This leads to Lanterns beeing in awkward places as well as way to many lanterns beeing around. That will still hold true even If I upgrade to lined Lanterns or chandeliers (and I do not even know if chandeliers would work here).

What I would like to know: Is there a mod or vanilla solution that will allow me to have a far bigger range on my light sources. It can have a higher cost or be something I have to do later once I have access to better resources. Something with a light range of at least 24 or even better around 30 would be necessary (more is obviously better).

There is one mod I found that uses temporal gears to make a lantern with up to 100 range which would be good, but it also creates a blue light and I would rather have a normal ligth source with yellowish/white colouring.

 

TLDR: I want to make a new base, but lighting is an issue as all ligthsources I have are to weak and make the base look like a mess. Are there Vanilla or modded solutions that give me a ligth source rage of at least 24 but mabye closer to 30, material cost does not matter only that they shine a normal light at a farther range.

Images:

I have attached 2 Images

1. Layout of the Base with a) Descriptions b) necessary ligth distribution c) desired ligh distributen (vague)
2. Picture of Lanterns in my pasture

Additional Question:

Has nothing to do with the Above. I would like to make a tower once my base is build as a landmark to find it easier (also maybe for windmill). On the top I plan to place a light to make it better visible from afar. Is there a mod to add a massive Pyre, signal light. Something that is not used for anything besides beeing visible and needs no fuel. The only mod I found is one for small braziers, which could be good but something a bit bigger would be nice.

Thanks for reading my post and your answers,

Tam Hawkins

 

[Kosti]

Well first of all I think this is an issue that needs to be addressed by the devs. Lanterns are a solution for small bases, and we deffo need more! However, until that happens here's what i've found: https://mods.vintagestory.at/craftablecreativelights ; https://mods.vintagestory.at/braziers
Besides that you could decide to sacrifice a lot of items and request the 'gods' give you a few from the creative light sources in exchange. Another option is a jonas tool that's fed gears to prevent rift spawns around you, but... that's really pushing the end-game, so for now the best might just be leaving the lanterns in the way you did.
Last thing i've found is this https://mods.vintagestory.at/electricity Hope it helps.

Edited January 7 by Kosti

[Maelstrom]

Assuming rift spawning hasn't changed from 1.19, lighting the area with lanterns prevents rifts.  In my 1.19 world I could go around my homestead with impunity even on nights with apocalyptic rift activity and not see a single mob.

[Thorfinn]

The easiest way is to not care about baddies spawning in most places. You don't need lanterns in your pastures to keep the livestock from despawning, only places where they are roofed over. Yes, including roofed over with glass.

Go for a brisk morning  run. You need to get 64 blocks away for only a few seconds. Then come home for a nice hearty breakfast. You will find your uninvited guests have all left. And your heart will thank you for getting some exercise.

[Tam Hawkins]

On 1/7/2025 at 7:10 PM, Kosti said:

Well first of all I think this is an issue that needs to be addressed by the devs. Lanterns are a solution for small bases, and we deffo need more! However, until that happens here's what i've found: https://mods.vintagestory.at/craftablecreativelights ; https://mods.vintagestory.at/braziers
Besides that you could decide to sacrifice a lot of items and request the 'gods' give you a few from the creative light sources in exchange. Another option is a jonas tool that's fed gears to prevent rift spawns around you, but... that's really pushing the end-game, so for now the best might just be leaving the lanterns in the way you did.
Last thing i've found is this https://mods.vintagestory.at/electricity Hope it helps.

Hey Kosti thanks for the mod suggestions but I cannot see any that increase the light radius in any way.

I decided to try my hand on modding it in myself and I had some success (but more failure ^^)

I managed to make some modded lanterns that even give some ligth. Supposedly a ligthvalue of 31, which weirdly enough I believe I have modded in via the "lightHsv" attribute, but for some reason it is not reacting to any changes besides erasing it. It also does not work when placed and to top it off for some reason it erases the block side it touches^^

So many problems still to solve.

But at least I got it to have a new shape.

I will figure out the rest in time.

 

[Tam Hawkins]

On 1/9/2025 at 9:19 PM, Maelstrom said:

Assuming rift spawning hasn't changed from 1.19, lighting the area with lanterns prevents rifts.  In my 1.19 world I could go around my homestead with impunity even on nights with apocalyptic rift activity and not see a single mob.

 

On 1/10/2025 at 7:41 PM, Thorfinn said:

The easiest way is to not care about baddies spawning in most places. You don't need lanterns in your pastures to keep the livestock from despawning, only places where they are roofed over. Yes, including roofed over with glass.

Go for a brisk morning  run. You need to get 64 blocks away for only a few seconds. Then come home for a nice hearty breakfast. You will find your uninvited guests have all left. And your heart will thank you for getting some exercise.

So Lanterns are not necessary to prevent animal despawn outside... that means I do not entirely need them. though I would still like the drifter spawn and rift spawn preventation.

I will see how the mod making goes and should it be to hard for me to make what I want I will have to void the whole lantern plan.

[Maelstrom]

Lanterns to prevent animals despawning is only necessary if they are in a covered space, like a barn.  Or a cave if you are really concerned about the wayward aminals.