What does everyone think about the enemies

[LadyWYT]

6 hours ago, Zane Mordien said:

Maybe something in the future will make cave exploring necessary at those depths.

I dunno, I have a sneaking hunch that the nightmares we'll need to deal with in the future won't necessarily be restricted to the deepest parts of the underground. Granted, I do expect them to be location-specific for story purposes, if they are spawning outside the normal conditions.

[StCatharines]

6 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

I have a sneaking hunch that the nightmares we'll need to deal with in the future won't necessarily be restricted to the deepest parts of the underground.

I sincerely hope you're correct! VS already scares my socks off now and then, I love it!

[Zane Mordien]

44 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

I dunno, I have a sneaking hunch that the nightmares we'll need to deal with in the future won't necessarily be restricted to the deepest parts of the underground. Granted, I do expect them to be location-specific for story purposes, if they are spawning outside the normal conditions.

Story locations for me fall into the reward category. I just want a reason to explore the depths. Maybe some new "unobtainum" ore or something spawns in randomly located dungeon at the bottom of caves that you can find by exploring only, just without the blue people and alien planet. 

[Chuckerton]

In general i like the enemies but one thing i wish was different about combat as a whole is that i think attacks should be more telegraphed. Like the bowtorn, wonderful, if you see it, it has a huge windup and a hard to dodge projectile, so find cover fast. 

 

But wolves, bears, drifters, shivers, if theyre close to you youre probably getting hit. For some enemies, thats fine. Drifters are slow and easy to avoid so their melee attack can be fast. But wolves and shivers, i wish their attacks would be more of a 'lunge', where they charge at you from some short distance, in a straight line that can be sidestepped. They can still have a basic up-close melee attack but having a few different melee options with the lunge being something theyll often try once theyre in range would be great. 

I think it would make fighting these enemies a lot more fun, it would be kind of faster paced but also fairer and more readable. 

[Thorfinn]

Wolves do have a lunge. I don't know about shivers. All I know about them is you are best off either keeping them at range or giving them the slip. They are not worth  fighting.

[EDIT]

If you have learned how to escape brown bears, shivers should be easy, now that they are slower.

Edited February 14, 2025 by Thorfinn

[Chuckerton]

3 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

Wolves do have a lunge.

Do they? I dont think ive ever seen it. They just run at you fast and then once theyre close, they do their attack animation. I mean like a straight-line attack that starts infront of you, ends behind you, and if youre in the path of it, you get hit. 

[Thorfinn]

2 hours ago, Chuckerton said:

Do they? I dont think ive ever seen it.

Yes. It's only a 1% chance, so on average it should take being chased 70 times to have a 50% chance of seeing it at least once. Bears have one as well.

Edited February 14, 2025 by Thorfinn

[Marotte]

On 2/14/2025 at 3:34 PM, Thorfinn said:

Yes. It's only a 1% chance, so on average it should take being chased 70 times to have a 50% chance of seeing it at least once. Bears have one as well.

1%?? why on earth is that so low? i would have imagined it be more like 20%? that would seem reasonable. it might make it harder just ignore and run right past them all the time. i wonder if their lunge give you an even stronger damage boost.

[Thorfinn]

10 hours ago, Marotte said:

i would have imagined it be more like 20%? that would seem reasonable.

Try it, then. Just change the leap chance from .01 to .2 in (I believe) 3 files in the entities\land directory: female wolf, male wolf and bear.

Once you decide what the right percentage is, bundle it up as a patch mod and upload it to ModDB.

Edited February 16, 2025 by Thorfinn

[Taladar]

As a new player I honestly think the enemies (not the animals, the hostile ones that aren't wildlife) are orders of magnitude worse than the entire rest of the game. They feel so badly designed.

99% of the time you can't hear them when they approach from behind until they get their first hit in, they spawn in impossible places (e.g. dead ends you literally just dug minutes ago or in your cellar or on top of a ladder you just dug upwards in a single block), underground they often push you into walls with their first attack and you can't attack them if they are too close because your weapon seems to come out their back before it does any damage.

And on top of it all they basically never give you anything worthwhile at loot, 90% of the time it feels like you get nothing at all. And then there is that whole issue of not being able to move your spawn to your home and of death having a chance to cost you items that are basically irreplaceable at certain time of the year like the bags to increase your inventory size.  And healing items basically don't exist either unless you have certain rare resources in large amounts so the next enemy has an even better chance of killing you.

I am very close to abandoning the game about 50h into my first game because it is a very miserable experience trying to find bismuth for bronze while constantly being murdered by silent enemies from behind.

[Thorfinn]

I agree the new creatures are pretty tough. A lot to take in while still learning the game mechanics. They do have an aggro sound, though. Shivers sound something like dragging a stick across a rough concrete sidewalk. Bowtorn sound kind of like a rusty brake rotor, followed by a "clunk". They also have idle noises you need to learn to listen for. Weather and music and the like are all well and good, but default settings makes it hard to hear these warnings.

The new monsters make it really important to place a  lot of torches. You must make sure there are no floors more than 6 from any torch or 3 from an oil lamp. Figure out now much light is needed after you are done building, or build with you lighting plan already figured out. And either have a good fast way to get the heck out of dodge or to slow or stop the enemies from pursuing.

Re: healing, you can grab horsetail pretty safely on the edges of forests. Lots of times it extends quite a ways from the trees, if you patiently scout the edge of the forest.

[Taladar]

Light sources are another one of those things that are essentially impossible to create in sufficient numbers without having the exact rare resources in large amounts.

Lanterns need large amount of metal, oil lamps need large amounts of fat and torches burn out constantly. Lighting up a home was hard enough under those circumstances, lighting up tunnels you have to dig to try to find ores is pretty much impossible.

[Thorfinn]

Welcome to the forums, @Taladar! Sorry I missed noticing that the first time around, and you even mentioned that you were a newer player. 

All true. Which boils down to the inevitable conclusion that is not the kind of gameplay it is designed for. There's no reason a lantern requires 2 m^2 of window glass and 2 ingots other than balance. It's intended to be hard to spawn proof large constructions/excavations, except on a short-term basis. They even added a game mode that eliminates them.

Alternatively, there are mods that extend the life of torches, one of which makes them permanent.

[EDIT]

Oh, hey, @Taladar, I was just going through updating mods to host a game, and noticed that there's a mod that introduces wooden torch holders. Might want to give it a look.

https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/17498

Edited February 16, 2025 by Thorfinn

[Zane Mordien]

2 hours ago, Taladar said:

Light sources are another one of those things that are essentially impossible to create in sufficient numbers without having the exact rare resources in large amounts.

Lanterns need large amount of metal, oil lamps need large amounts of fat and torches burn out constantly. Lighting up a home was hard enough under those circumstances, lighting up tunnels you have to dig to try to find ores is pretty much impossible.

I hear you. I push hard for lanterns day 1. I pan bony soil, collect quartz on the ground and keep an eye out for lead on the ground. Making lanterns out of Moly-whatever is pretty cheap since lead is worthless and usually you can find it on the ground (surface deposits). If you can't find copper or lead on the ground then, it's a miserable time trying to create enough light.

Edited February 16, 2025 by Zane Mordien

[Vratislav]

On 2/16/2025 at 8:01 PM, Taladar said:

it is a very miserable experience trying to find bismuth for bronze while constantly being murdered by silent enemies from behind.

I do agree that it is not easy and everybody went trough this, before finding viable strategies to mitigate dangers of early game ore mining. 

What went good for me: before any digging, I did the prep and made one to two stacks of rope ladders from cattails. It takes some time and spends several knives, but it is definitely wortwhile. Then I dig straight down on good propick readings. Nothing bad can spawn in vertical shaft that is sunlit from above. When dig through a cave, I just build drystone fences around my shaft so no drifter can get close to me. For cassiterite or bismuth, one to one and half stack of ladders is usually enough. 

[Cattastrafy]

Bare in mind I have only about 100h in game, all of it 1.2 so my opinions and points are subject to ignorance! This post is prob gonna go way off topic so beware, lol. I also hate building more than I have to in any game, so I'm more obsessed with combat than most people and realize I'm probably a strong minority here.

I like the mobs enough, more variety is always good though! Shivers def seem a little strong but easy enough to sleep through the night or be indoors, until you get some basic armor.

I love the tier system, and feel like vs has an amazing foundation for combat, but feel like that's just all it has.

Mobs don't drop much worthwhile, the instances where you find certain tiered mobs for your equipment level are random and inconsistent - caves can take you through multiple depths - (can you make a giant "kill floor" underground at a certain depth to fight mobs appropriate for your equipment if you wanted? Please answer!). It'd be amazing if higher level dudes could drop ore or other goodies appropriate for their strength to give you a reason to kill them, and an alternate way to obtain some of your stuff to progress.

Sounds like they're considering rng dungeons on the roadmap, this if done right could solve my issues here (if they're easily findable). Perhaps the rifts could be entered, and have a certain tier of difficulty viewable before you enter. Could lead to entirely new branch of dangerous exploration and resource acquisition. Maybe this is too mmo territory for vs.

Armor seems like a great foundation but misses the mark with metas choices and resource grinds needed, and no real reason to choose certain sets for the slight difference in maluses for most of them.

I feel like the cost of armor should be much more condensed (less to make plate, more to make lamellar etc) and each set should get a unique bonus. Plate already has high dmg tier. Scaled armor is almost as heavy, and slight less protection. But no one (I think?) is going to choose this when they might as well go big or go home. Scaled armor could give you a speed increase whenever you enter combat, like an adrenaline rush, mitigating the run speed malus significantly when in combat, but still horrible to travel in. This kind of idea might make me try it to check it out sometime.

And then the progression speed that's possible kinda makes low level armors mostly or wholely ignorable (I think). I force myself to play in each age a good bit for fun, but being able to make a couple picks outta copper, find some bronze stuff, make a couple bronze picks and anvil, find some iron, blue clay and go straight to iron age in less than two weeks (probably?) is pretty sad. This is kinda a separate (self made) issue but in terms of armor, you can go from optional wood lamellar to iron with very little combat or reason to engage in combat in between. I guess with bronze or better you can trivialize the occasional wolf but that's about it? And for all this, you can ignore metal armor entirely and grow debatablely the best topside armor set out of flax.

And then you make steel after a lot of resource grinding, and have nothing to show for it. Sure you're nearly immortal with steel plate...or steel whatever really, but what do you need to fight that's so hard or not cheesable at that point (mob farms - not that I'm against mob farms in general)?

Which brings up the storms, it's sad that a first storm can spawn god tier mobs while I'm lucky to be wearing copper armor. Sure you can cheese anything with a storm farm, but then that takes away from the challenge I imagine is intended. Perhaps storms should start easy and get harder each one? Would be hard to balance unless they find out of the box ways to determine where you're at progression wise. That circles back to only double headers and the like actually mattering for loot to begin with, at any point in the game. 

Please rip any part of this apart or tell me what I'm missing. There's the resonance archives (?) if you can find the treasure trader (someone tell me how to find this guy omg, I've found like 15 traders and none are treasure, and I can't see them on the map to save my life either, just randomly run into traders as I travel!)

[Zane Mordien]

6 hours ago, Vratislav said:

Nothing bad can spawn in vertical shaft that is sunlit from above. 

One small caveat/warning. If you dig even a 1x1 side shaft from your vertical shaft. Fill it up with dirt. I had a saw blade locust spawn in a 1x1 side shaft of my vertical shaft once. The odds are very very low but it does happen.

[Thorfinn]

1 hour ago, Cattastrafy said:

(can you make a giant "kill floor" underground at a certain depth to fight mobs appropriate for your equipment if you wanted? Please answer!

Absolutely. If you play with caveins, it means a lot of beams and/or fencepost stacks, but you can easily get enough stability back in combat to not need to return to the surface very often. There generally are natural areas that can be slightly modified, too, so long as you don't remove any supporting walls.

You will want to try to find something natural though, because they don't have to spawn in the cave you are in. If there's a large cave near you, that might be where they end up, and you have to leave the area to despawn them.

 

1 hour ago, Cattastrafy said:

being able to make a couple picks outta copper, find some bronze stuff, make a couple bronze picks and anvil, find some iron, blue clay and go straight to iron age in less than two weeks (probably?) is pretty sad.

I'm on track for that in this playthrough. Morning of May 7 I just poured my bronze anvil and pick. Only got enough tin for one more pick, but the one should be sufficient. The other I'll give to the trader.

Don't know if I have iron around me yet -- I only had enough copper for hammer and pick on day 6, but I am in basalt and there is andesite right next door. In my defense, I was getting my farm going, and also have slightly more than 1 storage vessel of honeycomb. That's a lot faster than normal. I'm usually struggling to find cassiterite until well into June.

I'm not sure I agree it should be even more grindy, though. There are lots of people who are marginally into bronze by winter.

 

1 hour ago, Cattastrafy said:

And for all this, you can ignore metal armor entirely and grow debatablely the best topside armor set out of flax.

My go to.

 

1 hour ago, Cattastrafy said:

Sure you can cheese anything with a storm farm, but then that takes away from the challenge I imagine is intended.

I'm not as convinced. Why bother giving the new guys the size variability if the point wasn't to make the challenge different than just a reskinned drifter? I'm not saying you should build a cheese farm. Though playing permadeath wilderness survival, I need to do something to shift the odds from impossible to something I can usually accomplish.

I mean, that was the point of many of the passages in the RA, but with you being the one who was having to fight hunched over or even sitting down.

 

1 hour ago, Cattastrafy said:

it's sad that a first storm can spawn god tier mobs while I'm lucky to be wearing copper armor.

Agreed. Or even before that. Since the first storm can strike on May 5 (optionally, as early as May 3), you need a pretty sweet start to have 1900 units of copper by noon or so of May 4.

 

2 hours ago, Cattastrafy said:

someone tell me how to find this guy omg, I've found like 15 traders and none are treasure, and I can't see them on the map to save my life either, just randomly run into traders as I travel!

Since you play with map, you should be able to predict within 50, maybe 100 blocks of where they are just by repeating the pattern. Otherwise, you just have to get used to judging distance by using nerdpoles.

[Cattastrafy]

1 hour ago, Thorfinn said:

Absolutely. If you play with caveins, it means a lot of beams and/or fencepost stacks, but you can easily get enough stability back in combat to not need to return to the surface very often. There generally are natural areas that can be slightly modified, too, so long as you don't remove any supporting walls.

Thanks for all the info! On this specifically, I guess by kill floor i meant, go to a certain level underground, mine out a large arena basically, just a spawn tank if you will, and murder stuff constantly as it spawns. Probably would have to be huge enough to constantly get spawns away from your light source if this even works.

[Zane Mordien]

6 hours ago, Cattastrafy said:

Scaled armor is almost as heavy, and slight less protection. But no one (I think?) is going to choose this when they might as well go big or go home. Scaled armor could give you a speed increase whenever you enter combat, like an adrenaline rush, mitigating the run speed malus significantly when in combat, but still horrible to travel in. This kind of idea might make me try it to check it out sometime.

And then the progression speed that's possible kinda makes low level armors mostly or wholely ignorable (I think).

I actually use scale over plate now just because I can heal myself in scale. With all 3 pieces of plate your healing effectiveness is trash. My son and I did the Resonance archives with him in plate and me in scale. He died because he couldn't heal himself in the major fight. Tier 3 armor is overkill for the RA, but if you can't heal you can still die in the fight.  

 

I agree that the low level armors are mostly ignorable in regular game play, but if you do some type of challenging world you might actually use them. I like doing the snowball earth - hot start and you have to use the lower tier armors because you cannot get leather. I think it's not a big sin to ignore them in standard game play.

 

 

I'm not touching the temporal storm topic anymore.

[Zane Mordien]

4 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

I'm not sure I agree it should be even more grindy, though. There are lots of people who are marginally into bronze by winter.

 

100% agree. It doesn't need to be more grindy. People have enough of a time finding bronze already. Especially if they watch videos on how to find cassiterite. Some of those tutorials lead you down a painful and unnecessarily long path.

[LadyWYT]

6 hours ago, Cattastrafy said:

Plate already has high dmg tier. Scaled armor is almost as heavy, and slight less protection. But no one (I think?) is going to choose this when they might as well go big or go home.

Scale armor offer more ranged accuracy than plate and more protection than chain(though less accurate). So if you prefer to do your fighting at range but also want a bit more protection than what chain offers, scale is the way to go.

6 hours ago, Cattastrafy said:

And then the progression speed that's possible kinda makes low level armors mostly or wholely ignorable (I think). I force myself to play in each age a good bit for fun, but being able to make a couple picks outta copper, find some bronze stuff, make a couple bronze picks and anvil, find some iron, blue clay and go straight to iron age in less than two weeks (probably?) is pretty sad. This is kinda a separate (self made) issue but in terms of armor, you can go from optional wood lamellar to iron with very little combat or reason to engage in combat in between. I guess with bronze or better you can trivialize the occasional wolf but that's about it? And for all this, you can ignore metal armor entirely and grow debatablely the best topside armor set out of flax.

Keeping in mind that one's progression speed hinges heavily on their skill. An experienced player can have their hands on iron within a couple months of in-game time, or even have steel in that timeframe depending on seed layout and task priority. A new player isn't going to have the experience and skill needed to do that though, given that they're still learning the game.

In regards to early armor types, most of them aren't very useful, especially to experienced players. Copper is pretty much a waste, as it's better to use copper for bronze. Bronze is decent, and can get you through the Archive, but won't hold up to the sturdier monsters(tier 3/4). Leather and improvised armors are...okay for the very early game, but aren't generally that useful for more experienced players, since those players are usually better at avoiding/dealing with danger. I would say those armors have situational usefulness--they might not offer much protection, but they're cheap, easy to acquire, and can sometimes be the difference between life and death as you establish yourself.

In regards to gambeson, it's definitely a prime choice for adventuring armor. It does take a while to acquire though, and there are other things you might want to use that flax for too.

6 hours ago, Cattastrafy said:

And then you make steel after a lot of resource grinding, and have nothing to show for it. Sure you're nearly immortal with steel plate...or steel whatever really, but what do you need to fight that's so hard or not cheesable at that point (mob farms - not that I'm against mob farms in general)?

Steel plate does turn you into a walking tank, however, the drawback is that you can't heal at all while wearing it. There might not be much damage that gets through the armor, but the bits that do will add up, and if you don't have a way to get to safety and patch yourself up you're probably done for. As for what you might have to fight? Aside from certain powerful story-related entities, the new monsters that were added pack quite a punch, especially in situations where you have a lot of stronger ones in the same general area. Steel is protective, yes, but it won't keep you safe from complacency.

6 hours ago, Cattastrafy said:

Which brings up the storms, it's sad that a first storm can spawn god tier mobs while I'm lucky to be wearing copper armor. Sure you can cheese anything with a storm farm, but then that takes away from the challenge I imagine is intended. Perhaps storms should start easy and get harder each one? Would be hard to balance unless they find out of the box ways to determine where you're at progression wise. That circles back to only double headers and the like actually mattering for loot to begin with, at any point in the game. 

Storms actually do start out easy, and get harder as time goes on. Which ironically, seems to be backwards from how certain things pan out in the lore, but for gameplay...I mean it works. But even the "easy" storms are going to be nasty if you're lacking in equipment and don't want to use cheese strategy(things that shouldn't work but do because videogame logic). Which I also think is fine, provided there are ways for the player to survive(like being alerted to the storm's approach, and hiding). It's okay for some things to be incredibly dangerous, and temporal storms help drive home the point that something very bad happened to the world. As for the loot...the Jonas parts are probably the best thing you can get from the storms, and I'm not sure what else the monsters could drop that would both feel satisfying and not unbalance the gameplay. Temporal gears, rusty gears, and flax fibers can all be acquired elsewhere, in safer fashions, but they're still useful gains from a storm after a fashion.

Also, this is just my opinion, but I think the monsters are supposed to be more obstacles that players need to face every so often, instead of things that players are actively encouraged to hunt. That's not to say they can't or shouldn't be hunted, but they seem more like supernatural abominations that lurk around and try to rip your face off every now and then. They aren't things you want to encounter, realistically, but will need to deal with in order to accomplish certain things(like the main story).

7 hours ago, Cattastrafy said:

Sounds like they're considering rng dungeons on the roadmap, this if done right could solve my issues here (if they're easily findable). Perhaps the rifts could be entered, and have a certain tier of difficulty viewable before you enter. Could lead to entirely new branch of dangerous exploration and resource acquisition. Maybe this is too mmo territory for vs.

I don't think it's too far-fetched, though I wouldn't expect it to be implemented in quite that fashion. I think there will likely be some "dungeon instances" that we'll enter and do stuff(technically there's already at least one!), and while I expect them to be dangerous, I don't expect them to be a way to acquire resources outside of plot-specific macguffins.

7 hours ago, Cattastrafy said:

(can you make a giant "kill floor" underground at a certain depth to fight mobs appropriate for your equipment if you wanted? Please answer!).

Well...I mean...I have what I've dubbed the "Friendship Hole/Mines" on my friend's server. It's a mined-out quartz vein that I've been using as a stone quarry as well--near the surface, with a lot of dark open space. There's usually a couple of monsters down there to tangle with, though on days with higher rift activity there are more. So I'd say that yeah, someone could dig out a "kill floor" if they wanted. It'd be a lot of effort, of course, and unless you're hunting the exotic shivers and bowtorn deep at the mantle layer, I'm not sure why you would do this. But yeah, you probably could.

[Cattastrafy]

16 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Scale armor offer more ranged accuracy than plate and more protection than chain(though less accurate). So if you prefer to do your fighting at range but also want a bit more protection than what chain offers, scale is the way to go.

That's true. I figure small differences between multiple suits isn't going to drive a significant portion of people to make niche decisions but who knows. Rather I figure something significant like each suit having its own buff to highlight the other small differences or just be a standalone cool thing might be a better tradeoff. Maybe too much mmo territory again.

16 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Keeping in mind that one's progression speed hinges heavily on their skill. An experienced player can have their hands on iron within a couple months of in-game time, or even have steel in that timeframe depending on seed layout and task priority. A new player isn't going to have the experience and skill needed to do that though, given that they're still learning the game.

Indeed, hopefully new players stick around and become experienced players. When ultimately everyone is going to be experienced, I think the game should be tuned closer to what is possible rather than what a new player on average is going to take time wise to complete. The fact you can enter steel age in 2 or 3 months is...sad. but no easy way to fix this. Maybe it doesn't need fixed, just my thoughts!

16 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Steel plate does turn you into a walking tank, however, the drawback is that you can't heal at all while wearing it. There might not be much damage that gets through the armor, but the bits that do will add up, and if you don't have a way to get to safety and patch yourself up you're probably done for. As for what you might have to fight? Aside from certain powerful story-related entities, the new monsters that were added pack quite a punch, especially in situations where you have a lot of stronger ones in the same general area. Steel is protective, yes, but it won't keep you safe from complacency.

Certainly. Story entities are a great example of what I'd like to use steel or whatever for. There's just not a lot of that. Right? Which is fine, development takes time. Just making the point that there's not much "currently' to make use of it.

Other than that, there's no real reason to fight these new powerful creatures for me after I get steel etc, personally. I'm someone who doesn't build just to build (a minority probably to be fair). Once I've got endgame gear, the idea is to use it significantly. 

I can mine faster. Doesn't matter, I already have steel. I can do more damage and take more damage. I don't need this, there's no reason to fight, I have all the things. But what about Jonas stuff? I can see at night with goggles. Doesn't matter, I have steel I don't need to go out for stuff. Teleporters. Cool, this would have been handy a long time ago. I have no reason to venture far out anymore, I have steel. Resonator? Sick, listening to music while I do things at home sounds cool. Too bad I have nothing to do at home anymore. I have everything worth getting. Snake eating its own tail situation? 

I guess only reason to keep going is for lore? I admit I don't know what comes after archives nor have I even seen those cause treasure hunter trader apparently is a myth on my saves.

[Cattastrafy]

This is all friendly conjecture on my end, though.

Again, though, I think new enemies are cool, shivers a bit tough without armor. My point is I wish there WAS a point to fight them more than there currently is.

[Thorfinn]

25 minutes ago, Cattastrafy said:

 I'm someone who doesn't build just to build...

I can mine faster. Doesn't matter, I already have steel. I can do more damage and take more damage. I don't need this, there's no reason to fight, I have all the things. But what about Jonas stuff? I can see at night with goggles. Doesn't matter, I have steel I don't need to go out for stuff. Teleporters. Cool, this would have been handy a long time ago. I have no reason to venture far out anymore, I have steel. Resonator? Sick, listening to music while I do things at home sounds cool. Too bad I have nothing to do at home anymore. I have everything worth getting. Snake eating its own tail situation? 

That's my situation. Kind of why I set a personal goal of finishing in one game year. Steel all around, more windmill power than I can come up with an excuse to use, on Wilderness settings and permadeath. By fall, I'm just finding things to keep busy, so I usually don't wait the whole year. Just start a new game and do the fun stuff all over again. Which, incidentally, is none of Chapter 2. I so hate the Mario Bros platformer crap I'm not going to do that again until at least Chapter 3, maybe 4.

But I also don't enjoy pointless combat. If killing the buggers did something like permanently restoring the stability to that chunk, or better yet, that chunk and half the amount to the chunks around it, and a quarter that much to the chunks surrounding that, I'd be all over it. I'm always building on unstable regions for some reason. I have to go out exploring to restore stability most of the time. Cabin fever or something, I guess.