How is getting one shot in early game in such a harsh game considered fun?

[Greccen]

Playing as a malefactor and my son as a hunter in a standardish game (400 percent tool durability- 50 percent hunger reduction because tedious mechanics)

Mob strength normal.

 

With full satiety I get one shot by a wolf, that mountain goat and bear. 2 shot by a rare bowthorn. 3-4 hit by a surface drifter Even with that improvised wooden armor. 

Our first storm arrives and instead of a jumpscare and worthy fight we get one shotted and spawnkilled in our house of dirt by tainted drifters.

So we know playing this game is a masochistic effort in its own right in "standard" settings, but can someone explain why its chosen to seal club starting players with how strong the mobs are?

 

 

Can I adjust mob strength in the current game? because we dropped the game real hard after that experience. We made all the copper tools and we were preparing to get an anvil but the motivation is gone.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

[A_British_Lass]

I have my issues with how enemies spawn during storms, but the amount of health mobs like bears take off you is easy to play around if you're smart about it.

Early game your best bet on killing mobs is to make several spears and throw them by hold right click, melee early game is not easy and should be avoided in my opinion, wait until you've reached thee metal age before attack a lot of the stronger mobs unclose

as for mob strength, I'm unsure if there's a setting to change how much damage they do. Though there probably are mods out there

[7embre]

Welcome to the game and to the forums!

1 hour ago, Gregory Verhulst said:

Can I adjust mob strength in the current game?

Yep! You can do that. Just use the following command as a host you probably are, and restart the server:
/worldConfig creatureStrength 0.5
It will make enemies half as deadly as they are by the default.

Still, I would not recommend doing that as it will eventually reduce the sense of accomplishment from getting your hands on the first decent armor. General pacing of this game intends that we, seraphs, are defenseless against nature (be it the cold, hunger or animals) and rot, but, we slowly yet surely turn the tables into our favor dye to our engenuity, by preparing better food, getting better tools and armor, etc. Although I acknowledge that some players might want to go a bit more casually, and the game allows it.

Have a good journey, and may the bears stay away from you!

[Greccen]

1 hour ago, A_British_Lass said:

I have my issues with how enemies spawn during storms, but the amount of health mobs like bears take off you is easy to play around if you're smart about it.
Early game your best bet on killing mobs is to make several spears and throw them by hold right click, melee early game is not easy

Thats how we found out and did. The club is worthless and so is melee in general. My son uses his crude bow and I have copper spears from panning. The wolves biting you dead instantly seems very unfair considering you need so much wood for charcoal from the forest to progress.

1 hour ago, 7embre said:

Welcome to the game and to the forums!

Yep! You can do that. Just use the following command as a host you probably are, and restart the server:
/worldConfig creatureStrength 0.5
It will make enemies half as deadly as they are by the default.

Still, I would not recommend doing that as it will eventually reduce the sense of accomplishment from getting your hands on the first decent armor. General pacing of this game intends that we, seraphs, are defenseless against nature (be it the cold, hunger or animals) and rot, but, we slowly yet surely turn the tables into our favor dye to our engenuity, by preparing better food, getting better tools and armor, etc. Although I acknowledge that some players might want to go a bit more casually, and the game allows it.

Have a good journey, and may the bears stay away from you!

Thank you, this might be the thing needed to atleast give it a revisit. Try to picture we arent the most pro players, how could it, my son is 8 but we did reach endgame in other survival games and defeated the ashlands boss in unmodded valheim last month without too much hassle for example.

For us the general pacing in the way its meant to be played seems an cognitive dissonant mess between time and effort taken between hunger and survival and the ease of dying. Its like the game expects you to rather die than fight for your lives. If you have to cheese everything from the beginning its mostly not in error of the player but the game that upfronts its difficulty too steeply, thankfully we can seem to change the settings.

 

Edited January 15, 2025 by Gregory Verhulst

[A_British_Lass]

9 minutes ago, Gregory Verhulst said:

The wolves biting you dead instantly seems very unfair considering you need so much wood for charcoal from the forest to progress.

 

 

hmm this is odd, for me, i can usually survive 5 hits from wolves (off top of my memory) might be the mods or settings i run though

[Echo Weaver]

3 hours ago, A_British_Lass said:

hmm this is odd, for me, i can usually survive 5 hits from wolves (off top of my memory) might be the mods or settings i run though

I think this must be mods or settings. I was definitely getting insta-killed by wolves at the beginning of the game. I didn't start getting resilient until gambeson armor.

[Dilan Rona]

Started off watching Youtube videos, and felt I was ready for what Vintage story could throw at me, and boy was I wrong. Had by butt handed to me within the first 5 minutes, mostly wolves, and one or two bears. Not to mention the drifters. Took a few days to get my bearings ingame, and it wasnt until I followed the ingame tutorial that I really got a handle on the game.

Never forget that tutorial if you are new to the game.

[Akari_Enderwolf]

2 hours ago, Echo Weaver said:

I think this must be mods or settings. I was definitely getting insta-killed by wolves at the beginning of the game. I didn't start getting resilient until gambeson armor.

I don't have mods that change wolf damage and I don't get one-shot by wolves with no armor. usually a few hits. I play with 20 base hp instead of 15, but that's only a small change, and I tend to take more than 2 hits to die from wolves.

[N0ma13]

VS starts off pretty unforgiving but it's really simple to get situated. 
Remember to harvest leaves to get seeds, you can plant trees at your base and away from wolf spawns. Just don't plant so many you create a new forest.
Play with your volume up and don't run everywhere you go, especially if the hunger mechanic is 'tedious'. 
Wolves tell you not to come any closer before they attack, just stop moving and turn around. This is where you run - away from them.
Improvised armor is useless. If you can find some resin make the wooden lamellar to start. Just takes firewood to repair once it's made and it'll let you survive a wolf or two.
Carry multiple spears, don't throw your last one..
Wolves aren't as good at climbing as you also, can lose them going over hills and jumping across pits.

[Steel General]

In the early game fighting is best avoided.  The seraph is not a viking warrior

Crude armor will let you survive one wolf bite - it's just enough that you get a chance to run if you're surprised by a single wolf.  The crude shield (crouch to use) has a chance to help if you already know you're in a fight, and if it's against a single wolf you might be able to make it run away before it kills you (provided you're doing more than slapping it ).  That's about all the prowess you should expect before you have better armor.

Seek coastal forest for your early wood so you have deep water to jump into at the first sign of trouble.  In water, you can kill nearly anything with a flint spear and without getting hurt by kiting.  Expect a bear to take more than one flint spear - it's health is greater than the spear's durability.  Spears work better when you can throw them, but collecting them to throw again in the same fight can be tricky.

I never bother with the club... it may have value I failed to assess, but spears seem easier to get and more effective.

[Koobze]

There is nothing wrong with changing the settings to suit your play-style and tolerance for the grindier aspects of the game. I play with increased run speed, decreased hunger, longer-lasting food, more HP, reduced enemy strength, and increased tool durability - which I then crank to 11 through console commands as soon as I start the game. I am not at all willing to make a fifth copper pickaxe while searching for tin or whatever, my copper pickaxe will last me as long as I am willing to play with that character, I only need a better one to reach better materials. I'd rather focus on exploring and building cool things. And if I set off on a long journey on my boat to discover a new continent and halfway there realize I forgot my pro-pick? I am absolutely flipping over to creative mode for a second just to spawn myself a new one, which I will then throw into the ocean on my eventual return trip home.

[Stern]

Funny, I usually play at mobStrength 150% and base health 10 plus then malefactor to make it 7.5. With all four early game accessible food types I get to 21 health which is sufficient. However, it does get frustrating especially in the early game and I usually build close to spawn to mitigate time wasted by returning to a death. I’m all for customising one’s experience, but i would recommend increasing the base health pool instead of decreasing mob damage to preserve the end-game balancing.
 

 

 

[Thorfinn]

Shouldn't be getting insta-killed by wolves on standard. They do 8, so if you are unarrmored, even with the malefactor penalty, you should survive 1 hit, but not 2. Well, you should survive if you are not down many HP to start with. BUT, the cooldown between wolf attacks is only 1.5 seconds. Most peoples' OODA loop is at least 0.5 seconds. If you are operating under any lag at all, that second hit can come awfully fast.

Though it sounds weird, I strongly recommend you not reduce hunger rate. Getting those bonus HP through nutrition is critical. Once you get to 16.1, you can survive 2 wolf bites. If you are having trouble with food, I'd suggest adding the mod Wildcraft Fruits and Nuts. There are probably others, but in that one, pretty much no matter where you go, you are surrounded by food.

[Kevin Eric Snell]

The learning curve involves a lot of death. I had to make my peace with that. In order to streamline the learning process, I began tweaking my games to increase my HP, while leaving monster strength untouched. Depending on where your spawn point is, that might be a more enjoyable strategy, or it might leave you annoyed at having to flee pursuing wolves and getting lost multiple times. (One early game I had a terrible spawn and only found a decent region to build my base several hundred blocks south, so every death was a massive headache.) Is it enjoyable? Eh. I did a lot of grumbling, swearing, and yelling, and I deleted a lot of worlds. Eventually, using slightly tweaked hunger and HP, I found my bearings and established myself. I became attached that particular world and I'm still working in it, building roads and gradually civilizing my local area, but I can now see that my tweaks to hunger weren't entirely necessary for survival (except for the very very early game), and I think in the future I'll leave them at standard.

 

Now armed with better knowledge about how to progress, I restarted with standard settings and found myself much less frustrated.

[LadyWYT]

Melee combat can be a tricky beast to master in the early-game, and it's also easier to handle if you're playing a class that specializes in melee(Blackguard) or one that doesn't suffer penalties to melee(Commoner, Tailor). Even then though, it's better to avoid combat if you can, or otherwise kill/weaken targets at range first. Spears are generally the most effective early weapon, as they are cheap, do decent damage, and can be either thrown as a projectile or used as a melee weapon with good reach.

Carrying a stack of bandages on you is a good idea, since it can keep you alive long enough to get to safety. Likewise, a crude shield and improvised armor can also help mitigate some of the incoming damage, if you find yourself running into trouble. It won't last long or keep you injury-free, but it can keep you alive through fights that you may not otherwise survive.

Once you acquire tier 2 armor and weapons, surface enemies become much easier to deal with, provided you remembered to equip your gear. Iron equipment is even better than that, and steel will make you almost impervious to most enemies(though you'll never be truly invincible).

[A_British_Lass]

12 hours ago, Akari_Enderwolf said:

I don't have mods that change wolf damage and I don't get one-shot by wolves with no armor. usually a few hits. I play with 20 base hp instead of 15, but that's only a small change, and I tend to take more than 2 hits to die from wolves.

Oh, thought I went crazy for a minute there

genuinely befuddled by the different experiences we've all had, I might launch my game and do some testing here

EDIT:  started a world with no mods and spawned in as a commoner.
Both a brown bear and a wolf killed me in two hits maybe some settings I ran before let me survive a couple more, however on the latest stable  build (1.19.8) on vanilla unaltered standard world (selecting the standard preset without changing any of the settings)

so i can confirm that in fact getting one hit even by a bear is not standard behaviour
Genuinely curious as to why op is getting one shot even with armour on?

Edited January 16, 2025 by A_British_Lass
adding extra information to my post

[Kevin Eric Snell]

Knowing from experience that decent bronze chain armor will insulate me from wolves helps keep me motivated. Still, sometimes that /gamemode creative is tempting when I get chased by a wolf in the middle of a hilly forest and some unseen obstacle (probably leaves) blocks me from jumping and gets me unrealistically stuck.

I also wish the animals wouldn't literally phase inside of me so I'm unable to hit them. Bears especially. I'm staring right at them, face to face, and nope, white cross target instead of red cross target because their hitbox is literally inside me. It's a neverending cycle of step back, swing, step back, swing, step back, swing.

[Greccen]

5 hours ago, A_British_Lass said:

Genuinely curious as to why op is getting one shot even with armour on?

I play as malefactor, no armor. I had around 12,5hp.

All the corpse runs made that day had the wolves get me in 1 hit when arriving at the place of gratuitous violence or their attack speed and high damage just felt as instantaneous death. It took me 4-5 corpse runs so I had my teeth grinded out in the aftermath and did them the same from a distance with spears and bow. Next time I'll check the combat log but I only found out its existence yesterday when monkeying around with that prospecting pick.

Anyway thank you all for the helpful hints, insights, shared experience and right mindset for this game. I'm sure we'll carry some of 'em over in our games.

 

Edited January 16, 2025 by Gregory Verhulst

[A_British_Lass]

2 hours ago, Gregory Verhulst said:

Anyway thank you all for the helpful hints, insights, shared experience and right mindset for this game. I'm sure we'll carry some of 'em over in our games.

 

have fun! best of wishes you and your kid got this, you can overcome the wilderness

[Teh Pizza Lady]

I will also point out that wolves tend to spawn closer to forests. (wiki: https://wiki.vintagestory.at/index.php?title=Wolf ) I wish I could find the bit I read now, but that seems to be indicated by the forest floor block vs a large amount of trees, so you could theoretically plant and harvest a good amount of trees away from a forest and not have to worry as much about wolf attacks/spawns. So it may be worth moving away from any forested areas for now until you get your bearings and figure out how to play the game.

On 1/15/2025 at 1:09 AM, Gregory Verhulst said:

we get one shotted and spawnkilled in our house of dirt by tainted drifters.

My very first time playing the game with my friend, we had a temporal rift spawn IN THE HOUSE during a temporal storm. It was a light storm so we opted to fight the drifters instead of riding it out in safety. Queue the panic that set in when the rift spawned right on top of my head and began spewing out monsters inside our little dirt hut... We had to scramble to hide inside the cellar which didn't even have a proper door at the time. Anyway I prefer to dig my house out under the surface. This seems to lessen the chances of a rift spawning inside. Just last night we had a rift spawn inside the charcoal kiln (just a 2x3x3 area enclosed by cobblestone blocks) so that was fun to deal with.

This game just LOVES tossing unpredictable things at you left and right. It's insane, but I love it. I hope you come to embrace the chaos, too!

Edited January 16, 2025 by traugdor

[FlyingCatPhillips]

 I don't know how many people "tweak" the world generation. But you can basically get rid of a ton of danger if you put on settings that would make it easier for you to play. Now bear in mind that if you put mob hostility to passive and attack a wolf (or if it is hunger?), it will still attack you. You can to some degree weaken them, you can also weaken temporal storms. I think you can also make them harder too. Just go with your skill level and what you are comfortable playing, as you get better at the game you can increase the threat levels. Also, if you're playing in an existing world, you can use commands to change these settings. I have had to turn off temporal storms since it would be no fun to trigger a seizure irl, and it does make getting some items harder so keep that in mind.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

37 minutes ago, FlyingCatPhillips said:

it does make getting some items harder so keep that in mind.

I'm curious what items you are referring to.

[FlyingCatPhillips]

temporal gears, you know the blue glowy ones

[LadyWYT]

15 hours ago, Kevin Eric Snell said:

Still, sometimes that /gamemode creative is tempting when I get chased by a wolf in the middle of a hilly forest and some unseen obstacle (probably leaves) blocks me from jumping and gets me unrealistically stuck.

I use creative and spectator modes a lot to fix various mistakes, because I don't always want to have to sink in the time and resources to do it "legit". There is an option to keep inventory on death, of course, though I don't like turning that option on as I've found it encourages me to play too recklessly.

11 hours ago, Gregory Verhulst said:

I play as malefactor, no armor. I had around 12,5hp.

All the corpse runs made that day had the wolves get me in 1 hit when arriving at the place of gratuitous violence or their attack speed and high damage just felt as instantaneous death. It took me 4-5 corpse runs so I had my teeth grinded out in the aftermath and did them the same from a distance with spears and bow. Next time I'll check the combat log but I only found out its existence yesterday when monkeying around with that prospecting pick.

Anyway thank you all for the helpful hints, insights, shared experience and right mindset for this game. I'm sure we'll carry some of 'em over in our games.

 

One thing I'll mention for 1.20, since we're getting close to a stable release: animals will now run away if attacked at range. This includes dangerous animals like male deer and predators, so players now have a chance to scare dangerous wildlife away from an area by throwing rocks/hitting them with some sort of projectile. It's also risky, since dangerous animals may notice your presence and choose to come after you instead of running away.