My suggestions

[Mac Mcleod]

I've been playing about 4 to 5 months on two servers.

Here are my ideas:

1) Historically accurate neolithic bone axes, shovels, and knives.  Ironically, the neolithic bone shovels look *exactly* like the existing shovels in the game.   The axes look similar.  This would be a white texture for the blade and possibly a lower durability than flint.   It would also make "skyworld" playthroughs easier (giving your game more videos on Youtube) as bone tools would be renewable.

2) Accurate creation of clay by putting dirt in water and letting the clay settle out over time.   I can see a "firepit" mechanism to start.  Dig a hole, fill it with water, toss in X dirt, wait 24 hours, get a piece of clay on the bottom of the water block.

3) Adding some kind of blower mechanism to bloomeries or firepits.  This would make them burn hotter.  It's a real thing in the real world.   You might limit this to certain classes since only certain cultures developed it.

4) Create a new water block.   Either make it so you can't pick the block up with a bucket, or make the bucket remove this kind of water block when you fill a bucket from it.   Make buckets place this kind of water by default.   The magical water source blocks from tobg are destructive to immersion and don't fit the "simulation" nature of the rest of the game.  Using a bucket on a block should pick this block up.   

5) Add a jonas device that *creates* source water blocks.

6) Make chests immune to flame or make firewood flammable by default.  It's silly that chests burn but the firewood next to the firepit doesn't burn.  It's really painful to have your chests burn tho.

7) Change drifter drops of 1 fiber to be 1 to 2 fibers... Doesn't have to be 50/50, could be 2/3 one fiber, 1/3 two fibers.  But it does give a little dopamine "hit".

8 ) Increase the time cherries and peaches are ripe when in multi-player.   They may literally only be ripe from 1am to 7am.  I suggest making it 24 hours so players have one real day to harvest.

9) Since you have rammed dirt and packed dirt, change ordinary dirt so it won't stack more than 2 high when placed by players.

I have one more that's heavier weight but I can't remember it right now, I'll have to add it when I remember it.

 

[Nagahiro]

I would love to have more stone age content, even if it's the early game, and people tend to skip that, or want to skip it. months of playing the game, I came to some conclusions too. it would be nice to have more uses for bone. like arrow heads, knives, needles or fish hooks once fish content has been planned and added. I tend to dig a lot of dirt and soil and I tend to use up more shovels than any other tool, once I've exhausted my copper and bronze I regress back to using stone shovels. it would be nice if it has more health relative to the speed it breaks blocks and the quantity you dig compared to other tools such as pickaxes for stone and axes for wood.

clay pits would be nice too, a way to "store" clay instead of storing them in reed baskets and chests. and we should also remove impurities and detritus from raw clay too, the wet process you mentioned is exactly that. from how long I've played the game, I've noticed that clay forming is lacking in its early steps. I certainly enjoy digging from a clay deposit, but the way you gather clay as an item, store it as an item, then use it on the ground, there's just something missing. an intermediate clay pit would probably fix that for me.

gather → clay pit → clay forming → pit kiln → ceramic

 

I wouldn't mind iron bloomeries to use blowers. however I do want forges to be have blowers or bellows too. the wait time until 700 degrees is... negligible at best, but I feel like there should be more to it.

the game is in need of some more fluid mechanics I believe to better balance the bucket and water source blocks. trenches for the early game, wooden troughs for the mid game, and copper and lead pipes for the late game, something like that. transporting water is a significant thing historically, and would surely fit in the world of VS. I don't think it would fit for Jonas tech to be able to "create" water, maybe "transmute" water? but idk, it would probably fit them better if it's a "Jonas pump" maybe.

I don't mind chests burning as a mechanic, just means you should be more careful with your storage. but wooden blocks should drop their metal components and a bit of char or ash if they end up burning. this includes firewood.

also, for number 9, just enable soil gravity in the world settings before world creation.

[Mac Mcleod]

Ah yes... in a world where the cost of leaving a door open is your life.   

10) Make a way to a craft doors that will automatically close.   Perhaps with a twine and a rock.   Perhaps with a metal rod (spring).

[Mac Mcleod]

On 2/20/2025 at 12:56 AM, Nagahiro said:

I would love to have more stone age content, even if it's the early game, and people tend to skip that, or want to skip it. months of playing the game, I came to some conclusions too. it would be nice to have more uses for bone. like arrow heads, knives, needles or fish hooks once fish content has been planned and added. I tend to dig a lot of dirt and soil and I tend to use up more shovels than any other tool, once I've exhausted my copper and bronze I regress back to using stone shovels. it would be nice if it has more health relative to the speed it breaks blocks and the quantity you dig compared to other tools such as pickaxes for stone and axes for wood.

clay pits would be nice too, a way to "store" clay instead of storing them in reed baskets and chests. and we should also remove impurities and detritus from raw clay too, the wet process you mentioned is exactly that. from how long I've played the game, I've noticed that clay forming is lacking in its early steps. I certainly enjoy digging from a clay deposit, but the way you gather clay as an item, store it as an item, then use it on the ground, there's just something missing. an intermediate clay pit would probably fix that for me.

gather → clay pit → clay forming → pit kiln → ceramic

 

I wouldn't mind iron bloomeries to use blowers. however I do want forges to be have blowers or bellows too. the wait time until 700 degrees is... negligible at best, but I feel like there should be more to it.

the game is in need of some more fluid mechanics I believe to better balance the bucket and water source blocks. trenches for the early game, wooden troughs for the mid game, and copper and lead pipes for the late game, something like that. transporting water is a significant thing historically, and would surely fit in the world of VS. I don't think it would fit for Jonas tech to be able to "create" water, maybe "transmute" water? but idk, it would probably fit them better if it's a "Jonas pump" maybe.

I don't mind chests burning as a mechanic, just means you should be more careful with your storage. but wooden blocks should drop their metal components and a bit of char or ash if they end up burning. this includes firewood.

also, for number 9, just enable soil gravity in the world settings before world creation.

I like your idea about chests burning their metal parts.

However, they have the fire spread feature turned off on their own public server.    That has to be for a reason.   It's an unpopular feature.   And the 1.20.X firepits suddenly can set things on fire that are not next to the firepits.  I.e. there is an empty block.

The earth feature is similar.  On their server and other servers, the feature is turned off along with cave-ins.  Now that you have packed and rammed earth available for free, dirt should be treated like sand and gravel.   I suppose you could let it be 3 high before it started falling over but that would need extra coding.

Thanks for responding.

 

Edited February 21, 2025 by Mac Mcleod

[LadyWYT]

On 2/19/2025 at 4:58 PM, Mac Mcleod said:

4) Create a new water block.   Either make it so you can't pick the block up with a bucket, or make the bucket remove this kind of water block when you fill a bucket from it.   Make buckets place this kind of water by default.   The magical water source blocks from tobg are destructive to immersion and don't fit the "simulation" nature of the rest of the game.  Using a bucket on a block should pick this block up. 

This is actually already a thing: an optional challenge setting that prevents buckets from placing water source blocks.

On 2/19/2025 at 4:58 PM, Mac Mcleod said:

6) Make chests immune to flame or make firewood flammable by default.  It's silly that chests burn but the firewood next to the firepit doesn't burn.  It's really painful to have your chests burn tho.

Firepits shouldn't be burning anything, save the fuel you put in them. Pit kilns, on the other hand, will happily set fire to whatever flammable thing happens to be near them. Which is also why you don't want to build them in your house(learned that the hard way!)

On 2/19/2025 at 4:58 PM, Mac Mcleod said:

7) Change drifter drops of 1 fiber to be 1 to 2 fibers... Doesn't have to be 50/50, could be 2/3 one fiber, 1/3 two fibers.  But it does give a little dopamine "hit".

Maybe, but I think it would make flax a little too easy to acquire, in addition to encouraging players to hunt the drifters and whatnot in the early game. Not that actively hunting them is bad, but in my opinion the monsters are more of a hazard to be avoided, unless you need to deal with them for some reason.

On 2/19/2025 at 4:58 PM, Mac Mcleod said:

8 ) Increase the time cherries and peaches are ripe when in multi-player.   They may literally only be ripe from 1am to 7am.  I suggest making it 24 hours so players have one real day to harvest.

I haven't tinkered too much with those crops, but cherries and peaches don't have the same shelf life as pears and apples, which is why they have a shorter time window for harvest/use. If I'm recalling correctly though, cherries don't have as good of nutrition value as other fruits, which is a shame. If I were to change anything, I'd increase their nutrition value so that it's more worth investing in them.

On 2/19/2025 at 4:58 PM, Mac Mcleod said:

9) Since you have rammed dirt and packed dirt, change ordinary dirt so it won't stack more than 2 high when placed by players.

Also already a feature: cave-ins and soil instability. If you have those turned on, not only will you need to be careful about your mining process, but you'll also be unable to build with just plain dirt as it will collapse. You'll need to pack/ram the dirt first, if you wish to build anything with it.

10 hours ago, Mac Mcleod said:

10) Make a way to a craft doors that will automatically close.   Perhaps with a twine and a rock.   Perhaps with a metal rod (spring).

Or a simple Jonas contraption. Or even a complicated one that functions like an airlock--it only opens for the player, and closes shortly after being opened.

 

[Mac Mcleod]

On 2/21/2025 at 6:46 PM, LadyWYT said:

This is actually already a thing: an optional challenge setting that prevents buckets from placing water source blocks.

No your options are:

1) Turn off water blocks so when you place a bucket of water, it vanishes within a few seconds.

2) Placed full water source blocks where you can transport one magical bucket of water with you and create a large lake from that one bucket of water.

You don't have the option to carry a bucket of water which is a single non-source block of water which fits the game's simulation base much better.

On 2/21/2025 at 6:46 PM, LadyWYT said:

Firepits shouldn't be burning anything, save the fuel you put in them. Pit kilns, on the other hand, will happily set fire to whatever flammable thing happens to be near them. Which is also why you don't want to build them in your house(learned that the hard way!)

 

Maybe, but I think it would make flax a little too easy to acquire, in addition to encouraging players to hunt the drifters and whatnot in the early game. Not that actively hunting them is bad, but in my opinion the monsters are more of a hazard to be avoided, unless you need to deal with them for some reason.

There would be no appreciable increase in availability if the odds were:

45/50 = 0 pieces of flax, 5/50 = 1 piece of flax (roughly what it is now)

vs

45/50 = 0 pieces of flax, 1/50= 2 pieces of flax, 4/50 = 1 pieces of flax.

But when you got 2, it would be memorable.   Fixed rewards are boring.  Random rewards makes things more fun.   The player gets a little variety/dopamine hit.    

On 2/21/2025 at 6:46 PM, LadyWYT said:

I haven't tinkered too much with those crops, but cherries and peaches don't have the same shelf life as pears and apples, which is why they have a shorter time window for harvest/use. If I'm recalling correctly though, cherries don't have as good of nutrition value as other fruits, which is a shame. If I were to change anything, I'd increase their nutrition value so that it's more worth investing in them.

Also already a feature: cave-ins and soil instability. If you have those turned on, not only will you need to be careful about your mining process, but you'll also be unable to build with just plain dirt as it will collapse. You'll need to pack/ram the dirt first, if you wish to build anything with it.

Or a simple Jonas contraption. Or even a complicated one that functions like an airlock--it only opens for the player, and closes shortly after being opened.

 

I think you missed the fact i said, "multiplayer".   Currently your cherry crops may become ripe *while you are asleep in the real world* and *vanish* before you wake up.  On a multiplayer server the game doesn't stop when you log off.   If you log off at 9pm and get on the next day at 6pm, 21 days have passed.  As you propose, you might need to set an alarm to wake up at 4am to harvest your crop.

 

Server Operators turn off soil instability because of it's impact on the server when a large mass of dirt or rock caves in.  I'm talking about something much less impactful.  When a player places *one* dirt block, check to see if that one block isn't supported (same as for sand and gravel now) and have it flow down.   Very low server impact.  Gives a nudge to people to use packed earth and rammed earth instead of building really ugly dirt huts.

Also, I think they should minimized floating blocks as a result of players digging.   One block that is unsupported after a player digs away it's support should just fall.  Don't set off a huge cascade because it will be turned off.

 

Edited February 25, 2025 by Mac Mcleod
Hit enter too soon because the quote wasn't splitting.

[Mac Mcleod]

Well I tested and it took about 5 minutes but the firewood did eventually burn.  As long as it's consistent.   the chests do seem to be made of flashpaper tho.

Edited February 25, 2025 by Mac Mcleod

[LadyWYT]

4 hours ago, Mac Mcleod said:

1) Turn off water blocks so when you place a bucket of water, it vanishes within a few seconds.

4 hours ago, Mac Mcleod said:

You don't have the option to carry a bucket of water which is a single non-source block of water which fits the game's simulation base much better.

Is that not what that is? A non-magical water bucket? Did I misunderstand and you meant make the water than you pick up disappear, and reappear wherever you place it? If that's the case, you'd need to figure out a way to have water replenished, in a way that doesn't require a ton of system resources to calculate.

4 hours ago, Mac Mcleod said:

But when you got 2, it would be memorable.   Fixed rewards are boring.  Random rewards makes things more fun.   The player gets a little variety/dopamine hit. 

The drops are already randomized from a loot table. I can't say that getting two fibers would be particularly exciting either, or particularly memorable. The little bits that you sometimes get are certainly nice, but the majority of flax should be coming from crops, not monsters. If monsters dropped more, I'd still be concerned about it being too easy to acquire a fair amount of flax in the early game without putting in the farm work.

4 hours ago, Mac Mcleod said:

I think you missed the fact i said, "multiplayer".   Currently your cherry crops may become ripe *while you are asleep in the real world* and *vanish* before you wake up.  On a multiplayer server the game doesn't stop when you log off.   If you log off at 9pm and get on the next day at 6pm, 21 days have passed.  As you propose, you might need to set an alarm to wake up at 4am to harvest your crop.

Ah. Yeah, that would be a multiplayer-specific setting, if it were added, as it's not something that's needed for singleplayer. Which, that's also one of the drawbacks to multiplayer, especially on large servers where someone is online most of the time, or servers where one player isn't playing at the same rate as everyone else. Time will continue to pass as long as someone is online, which can cause other problems than a missed cherry crop if one doesn't play as often as others.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

On 2/19/2025 at 4:58 PM, Mac Mcleod said:

9) Since you have rammed dirt and packed dirt, change ordinary dirt so it won't stack more than 2 high when placed by players.

I think this is would better be served as a difficulty option vs baking it into the base game for one very simple reason:

New players, especially those who are used to that other block game, are going to be in for a very rough time when they try to make their first hut to survive the night. They're already going to be thrown off by the lack of a wooden or stone pickaxe. Forcing them to grind enough dirt to make the rammed/packed dirt is just going to be cruel at that point. They also aren't going to know how to handle a bear the first time they encounter one so the dirt noob tower still needs to be a thing, if nothing more than to pay homage to Vintage Story's humble beginnings as a Minecraft mod.

[Thorfinn]

Like @traugdor, I think some of those are great ideas. But great ideas for a mod. Or more aptly, mods, so that people can choose whichever they prefer if they don't like the default game.

Dirt gravity makes it very dangerous to go around sprinting everywhere, because in order to see, you are often jumping, which can collapse everything under you. Especially with the new mapgen that is often 4 or more blocks of dirt on top. Lots of caves within that range. It also means you end up having to strip mine most surface deposits. At least at present. Maybe the fix for falling blocks disappearing will deal with this, too. I can only hope.

[Thorfinn]

18 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

If monsters dropped more, I'd still be concerned about it being too easy to acquire a fair amount of flax in the early game without putting in the farm work.

I'm more concerned with shifting the balance of the game to farming monsters. That is self-evidently not the intent, or the drops would have been higher. I'm not sure how to make fighting random monsters any less of a good idea than changing them to no drops at all. All downside, no upside.

But @Mac Mcleod, several of your suggestions are easy to implement as mods. Some of them already are. There are lots of drifter loot mods, for example.

Edited February 26, 2025 by Thorfinn

[LadyWYT]

3 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

I'm more concerned with shifting the balance of the game to farming monsters. That is self-evidently not the intent, or the drops would have been higher. I'm not sure how to make fighting random monsters any less of a good idea than changing them to no drops at all. All downside, no upside.

Hence why I'm fine with the current drop rates that we have. It's a nice little bonus every once in a while, but it's not so much that players are encouraged to hunt them down for the loot. There's better ways of acquiring most everything the monsters drop, outside of perhaps the Jonas parts and temporal gears. Those are best acquired from hunting monsters, however, only the rarest, most dangerous types drop them, which means players that seek those will need to be making a significant resource investment into that task.

[Mac Mcleod]

On 2/26/2025 at 12:01 AM, traugdor said:

I think this is would better be served as a difficulty option vs baking it into the base game for one very simple reason:

New players, especially those who are used to that other block game, are going to be in for a very rough time when they try to make their first hut to survive the night. They're already going to be thrown off by the lack of a wooden or stone pickaxe. Forcing them to grind enough dirt to make the rammed/packed dirt is just going to be cruel at that point. They also aren't going to know how to handle a bear the first time they encounter one so the dirt noob tower still needs to be a thing, if nothing more than to pay homage to Vintage Story's humble beginnings as a Minecraft mod.

I honestly don't see how you can feel that digging 6 dirt blocks to make 6 packed or rammed dirt is "grinding" but that could be addressed by making the recipe 3x1 instead of 6x1.   For that matter, the recipe could be 2x1 with two dirt blocks next to each other in the crafting grid as there is no existing recipe like that.  

You add a couple sentences to the Handbook and new players following the progression guide would just see it as normal game behavior.  There are *many* other aspects to the game that are much harder on new players.  Drawing the line here seems like simple reactionism.   Do you genuinely feel it would make the game that much more difficult or are you just resisting change?

I say this because in TOBG, I've seen people vehemently resist suggestions made by other players... only to agree with those changes when Mojang made them six weeks later.  Simply saying think about your motives and how you would have reacted if that the dirt behavior change had simply dropped in 1.20.4 .   I see this as a bit of an almost cliched hostile culture here in the suggestion forum and a reason I haven't bothered making or even looking for any more suggestions to improve the game.  This isn't my first rodeo but I was hoping for better here.

 

Edited March 9, 2025 by Mac Mcleod

[Mac Mcleod]

On 2/26/2025 at 11:32 AM, Thorfinn said:

Like @traugdor, I think some of those are great ideas. But great ideas for a mod. Or more aptly, mods, so that people can choose whichever they prefer if they don't like the default game.

Dirt gravity makes it very dangerous to go around sprinting everywhere, because in order to see, you are often jumping, which can collapse everything under you. Especially with the new mapgen that is often 4 or more blocks of dirt on top. Lots of caves within that range. It also means you end up having to strip mine most surface deposits. At least at present. Maybe the fix for falling blocks disappearing will deal with this, too. I can only hope.

Oh, but I'm not "mass dirt gravity" with avalanches everywhere ... My suggestion was that when you put a dirt block on top of a dirt block that has no other supporting block on all 8 sides, then that one dirt block will flow down to one of the four orthoganal sides to encourage the use of more attractive, and in game harder, dirt blocks that are basically free.   You only have to dig up 6 dirt blocks to craft 6 packed earth or 6 rammed earth.   You add a couple sentences to the handbook and bob's your uncle.  New players will just see it as normal game behavior.

 

 

Edited March 9, 2025 by Mac Mcleod

[Mac Mcleod]

On 2/25/2025 at 5:14 PM, LadyWYT said:

Is that not what that is? A non-magical water bucket? Did I misunderstand and you meant make the water than you pick up disappear, and reappear wherever you place it? If that's the case, you'd need to figure out a way to have water replenished, in a way that doesn't require a ton of system resources to calculate.

No... What I suggested was
1) When a player in survival mode uses a bucket pick up from a water source block that can only created by the game, the bucket fills and the water source block remains.
2) When a player places that bucket of water in a hole, it remains (it currently vanishes) as a non-source water block.
3) When a player uses a bucket on a non-source water block, the water is picked up leaving the hole empty.
4) Players in survival mode cannot create new water *source* blocks with a bucket.   
5) Only the game and players in creative mode can create water *source* blocks during terrain generation.

6) And then you can have an end game/near end game steam punk magical device that is capable of creating water source blocks.

 Currently, I can (and have) fill an entire cave system with water from one bucket.  Does that seem realistic to you?   I've created entire lakes from one bucket.  That's fine for creative mode but doesn't fit the "gritty hard core survival" game.

I'm going to move on.   
Cheers.

[Thorfinn]

Seems like your water suggestion would be a pretty easy mod. Just add a "non-source water" and probably non-source seawater and hot water. It would mean we Wilderness players could again have fields where we want them, not just where the woldgen supplied water.

What happens to that block if you place it on flat ground instead of in a hole?

And what's the purpose of a source block? It's the only one that can create motive power?