Hot Environment Challenges?

[Lumara]

Hi! I'm new to Vintage Story. I've recently began playing with my brother who has hundreds of hours on the game. We're in what seems to be a temperate to cool environment. It's been fun so far and he warns me of Winter/preparing for that season.

I mentioned that I would like to try a single player game in a hot, arid, if not straight up desert environment for a different challenge/scenery. But, he told me hot isn't' really so much a challenge. It was pointed out that common dry/hot environment challenges such as water didn't exist. Nor does getting overly hot? He said you basically have a longer growing period and different crops. Winter challenge is removed so you otherwise have the same difficulties (creatures and finding food), but no threat of winter and no new threats to replace it.

I was a little sad to hear that, so my question as a newbie: is he right about all of that? If so, are there plans to add such challenges? Or mods to do so?

Thanks!

[Kolyenka]

Im coming back to the game after a long break so I can't really say much about hot weather, although im fairly sure that is accurate. That said, someone just recommended the mod hydrate or diedrate which i imagine would make it a great deal hotter.

If you can find an area hot enough then there are challenges getting the crops to grow (similar to crops not growing in winter). But overall, if youre looking for a very difficult experience, ice world is the way to go. That is much harder ime. Much much harder just to stay alive, not to mention thrive/build/accomplish goals.

Hopefully others have more info. I'm curious about this too. I like playing extreme environments and I'm getting a little bit sick of the iceballs after a long time playing like that.

[Acnologia]

I'm playing hot environment right now, and the only major problem is finding anything that wants to grow  and not die in the heat, summer is lethal on the crops, and meat doesnt last more than a day or two at most, digging low enough for a good cellar is hard work, otherwise me and my friends dont have any problems

[Dark Thoughts]

Unfortunately it's true at the current time. Hydrate or Diedrate is a mod that helps a little bit with adding a challenge, since temperature affects thirst rate, but there's still no direct heat related equivalent to hypothermia, like getting heat strokes or something. You likely also want to install biomes & floral zone mods, along with the Fotsa animal mods, because in that regard the warmer regions are also quite lacking behind. Right now, the colder regions are where the core gameplay and content is at.

[LadyWYT]

In addition to Hydrate or Diedrate, you may also want to enable the gamerule that prevents buckets from creating water source blocks. That way when you finally find a water source(which will probably be pretty small if you created a desert world), you can't just use buckets to irrigate massive farms or create water sources elsewhere. You'll need to rely on the rare rain, the magical watering can(since these don't exhaust water sources), or Hydrate's well mechanics to get more water.

Another gamerule to consider enabling is allowing lightning to start fires. In a world with little rain, those dry thunderstorms suddenly become more dangerous.