Impressions/suggestions.... ?

[Trex_Crazy]

So I'm not sure where to put this discussion but ot has suggestions so I guess here? Its my impressions, so far, and things I would like to see.so I just started playing the game. as in literally three days ago. and as of yet I am only very early bronze (just casted a pick, hammer and anvil with 3 bronze ingots to spare) so some of my ideas/critiques could be something I just haven't gotten to yet.  So far I love the game but I do have some critiques/suggestions/things I would like to see. So one big thing is that I like the sanity (I know its "temporal stability" shhhh) mechanic and phasing in to the "rust world" is cool but I would really like if in addition to this you could actually go to a seperate "rust world" dimension (like the twilight forest or something) where theres.... idk stuff? (ruins, unique flora or lack thereof, themed stuff to go with the lore idk) with regards to enemies I think its very cool that there are different variations depending on... something? so far I can assume "surface" enemies only spawn on the surface and "deep" enemies only spawn underground but idk the exact details. but its nice that it isn't just the same enemy copy pasted 100 times. And I enjoy that the enemies and animals have working braincells so that they will throw rocks if they can't get to you, or run away/reposition if youre just on a pillar or something rather than the other block game where 80% of the ai is "move toward player" even if it means just smashing their face against a wall while they get stabbed. I like that the enemies behave differently bowtorn purposely try to move away from you (instead of just shooting you pointblank and dying) the drifters charge abd throw rocks, and the spider crack fiends (I dont remember their name) seem to do hit and run to distract you for other enemies/make it harder to fight them. that being said I would like it if there were more types of enemies, however as I understand it the spider crack fiend is a new enemy so they are doing exactly that anyway. My only other issue with enemies is that I wish they were a more prevalent threat. as in they are more commonly about. underground they seem mostly common but above ground they only seem to spawn around portal things and Ill go like 5 or 6 days with no monsters above ground (now I do have a few torches and I know they make the portals less common around your base, I only have them so I can see what I am doing but even so they hardly appear even away from my house. itd be cool to have an option to set a minimum/increase activity of rifts or an option so the monsters just spawn at night without rifts needed. (I just want them to be more common, I have no complaints about their threat when they are there as Ive been curbstomped plenty of times by them) so traders are annoying to me, not because of any reason except its dificult to find a treasure hunter. So I want to find a treasure hunter because apparently thats how I start/do the story quest(s)? but finding traders is dificult and I've yet to find a treasure hunter. I feel like it'd be nice if you could ask a trader about other traders and they can give you a random traders location on your map (or coordinaes if you disabled the map) just so you aren't wandering trying to find the guy you need. Another problem is that travel is just kind of boring/annoying there isn't much to find while exploring minerals if you're prospecting or traders. But ruins so far seem largely uninteresting, find sone bony soil or cracked vessels and move on. (it'd be nice if you could get a mount earlier than after doing a quest(s?) for the treasure hunter so you can find the guy.) also I am sad that theres no minecart, now I understand that you get teleporters later but looking at the recipes they look waaaaaay past what I have access to now (plus minecarts are fun) and itd be nice if I didnt have to scale seven mountains and swim through fifteen oceans every time I want to go to my tin/bisth mine. (I did find a broken translocator (havent fixed it though) and a weird brick cylinder building that had a water vortex pool thing in it which was cool though) Water seems to have a really cool setup with no mechanics, it iften seems that rivers/lakes are extremely deep and cool to explore (better with a lantern) but I have yet to find any way to extend breath underwater other than mining a hole or any way to swim better (like flippers) it'd be cool to be able to make a diving suit. (also itd be cool to have water enemies) A big complaint I do have however is leather making. Now I enjoy the realisticish and complicated mechanics of the game (heating and smithing/manually making clay/etc) but waiting ~6 real life hours (I usually don't sleep because theres ni monsters to make me want to fastforward time when I could be progressing before the next temporal storm) just to get like 4 leather because the pelts will expire is just not enjoyable. though i also hate waiting. speaking of leather a big complaint (compounded by the lengthy leathermaking process) is that chainmail needs a leather base which makes no sense. while plate usually has straps etc so it makes sense chainmail traditionally, like 95% of the time was just chain without any cloth/leather necessary (though it often was worn with cloth for displaying crests/colors/etc) also a strange bug I found is that if you jump when hitting the ground you will negate/take less fall damage for some reason. Also traders mention villages and sell armor referencing knights, which would mean kingdoms or at least feudal lords but I have yet to find one. also strangley merchants just have nithing to say about temporal storms, I feel like itd definitely be something that came up in conversation.  lastly I cant tame wolves, like I dont even want it for combat I just like dogs and am sad that I cant have one. There will likely be more suggestions/impressions but I will write it later, I'm about to go to bed lol.

[LadyWYT]

Welcome to the forums! The first thing I will point out...paragraphs, my dude. They're very important for separating information into more readable chunks. A wall of text like this muddies your points, as well as turns away potential readers.

23 minutes ago, Trex_Crazy said:

So one big thing is that I like the sanity (I know its "temporal stability" shhhh) mechanic and phasing in to the "rust world" is cool but I would really like if in addition to this you could actually go to a seperate "rust world" dimension (like the twilight forest or something)

Yeah this is one thing I actively don't want to see, outside of a possible one-time brief visit as a story bit. The reason for that is if it's a place that you can regularly visit and explore to your heart's content, it loses a lot of the mystery behind it. The Rust World is meant to be a dimension outside the scope of what constitutes normal logic--a completely alien place. If it's a place you can frequent, then it has to be explained at least partially in order to justify your existence there. Much like Minecraft's Nether(or other modded dimensions), it's no longer a strange place full of danger, but just a familiar place you need to visit to check off a box on your list of tasks.

Now as a mod? Sure, fine--I'm sure someone will end up figuring out how to mod it. But it shouldn't be vanilla, in my opinion.

28 minutes ago, Trex_Crazy said:

My only other issue with enemies is that I wish they were a more prevalent threat. as in they are more commonly about. underground they seem mostly common but above ground they only seem to spawn around portal things and Ill go like 5 or 6 days with no monsters above ground

Temporal storms. Outside of that, the fact that you can't predict when you'll encounter surface monsters is a decent threat itself. Assuming default settings, you can potentially go several nights without a single monster, which can lull you into a false sense of security or even make you more paranoid, especially for new players. Some nights it may be an almost nonstop horde. If you're hanging out around your base, it's not a big deal, but if you're venturing out into the wild for several days then it becomes a much bigger risk. You could don heavier armor to compensate, however, that will slow you down and eat through supplies faster.

I'll also note that the game is still very much in the early stages of development, so I daresay more enemies(both natural and not) will be coming in the future to round out the experience a little more.

33 minutes ago, Trex_Crazy said:

So I want to find a treasure hunter because apparently thats how I start/do the story quest(s)? but finding traders is dificult and I've yet to find a treasure hunter.

I think this is one thing that's slated for a change in the future, in part because of how difficult it can be to start the storyline due to RNG. I will note that you don't NEED to talk to the treasure hunter at all in order to complete the story, however, if you're going that route you have to know exactly what you're looking for(which new players won't). How things are changed to smooth it out, I'm not sure, but it does come up in discussion somewhat often. The best proposal I've seen was adding some sort of "welcome mat" item that attracts traders to your base, instead of needing to scour the countryside to find them.

37 minutes ago, Trex_Crazy said:

Another problem is that travel is just kind of boring/annoying there isn't much to find while exploring minerals if you're prospecting or traders. But ruins so far seem largely uninteresting, find sone bony soil or cracked vessels and move on. (it'd be nice if you could get a mount earlier than after doing a quest(s?) for the treasure hunter so you can find the guy.)

Travel is going to be hit or miss; it heavily depends on whether or not you enjoy just meandering around the world and seeing different types of terrain generation. The mount system is still being worked on, and the gated system we have now is more of a placeholder than anything.

Regarding ruins...they're mostly just part of the background, and not really meant to be something too incredibly useful outside of the early game or specific game challenges(like snowball earth). The loot they offer is useful, but nothing that will let you skip significant chunks of gameplay or otherwise progress too quickly--you'll still need to put in the legwork yourself. Now it is possible that more complex ruins with some sort of procedural dungeon and better loot might be added in the future, but that kind of thing I would expect to find underground rather than on the surface. Bear in mind too that larger and more complex structures tend to require more powerful computers to play on; the game still needs to run efficiently on a variety of machines, and not just the upper end of the spectrum.

44 minutes ago, Trex_Crazy said:

now I understand that you get teleporters later but looking at the recipes they look waaaaaay past what I have access to now (plus minecarts are fun) and itd be nice if I didnt have to scale seven mountains and swim through fifteen oceans every time I want to go to my tin/bisth mine.

A teleporter. You can only build it once, and it links to a specific location in order to save you the trips later. Otherwise, there are translocators that you can find and repair, but they may or may not take you anywhere you want to go. That may or may not change later, but if players do get to set up their own teleport networks, I would expect that to be something unlocked at the end of the game. Teleporting is convenient, yes, but shrinks the world significantly and otherwise encourages the player to disengage from the world instead of appreciate/overcome their surroundings.

As for navigating difficult terrain, yes it can be tedious, but that's part of what makes the world feel real. It's a challenge to overcome. Oftentimes there's an easier way of travel around the rough terrain, though it may be a longer route. If the terrain is something you'll be navigating frequently, then it's wise to invest in building some roads or other infrastructure to make your travels easier.

49 minutes ago, Trex_Crazy said:

A big complaint I do have however is leather making. Now I enjoy the realisticish and complicated mechanics of the game (heating and smithing/manually making clay/etc) but waiting ~6 real life hours (I usually don't sleep because theres ni monsters to make me want to fastforward time when I could be progressing before the next temporal storm) just to get like 4 leather because the pelts will expire is just not enjoyable. though i also hate waiting. speaking of leather a big complaint (compounded by the lengthy leathermaking process)

I will note that needing to wait and investing a lot of time/effort into achieving a goal is part of a lot of Vintage Story's gameplay. It's not everyone's cup of tea, of course, hence why there are settings that you can adjust to make the game easier or harder as needed. If it's not covered in the settings, then there's usually a mod for it, and if there is no mod it's fairly easy to jump in and make your own.

In the case of leatherworking, it's fine as it is; leather bags are a significant upgrade and leather also unlocks better armor. If it takes too long for your liking, I believe there's a mod or two out there that will speed up the process.

53 minutes ago, Trex_Crazy said:

speaking of leather a big complaint (compounded by the lengthy leathermaking process) is that chainmail needs a leather base which makes no sense. while plate usually has straps etc so it makes sense chainmail traditionally, like 95% of the time was just chain without any cloth/leather necessary (though it often was worn with cloth for displaying crests/colors/etc)

Yeah...this isn't correct. Gambeson(or perhaps some kind of leather garment) needs to be worn under chainmail(or other metal armor) not just as an extra layer of protection from incoming attacks, but as protection from chafing. The "cloth" you're thinking of here to display colors/crests would be the surcoat.

Now I do agree that it's a bit strange to have leather jerkin as a requirement to craft chain/scale(and requiring full chain as an ingredient for plate). However, I daresay this decision was made for gameplay balance, and not for realism. Leather is easier to obtain than the flax required for gambeson(and you'll need flax for other things), and there are things introduced in the leatherworking loop that you'll need later for things like steel. Regarding the chain requirement for plate...plate armor is extremely protective, so the cost needs to be fairly high to help balance it against other armor choices.

1 hour ago, Trex_Crazy said:

also a strange bug I found is that if you jump when hitting the ground you will negate/take less fall damage for some reason.

I don't know about jumping when you hit the ground to avoid damage, but there is(or was) a bug that let you avoid fall damage entirely as long as you made no movements when falling. Can be a useful exploit while it exists, but I wouldn't recommend exploiting as it inevitably leads to nasty accidents.

1 hour ago, Trex_Crazy said:

Also traders mention villages and sell armor referencing knights, which would mean kingdoms or at least feudal lords but I have yet to find one.

Without spoiling too much of the story, the current setting is the late Middle Ages, post-apocalypse. The kings and kingdoms of old no longer exist, and the remnants of humanity that survived(the villages) are very few and far between. That's why you hear traders mention settlements, and see a note or two about former nobility, but otherwise can't find proper civilization(for all intents and purposes, it no longer exists).

The full story has yet to be implemented as well, so that's another reason that there's not much to find regarding specific locations. There is at least one though--play through the story, and you'll find it soon enough.

1 hour ago, Trex_Crazy said:

also strangley merchants just have nithing to say about temporal storms, I feel like itd definitely be something that came up in conversation.

They may or may not make specific mention of it in the future. I would assume the reason they don't talk about it, is that temporal storms are just a normal part of their world, and therefore something everyone knows about. Of course that isn't the case for the player character, but the trader isn't going to be aware of that, and traders don't necessarily need to share everything they know with a complete stranger. It's a dangerous world, after all, and the player character is obviously not human and rather addled...

1 hour ago, Trex_Crazy said:

lastly I cant tame wolves, like I dont even want it for combat I just like dogs and am sad that I cant have one.

Wolf taming is on the road map. Until it's implemented, there are mods that fill that niche.

[Trex_Crazy]

So firstly I was sleepy and on the phone so shhhhh. In regards to the counterpoint on a seperate dimensionI do agree that the nether becomes essentially another biome with one potion and maybe some enchantments. But my vision/idea (maybe I should learn to code so I can make mods lol) would be more something that isn't as easily countered. Now I like roguelikes so it may not be everyones cup of tea but I would have it be similar to the final levels/floors/etc in a roguelike where enemies/battle conditions are not something youll ever be even close to matching and it requires you to use everything you've learned to even have a chance of survival. But idk if that would end up being more annoying than a fun challenge.

My other idea is that you either wouldn't be able to choose when you enter the other world. so a "extra severe" temporal storm that transports you to an area of the rust world that you've never seen before and you need to find a way out/wait it out/die. Or that you could transport to the other world via a device (and maybe a different one that needs "charged" while in the rust world so you can't jump back and forth?) but each time it would put you either somewhere random or it generates a seperate "plane" of the rust world every time (though I could see that taking a lot of memory) so you can't setup a camp or "safe" zone. 

I don't feel like the absence builds tension for three reasons. One is that I can just press c and the game will tell me rift activity so I can expect enemies or not. Two, the monsters make very unnatural and strange noises (which I like the sound design for the spider guys and bowtorn, the drifters just sound like a zombie mostly (not that thats a bad thing it just doesnt stand out as much as the others)) which stand out from the normal ambient noises and music. even when I didn't know exactly what noises they made it was enough to put me on alert because it didn't sound "right". Three is that, on the surface at least, the monsters aren't too big of a threat. Now they can and have killed me but I would take the surface monsters over wolves or bears because holy they do so much damage compared to eldritch monsters from another dimension.

As an aside when I criticize or say I want sonething like more monster variety I'm not saying the game is bad by any means. I know its still in development, though it plays like a fully completed game so far.

Also I dont mean that ruins need to be a trove of treasures I mean moreso that I would like more interesting ruins not necessarily huge but like a small house maybe a chapel with some debris etc. to explore rather than just a corner. (like the strange ruins cylinder of rotating water, not a big structure and it had no loot but I enjoyed digging into it and exploring it)

The scenery isnt that interesting to me as I dont think theres much to see landscape wise. Though I think its the change of the seasons because I never saw it earlier the trees changing leaf colors is nice to look at, and the mountains with layers of rock is also pretty neat. But it seems that 80% of the time the only thing to look at is the wall of a hill I am trying to climb. (as a side note is it just my world gen or is 80% of the terrain steep hills/mountains 10% water and 10% actual flat ground?) I think the sights would be better to look at if there werent a bunch of little tree saplings/bushes that are 2-3 blocks high as there are so many they crowd out the flowerbeds and other plants to look at.

With the chainmail I primarily meant that the actual chainmail itself exists seperate from most of the other attire. as in you theoretically could wear the chainmail and noclothes at all but I don't think that'd be a very good idea. it'd be nice if you could make chainmail and it gives only some protection unless paired with the leather/gambison so you can have some armor while waiting for your leather to finish soaking. (I know there's the... lamelle? idk how to spell it. armor but that just seems like a waste of metal) Also if I recall correctly chain was worn under plate armor so it kind of makes sense? ish. but again they were also two seperate things that were worn together.

I don't rely on the bug I was just stating it existed. going to report it when I figure out how to do that.

Thanks for the non spoiler info on the village/noble stuff! explains a lot lol. It seems strange to me that they don't mention it because when you first talk to a merchant he asks if you just woke up and says that people like you just seem to appear. And while they may not trust a complete stranger I feel like if you met someone who just appeared into this world and they, presumably, don't know anything/much about this plane/world. you might mention "Hey new guy I don't know if youre from around here but every couple of days literal hell decends with monsters and its not pretty, I reccomend you prepare." though it would make sense if maybe because youve already had the strange occurrence of waking up in an unfamiliar place that the temporal storm only affects monsters and anomalies like you. also maybe why monsters don't attack merchants (I think, I haven't seen monsters take any interest in anything but you. Like I had one of the spider guys just chilling in my animal pen yesterday.)

[Trex_Crazy]

18 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Welcome to the forums!

Um, it didn't quote my selections in my previous post so my response is above lol.

[Trex_Crazy]

Some other thoughts I've had since/forgot to talk about in the initial post. Ive been having a hard time getting temporal gears (which I apparently need to fix the machine I found) because its difficult to find enemies consistently. Dark spaces underground seem ok at spawning them but there seem to just be very few monsters at any given point besides "high" rift activity and temporal storms. 

As mentioned above I find it odd that wolves do so much damage compared to supernatural enemies (except some variants I've seen during temporal storms) Now I am not saying I could take a wolf in real life and I get that they can easily kill a human I dont have an issue with the amount of damage they do, just that eldritch abominations with claws, a giant mouth, and the ability to shoot... ribs? (I have no idea what they shoot at you. Looks like bones though) do less damage than something from the realm of reality. it is arguably a fourth reason why I dont find the long sections without monsters anxiety inducing because they're small beans compared to a random wolf wandering into my base. 

So food is very strange to me, I enjoy that while crops take a long time to grow they give you a bountiful harvest for food. and cooking makes more satisfying food etc. the strange part is that I feel like my character has a tape worm or something with how much food they need (I know armor increases hunger rate but I only have a helmet right now, and I only wear it during combat) Like if the regular 'red meat' is akin to a medium-smallish peice of hamburger you end up eating like 5-6 times what I (an average to light weight person) end up eating in a day. Now I also get they're doing backbreaking labor all day but even so I question whether a person could reasonably eat all of that in a day and not harm themselves in the process. (I know you can lower the hunger rate, I just like to play the game as "intended" so im just talking about my experience with it so far. 

also for some reason surface bowtorns keep spawning deepish underground (idk if the weaker variants spawn lower, I think I've only seen deep drifters underground) and upon killing them they fall over and phase through the roof all the way to the surface. I am assuming that it's a bug, I do think its kind of funny though. 

Another thought I had is about temporal storms/low temporal stability. (I may start its own topic/discussion just for this honestly) While I don't get motion sick I have a friend who does that likes survival craft games but the moving textures and jerking blocks would absolutely melt them. While I think it would be a double edged sword because some people might disable it to negate the intentional disorienting effects it would help motion sick people to have an option to tone it down/turn it off.

[GenMarian]

Hey, can we add the ability to create our own clay objects? I would like to create moving chess or clay figures that can be fired and then rearranged. It seems to me that it would be enough to specify a maximum height and width, and then everyone can build what they like. Thank you and best regards.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

On 5/24/2025 at 5:42 AM, Trex_Crazy said:

Thanks for the non spoiler info on the village/noble stuff! explains a lot lol. It seems strange to me that they don't mention it because when you first talk to a merchant he asks if you just woke up and says that people like you just seem to appear.

Would you tell a tall, blue-skinned stranger about your home?

I wouldn't.