Nightime should have more impact and be more dangerous

[SETHI]

Beside monsters there's not much to see at night. How about making it more immersive? Homosapien mod is very much loved yet at night there's nothinh truly dangerous.

Wolves and other nocturne animals could hunt in pack, be more agressive, hostile animals in the water. In the regular gamemode, maybe some monster could track you down at night? maybe one or two time a month, a mob mob who might not be overpowered but just creepy enough to make you want to stay indoor or in a secure base. How about fatigue debuff like hallucinations (auditive or vision) if you get too far from your base or from the light? 

IRL, even if you know there's nothing out there in the wood, at night lot of people will start hearing creepy sound and see movments, glowing eyes etc. It woud really add to the cosyness of the game and push players to make the base truly safe with traps, light, and make them feel like having a home is a safe place. All about immersion.

[Zane Mordien]

I thought people played homosapien mode to avoid the night spawn. 

[gogeode]

I think the main problem with this is that adding more danger with homosapien mode in mind could end up making night too dangerous in the regular mode, especially since homosapien mode is meant to make the nights safer. only thing I could see with this is maybe an addition that tries to add some more danger to long distance travels as usually you can just outrun anything that could put you in danger.

[SETHI]

19 hours ago, Zane Mordien said:

I thought people played homosapien mode to avoid the night spawn. 

i just don't like the surnatural stuff. i like pure realistic survival so the night don't make a difference. Homosapien make the game very passive, animals are not so much of a treath and you don't get any benefice from making your base safe

[SETHI]

18 hours ago, gogeode said:

I think the main problem with this is that adding more danger with homosapien mode in mind could end up making night too dangerous in the regular mode, especially since homosapien mode is meant to make the nights safer. only thing I could see with this is maybe an addition that tries to add some more danger to long distance travels as usually you can just outrun anything that could put you in danger.

i guess you'll need to balance things out... i'm just a bit tired of seeing the same 3 enemies swarming around my house. I hope we get something more discreet in the future, like a threat you can't see but you still need to protect yourself from. 

[Thorfinn]

Welcome to the forums, @SETHI

Interesting thought. Should be easy enough to tweak night spawn rates, but as has been said, many people play HS mode to avoid the danger.

Do you want a HS mode that has higher mundane spawn rates?

[SETHI]

13 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

Welcome to the forums, @SETHI

Interesting thought. Should be easy enough to tweak night spawn rates, but as has been said, many people play HS mode to avoid the danger.

Do you want a HS mode that has higher mundane spawn rates?

I've always felt like HS was mostly for ultra realistic mode more than avoiding danger. I just play exploration when i'm not interested in combat and safety.

Vintage Story triggers a feeling of accomplishement and safety in me. It alternate between adrenaline rush and the cosyness you feel when you finally get your stew simmering in your little mud hut at night knowing nothing can't reach you there. The early days feel very primal, you do everything fast, you run to your house, you watch over your shoulder, it's my favorite moment.

But as time goes the game stop punishing you and all these sentiments disappear. It's not even a question of game mode, i think my suggestions could do well even in the regular gamemode if we balance the number of already existing mobs. How about a new threat that keep approching or growing the more you advance in the game ? Something chasing you or an early game enemy evolving with time. 

It could be an interesting mechanic.

 

[Thorfinn]

39 minutes ago, SETHI said:

I've always felt like HS was mostly for ultra realistic mode more than avoiding danger.

Fair. I meant that in HS mode, there is absolutely nothing to fear in caves unless you have cave-ins turned on. And you are right that the threat from wolves and bears that was quite low on day 1 drops to essentially zero once you have armor and weapon. Somewhere around 95% of my deaths in Wilderness are from falling, and that's just carelessness. The rest are one shots from things like sawblades. Again, from carelessness.

Hate to be "that guy" but you really need to butchify the foes if you want HS to be interesting. Something like the Phanerazoic mods or the Stone Age mods. And there needs to be some kind of cave denizen. You don't even have stability driving you to complete your caving quickly.

[SETHI]

3 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

Fair. I meant that in HS mode, there is absolutely nothing to fear in caves unless you have cave-ins turned on. And you are right that the threat from wolves and bears that was quite low on day 1 drops to essentially zero once you have armor and weapon. Somewhere around 95% of my deaths in Wilderness are from falling, and that's just carelessness. The rest are one shots from things like sawblades. Again, from carelessness.

Hate to be "that guy" but you really need to butchify the foes if you want HS to be interesting. Something like the Phanerazoic mods or the Stone Age mods. And there needs to be some kind of cave denizen. You don't even have stability driving you to complete your caving quickly.

yeah i do use mods to have more variety! again i'm not particulary hating on the supernatural stuff, but even in regular gamemode, monsters and animals are just useless on the surface. After some time you're just intouchable, same, i die from the element more than the mobs. I think it just need some deversity with the mobs and a better A.I. 

The horror stuff is just so original they should go full on it, even monster at the surface. Something watching you from afar, monster evolving with you as time goes, wolves tracking your scent, maybe some rare mobs who can break crude doors, something that pushes you to endlessly watch upon your shoulder and make you base safer. 

How about some human threat, thief, gangs, rogues, barbarian etc... i'm just rambling at this point but you get the idea. it's more than a balancing matter at this point

 

[MagpieOAO]

I agree not in that they should be more dangerous per-say but it would be better if nights and temporal storms had reasons to actually go out in them aside from desperation. 

One thing I have noticed is at night, some trader Caravans are lit up which is a good way to organically give direction to players to find something new at night. Maybe another could be meteorites with ore that drop at night. Not only beautiful to watch, but most visible at night while in the day they only smolder slightly. 

Glowbugs of course, but maybe something else too like nocturnal animals or creatures that otherwise hide in caves and in trees or rifts come out at night with drops that aren't progression tied, but are very useful. 

[SETHI]

15 minutes ago, MagpieOAO said:

I agree not in that they should be more dangerous per-say but it would be better if nights and temporal storms had reasons to actually go out in them aside from desperation. 

One thing I have noticed is at night, some trader Caravans are lit up which is a good way to organically give direction to players to find something new at night. Maybe another could be meteorites with ore that drop at night. Not only beautiful to watch, but most visible at night while in the day they only smolder slightly. 

Glowbugs of course, but maybe something else too like nocturnal animals or creatures that otherwise hide in caves and in trees or rifts come out at night with drops that aren't progression tied, but are very useful. 

right!! there's nothing to do at night beisde waiting! maybe make it more atmospheric with fireflies, mobs that only go out at night like hedgehog or frogs? Make the night more interesting, a bit more tricky and dangerous but if you dare to go out and fight, you could find i whole lot of new mobs, new interactions with the trader etc. 

[LadyWYT]

On 6/19/2025 at 2:20 PM, SETHI said:

there's nothing to do at night beisde waiting!

I will note that sleeping through the night is an option, provided you have a bed. It will cost some hunger points, and depending on the time of year and where you settled, you may or may not be able to sleep through the entire night. But it is an option if you have nothing else to do and don't want to go out in the dark.

On 6/19/2025 at 2:20 PM, SETHI said:

maybe make it more atmospheric with fireflies

Fireflies already exist in Vintage Story, however in addition to the ambient lighting needing to be dark enough for them to spawn, the weather also needs to be warm enough. If it's too cold, they won't spawn.

On 6/17/2025 at 2:53 PM, SETHI said:

Beside monsters there's not much to see at night. How about making it more immersive? Homosapien mod is very much loved yet at night there's nothinh truly dangerous.

As others in the thread have already mentioned, the point of Homo Sapiens to have a realistic survival experience without the lore content. The main drawback to the HS gamemode is that once you achieve tier 2 armor, there's not really anything that can kill you aside from your own complacency. Honestly, I wouldn't expect Homo Sapiens to change much in that regard; it's there as an option for those that prefer it, but isn't the core of what Vintage Story is developed around.

For standard gameplay, the monsters are one of the biggest reasons not to hang around outside at night. I'll also note that monsters need rift activity in order to spawn on the surface(barring a temporal storm), and rift activity isn't predictable. You can have several nights of calm in a row, several nights of high activity, or anything in-between, and that unpredictability is its own brand of unnerving.

On 6/19/2025 at 2:01 PM, MagpieOAO said:

I agree not in that they should be more dangerous per-say but it would be better if nights and temporal storms had reasons to actually go out in them aside from desperation. 

I have to disagree here. Realistically, nighttime is when people should be sleeping after a long day's work. Currently there's no penalty for going without sleep, but the drawback to working in the dark is that it's difficult to see what you're doing and spot potential hazards. If you choose not to sleep through the night, then you either need to deal with the hazards that night presents(if you choose to go out) or find something to do in the safety of your base. 

As for temporal storms...the general idea behind them is that they're a supernatural disaster and really not something you want to be going out in. The main reason the player has for venturing out in them(aside from being caught off-guard by one) is to collect gears and Jonas parts. Personally, I think that's incentive enough. You do need those items to achieve various things in the late game, but you won't really be punished if you choose to play it safe during a temporal storm either. It also keeps the storms feeling like a true disaster, and not some special looting event like an MMO.

On 6/17/2025 at 2:53 PM, SETHI said:

IRL, even if you know there's nothing out there in the wood, at night lot of people will start hearing creepy sound and see movments, glowing eyes etc. It woud really add to the cosyness of the game and push players to make the base truly safe with traps, light, and make them feel like having a home is a safe place. All about immersion.

Ambient noise does add immersion to videogames, however, the spook factor wears off pretty quickly once the player figures out that there's nothing actually making the noise. I would also point out that adding more creep factors subtracts from the coziness rather than adding to it; same with needing to add traps absolutely everywhere. The game already pushes players to make their base safer by lighting it up and adding contraptions like rift wards to further cut down on the spawn potential.

That's not to say there isn't room for more ambience of various types, but it does need to be implemented carefully in order to be effective.

On 6/19/2025 at 8:23 AM, SETHI said:

Vintage Story triggers a feeling of accomplishement and safety in me. It alternate between adrenaline rush and the cosyness you feel when you finally get your stew simmering in your little mud hut at night knowing nothing can't reach you there. The early days feel very primal, you do everything fast, you run to your house, you watch over your shoulder, it's my favorite moment.

But as time goes the game stop punishing you and all these sentiments disappear.

Honestly, I think that's just a byproduct of becoming better at the game. As your skills improve, old challenges and threats won't seem as impressive.

On 6/19/2025 at 8:23 AM, SETHI said:

How about a new threat that keep approching or growing the more you advance in the game ? Something chasing you or an early game enemy evolving with time. 

But I don't think this is the way to counter what I mentioned above, outside of using mods that is. A big part of why achieving things in Vintage Story feels so satisfying is that it lets you tackle things that you couldn't before, or otherwise complete more mundane tasks more easily. However, if threats are just being upgraded to always match your equipment, then what's the point of constantly chasing new equipment if it never actually feels useful? Likewise, if the threats' evolution is tied to a specific passage of time, then the player is pressured into specific ways of playing every game or else they fall too far behind technologically. The system we have now allows players to play at their own speed, with a wide variety of options of what order they want to progress things in.

On 6/19/2025 at 1:00 PM, SETHI said:

How about some human threat, thief, gangs, rogues, barbarian etc... i'm just rambling at this point but you get the idea. it's more than a balancing matter at this point

I could see this being a thing at some point. I know there's already a mod for it. However, in some ways it also doesn't fit the lore and the overall theme that the developers seem to be angling for. It is a post-apocalyptic world, and roving bandit gangs certainly make sense in that kind of setting. Some NPCs even refer to certain unscrupulous elements being present. The reason there might not be any bandit gangs for the player to actually encounter though(aside from the developers intending for the player to have a cooperative existence with NPCs), is that almost all of humanity was wiped out. The remnants that are left stick together in settlements(which are few and far between) since it's dangerous to be out in the wilderness. The few criminal elements that do exist are going to be living somewhere close to one of those settlements, assuming the locals haven't brought them to a swift end.