Today I learned about temporally unstable zones

[lampyridae]

I started a new world when the 1.21 update was released and I'm progressing briskly so far. It's fun to feel like I mostly know what I'm doing! I've started by wandering for a while, settled in a first base, and then finally moved to an completely new spot I entirely love... until I realized that funny blue cog in the HUD kept spinning back and forth, and turning to grey while I was walking around my new home. So I started reading about temporal stability. This is cool underground, but on the surface it's kind of a bummer. Is there anything I'll miss story wise by disabling this?

I've been walking around staring at the cog, looking for another place, eyeing some locations, paranoid about unstable zones around the corner I might have missed. It's hard to visualize their presence, intensity and scope. Actually I'm pretty tempted to go 

/worldconfig temporalStability false

[ComeAves]

There is a specific story locale with lots of surface instability... I haven't tested if disabling it will change anything there, maybe monsters wouldn't spawn or the area might be safe, having forced instability due to story reasons? Anyway, I wasn't aware that there are "unstable" areas... Just thought the portal looking things would appear at random...

[LadyWYT]

21 minutes ago, lampyridae said:

This is cool underground, but on the surface it's kind of a bummer. Is there anything I'll miss story wise by disabling this?

Not really. While story locations do seem to have set stability parameters(ie, some locations are stable, while others aren't), all you really miss by turning the stability mechanic off is a little extra flavor. You won't miss any actual story bits themselves. Temporal stability is mostly just there to help flavor the setting and provide additional challenge.

[Toroic]

You'll miss nothing.  Surface temporal stability adds no challenge, it just occasionally makes an otherwise good base location unviable.