New story location: Temporal workshop and crafting eidolons

[PaulP]

My son loves Vintage Story and has some ideas for the game:

1. A new story location called the Temporal Workshop that needs to be unlocked using a tuning spear and temporal gears. It would have a temporal furnace that can melt temporal gears to be used for crafting temporal items and Jonas parts if you’re a clockmaker. The temporal workshop could have its own translocator with a translocator building kit linked to it that can be finished with special parts and placed at your base.
    
2. The ability for a clockmaker to craft your own eidolon by hacking the core of the pinned eidolon boss using a tuning spear and repairing it using temporal plates and parts made in the temporal workshop. The eidolon could be equipped with oversized eidolon weapons and armor and fight for you and if you are wearing a glider you could have it throw you up and then follow you as you fly. And it could be equipped with a harness to ride it. It would take commands like follow, defend, or stay to sit and wait for you. If it gets damaged too much it would break down and require more parts to repair and revive it.
    
3. Locusts could also have commands and be assigned to other players so they could be traded away. And the temporal workshop would let you craft upgrades for them to make them into friendly sawblade locusts. Locusts could be assigned to guard areas, allowing you to hack more locusts and collect a bunch of them to guard your base.
    
4. Bells could also be made and used at your base. They would ring and summon all your locusts as a group to fight off enemies.
    
5. A new submarine ship that can be made with Jonas parts and steel and cupronickel to travel underwater.

Edited September 18, 2025 by PaulP

[LadyWYT]

It's a neat idea, but...

3 minutes ago, PaulP said:

A new story location called the Temporal Workshop that needs to be unlocked using a tuning spear and temporal gears. It would have a temporal furnace that can melt temporal gears to be used for crafting temporal items and Jonas parts if you’re a clockmaker. The temporal workshop could have its own translocator with a translocator building kit linked to it that can be finished with special parts and placed at your base.

Locking a story location behind a specific class isn't a good idea, unless each class also gets its own special location and such locations fill the same general function for that part of the story. That's a lot of work to accomplish though, especially if more classes end up getting added later, and not every class really offers a good foundation for a unique location(Commoner being the most prominent example). It's a better idea to have one bigger, more detailed location(like the Resonance Archive) that's fully available and useful to all classes.

 

7 minutes ago, PaulP said:

The ability for a clockmaker to craft your own eidolon by hacking the core of the pinned eidolon boss using a tuning spear and repairing it using temporal plates and parts made in the temporal workshop. The eidolon could be equipped with oversized eidolon weapons and armor and fight for you and if you are wearing a glider you could have it throw you up and then follow you as you fly. And it could be equipped with a harness to ride it. It would take commands like follow, defend, or stay to sit and wait for you. If it gets damaged too much it would break down and require more parts to repair and revive it.

Again, neat idea, but has similar issues to the above in that it makes the suggested location way too useful for clockmakers, compared to the other classes. Likewise, while I do agree that special clockwork contraptions are fitting for a clockmaker exclusive...an eidolon like this is going to make clockmakers much too strong compared to other classes. Now if it's something available to all classes by default, as a late-game tech item, then it would be more balanced.

Now of course, as a modded location and rewards, sure!

[Crunchy Chicken]

It just sounds to me like your son likes the clockmaker class specifically and just wants his favourite class to be more op/get more stuff. In itself it isn't wrong but ideas for a game need to have things that can be applied generally across the gameplay for all players, not make one specific aspect of it super fun/strong for one type of player and not fun for everybody else.

A lot of those ideas I would personally stand against too as they would make the game too easy. I enjoy the feeling of being weak and vulnerable to the deep down monsters even when properly equipped and decked. It adds depth to the survival. Making so much monsters pet-able and upgradable would make the game just "the other block game" when survival is just a label slapped as an afterthought and the game is designed for you to thrive not survive. To make those summons balanced we would need action bosses, raids and so on, and that kind of ADHD gameplay is just not this game from what I've seen.