Let’s think about players who like to play this game for a long time.

[Thorfinn]

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

Hence why it does work as a mod, but not really for the base game, since most players aren't really after something that brutally punishing.

But it's really only punishing to one type of player. If you build your house out of packed earth, who cares if it gets damaged? How hard could it be to replace a few blocks, or even just build yourself another shoebox off to one side? Or live in a cave. Presumably the ice storm doesn't wreck everything.

IMO, the real problem with this idea is that it basically would convert every block into a chiseled block, because you have to keep track of the damage somehow. Better Ruins gives you a pretty good idea how your machine handles widely separated buildings in various states of disrepair. Imagine that being your entire homestead. Even if I thought it would be fun to go around repairing everything after every storm, you could never get away from the lag. You would be much better off never building anything.

Edited September 24, 2025 by Thorfinn

[Zane Mordien]

2 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

]

I don't do anything more than utilitarian chiseling, and it doesn't sound like you do, either. That would be a serious problem for people who do, though. 

"So they can just shut that off."

"Yes, or the few who want that can just add a mod."

Doesn't matter much to my playstyle anyway. I rarely play more than one year before it becomes too meh and I start a new world to get some of the thrill back, as well as to work on avoiding the errors I made in the last playthrough.

Guilty,  I may chisel around my windows and that is it... if I even do that. 

 

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

 

In regards to nightmare monsters spawning in the first temporal storms...that's much different than the natural weather changing drastically after X amount of time "just because". The player knows up front what they are getting into with temporal storms, for the most part, and has adequate advance warning and time to figure out a way to deal with it, whether it be fighting through the storm or hunkering down until it's over. Likewise, the first storms are fairly weak compared to later storms, and the weaker storms tend not to spawn as many high tier monsters.

In other words, temporal storms are a big challenge early on, but they don't wipe player progress and the player is able to develop better equipment to handle the storms. What's been proposed here is much different, in that the proposal is arbitrary natural disasters that don't give the player advance warning, aren't countered by the player making progress, and actively wipe out the player's progress in many cases. 

It doesn't have to be exactly like the author described and destroy blocks,  but I like the idea of increasing difficulty based on some measurable metric in the game. Time passed or story progression. If you keep adding difficulty to the game from day 1 it drives people away IMO. You gotta hook people on the gameplay before dropping the flying bowtorns that shoot lava in the game.

Warnings could be added to the game to warn you. Let's say you finish the 2nd chapter and what's his face tells you now that the lens is removed X will start happening in Y months. 

Weather could be handled with some type of warning system either player built or built in the game like the temporal storm warnings. 

23 hours ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

Acid rain is caused by aerial pollution and only became widespread with the industrial revolution. Not possible in this game.

This was bothering me so I jumped back to it. Not that I think we need acid rain, but to me the constant interaction with the rust realm might cause this or some unknown Jonas device out there pumping out toxins. I don't get the impression that Jonas cared about this type of stuff. 

[Thorfinn]

9 minutes ago, Zane Mordien said:

You gotta hook people on the gameplay before dropping the flying bowtorns that shoot lava in the game.

This is true. So maybe they flying lava bowtorn just don't exist?

Games that scale difficulty by progress are everywhere. It's refreshing to have one every once in a while where progress is really progress, not just something that unlocks higher level adversaries. Wolves are a challenge that you learn to overcome. It's not like they let slip the dogs of war just because you killed your 50th wolf.

Edited September 24, 2025 by Thorfinn

[LadyWYT]

19 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Games that scale difficulty by progress are everywhere. It's refreshing to have one every once in a while where progress is really progress, not just something that unlocks higher level adversaries.

This. So much this. I don't mind unlocking specific areas with unique enemies or more difficult challenges, as that does make for good late game challenges. However, that doesn't mean I want the world as a whole affected. If the world as a whole is constantly throwing harder enemies or hazards at the player just because they got better equipment...the player isn't actually making any progress. It'd be the equivalent of making all enemies tier 4 as soon as the player achieves steel.

With the current setup, yes, the game does get easier as the player acquires better tech...but that's the point of progress. It's also why there are soft gear requirements for certain areas and activities--to push the player to make progress so they can handle those things. For example, the player needs tier 2 equipment to complete the first story chapter; the content is still able to be completed with weaker equipment, but it's a lot riskier. Another example is the surface monsters and temporal storms--the player can handle both with stone age tech, yes, but it doesn't really become safe to go out and properly fight the hordes until the player has achieved bronze. Once the player has better gear though, then they can start doing things like tackling the story content, or venturing out into the temporal storms to slay the special monsters, or even just cutting through the surface monsters like a hot knife through butter.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

the game does get easier as the player acquires better tech

The game not only gets easier, but what you're enabled to do gets a lot more involved/difficult to do efficiently. For example, the first story location is simple and requires you to solve a puzzle which not only tells a story, but introduces you to mechanics that will become important later. The game forces you to learn how to make bronze before even thinking about starting that part of the game. Bronze makes fighting easier, but also unlocks iron as a resource which will be needed for story locations in chapter 2.

But iron isn't as simple as dropping some nuggets in a crucible and pouring the metal into molds.

Edited September 24, 2025 by Teh Pizza Lady

[Zane Mordien]

2 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

This is true. So maybe they flying lava bowtorn just don't exist?

Games that scale difficulty by progress are everywhere. It's refreshing to have one every once in a while where progress is really progress, not just something that unlocks higher level adversaries. Wolves are a challenge that you learn to overcome. It's not like they let slip the dogs of war just because you killed your 50th wolf.

With 6 more chapters, which will take years to finish I expect more mobs will be added. Mark my words, flying rust creatures will be a thing one day. 

[Teh Pizza Lady]

23 minutes ago, Zane Mordien said:

flying rust creatures will be a thing one day. 

Bit of a bold prediction, considering what we already know in Chapter 2...

[Zane Mordien]

56 minutes ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

Bit of a bold prediction, considering what we already know in Chapter 2...

I mean every day mobs and technically that wasn't a rust creature. It was a human made thing that got corrupted like the locusts.

Edited September 24, 2025 by Zane Mordien

[Bruno Willis]

7 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

Seems to me a much better solution for those of us who enter a state of ennui as comfort builds is just start a new game. Play the fun parts over again.

I get this, but I think being able to use the same world for a long time is something VS should aim for, so you don't get bored of reading the fantastic lore over and over again. 

This is a very different idea to the OP's, but might help you keep a world going: Far-reaching Transponders. Big, bulky, overcomplicated versions of the flimsy everyday ones. They'd crop up very rarely and clearly state "Core parts are unreliable, this may be a one-way ticket," and they'd throw you halfway across the world, re-set your spawn to there, and then break (maybe a 90% chance of breaking each use). It'd give people a way to re-start the challenge with whatever they can carry, but keep their story going.

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, Bruno Willis said:

This is a very different idea to the OP's, but might help you keep a world going: Far-reaching Transponders. Big, bulky, overcomplicated versions of the flimsy everyday ones. They'd crop up very rarely and clearly state "Core parts are unreliable, this may be a one-way ticket," and they'd throw you halfway across the world, re-set your spawn to there, and then break (maybe a 90% chance of breaking each use). It'd give people a way to re-start the challenge with whatever they can carry, but keep their story going.

I absolutely love that idea! Plus it wouldn't even have to be a late game thing. It could just be a variation of the translocators that can already be found, but instead of needing repair before it can be used, it can be used as-is...albeit with the chance to fail and break after use, resetting the player's spawn elsewhere in the world and otherwise stranding them. If stranded, the player can either start anew where they are, start walking back toward know territory(if possible, would need map enabled), or attempt to fix the now broken translocator. Of course, the player could also just opt to fix the translocator before using it and thus avoid the risk, in which case I would increase the general cost of translocator repair in order to make taking the risk a bit more attractive. If the player opts to risk it though and breaks the translocator in the process, attempting to fix it will require the same amount of materials but have a chance to fail, consuming the materials and requiring the player to find more and try again.

Clockmakers, in addition to being able to fix translocators with fewer materials, would also be more likely to use a dodgy translocator without it breaking, or otherwise repair a broken dodgy translocator with a higher rate of success.

For additional cheap amusement, there could also be a variation of the base return teleporter(or whatever it's called). Instead of being a single-use item that teleports you back to your spawnpoint, it could simply teleport you somewhere on the surface several thousand blocks away. In order to keep it from being a really cheaty method of travel(like getting to the tropics and back easily), this particular contraption won't be of use if the player has a base return teleport in their inventory. In other words, this thing is 100% a one-way trip, though it won't reset your spawn(you'll have to do that yourself, lest you die and lose your stuff!).

[Bruno Willis]

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

I absolutely love that idea! Plus it wouldn't even have to be a late game thing. It could just be a variation of the translocators that can already be found, but instead of needing repair before it can be used, it can be used as-is...albeit with the chance to fail and break after use, resetting the player's spawn elsewhere in the world and otherwise stranding them. If stranded, the player can either start anew where they are, start walking back toward know territory(if possible, would need map enabled), or attempt to fix the now broken translocator. Of course, the player could also just opt to fix the translocator before using it and thus avoid the risk, in which case I would increase the general cost of translocator repair in order to make taking the risk a bit more attractive. If the player opts to risk it though and breaks the translocator in the process, attempting to fix it will require the same amount of materials but have a chance to fail, consuming the materials and requiring the player to find more and try again.

Just updating the existing translocators is a good call. I also think fixing/adapting abandoned tech is maybe a more interesting way of using Jonas parts than crafting entirely new things. I imagine there would be maybe 6 levels of damage which could be repaired, starting cheap and getting progressively more complex, but becoming more and more reliable. If you've repaired 5 levels of damage, it would be 100% reliable, and if you repaired the 6th, perhaps you would be able to pick up and move that end of the translocator?

[Kyassady]

On 9/25/2025 at 12:15 AM, Bruno Willis said:

Just updating the existing translocators is a good call. I also think fixing/adapting abandoned tech is maybe a more interesting way of using Jonas parts than crafting entirely new things. I imagine there would be maybe 6 levels of damage which could be repaired, starting cheap and getting progressively more complex, but becoming more and more reliable. If you've repaired 5 levels of damage, it would be 100% reliable, and if you repaired the 6th, perhaps you would be able to pick up and move that end of the translocator?

i really liked this Idea, dropping the pickup part! i think this ancient tech is very finicky, and if you pick it up you'll need one blueprint to replace it any where else, ( you just get pieces!) and one of the things to repair it could be some cupronickel or even titanium plates! 

i like it!

Edited September 26, 2025 by Kyassady

[Thorfinn]

I've done that, @Bruno Willis, but with nothing. Not even the shirt on my back. Just take off and go in whatever direction trips my trigger. Leave the homestead exactly as it is, including the stacks of ingots and all, windmill and all, but all the sails removed and placed in a chest next to to one of the rotors. Because pretend there's wear and tear.

And that's fine in MP, where you can imagine that maybe someone found it useful, or at least something different. But almost all servers play on easy settings, so the build is just not that enjoyable for me. Plus, my schedule is pretty hit or miss. I'll have several hours to play one day, then a week or more goes by before I get back to it. Rather than doing anything fun, I'm just clearing out rot. So I play mostly single player anymore. And I can't take the fantasy that far -- that some seraph will pop into my single player world and take over the farm.

So I just cut to the chase. Rather than find a place where I will  probably never encounter my old way of life, generate a new one where that is guaranteed and get to the fun stuff right away.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

16 hours ago, Zane Mordien said:

I mean every day mobs and technically that wasn't a rust creature. It was a human made thing that got corrupted like the locusts.

stop being smarter than me.

[Zane Mordien]

1 hour ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

stop being smarter than me.

I wouldn't go that far. It's a pointless detail at best. 

[Thorfinn]

22 hours ago, Zane Mordien said:

It's a pointless detail at best. 

Ooh, that's the kind of thing I'm good at, too.