Musing on gameplay variation

[Echo Weaver]

I was introduced to the game by a friend at 1.18 and played for quite a while on a server he ran. Then we both drifted on to other things, and I eventually came back and started a game on 1.19 that I still play. That game's the one where I really learned the ropes, since my experienced friend took us to the iron age while I mostly tagged along.

I tried a couple of game generations and stuck with one that spawned in a lovely valley covered in heather. I have some emotional attachment to heather, so it seemed fitting.

The spawn turned out to be incredibly arid. I didn't know anything about soil quality, and all I saw anywhere was low quality, so I started my first farm on that. I figured higher quality soil was part of advancement. I had a decent farm, but my harvest still ran out in January, and I nearly starved. I spent a lot of February digging for cattail roots and racing to my little base to cook them before I froze to death. By the end of winter, I had a milkable gen 0 ewe and would spend a long time just out of her reach, trying to milk her and waiting until she calmed down to try again.

Now, a bit older and arguably wiser, I've started a new more heavily-modded game with FotSA and Primitive Survival (pared down to just the survival content) and a self-imposed rule that I can't advance into copper until after the first winter. My spawn point was in a lush grassland rimmed by mountains. Rainfall is very frequent and all the soil is medium. 5-ish blocks from spawn was a patch of high-quality soil. I have found a good 3 enormous deposits of red clay without looking. Fields of mushrooms are scattered all over.

OTOH, SEEDS. I was falling over wild crops in my first game. This time I'm running everywhere looking for something to plant. It's been hard to actually use all my high quality soil. My luck with meat and/or livestock acquisition has also been bad enough that I wonder if I should just play this game vegetarian . A lot of that is FotSA, though. I've seen vanilla pigs, but a lot of the animals around are from those mods, and even the domesticatable ones can be pretty deadly when they're wild. There's a male and female of a particularly large bovine species wandering around, and I'm scheming some pit traps from Primitive Survival to try to nab them. Don't think I can just build a fence around them. The bull has already gored me once.

This is just musing on how incredibly different gameplay is in each world, even setting aside the mod bits.

Even though I immediately grabbed my first world generated, I did generate another one to check out. In that one, I literally spawned inside a herd of trumpeting elephants that stomped me. I kept the save, though. It seems really worth coming back to check out the elephants. 

Edited September 26, 2025 by Echo Weaver

[HalfAxd]

I almost love starting a new world and wandering thru it for a month more than settling in one world and living in it.   I restart a lot just to see something new and explore it.

Wonderful aspect of the game. 

[Teh Pizza Lady]

5 hours ago, Echo Weaver said:

There's a male and female of a particularly large bovine species wandering around, and I'm scheming some pit traps from Primitive Survival to try to nab them.

the Bola mod is a godsend. There's a funny story with that... A friend of mine and I are starting a new world. The spawn is pretty dismal. Gravel, cliffs, and low quality soil. She's arguing for a mulligan. I'm holding out hope that the next hill is hiding a utopia of survival content.

Then I spy a cow in the trees, quick make a bola and some spears. Throw the bola. The cow is pinned. It's a bull, actually, which means more meat!

MOOOO! 

And I'm staring at the death screen.

Turns out he had a roommate just around the corner who was none too happy with me for pinning his best bud with the bola and poking him with spears.

All my friend sees is me getting gored to death and then 

SERVER WILL SHUTDOWN IN 10 SECONDS.

She laughed.

[Echo Weaver]

12 minutes ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

the Bola mod is a godsend.

Huh, I don't have the bola mod. That sounds really useful. I'd like to see if I can stick it out and get these guys in a pit trap, but I may return to that.

Yeah, I was innocently foraging and that bull gored me. I never saw it coming. Seems like it could moo more than half a second before killing me.

Oh, I forgot to mention that my new spawn area is a swiss cheese of instability. So it's a verdant paradise that will suck you into the rust world if you don't pay attention to your gear at all times.

Edited September 27, 2025 by Echo Weaver

[Echo Weaver]

Update: I do not seem to be able to catch prehistoric bovines with pit traps. I'm pretty sure I made it large enough, but both cow and bull individually walked right up to the edge and grazed on the block beside the trap. I don't know much about how the traps work or how the animal AI works -- i.e. whether it would be reasonable to expect a mod animal to fall in or not.

Still, a bummer. As a consolation prize, I happened upon a vanilla sow napping and fenced her in. In addition to no mate for her, I also don't have anything to feed her yet, but she'll keep. I WANT those bovines, though.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

1 hour ago, Echo Weaver said:

Huh, I don't have the bola mod. That sounds really useful. I'd like to see if I can stick it out and get these guys in a pit trap, but I may return to that.

Don't bother... we just found out that they actually cannot be trapped by the bola. So it seems one of the two mods updated for that.

Either way, happy hunting!

[Echo Weaver]

1 hour ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

Don't bother... we just found out that they actually cannot be trapped by the bola. So it seems one of the two mods updated for that.

Either way, happy hunting!

Why would they update to make that impossible? 

[LadyWYT]

11 minutes ago, Echo Weaver said:

Why would they update to make that impossible? 

I'm guessing because it was pretty OP before. Cattle are big, and drop a lot of meat, hide, fat, and bones, so to be able to just immobilize one cheaply and stab it to death...

Will miss the easy steaks though.

[Echo Weaver]

38 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

I'm guessing because it was pretty OP before. Cattle are big, and drop a lot of meat, hide, fat, and bones, so to be able to just immobilize one cheaply and stab it to death...

Will miss the easy steaks though.

I want to domesticate those bastards. I don't want to eat them. 

[Teh Pizza Lady]

49 minutes ago, Echo Weaver said:

I want to domesticate those bastards. I don't want to eat them. 

I play with a blackguard who salivates every time she walks past the pig pen

[Echo Weaver]

20 minutes ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

I play with a blackguard who salivates every time she walks past the pig pen

OK, more appropriately, I want to domesticate them, THEN eat them.

I'm just obsessed with the idea of catching and breeding something that dangerous. I've tried several approaches so far and failed, and they might have migrated out of my valley, but I have a new plan if I see them again.

I'm getting more practical mileage out of the Critters pack. Crabs are a great addition to hunting. It looks like my eggs are going to come from mallards this time.

Edited September 27, 2025 by Echo Weaver

[Teh Pizza Lady]

1 hour ago, Echo Weaver said:

OK, more appropriately, I want to domesticate them, THEN eat them.

I'm just obsessed with the idea of catching and breeding something that dangerous.

You may have better luck just fencing them in with 100 or so fences. Extend the fence and place a food trough in the extension and when the cows are distracted, trap them in.

See crude MSPaint drawing:

Solid line is initial fence. then build dotted line. Knock out line with X. When cows are distracted with new food trough, remove old one and add new dotted line fence. Remove original fence.

[Echo Weaver]

6 hours ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

You may have better luck just fencing them in with 100 or so fences

I tried this with about 70 fences, but it's hard to stay unnoticed. They have a pretty decent detection range. The cow runs away and the bull charges.

I didn't try putting a trough out as bait, though. That's worth a try.

My next thought is the violent approach. I can probably did a 3-deep pit trap with some ladders for jump escape. Getting the bull to chase me is trivial. Surviving until it chases me into a pit is more challenging. The cow is harder this way because I can't direct where she runs, but  maybe I can put up some fence to funnel her toward the pit.

[Michael Gates]

Surprisingly few animals will go through a one-block-wide opening. My standard bear trap is a 4-deep pit, with a one-wide passage leading off a couple of blocks and then a ladder up-- neither bears, wolves, nor moose will go into the passage, so it's safe to stand in there and spear everybody. If whoever wrote cows did their job, they *should* work the same way

[Echo Weaver]

Just now, Michael Gates said:

Surprisingly few animals will go through a one-block-wide opening. My standard bear trap is a 4-deep pit, with a one-wide passage leading off a couple of blocks and then a ladder up-- neither bears, wolves, nor moose will go into the passage, so it's safe to stand in there and spear everybody. If whoever wrote cows did their job, they *should* work the same way

That's a very good point. I can't imagine these bovines would fit through a 1-block opening. Tentharchitect, author of Fauna of the Stone Age, is very good.

[Kaldo]

I dunno if it's luck, the terra prety mod or just me being more experienced but my second world is going so much smoother than the first one. I put in some immersion/difficulty mods like butchering, toolsmith but I'm still thriving - after ~20 hours I even found some chalk and bees. Still no salt of course, but I do have a cave with high hematite readings. Might even get a basic windmill up before winter fully hits.

I still feel like the world should have more distinct biomes. Maybe each island is a biome and you have to sail between them, or large (vanilla) rivers to give some sensible form and memorable layout... my one complaint so far is that it's just valleys, forests and random holes, thought the mod might make it more interesting but it's not really that much better.

[LadyWYT]

9 minutes ago, Kaldo said:

I still feel like the world should have more distinct biomes. Maybe each island is a biome and you have to sail between them, or large (vanilla) rivers to give some sensible form and memorable layout... my one complaint so far is that it's just valleys, forests and random holes, thought the mod might make it more interesting but it's not really that much better.

There is this mod: https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/8785

If used in conjunction with Fauna of the Stone Age, Floral Zones, and other mods that add plants/creatures, it will limit them to spawning only in their appropriate region. The difference is still more subtle than what you might find in the other block game, but it can add quite a lot of diversity.

12 minutes ago, Kaldo said:

I dunno if it's luck, the terra prety mod or just me being more experienced but my second world is going so much smoother than the first one. I put in some immersion/difficulty mods like butchering, toolsmith but I'm still thriving - after ~20 hours I even found some chalk and bees. Still no salt of course, but I do have a cave with high hematite readings. Might even get a basic windmill up before winter fully hits.

It's probably a combination of luck and experience. Once you know what to look for, it's harder to find any world with "bad" generation, since the resources will be more noticeable. That's not to say it isn't possible to get dealt a bad hand--it's just easier to handle them when you do.

[Echo Weaver]

I'm pretty sure they're European Aurochs.

I was all set up with my pit, ready to lure the bull. I headed out to where I last saw him, heard him bellow, and ran away. I turned around, and he wasn't there. I can't find him. There are several sinkhole caves there, and I fear he fell into one and is gone. 

The cow is still around and has evaded me again.

If the bull is gone, I am highly tempted to cheat him back into existence to keep trying to catch him.

[Echo Weaver]

Maybe I should retitle this "Echo's Stone Age Travelogue."

Yup, they're European Aurochs. I caught the cow! I feel like a rock star. I created a fenced enclosure on three sides and put a trough of grass beside a 2x3x3 pit trap from Primitive Survival. (I wasn't sure whether she'd be able to jump 2 blocks, so I made it 3 deep.) I wasn't sure if she'd be drawn in, but she showed up after about 24 hours. I sneaked out and got about half the 4th side of the fence placed before she noticed me, at which point she freaked out, tried to run away, rebounded off the far fence, and fell into the pit trap. I'm not sure I actually needed the pit trap, but it was great to have as backup.

So. After I said the bull might be gone, I thought I saw him about, but now I think it might have always been the cow. I ran about my grassy downs area and haven't found him. 

Coincidentally, two deer were also checking out the grass trough when I captured the cow and were also fenced. I thought they were ordinary deer that would be good meat, but they turn out to be baby Giant Deer from FotSA. Sadly, both male. While searching for the auroch bull, I found their parents walking around together.

I'm going to set up another similar trap to see if the bull will materialize or I can get the adult giant deer, at least the female. Adult domesticated giant deer can be ridden like elks, says the FotSA page, though 10 generations is a long haul. I don't know if a partially domesticated giant deer might be rideable. 

Giant deer can be milked AND can eventually be ridden. It would be much more logical to abandon the quest for aurochs and focus on the deer, but it's hard to give up on the aurochs. I mean, aurochs, c'mon. I'm trying to figure out if I could let myself cheat a bull into existence if the original bull can't be located. Maybe if I am able to pull a repeat performance with the giant deer, I will let myself go into creative to zap one of the male deer and replace it with a male auroch. And then I would have way too many domesticatable animals that will be insane to work with for a couple of generations and will likely kill me repeatedly. I haven't actually seen vanilla deer yet, but the auroch cow panics like nothing I've seen in vanilla, and my experience with the bull in the wild is that he aggros like a bear and does more damage. It will be hard to get close enough to feed them, and I can't imagine milking is an option in gen 0 at all, maybe not even gen 1.

I thought I saw that there was a console command for locating a specific entity. Is that a thing? Maybe I can determine whether the bull is out there at least or if it either fell down a sinkhole cave and died or wandered far enough away to despawn.

Oh, and now there is some kind of wild dog running about that has chased me multiple times and got a nearly-lethal bite out of me once.

Great times.

(Maybe I should post pictures. This is a ton of fun.)

Edited October 2, 2025 by Echo Weaver