Criticisms from a Passionate Fan

[Bumber]

On 9/27/2025 at 1:28 AM, Bruno Willis said:

I would love it if bears scratched trees to mark their territory, then spent their days going from scratch-mark to scratch-mark, hunting when something gets near. They'd still be quiet and terrifying, but it would be more of a "Oh shit, is that a scratch mark on that tree behind me? What have I done!" than a straight up "is the bear chasing me yet?" More of a slow building fear you know?

Players aren't going to notice the scratches any more than they notice stealth bears. There's a reason the Buzzwords mod exists.

[Boula Bayan]

About the copper, honestly i do not pay attention to it anymore, every games i start i simply just explore, do my stuffs while keeping an eye open. Usualy i get enough copper bits to make a pickaxe and hammer in the first hour. What help A LOT is to go 3rd person camera (F5) with a FoV of 90-100. If there is one, go to the nearest Rock or sand biome, you are nearly guaranteed to get what you need there, otherwise keep your eyes peeled while you gather other stuffs and do the early game things.
Its actually not that much of a grind if you just don't wait and overfocus on it, add it to you normal early game play.

 

[Vratislav]

10 hours ago, Boula Bayan said:

If there is one, go to the nearest Rock or sand biome, you are nearly guaranteed to get what you need there

I second to this advice. On grassy biomes, one can just take a copper that hits his nose when collecting other stuff. But for the rocky biomes, it is good opportunity just go to a nearest hill or other vantage point and take a good look around. (Also, a Zoom Button mod is my great friend for this ).

The most unlucky I was with the copper, it took me like 10 days to find enough on the surface. And my mistake, I was wandering only in grass and around lakes, even looking for the copper there did not work. When I moved into rocky biome, I have found several copper deposits almost immediately.

[Moony_Otter]

On 9/27/2025 at 11:18 AM, LadyWYT said:

Only partial quoting in some cases to save on space--bears are fine as-is, for the most part, though I do agree they could use some footsteps or louder noise to announce themselves from time to time. There was a mod I used a while back that changed the models and added more bear noises, which the added noise really helped make them easy to notice. 

Thanks for the welcome! I will steal your tactic of a partial quote for the sake of saving space as well haha

I just wanted to say that these criticisms I posted aren't outright negatives, just things I took note of that I thought could be improved.

Especially with bears; I want to clarify that I have nothing wrong with the actual design of the bears, both visually and gameplay. I like how massive of a threat they are, I think they should be super oppressive, really restricting where you can go; that's what wolves were for me on my first playthrough, before I got good at combat. In my first world, I had a small wolf duo near my house, and I always made sure to avoid it when I went to the trader that was close to where they liked hanging out. I love that decision making aspect, makes the game less brainless, which I love!
My issue with bears is not what they are inherently, but how they're implemented into Vintage Story's world. Vintage Story has hostile terrain; bushes are inconsistent to get through, shrubs block your view, trees and blocks really make you think about how to traverse even simple terrain, finding what you need often involves a massive day-long search; and I love that! I love the immersive and natural and hostile terrain in the game, and I love bears, but you put the two together and that's when I feel there's a problem.

Primarily, Vintage Story has a LOT of bears. When I'm out prospecting to find what I need, or whatever I'm out to do, I will come across bears CONSTANTLY. And, yeah, multiple times when I come across them, I can avoid them. But, there are very often times where there was no reasonable way for me to know that there was a bear nearby, and it was virtually guaranteed to see me before I see it. And, when that happens, it's basically guaranteed death unless you're kitted up the wazoo.
Also, I feel like the bears are absolutely faster than you. I rarely wear armor or restrictive clothes when exploring, when I can I'm just in my commoner gear because I value the movement over the protection (yeah, maybe I'm setting myself up for failure by going into potentially dangerous forests unprotected, but... like 20% of the entire world is forest, I can't avoid all of it unless I want to spend a majority of my time tiptoeing around the edges of forests when I want to explore), and bears still easily keep pace with me if not catch up to me. I am almost certain that bears are faster than the player at a base level, at least when just running away in one direction. Pair that with the hostile terrain and lack of retaining momentum when jumping up a block, and a bear attack is 90% a guaranteed death if you're not prepared for it; and, when just out exploring, you likely won't be-- or, at least, I'm rarely prepared for the bear that appeared behind me with zero sound effects or other tells and no way in hell I could have possibly seen it before it saw me. That's happened over 5 times now, and it's the only time I've ever cheated in Vintage Story, because I feel cheated every time it happens and with how often it happens, so I go into creative and fly over the hundreds or thousands of blocks I explored to get my stuff back and continue in survival from where I left off.

Again, I have no issue with the bears themselves. I have no issue with the hostile terrain. I don't even have an issue with how impossibly difficult to escape or kill bears are. What I do have a problem with is how unBEARably often they spawn-- for a "surface boss", they sure do spawn a LOT-- and how little indication of their presence there is other than just seeing them laying down in the heavy shrubbery and trees before they see you.

When I think of a surface world boss, I think of the Talus from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. If you're going to make a boss that can appear in areas that the player isn't expecting there to be danger-- no, I do not think that the general concept of "bears are near forests" is enough of an indicator; again, forests take up like a quarter of the game world and aren't outright coded as dangerous like caves are-- then you need proper indicators or counterplay to their existence. Even then, many Stone Talus are placed in areas that look like they would hold a dangerous creature, similarly to other games when you walk into a big empty room, you likely expect some dangerous enemy or boss to appear.
For example, the Talus is almost impossible to see coming for a new player. Looks like a normal rock, but, once you step on it, the rock rumbles and lifts. The player is given time to realize that there is something happening, and that they should be on high alert for it (similar to wolf howls, sounds of their pups yipping, and warning growls). However, even if the player doesn't immediately run away, once that boss bar appears and the boss is ready to fight, the player can still get away. Likely not without a few scratches, maybe even a death, but the player always has options, and for a boss that can appear unexpectedly, that is very important. Imagine if, in BotW, a Stone Talus could immediately rise from the ground in a mere second if the player was in the general area and could easily keep up with the player even if they sprint away. That would suck, and would feel unfair, because it is; the player being punished with a boss fight for doing something that isn't immediately coded as something that would lead to a boss fight is unfair. Bears are everywhere, they're quite often hard to notice, and if they notice you then there's little to no counterplay. They have the spawning requirements and indicators of a normal animal, but the health, speed, and damage of a major boss battle.

Again, nothing wrong with the difficulty of bears or how oppressive they are. But, they spawn way too often, have almost zero counterplay once it sees you, and have very little indication of the danger they pose; that's not an issue with their difficulty, that's an issue with their implementation; they need the proper indicators you'd expect of a boss enemy, you should be aware of such an immense danger before that danger is already on top of you; but, if you're not going to do that, then you need to give the player options should that boss appear out of nowhere. A boss lets you know that it's a boss way before you actually fight it, and that's for good reason. Bears just show up and kill you, often times (at least for me) at seemingly random, and I don't feel like forcing the player to label every single tree line as "nope, there could be a couple boss enemies there" is reasonable, especially in a game with such heavy focus on long-distance exploration and how common said tree lines are.

If I'm exploring the surface in the middle of the day with no rift activity, I shouldn't be on the same level of edge as I am expected to be while deep in an open, winding, pitch-black cave. As in, I shouldn't be expecting minibosses to just appear out of nowhere like Bells or Corrupt Sawblade Locusts or Bellhead Shivers, the setting of the caves are designed to have you on edge and ready for anything to appear from the darkness, whereas the surface isn't designed as such; yet, the arguably even more dangerous bears can seemingly appear just as randomly and frequently as those difficult cave enemies, out of nowhere with little to let you know that this is bear country other than "too many trees" in a world full of trees almost everywhere

I rambled a bit here, but I hope I've made it clear that I don't dislike bears in a vacuum. They're a good enemy! But, their implementation into Vintage Story's actual world is very heavily flawed, in my opinion.

[Moony_Otter]

On 9/30/2025 at 5:13 AM, Boula Bayan said:

About the copper, honestly i do not pay attention to it anymore, every games i start i simply just explore, do my stuffs while keeping an eye open. Usualy i get enough copper bits to make a pickaxe and hammer in the first hour. What help A LOT is to go 3rd person camera (F5) with a FoV of 90-100. If there is one, go to the nearest Rock or sand biome, you are nearly guaranteed to get what you need there, otherwise keep your eyes peeled while you gather other stuffs and do the early game things.
Its actually not that much of a grind if you just don't wait and overfocus on it, add it to you normal early game play.

 

Yeah, I get this, I like this strategy, but to be honest this seems like a bit much to ask of an average player. Strategies like these should make the game better for those that are experienced enough to employ them, rather than an expected way of accomplishing such a vital goal in a game's progression. There's no way to reasonably expect the average player to do something like this, I feel the early game should be at least a little more inviting, or at the very least made to be less tedious.

It's understandable that your way of playing tends to work, but for the average player that doesn't know these strategies or about how copper works, it ends up being extremely tedious and sometimes hardly worth the immense time and effort put into getting that initial 40 bits; and that's including hoping that you used those bits on specifically a hammer and pickaxe, not another tool.

[LadyWYT]

2 hours ago, Moony_Otter said:

Yeah, I get this, I like this strategy, but to be honest this seems like a bit much to ask of an average player. Strategies like these should make the game better for those that are experienced enough to employ them, rather than an expected way of accomplishing such a vital goal in a game's progression. There's no way to reasonably expect the average player to do something like this, I feel the early game should be at least a little more inviting, or at the very least made to be less tedious.

I actually disagree that the early game should be made easier--one of the points of the difficulty is to push the player to make progress. As the player progresses, new equipment and whatnot feels properly rewarding, because it makes tasks so much easier to do. 

How the player chooses to go about progressing in the game is entirely up to them, and the game has pretty high expectations of new players and veterans alike. New players will struggle, because they don't yet have the experience require to utilize the best strategies. Veteran players will struggle if they get complacent about their own abilities. I think this is fine, and likely one of the qualities that makes Vintage Story attractive. The game might be tough, but it doesn't assume the player is dumb/inept and lead them around by the hand for everything. There's a tutorial to teach new players basic controls so they aren't completely lost, yes, and there is a handbook full of information, but ultimately it's up to the player themselves to decide whether they succeed or fail. 

[LadyWYT]

6 hours ago, Moony_Otter said:

Again, nothing wrong with the difficulty of bears or how oppressive they are. But, they spawn way too often, have almost zero counterplay once it sees you, and have very little indication of the danger they pose; that's not an issue with their difficulty, that's an issue with their implementation; they need the proper indicators you'd expect of a boss enemy, you should be aware of such an immense danger before that danger is already on top of you; but, if you're not going to do that, then you need to give the player options should that boss appear out of nowhere. A boss lets you know that it's a boss way before you actually fight it, and that's for good reason. Bears just show up and kill you, often times (at least for me) at seemingly random, and I don't feel like forcing the player to label every single tree line as "nope, there could be a couple boss enemies there" is reasonable, especially in a game with such heavy focus on long-distance exploration and how common said tree lines are.

I think the crux of the issue here might be less where bears spawn(save in the case where they respawn immediately after being killed) and how they can be encountered sometimes, and more a case of...they don't make noise to announce themselves. If the player happens to spot the bear in advance, it's safe to assume that the bear is a massive threat, given what wolves do to the player. However, bears can be difficult to spot due to surrounding foliage or just taking a nap in a secluded spot, and they don't otherwise announce their presence like wolves do with howling. Oftentimes, the only warning the player has is the roar as the bear rips into them. If some sort of noise were implemented to alert the player to the bear's general presence, I think bears would feel a lot more balanced as a threat, even if they remain incredibly strong.

As for bears being faster than the player, I think it depends on the bear, really. Most are almost as fast as the player, with the sun bear, panda bear, and black bears being the slowest. Brown bears are faster, and polar bears are the fastest, to my knowledge.

[Dilan Rona]

On 9/27/2025 at 9:10 PM, Thorfinn said:

IMO, if you are caving on a calm or low day, and you get chased out by critters, you need to pick up the pace. Dilly-dallying around will get you killed. There's no point to exploring every nook and cranny -- they are procedurally generated, so you might as well leave and roll your RNG in a cave that isn't filled with critters. This time, not dawdling. If you find ores you want to mine, sure, wall yourself off and go to town, but realize that most likely, you are also going to have to tunnel to the surface, because they will spawn right outside your walls.

 

I do the same thing when I have to do extended caving. Except I combine it with a well placed moat (or 2, when dealing with a tunnel and the ores are in the wall). Keeps the walled off area clear when I am ready to leave the mining area. That and plenty of light sources.

Start of any new map, main focus is really food first and foremost. Finding a good spot to dig into a hill or mountain, or setting up a dirt shack is just as important, as it usually becomes my permanent home. Copper is a last concern, but I do mark their location before picking up the nuggets. Long nights I pan gravel and sand. Helps pass the time if I have nothing else to craft or do during the night. Most of the complaints in fact I dont see as a tedious chore.

[HDanke]

On bears i find that wolves and black bears become quite manageable by back kiting even with simple leather armor and a good iron falx, but brown bears in particular are tanky and fast making them really oppressive, which wouldn't be that bad if they were rare or easy to spot - but they are neither.

I find them really tedious to deal with and would rather avoid them but they are such a pest i have no choice but to kill them and now i have more leather fat and meat than i can use.

If i don't kill them an unexpected brown bear attack is almost always a death sentence due to how persistent they are at chasing you until you are dead, i wish they had stamina and tired down after a minute or so to allow you to shake them off eventually.

I also have an issue with their weird hitboxes that make them harder to hit while running.

Overall just not a fun experience when brown bears are mindless killing machines with overtuned stats and being so common, they don't feel polished or engaging to combat.

[Dilan Rona]

6 hours ago, HDanke said:

I find them really tedious to deal with and would rather avoid them but they are such a pest i have no choice but to kill them and now i have more leather fat and meat than i can use.

 

Wolves are easy. Poke one, and run to the nearest pit trap. If you keep them till winter, they make for great emergency food. Just remember to feed them now and then, and to raise the walls by one when it snows.

As for bears. If they aint chasing you to a pit trap, they will be running away. Best to tackle it head on, and kill it before it kills your animals. Keeping a farm nearby a pit trap makes for a good magnet for trapping bears for winter meat though.

6 hours ago, HDanke said:

Overall just not a fun experience when brown bears are mindless killing machines with overtuned stats and being so common, they don't feel polished or engaging to combat.

I generally have 1 bear to every 7 wolves though. If I am not so lucky, thats 1 bear per 3 packs of wolves though.

Edited October 6, 2025 by Dilan Rona

[HDanke]

48 minutes ago, Dilan Rona said:

Wolves are easy. Poke one, and run to the nearest pit trap. If you keep them till winter, they make for great emergency food. Just remember to feed them now and then, and to raise the walls by one when it snows.

As for bears. If they aint chasing you to a pit trap, they will be running away. Best to tackle it head on, and kill it before it kills your animals. Keeping a farm nearby a pit trap makes for a good magnet for trapping bears for winter meat though.

I generally have 1 bear to every 7 wolves though. If I am not so lucky, thats 1 bear per 3 packs of wolves though.

Never had an issue with wolves, it's brown bears specifically that feel like too much. I've had bushlands with no wolves but 5 brown bears in close proximity which is ridiculous. Getting ambushed by a wolf isn't a problem at all, black bears lose interest in you fairly quickly but a brown bear is often guaranteed death if you aren't fully prepared to take them out - which is my problem with them exactly, the game forces me to kill the bear or else it's going to kill me later on by complete surprise. I don't really have a need to kill bears currently and i'm starting to get sick of kiting them to the cheese pit.

[Thorfinn]

1 hour ago, HDanke said:

a brown bear is often guaranteed death if you aren't fully prepared to take them out

I think the last brown I died to was in 1.19. Might have been one of the 1.20 prereleases, when I was a little distracted trying to figure out the new rusties. I rarely fight them, either, because by the time I realize they are in the same territory as my wild animals, they have usually killed off all the females, so why bother?

Unless you meet him on a flat, featureless plain, (and if you did, why did you not notice him?), they are really easy to escape from, either running uphill, dodging or jumping bushes or tree trunks. Bear pathing is terrible. But it does take a little practice.

[Bruno Willis]

I'm fine with the bears at the moment, I've learned how to avoid them consistently and without much trouble, but I can think of ways to improve them.

The best case scenario, to me, would be if bears somehow chose cave entrances to build lairs in, then dragged their larger kills back to the lair to to eat them, breaking bushes on their way back. The skeletons would build up in and around their lair, and the bear would be constantly returning to the lair (so it would have a predictable location). The bear would also scratch trees to mark its territory, check those trees regularly like a perimeter guard, and in spring male and female bears would get together and make cubs, and all hang out in the same lair. If you didn't deal with the bear family early, you'd see the bear population double. 

That'd turn areas of forest into recognizable (but subtle) danger zones, and make it easier to go after a bear deliberately, and less likely to get hit by a surprise bear in territory you know well. I think those sorts of environmental changes would make them feel more like the surface bosses they are.

Also, imagine caving, and you're tired, weighed down by your best armor, and you've found an alternative exit. As you come up into the light you see the skeletons of 20 goats and pigs, and a couple of bear cubs growling in a courner. D-:} 

 

[HDanke]

2 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

I think the last brown I died to was in 1.19. Might have been one of the 1.20 prereleases, when I was a little distracted trying to figure out the new rusties. I rarely fight them, either, because by the time I realize they are in the same territory as my wild animals, they have usually killed off all the females, so why bother?

Unless you meet him on a flat, featureless plain, (and if you did, why did you not notice him?), they are really easy to escape from, either running uphill, dodging or jumping bushes or tree trunks. Bear pathing is terrible. But it does take a little practice.

I've had a couple jump scares while exploring far away where they pop out full speed from a bush they were sleeping in while i'm sprinting by. I'm playing commoner and i don't think i've ever managed to shake out a brown bear. As others have said i think a lack of cue is one of their main flaws. I don't think bears should be able to break into a full sprint chase from sleeping.

I do not mind getting flayed if i had every opportunity to react to the danger before i get into the death zone, but at times it feels like i was given little to no chance to react. For a mob some people consider a mini boss, they have awfully little presence in the world besides the occasional livestock kills and looking up every so often.

[LadyWYT]

17 hours ago, Bruno Willis said:

Also, imagine caving, and you're tired, weighed down by your best armor, and you've found an alternative exit. As you come up into the light you see the skeletons of 20 goats and pigs, and a couple of bear cubs growling in a courner. D-:} 

Or imagine minding your own business out in the woods, and a couple of adorable little bear cubs run up to play. And while you're standing there thinking "awwww, how cute!" momma charges out of the bushes absolutely furious.

This one is probably not feasible to implement, but imagine too if polar bears behaved like their IRL counterparts. Didn't vary your daily routine enough? Have fun getting jumped by a hungry ursine!

[Zane Mordien]

20 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

I think the last brown I died to was in 1.19. Might have been one of the 1.20 prereleases, when I was a little distracted trying to figure out the new rusties. I rarely fight them, either, because by the time I realize they are in the same territory as my wild animals, they have usually killed off all the females, so why bother?

Unless you meet him on a flat, featureless plain, (and if you did, why did you not notice him?), they are really easy to escape from, either running uphill, dodging or jumping bushes or tree trunks. Bear pathing is terrible. But it does take a little practice.

My last playthrough started with the roar of a hungry bear. Brown, black, grizzly... who knows it ate me before I moved very far. 

 

Generally though,  most people aren't as good as you a taking advantage of bad pathing. As the bear ate me, I was thinking how the F does Thorfinn shake them so easy. 

Edited October 7, 2025 by Zane Mordien

[LadyWYT]

10 hours ago, Zane Mordien said:

As the bear ate me, I was thinking how the F does Thorfinn shake them so easy. 

I've stopped questioning the whys and just enjoy the stories about the legend of @Thorfinn. Although I daresay he's not always escaping the bears, as much as becoming lunch and starting over thanks to permadeath settings. Pure speculation on my part though.

[Dilan Rona]

Fresh meat for when winter hits

[Thorfinn]

15 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

I've stopped questioning the whys and just enjoy the stories about the legend of @Thorfinn. Although I daresay he's not always escaping the bears, as much as becoming lunch and starting over thanks to permadeath settings. Pure speculation on my part though.

Chasms claim most of my deaths, laziness the rest. Particularly in tall grass or bushes, those things come up out of nowhere. They ought to make some kind of noise or something, but, no. They just up and kill me when all I'm doing is minding my own business.

Laziness is just thinking I don't need to use poultices, I'll heal up in a minute or two, then get tagged while jumping over a wolf, or cutting it a little close running past a shiver or something.

[Echo Weaver]

1 hour ago, Thorfinn said:

Chasms claim most of my deaths

Yeah, I gotta say that the ubiquity of sinkhole-style caverns is not my favorite part of worldgen.

[7embre]

10 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

Chasms claim most of my deaths, laziness the rest.

Ah, legendary vintage holes. I neither like or hate them at this point, to be honest. Can only find them funny, as they add this little bit of a spice to travelling

let's see what you'd say to invisible vintage holes, forming right under your feet due to soil gravity, mister "I don't hate them"

[mayushii]

On 9/27/2025 at 1:18 PM, LadyWYT said:

I agree that it would be nice to have as an accessibility option, but it shouldn't be something baked in by default. I remember when this feature was introduced to Minecraft, and it was one of the first things I disabled in the options as I absolutely positively hate it!  While pressing spacebar each time to climb up a steep hill or mountain can get tedious, I much prefer the greater control I have over my movement, than the accidental missteps that tend to occur when the game is just assuming that I wanted to step up certain heights.

You misunderstood the OP on this. They are not asking for an auto-step up feature, they are trying to get the physics correct on momentum. Easy mistake to make!

[Teh Pizza Lady]

21 minutes ago, mayushii said:

You misunderstood the OP on this. They are not asking for an auto-step up feature, they are trying to get the physics correct on momentum. Easy mistake to make!

I believe the team over at Anego has already made improvements towards this.

[Endeavour]

I quite like bears, they are as terrifying as they are in real life.  I usually just run away uphill or over a small body of water as they swim slow. If I kill them I kite them over a small lake and spam arrows or spears at it.  I agree with others they could benefit from more noise as it would make them more scary.
Unconfirmed but I had a situation where I accidentally stared down a bear and it did not attack. 

As for copper, I usually take my time in the stone age. I did not even know surface deposits were almost guranteed spawn in your initial spawn area so I always panned for pickaxe and hammer and it usually didn't take that long. I believe rather than making copper more common(which you can do with world settings), it would be better to add more to do in copper age- fishing, more hide craftables, bigger ruins to find potential copper nuggets in.

Personally after like 5 worlds of advancing to bronze age, I have started to keep rifts and storms off as surface world is dangerous enough with wolves and bears and sinkholes and I don't feel like surface creepers add much to gameplay as they are they are countered by just shutting the cheapest door and covering windows with stick fences during the night. It feels much more alien to explore underground when they have their own threats. 

I encourage you to tweak your map generation and gameplay settings to your liking. I like no rifts, no storms, less than 50% landmass for oceans so boats have a purpose and I usually leave rest as-is. 

[Thorfinn]

14 hours ago, mayushii said:

You misunderstood the OP on this. They are not asking for an auto-step up feature, they are trying to get the physics correct on momentum. Easy mistake to make!

I'm not so sure. If you were sprinting and trying to jump up 1m (something most people can't do -- I certainly can't!) if you stub your toe on the edge, momentum is going to make you fall on your face. I do not think that's what the OP wants. I suspect it's more you succeed and land on your feet. Which is indistinguishable from increasing your step height to just over 1m.