Add a mechanism to let players stabilize surface areas.

[Bumber]

I think it would be best if the gear just spun at a rate relative to the stability of the area. Don't rock it back and forth at neutral; hold it still. Don't stop turning the gear just because stability is full.

The fullness of the gear already indicates your current stability. IDK why we'd need extra elements to the UI. You could put an arrow in the middle, but what do we need to indicate with it?

11 hours ago, Mac Mcleod said:

his profound loneliness drove him to try (unsuccessfully) to befriend a mouse for company.

even mice don't want to be his friend. L rizz, lmao.

he was probably pushed into speleology by a guidance counselor just so people didn't have to listen to him.

"let me tell you about this fascinating rock I found. wait, Mr. Mouse, why are you throwing yourself down a chasm?"

Edited October 20, 2025 by Bumber

[Mac Mcleod]

On 10/20/2025 at 6:13 AM, Facethief said:

If you have blue, green, AND red color blindness, I don’t think you’d be able to see anything on a computer. As for a pattern, I’d have a generic glow for stability increase (I prefer stability) and the rift halo effect for decreasing stability.

Hey man....  FYI

Color Blindness (also called color-vision deficiency) is a condition in which a person’s ability to distinguish between certain colors differs from what is considered “normal” color vision. 

Key details:

• It usually means that an individual has difficulty telling the difference between specific colors (for example, red vs. green) rather than seeing the world only in black and white. 

• The condition is most often genetic, caused by abnormalities in the cone cells of the retina responsible for detecting color. 

• The most common form is red-green coloring deficiency; blue-yellow and more severe forms exist but are less common. 

• There is currently no cure for most forms of color blindness, though special lenses/filters (mostly for blue/red) and adaptive strategies can help. 

[Mac Mcleod]

On 10/18/2025 at 5:08 PM, Thorfinn said:

Areas with low stability are, by your own reckoning, not desirable locations.

"This house is in a great location!

What are you talking about? The planes taking off go only a couple hundred feet right over it. Most of the time you can't hear music even if you crank it to 11."

It's more akin to invisible toxic pollution.    It's a beautiful site, open plains by a lake, or perhaps a striking mountain-side bluff.   If you don't notice that your temporal stability gear isn't recovering (or worse is drifting very slowly to the left), then you don't know it's a bad site.   Even my sepia suggestion wouldn't help much there.   You could just say, it's part of the game to learn that many locations that look great are unstable.   But having a device to address that would give players something to strive for.   And having the instability show in some form (trees don't grow right, the water is off color, animal voices sound strange (like they do during temporal storms) would be more immersive.   
 

[Thorfinn]

9 minutes ago, Mac Mcleod said:

It's more akin to invisible toxic pollution.

I agree it's kind of like radon in a modern home. Invisible, colorless, odorless, and, yet, not a good location. The game gives you the means to check for stability. You don't have to go to the store to get the kit, or wait for results to come back. If you choose not to avail yourself of them it's not really the game's fault.

Edited October 27, 2025 by Thorfinn

[Mac Mcleod]

Just now, Thorfinn said:

I agree it's kind of like radon in a modern home. Invisible, colorless, odorless, and, yet, not a good location. The game gives you the means to check for stability. If you choose not to avail yourself of them it's not really the game's fault.

Yes, it's the games fault because the interface is bad and they do not highlight this risk of losing 20 to 40 hours of effort with tips to new players.   Seraphs should know but they don't.  Putting hours of effort into a base and then losing it is a *common* new player experience.   You don't want to make the game bad for new players.   I've been involved with *many* different games over the last 45 years and stuff like this keeps otherwise great games from being profitable. 

[Thorfinn]

6 minutes ago, Mac Mcleod said:

Seraphs should know but they don't. 

Why should they know? How much of the lore do they know? Just like most other games, this comes down to player skill/knowledge, not handwaving things that you learn in-game.

[Forks]

1 hour ago, Mac Mcleod said:

Yes, it's the games fault because the interface is bad and they do not highlight this risk of losing 20 to 40 hours of effort with tips to new players.   Seraphs should know but they don't.  Putting hours of effort into a base and then losing it is a *common* new player experience.   You don't want to make the game bad for new players.   I've been involved with *many* different games over the last 45 years and stuff like this keeps otherwise great games from being profitable. 

I agree with this sentiment heavily and I've even mentioned before how I have seen it ruin the game for new players.
I launched a server for friends who for some it was their first time ever playing the game and 2 were unlucky enough to build their houses in an unstable zone on the edge of our town. They didn't even know something was wrong until irl days had past and their houses were basically complete.

I'm all onboard with mechanics that the player has to learn, but imo surface instability just feels so tacked on. 
And the fact to turn it off you also have to turn off cave instability pisses me off, let people have the choice and the problem is no more.
The invisible pollution point some people have made is realistic, but there's always an important balance between realism and fun.

[Bumber]

7 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

I agree it's kind of like radon in a modern home. Invisible, colorless, odorless, and, yet, not a good location. The game gives you the means to check for stability. You don't have to go to the store to get the kit, or wait for results to come back. If you choose not to avail yourself of them it's not really the game's fault.

Always be sure to measure the basement for possible non-euclidean geometry before purchasing a new home.

I think the issue is that the game isn't good at providing the info. This is a bad UX issue.

[Mac Mcleod]

21 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

Why should they know? How much of the lore do they know? Just like most other games, this comes down to player skill/knowledge, not handwaving things that you learn in-game.

Because, it's on the official Wiki and in the tutorial.   

It's not a question of skill.  This is a basic game design flaw as implemented. 

It's a question of joining a game with friends and playing or...
...spending 16 to 24 hours playing through the tutorial before you join the real game with your buds.  

It would be a little different if the tutorial took 15 minutes but it doesn't.

In any, we already have an example above of a player group having this exact same problem.

 

[LadyWYT]

On 10/27/2025 at 2:44 PM, Mac Mcleod said:

Seraphs should know but they don't. 

Should they? According to the lore, the player just "woke up" at a random fixed point in the world, lacking most of their memories. The most they really know about themselves is that they're obviously not exactly human, but aside from that most of what the learn/remember from that point is gleaned through hard experience and talking to various NPCs(for example, the traders explain what those horrible monsters are that appear from thin air).

Based on that, it makes sense that temporal stability and associated mechanics are going to catch them off guard.

On 10/27/2025 at 2:44 PM, Mac Mcleod said:

Yes, it's the games fault because the interface is bad and they do not highlight this risk of losing 20 to 40 hours of effort with tips to new players.   Seraphs should know but they don't.  Putting hours of effort into a base and then losing it is a *common* new player experience.   You don't want to make the game bad for new players.   I've been involved with *many* different games over the last 45 years and stuff like this keeps otherwise great games from being profitable. 

I have to mostly disagree here as well. The interface does its job fairly well, but the key is that the player needs to pay attention to it in order for it to be of any use. I think the more likely underlying problem here is that temporal stability is a concept unique to Vintage Story, so unlike hunger or health or concepts that are standard to most games, it can be a little tough to figure out without reading the handbook(which can be said for many gameplay loops).

 

On 10/27/2025 at 2:30 PM, Mac Mcleod said:

 And having the instability show in some form (trees don't grow right, the water is off color, animal voices sound strange (like they do during temporal storms) would be more immersive.   

Personally, I don't like this solution, because it ruins the unsettling element of the mechanic entirely. Yes, it's more obvious, sure, but it's also practically a neon sign in the player's face that SOMETHING IS WRONG HERE! The current implementation is more subtle and can be easily missed, yes, but that also helps keep the player immersed in the creeping horror and more unsettling elements of the world. At a glance, everything is fine on the surface, aside from certain events that a total trainwreck(like temporal storms), but that lulls the player into a false sense of security. Spend too long in the wrong spot, and they may quickly find the distant ambience of the "other reality" filtering in.

I think a better solution would just be including a basic explanation of the stability meter in the game's tutorial. That way, new players will have a ready explanation of what that gear is, without needing to look it up, but it's otherwise up to them to pay attention to their surroundings and what that gear is telling them.

Though there is one change to temporal mechanics that I think would be great for immersion, and that is the concept brought forth by this mod: https://mods.vintagestory.at/temporalsymphony

The text messages should be an option in the Accessibility settings, but otherwise, I think something like this concept would be a lot more dramatic, especially for new players. Everything is fine, until the world itself starts shaking and you hear the gears turning. The first warning is spooky enough to have players on edge wondering just what the heck happened, while also giving them enough time to potentially calm down and stop worrying...right before the second warning hits.

[Bumber]

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

Should they? According to the lore, the player just "woke up" at a random fixed point in the world, lacking most of their memories. The most they really know about themselves is that they're obviously not exactly human, but aside from that most of what the learn/remember from that point is gleaned through hard experience and talking to various NPCs(for example, the traders explain what those horrible monsters are that appear from thin air).

Based on that, it makes sense that temporal stability and associated mechanics are going to catch them off guard.

Presumably Seraphs can feel it somehow, like skin temperature, nausea, or ASMR. The player gets a representation as a gear, but it's difficult to keep track of a single UI element while you're focused on walking around and doing stuff.

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

I have to mostly disagree here as well. The interface does its job fairly well, but the key is that the player needs to pay attention to it in order for it to be of any use. I think the more likely underlying problem here is that temporal stability is a concept unique to Vintage Story, so unlike hunger or health or concepts that are standard to most games, it can be a little tough to figure out without reading the handbook(which can be said for many gameplay loops).

It's not really much different from the shroud effect from Enshrouded, the environmental hazards in No Man's Sky, oxygen in Subnautica, or other such game mechanics that prevent you from spending too much time in an area. It's just not as obvious because the meter is depleting or recovering very slowly, and neither the indicator nor the environment give the player much of an alert that anything has changed.

My recommendations:
Firstly, it needs a small immersive effect so you're aware of it while walking through an area. It'd be enough to know something's slightly off, which would cause the player to think twice about building there. Secondly, the effect on the gear should be immediately obvious enough that they can just search the handbook for an explanation. Lastly, a stability device allows the player to eventually enjoy a base in a scenic location, despite it being hit badly by RNG.

Edited October 28, 2025 by Bumber

[williams_482]

38 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

Personally, I don't like this solution, because it ruins the unsettling element of the mechanic entirely. Yes, it's more obvious, sure, but it's also practically a neon sign in the player's face that SOMETHING IS WRONG HERE! The current implementation is more subtle and can be easily missed, yes, but that also helps keep the player immersed in the creeping horror and more unsettling elements of the world. At a glance, everything is fine on the surface, aside from certain events that a total trainwreck(like temporal storms), but that lulls the player into a false sense of security. Spend too long in the wrong spot, and they may quickly find the distant ambience of the "other reality" filtering in.

Interesting, because I'd take the exact opposite position. Unstable surface areas containing weird and creepy sounds, off colors, occasional flickering/insubstantial blocks, etc, produces a much more visceral sense of discomfort (and with it a much more immersive experience) than just seeing the gear spin the wrong way. 

The "neon sign" is a feature. Luring new players into traps which an experienced player can trivially avoid just makes for a more frustrating experience for them, with little benefit. It's also counter to most of the other gameplay loops.

Most mechanics in this game fall into one of several categories:

1) Genre staples and in-your-face problems. There's a hunger bar, you need to eat. There are monsters who attack you, you need to fight back or run away. etc. Most players will intuitively understand these things, and those who don't are probably going to recognize that they are out of their depth and go to the tutorial or a youtube video to get themselves sorted. Even if they just try to muddle though without help, "there's a little grey guy throwing rocks at me" is at least easy to identify as a problem. 

2) Obvious how-to questions (How do I find food? How do I protect myself from monsters?) which can be answered relatively easily in the handbook or with a little in-game experimentation, but require work to obtain any practical benefit. Progressing in this game is essentially a sequence of asking how to get a thing you want, finding the answer, and then executing on it. 

3) Non-obvious questions about lore and the world at large (what are these weird monsters?) which the player isn't even going to know to ask until they stumble across something in game and will have to do some legwork to answer at all, but which don't directly impact their engagement with the survival and progression mechanics. 

Surface stability *should* fall firmly in the third category, weird things about the world that you'll learn about over time. Unfortunately it's treated as if it belongs in the first category, and thus becomes a trap. New players who get unlucky picking a location for their base don't even recognize there's a question they need to ask until they've wasted a big chunk of time building a base they can't really use, and that's incredibly frustrating. 

[LadyWYT]

44 minutes ago, williams_482 said:

Luring new players into traps which an experienced player can trivially avoid just makes for a more frustrating experience for them, with little benefit.

I somewhat agree, but this is also why I suggested just teaching the player the basics of what the gear represents in the tutorial, which I would assume most new players will play through at least once. There are lots of things that are trivial to experienced players, as that is just the benefit of having experience, but that doesn't mean that experienced players won't get caught by the mechanic.

 

1 hour ago, Bumber said:

Presumably Seraphs can feel it somehow, like skin temperature, nausea, or ASMR. The player gets a representation as a gear, but it's difficult to keep track of a single UI element while you're focused on walking around and doing stuff.

Right, but just because one feels something doesn't mean they automatically know what it is, or how to counter it. Temporal stability already has a few ambient telegraphs to alert the player to a looming problem. Rust world ambience starts to play after the player has lost about 25% stability, which should provoke an unsettling feeling and prompt the player to figure out what is going on. Once the gauge has dropped to around 33% stability remaining, monsters will begin to appear sporadically, with temporal storm effects setting in once the gauge approaches empty. Stepping into a rift will trigger the temporal storm effects, as well as cause stability to drop drastically, providing yet another indication that not all is right with the world.

However, it's not necessarily obvious what to look up in the handbook in order to figure out what temporal stability is, hence why I suggest that including a brief note in the tutorial might be a better option.

52 minutes ago, williams_482 said:

3) Non-obvious questions about lore and the world at large (what are these weird monsters?) which the player isn't even going to know to ask until they stumble across something in game and will have to do some legwork to answer at all, but which don't directly impact their engagement with the survival and progression mechanics. 

Overall, the general impression I get of temporal stability is that outside of rifts, temporal storms, and certain specific locations, it's a looming background threat and not something meant to be immediately obvious(like distorted noise or visual glitching). Seraphs also seem to be much more sensitive to its influence than humans and other normal creatures, thus I'm not sure that animals and the like are a good indicator of whether an area is stable or not.

Honestly, I still think it's less a matter of providing more obvious signposts for the player regarding area stability, and more a matter of teaching the player how to use the tools already at their disposal.

[Thorfinn]

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

but that doesn't mean that experienced players won't get caught by the mechanic.

I still get caught by it. Not that I really care, as I spend no time at home, anyway, but, still...

3 hours ago, williams_482 said:

New players who get unlucky picking a location for their base don't even recognize there's a question they need to ask until they've wasted a big chunk of time building a base they can't really use, and that's incredibly frustrating.

First off, they can use it, just not necessarily spend much time there. It's still a perfectly good place to drop off stuff, and forging and cooking and the like, because if they really spent that much time building there, it's not negative, it's just not positive. They have to go somewhere else to recover stability.

Now, granted, I've been there, and when I should have known better. I thought it was weird my world was going sepia while I was doing some clay work waiting for a wild hive to swarm, and it did not occur to me that I was in an unstable region. But that's really the point. Had I been trying to build there, things would have gone sepia before I got much more than a shanty constructed. Definitely not the 40 hours someone was talking about upthread.

[Bumber]

7 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Right, but just because one feels something doesn't mean they automatically know what it is, or how to counter it. Temporal stability already has a few ambient telegraphs to alert the player to a looming problem. Rust world ambience starts to play after the player has lost about 25% stability, which should provoke an unsettling feeling and prompt the player to figure out what is going on. Once the gauge has dropped to around 33% stability remaining, monsters will begin to appear sporadically, with temporal storm effects setting in once the gauge approaches empty. Stepping into a rift will trigger the temporal storm effects, as well as cause stability to drop drastically, providing yet another indication that not all is right with the world.

One can immediately feel cold air on the skin, and then observe that stepping back inside reverses it. Following that analogy, one shouldn't need to wait for hypothermia to set in an hour later to notice there's a problem and then try to back trace the cause of sudden body convulsions and teeth chattering. Putting on warm clothes as a solution is irrelevant until the problem can first be properly identified. It's not useful to suddenly realize you're under-dressed once you're miles from civilization (or have a house in a low stability area).

Stepping into a rift is rather obvious. The gradual loss of stability that has absolutely nothing to do with rift activity is not. AFAIK, rifts aren't even more common in low stability areas.

Even underground instability is fairly obvious because it scales with depth and really nasty mobs spawn near the mantle.

Edited October 29, 2025 by Bumber

[LadyWYT]

8 hours ago, Bumber said:

One can immediately feel cold air on the skin, and then observe that stepping back inside reverses it. Following that analogy, one shouldn't need to wait for hypothermia to set in an hour later to notice there's a problem and then try to back trace the cause of sudden body convulsions and teeth chattering. Putting on warm clothes as a solution is irrelevant until the problem can first be properly identified.

Right, but cold weather is something that's familiar and easily recognized. Temporal stability is not. I would liken it to being in an area and getting a creeping unsettling feeling, without really knowing why, and there are two choices--leave immediately as soon as it hits(which may take a while), or ignore it and keep going/try to figure out the cause(is it just imagination or not).

 

8 hours ago, Bumber said:

Stepping into a rift is rather obvious. The gradual loss of stability that has absolutely nothing to do with rift activity is not.

Except the low stability from both is indicated by the gear turning counterclockwise, which is rather obvious. However, the player needs to both know what the gear indicates, as well as be paying attention to said gear for the information to be useful. Rifts are simply very strong anomalies, where effects of stability loss are quite rapid and thus easier to notice. Unstable areas themselves are much more subtle about it, hence how it tends to catch players off-guard: they weren't aware of the mechanic(newer players) or otherwise weren't paying attention(applies to any skill level).

 

8 hours ago, Bumber said:

AFAIK, rifts aren't even more common in low stability areas.

They're actually supposed to be more common in unstable areas and less common in stable ones. How well that translates to gameplay, I'm not sure, as I've not been tracking exactly where they spawn.

 

8 hours ago, Bumber said:

Even underground instability is fairly obvious because it scales with depth and really nasty mobs spawn near the mantle.

This is a case similar to the rifts though. The underground is more unstable, and typically gets worse the deeper one ventures, so it's a more pronounced effect than surface stability. The same concept of tracking it still applies--watch the gear to see which way it's spinning, and mind that the fluid within doesn't get too low. The player is also a lot more likely to be on guard when underground since it's a known dangerous location, but the surface is a more cheerful, much less dangerous place and thus it's easy to fall into sense of complacency. 

[Bumber]

6 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

I would liken it to being in an area and getting a creeping unsettling feeling, without really knowing why

The problem is that this isn't really happening for many. Players are having a difficult time noticing anything unsettling with the area until the point where they've built an entire house on an Indian burial ground and moved in.

6 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Except the low stability from both is indicated by the gear turning counterclockwise, which is rather obvious.

The turn speed scales with the rate of loss. The state where the gear is rocking back and forth is the most confounding. It may look like it's recovering if you glance at it for only a second.

Edited October 29, 2025 by Bumber

[Metalton]

Personally, love the Stability feature. Creeps up on you and keeps you on edge that no matter how normal things look you might not really be safe anywhere (which is what I kinda expect from "Lovecraftian horror").. Though in practice it's a relatively tame threat, it at least adds a bit of challenge to surface gameplay outside of wolves and bears, since rifts can for the most part be ignored during the day..

[MKMoose]

On 10/28/2025 at 9:47 PM, LadyWYT said:

On 10/27/2025 at 8:30 PM, Mac Mcleod said:

 And having the instability show in some form (trees don't grow right, the water is off color, animal voices sound strange (like they do during temporal storms) would be more immersive.   

Personally, I don't like this solution, because it ruins the unsettling element of the mechanic entirely. Yes, it's more obvious, sure, but it's also practically a neon sign in the player's face that SOMETHING IS WRONG HERE! The current implementation is more subtle and can be easily missed, yes, but that also helps keep the player immersed in the creeping horror and more unsettling elements of the world. At a glance, everything is fine on the surface, aside from certain events that a total trainwreck(like temporal storms), but that lulls the player into a false sense of security. Spend too long in the wrong spot, and they may quickly find the distant ambience of the "other reality" filtering in.

This take frankly surprises me, because I would say that the current implementation is much more of a neon sign than diegetic clues (signs present in the game world). A kind of easy to miss neon sign, yes, but also kinda simplistic and unimmersive. Recognizing unstable areas basically boils down to "oh the gear it turning the other way".

I think I would much prefer if it was more in the vein of "this place seems a bit odd, let me check if I can find any indications of instability". But that is almost completely squandered once the player realizes that the turning gear is practically the only indication of instability in the entire game (aside from sky turning to sepia and so on, but that's player instability and not world instability), and it is also immediate and completely reliable.

 

One thing that I really don't like about the current implementation, though admittedly it could be by design, is that the trigger and effect are not well correlated, because the effects of instability take a while to kick in and stay active for some time after leaving the area, which makes the spinning gear a necessity to recognize instability with any level of accuracy.

Combined with the randomness in the stability distribution itself, this creates a system with unclear causality and poor feedback to player actions (except the gear which turns immediately but may be easily missed). Such a system provides very limited learning opportunities, meaning that a new player will often struggle to understand it without a tutorial - and at that point, a large part of the mysterious and unsettling vibe vanishes in a paragraph of explanatory text.

 

21 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Right, but cold weather is something that's familiar and easily recognized. Temporal stability is not. I would liken it to being in an area and getting a creeping unsettling feeling, without really knowing why, and there are two choices--leave immediately as soon as it hits(which may take a while), or ignore it and keep going/try to figure out the cause(is it just imagination or not).

This is a very cool ideal, but I cannot say I've ever experienced anything close to it while playing myself.

To actually get this unsettling feeling in the best way possible, the player needs diegetic clues, not UI. That's the same issue as chat messages for temporal storms, which do their job sufficiently well but have nothing immersive about them. Instead of making the player focus more on their surroundings, they take the player out of the game by making them pay more attention to the UI.

And by the way - what is there to investigate? If I search an unstable area, will I find an explanation or an answer? Nope, it's just a random 3-dimensional distribution that only really affects a meter in the UI. If I ever find an answer to anything, it's gonna be somewhere in the lore, but that still doesn't answer why a specific area is unstable.

 

I do agree with the idea of what temporal instability should aim to achieve from a design perspective and with how it should be approached by the player because of this, but it just ain't doing it for me very well, at least not on the surface. I wouldn't claim it's terrible and in urgent need of a rework as some have said, but I think there is plenty of space for improvement.

With that, here's a few independent ideas on how it could be changed: 

1. Player stability shouldn't fall all the way to 0% in every unstable area. Presumably implemented by restoring stability faster while it's low, this would make the mechanic less binary and allow to increase surface instability while making it easier to stay in "partially unstable" areas indefinitely if you can deal with the effects. Limiting "fully unstable" areas to below ground would also prevent new players from getting messed up if they don't notice that an area is unstable, because they won't get stuck in endless full-on storm-like effects.

2. The functionality of the spinning gear could be moved to an actual item or device (or a few of them with distinct purposes or different qualities) to make it so that precise evaluation of an area's instability is only possible when the player deliberately investigates it. These could be a variety of "measurement devices", starting from simple temporal gears and ending at sophisticated Jonas tech. At the very least, only show the spinning gear in UI if the player has a temporal gear in inventory. Note that this suggestion is probably the largest of these five and would also require additional effort to make sure that unstable areas don't feel unfair before the player can detect them reliably.

3. Subtle clues could be added to the environment, like rust particles, slight dark fog, a bit sparser or discolored vegetation, reduced animal and insect density or just reduced commonness and volume of their sounds. The purpose of these is primarily to avoid pulling the the player's attention to the UI (especially if implemented alongside suggestion 2.) and instead encourage to analyze the environment critically. That said, it shouldn't be a fully consistent and reliable way of gauging instability.

4. Actual sources of (additional) instability, presumably in ruins, would do wonders for player agency. They would increase instability in an area around them and ideally it would be possible to destroy, disable or weaken them. Granted, they shouldn't be the only source of surface instability and in some cases they may effectively just increase existing ambient instability and not create a distinct unstable pocket, because we don't want the player to feel like they can completely cleanse an area and control stability - it should still be an everpresent risk that can catch the player off-guard.

5. Slow instability fluctuations would be able to really, properly catch the player off-guard. Ideally, they should be tied to rift activity and temporal storms in some way, peaking during temporal storms. The fluctuations should change the shape of the instability distribution and not just reduce or increase it uniformly, and would have to be tuned appropriately to avoid kicking the player out of their home for an extended period of time. In a more extreme and sophisticated implementation, it could cause unstable areas to effectively move through the world in a way that can be observed and tracked. Overall, it would require more regular stability checks and on-the-fly adaptation from the player. They could also be cyclical, repeating around once a year or so.

I'm not suggesting that all of these be implemented, and some may be found to cause downstream issues or just be unfit for the vision of the game, but I believe they have a lot of potential to improve the overall experience.

Edited October 30, 2025 by MKMoose
Clarifications and phrasing.

[LadyWYT]

2 hours ago, MKMoose said:

If I ever find an answer to anything, it's gonna be somewhere in the lore, but that still doesn't answer why a specific area is unstable.

It is explained somewhat in the lore, yes, at least for one particular spot. For instability as a whole though, it's basically left as a byproduct of the catastrophic events of the Old World, and it's otherwise left up to the player to draw conclusions about why some areas are unstable. Aside from specific story locations, I'm not sure that I would expect explanation for every pocket of instability, though I would expect an eventual detailed account of exactly what happened in the Old World to mess everything up so bad(it's already somewhat known, but details are unexplained).

 

2 hours ago, MKMoose said:

1. Player stability shouldn't fall all the way to 0% in every unstable area. Presumably implemented by restoring stability faster while it's low, this would make the mechanic less binary and allow to increase surface instability while making it easier to stay in "partially unstable" areas indefinitely if you can deal with the effects. Limiting "fully unstable" areas to below ground would also prevent new players from getting messed up if they don't notice that an area is unstable, because they won't get stuck in endless full-on storm-like effects.

Maybe, but that can also teach the player to start ignoring the stability mechanic, instead of paying attention. I think the current system is fine, as the drain to 0 will teach the player that stability loss is bad, and they should be careful how long they hang around in unstable areas. Most unstable areas on the surface, however, are also a slow drain, so the player will still be able to spend a decent amount of time there before they need to leave.

The counter suggestion I have to this idea is to restore a good chunk of stability should the player die with low stability(as far as I know, currently the gauge remains at whatever it was on death). Mechanically, it gives the player a brief grace period to improve their situation before they potentially die again, while also helping to alert them to the cause(the meter was empty, they took damage and things got weird, but now it's somewhat full and they're fine). From a lore standpoint, it makes some sense too, in that if the player is able to respawn, that indicates they have at least some stable grasp on the present timeline.

3 hours ago, MKMoose said:

2. The functionality of the spinning gear could be moved to an actual item or device (or a few of them with distinct purposes or different qualities) to make it so that precise evaluation of an area's instability is only possible when the player deliberately investigates it. These could be a variety of "measurement devices", starting from simple temporal gears and ending at sophisticated Jonas tech. At the very least, only show the spinning gear in UI if the player has a temporal gear in inventory. Note that this suggestion is probably the largest of these five and would also require additional effort to make sure that unstable areas don't feel unfair before the player can detect them reliably.

It's an interesting idea, but I'd rather see this as a mod, and not vanilla. Plus as you've already noted at the end here, it doesn't really fix the problem of players hanging around in unstable areas, but rather just makes the problem worse since now they won't have indication at all(or the indicator they can craft will be forcing them to choose between that and setting spawn point).

The bright teal gauge we have currently is meant to grab the player's attention, while still being much less intrusive than flashing screen effects, distorted noise, or something similar. The spinning can be easy to ignore, but much like the other meters, it takes a bit of practice to figure out how often one needs to check themselves to avoid problems.

3 hours ago, MKMoose said:

This take frankly surprises me, because I would say that the current implementation is much more of a neon sign than diegetic clues (signs present in the game world). A kind of easy to miss neon sign, yes, but also kinda simplistic and unimmersive. Recognizing unstable areas basically boils down to "oh the gear it turning the other way".

 

3 hours ago, MKMoose said:

3. Subtle clues could be added to the environment, like rust particles, slight dark fog, a bit sparser or discolored vegetation, reduced animal and insect density or just reduced commonness and volume of their sounds. The purpose of these is primarily to avoid pulling the the player's attention to the UI (especially if implemented alongside suggestion 2.) and instead encourage to analyze the environment critically. That said, it shouldn't be a fully consistent and reliable way of gauging instability.

Incidentally, the other thing I have against distorting sounds or applying weird overlays in unstable areas, is not just that that kind of detail is reserved for majorly messed up areas/events, but also that...it would get very old, very fast. Imagine building your base in a stable chunk, with lots of unstable areas nearby. Now instead of just occasionally hearing distant Rust ambience when out hunting/foraging, you have to put up with "temporal storm light" each and every time. As a mod? Sure, but that's one of the main reasons I say that the simple gauge we have now really isn't that intrusive.

I will note though, that to my knowledge, unstable areas are supposed to be more likely to contain rifts. I'm not sure how well this mechanic works though, as it seems to place greater priority on the player's current position--most likely to ensure that rifts are spawning near the player and therefore posing a threat. Maybe instead, greater weight should be placed on spawning the rifts in unstable areas, so the player both has more visual indication of instability(without it being too annoying) as well as more advantage to building in large areas of stability.

3 hours ago, MKMoose said:

4. Actual sources of (additional) instability, presumably in ruins, would do wonders for player agency. They would increase instability in an area around them and ideally it would be possible to destroy, disable or weaken them. Granted, they shouldn't be the only source of surface instability and in some cases they may effectively just increase existing ambient instability and not create a distinct unstable pocket, because we don't want the player to feel like they can completely cleanse an area and control stability - it should still be an everpresent risk that can catch the player off-guard.

This is somewhat already a thing for certain locations, although the actual source isn't really revealed for the most part. Rather, in specific story locations that are unstable, it's implied that some really bad juju happened in those places, essentially. I would also expect more instability for the procedural dungeons, if/when they are implemented, but otherwise for the world as a whole...there's not a specific cause that's explained other than "someone scienced too hard in the part and broke time as a result".

In other words, there's no fixing it(although a Jonas tech item that stabilizes an area when powered would be nice); it's simply a feature of the new world that the player must learn to live with, much like other things. That being said...I'm reminded of a certain gameplay feature that's been teased for a different upcoming game(Gate Zero, for those wondering), so depending on how the devs want to set the lore up and how they want to tell the story, perhaps fighting pockets of instability like this directly might be something unlocked in a later story chapter.

3 hours ago, MKMoose said:

5. Slow instability fluctuations would be able to really, properly catch the player off-guard. Ideally, they should be tied to rift activity and temporal storms in some way, peaking during temporal storms. The fluctuations should change the shape of the instability distribution and not just reduce or increase it uniformly, and would have to be tuned appropriately to avoid kicking the player out of their home for an extended period of time. In a more extreme and sophisticated implementation, it could cause unstable areas to effectively move through the world in a way that can be observed and tracked. Overall, it would require more regular stability checks and on-the-fly adaptation from the player. They could also be cyclical, repeating around once a year or so.

I do like this idea, though rather than change the range of instability I would simply keep things as-is and perhaps just ramp up stability loss significantly in unstable chunks during temporal storms. I also think something like this would be critical if you're going to stop unstable chunks from draining stability entirely, as that way if the player gets complacent enough to build in one they're in for a very rude awakening later once a temporal storm hits.

 

3 hours ago, MKMoose said:

I'm not suggesting that all of these be implemented, and some may be found to cause downstream issues or just be unfit for the vision of the game, but I believe they have a lot of potential to improve the overall experience.

They aren't bad ideas, but I do think most of them are better as mods. The simplest way to address most of the complaints I've seen about temporal stability mechanics, is to just add an option to disable surface instability while still keeping underground instability. Most players don't seem to mind dealing with it underground; they don't like dealing with it on the surface because it stops them from building wherever they want. 

[Thorfinn]

IMO, this is a mountains out of molehills issue. You cannot spend hours and hours building in an unstable location without the world going sepia. Maybe an hour at a time, tops. Those who are finding the location unstable are likely in a location of spotty stability, some positive, some negative, so the world never acted up until later when they were spending lots of time using the location they wanted for a smithy, instead of roaming around doing lots of tasks. Seeing how the building looks, how the homestead as a whole is coming together, etc. There's good stability in the vicinity, but just not where the bedroom ended up. (Or whatever room.) So just leave that as the guest bedroom or distillery or storage or something else you don't need to be in very long, and move the bee in your bonnet 20 blocks SE and you are good to go.

Edited October 30, 2025 by Thorfinn

[LadyWYT]

1 minute ago, Thorfinn said:

IMO, this is a mountains out of molehills issue. You cannot spend hours and hours building in an unstable location without the world going sepia. Maybe an hour at a time, tops. Those who are finding the location unstable are likely in a location of spotty stability, some positive, some negative, so the world never acted up until later when they were spending lots of time using the location they wanted for a smithy, instead of roaming around doing lots of tasks. Seeing how the building looks, how the homestead as a whole is coming together, etc. There's good stability in the vicinity, but just not where the bedroom ended up. (Or whatever room.) So just leave that as the guest bedroom or distillery or storage or something else you don't need a lot of, and move whatever it is 20 blocks SE and you are good to go.

Pretty much. Most unstable surface areas one can easily spend all day in without the gauge dropping below half. The spook noises settle in around 60%, but it's not until the gauge hits the 25% mark(monsters begin spawning) that the player should be really concerned and head to more stable ground. If they somehow miss/ignore all of those warning signs, the last warning is around the 12% mark, when temporal storm effects fully set in and they start losing health.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

On 10/27/2025 at 2:26 PM, Mac Mcleod said:

It usually means that an individual has difficulty telling the difference between specific colors (for example, red vs. green) rather than seeing the world only in black and white. 

Just dropping in to say that full monochromatic color blindness is a very rare condition that actually exists because it's a recessive gene tied to the X chromosome. That is to say, only biological females will ever present with the condition.

And I know someone with this condition who plays a very colorful MMOJRPG (FFXIV) and I can say it's definitely a struggle for her.

IDK how this relates to the current thread but I thought it was interesting.

carry on!

[Teh Pizza Lady]

On 10/28/2025 at 3:47 PM, LadyWYT said:

the key is that the player needs to pay attention to it in order for it to be of any use

I don't think the solution to a player not paying attention is to make the information more readily available, but rather to educate the player and teach them to pay attention. Losing your home because you didn't notice in the 8 in-game hours it took you to build it that your temporal stability was draining is not the fault of the game, but of the player.

And that's a hard truth a few players aren't willing to accept.

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

The bright teal gauge we have currently is meant to grab the player's attention, while still being much less intrusive than flashing screen effects, distorted noise, or something similar.

Personally I am in favor of removing the gear. The rust world sounds that would appear when your stability gets low should be indication enough of what's going on. And in my opinion it makes it even more immersive. You enter an area, you shouldn't be immediately aware that something it wrong, and I don't see anything in the lore to indicate that you should either. Same for the temporal storm warnings. They should be audible and visual, not a text popup and I'm sure that one of those "polish and quality" passes the devs will make in a future update, but in the mean time I'm glad we have Temporal Symphony as a mod and judging by the sheer amount of downloads it has gotten since it released, I'm by far not alone in this.

Actually I'm going to go ask Salty if he can remove the gear from the UI... XD

[LadyWYT]

29 minutes ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

I don't think the solution to a player not paying attention is to make the information more readily available, but rather to educate the player and teach them to pay attention. Losing your home because you didn't notice in the 8 in-game hours it took you to build it that your temporal stability was draining is not the fault of the game, but of the player.

And that's a hard truth a few players aren't willing to accept.

Yeah, hence why I suggest including a brief mention in the tutorial  It doesn't fix players not paying attention, but it does teach new players what that gauge is and why they should pay attention. As I said, the temporal stability mechanic is a feature unique to Vintage Story, so while it's a relatively easy mechanic to deal with, most new players will likely struggle a lot with it, until they read that particular section of the handbook.

 

32 minutes ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

Personally I am in favor of removing the gear. The rust world sounds that would appear when your stability gets low should be indication enough of what's going on. And in my opinion it makes it even more immersive. You enter an area, you shouldn't be immediately aware that something it wrong, and I don't see anything in the lore to indicate that you should either. Same for the temporal storm warnings. They should be audible and visual, not a text popup and I'm sure that one of those "polish and quality" passes the devs will make in a future update, but in the mean time I'm glad we have Temporal Symphony as a mod and judging by the sheer amount of downloads it has gotten since it released, I'm by far not alone in this.

While this is true, that's the kind of thing that should be an optional challenge, not the default. Bear in mind that the first sign something is wrong, aside from the gear spinning the wrong way, is the Rust ambience creeping in, and that doesn't start until the player hits 60%. That's quite a long time to go without any warning, and once it sets in how, exactly, is the player supposed to figure out stable areas from unstable when the changes are that gradual?

Of course, you could simply change the current balance when removing the gear, and instead introduce effects that are immediately obvious, like the suggested visual and sound distortions, when one sets foot in an unstable area. However, since it's now painfully obvious, the player has to put up with that every time they're in an unstable area, and it's no longer possible for instability to be a creeping horror factor that can catch the player off-guard.

Maybe it's just me, but that sounds more annoying than spooky fun. I much prefer the subtle changes we have now, with the current gear to track it all, than something that's constantly going to be in my face with sounds and visuals like that. Plus as @Thorfinn has already pointed out several times, and you've already noted yourself...the current system gives players plenty of time to notice the area they're in is unstable and do something about it. If the player fails to account for it, it's no more the game's fault than it is when the player overestimates their abilities/situation and dies to wolves or a bear.