I think I hate this game

[MiggySauce]

I am new to this game after watching a bunch of interesting videos of it.  More immersive minecraft, more realistic settings, more complexity to start out as a stone age person, etc. I have been stuck in a temporal storm for now 4-5 days.  I have died more times then I can count and the red shaking of my monitor has me ready to throw up after the last 3 hours.  I understand I can play this as just explorations, but maybe we can tone down the red shaking before I go into an epileptic fit. Can some one direct me to how to fix this? I am using a basic setup, no mods, not changes to the world.  Either something is wrong or this is the game.

[ifoz]

Some areas are just temporally unstable, and just being in those areas will decrease your stability, leading to the effects of a temporal storm.
There is nothing you can do (without altering world settings to disable stability, or getting a mod) other than just leaving that area and going somewhere that is temporally stable.
(Gear on your hotbar turning clockwise means stable, counter-clockwise means unstable).

I won't try and defend surface stability since it's a kind of esoteric mechanic that you sort of just have to know about to understand what is going on, but yeah.
There are mods out there that specifically only disable surface instability but keep it underground, I am pretty sure.

Edited October 22, 2025 by ifoz

[LadyWYT]

Welcome to the forums! Sorry to hear that you're having such a rough time. 

1 hour ago, MiggySauce said:

I understand I can play this as just explorations, but maybe we can tone down the red shaking before I go into an epileptic fit.

You should be able to turn down/off the camera shake in the Accessibility tab of the Settings menu, and may also find this wiki page helpful: https://wiki.vintagestory.at/index.php/Accessibility

1 hour ago, MiggySauce said:

I have been stuck in a temporal storm for now 4-5 days. 

What's almost certainly happened is that you have run out of temporal stability due to being in an unstable area. Temporal stability is something that, as @ifoz says, is esoteric at first, and catches many players(veterans included) offguard. A stable area is noted by the teal gear on the hotbar turning clockwise--the gauge will fill in stable areas. An unstable area is noted by the gear spinning counterclockwise--the gauge will drain in unstable areas. There are also neutral areas, where the gear does not spin, and neither drains or fills. The deeper underground you venture, the more unstable the surroundings become.

To recover stability, the simplest solution is to hang out in a stable area for a while, but it's also possible to restore some stability instantly by killing monsters(the tougher the better) or by sacrificing a temporal gear and a bit of health(if you just started the game, this likely isn't an option).

Honestly, I recommend starting over on a new world so that you'll have a fresh, full stability meter, and trying again. Doing so will probably be less frustrating than trying to recover from your current situation, as well as allow you to improve on any other gameplay decisions you made and weren't happy with.

1 hour ago, MiggySauce said:

More immersive minecraft, more realistic settings, more complexity to start out as a stone age person, etc.

While these are true, the "more realistic/immersive Minecraft" is not, and I think that throws a lot of people off the first time they play. It's a convenient description since both games have similar voxel graphics, and have some similarities in crafting concepts, but the similarities really stop there. Vintage Story is its own thing, with very different gameplay systems, expectations of the player, and proper lore with a story to tell. Minecraft is mostly a whimsical sandbox world where the player can do whatever.

What I recommend for Vintage Story, is making sure that you start your first world(or worlds, if you're inclined to go through multiple while learning the game) on Standard or Exploration difficulties, not Wilderness Survival or Homo Sapiens. The latter two are the hardest difficulties and absolutely merciless; Standard is still tough, but more forgiving of mistakes, and also the game mode that is the developers' vision. Exploration is easier than Standard(and disables temporal stability entirely as a mechanic), but it's easier to handle learning basics here before graduating to a harder game mode.

[Endeavour]

I reccomend you turn off temporal storms and rifts for start. The creepy crawlers really don't do much except keep you indoors at night or make you lock into a 1x2 size room for 10 minutes while the storm happens. If you want an easier time, mediterranian climate is also really good.