Changes to temporal storm and surface instability

[Ricwi]

Lets face it, no one likes them. atleast in early game(who wants to fight multiple tier 3 or 4 enemies when youre in wood or copper armor) . instead of having it be a global thing where you hide away in a 1block by 1 block hole for 5 minutes, make them actual storms. light storms can be small and fast. for likely to catch you off guard but will both pass by quick or be easy to run out of the path of if you do spot it ahead of time. heavy would be much larger but slower. making them easier to notice ahead of time but also requiring effort to either evac for the time being or prepare and hunker down. 

As for surface instability, nobody likes it. it always gets in the way of good build spots for no reason other then fuck you. it could either be scrapped entirely and focused into the temporal storm, or make it associated with something like ruins, or be an indication of something underground, and if you go to the ruined location underground and wreck it, it removes the surface instability or something. another possibility would be being able to use temporal gears to cleanse an area on the surface of the temporal instability

[LadyWYT]

16 minutes ago, Ricwi said:

make them actual storms.

But they are actual storms...time itself is affected, and time affects everything.

 

17 minutes ago, Ricwi said:

light storms can be small and fast. for likely to catch you off guard but will both pass by quick or be easy to run out of the path of if you do spot it ahead of time. heavy would be much larger but slower. making them easier to notice ahead of time but also requiring effort to either evac for the time being or prepare and hunker down. 

The whole point of temporal storms is that they are supernatural disasters that the player must work around, and not natural storms that the player can simply avoid by a short jaunt to a neighboring region. The player needs to either fight their way through it, or otherwise build some kind of bunker and wait out the storm in safety.

For players who really don't want to deal with the mechanic, there is also the option to disable temporal storms, or at the least sleep through them.

19 minutes ago, Ricwi said:

As for surface instability, nobody likes it

Well it's a mechanic I enjoy, partly because it makes the world and story premise feel authentic, so...

 

20 minutes ago, Ricwi said:

it always gets in the way of good build spots for no reason

There is a reason though. Certain past events messed up the flow of time, essentially, and the player character is a lot more sensitive to temporal anomalies than other living creatures are. For those who don't enjoy the mechanic/don't want it to get in the way of building, there is the option to turn the mechanic off, and for those open to modding there are multiple different options for changing the gameplay.

 

23 minutes ago, Ricwi said:

another possibility would be being able to use temporal gears to cleanse an area on the surface of the temporal instability

If temporal gears alone were powerful enough to fix instability, it would have been fixed a very long time ago. Fixing instability is something that will take a lot more effort, and is a concept better suited for Jonas tech, or perhaps a major story plot point(or both). As I said before, if one really doesn't want to deal with the mechanic, there's already the option to turn it off, or mods such as this one to otherwise season the game to one's personal taste: https://mods.vintagestory.at/chunkstaboverride

[Phytotoxin]

I agree with OP in some regards. I don't care about some story reason for temporal storms. I care about the gameplay effects, which means I get screwed over countless times, unless hide in a hole doing virtually nothing. This isn't gameplay, I have better things to do than waste my time like that. The mechanic might well stay in some way, but it needs to be changed somehow to adapt at least somewhat to the players progression.

[Heart_Afire]

I recall seeing a mod sometime regarding temporal storms that I personally thought was a good idea, wherein the storms would last longer but that the player could actively lessen them by going out and slaying monsters.

If I recall correctly, the way they worked it was that each rift and type of storm had a limited number of each monster it could spawn, and killing those monsters took their 'time budget' away from the storm itself or the rift, and once all had been slain the rift would close and/or the storm would end.

Obviously the concept would need to be fleshed out, but personally I think this is an excellent way to do it, as it encourages the player to step outside and actively engage rather than just sleep.

[Bruno Willis]

On 11/18/2025 at 6:39 AM, Ricwi said:

As for surface instability, nobody likes it. it always gets in the way of good build spots for no reason other then fuck you. it could either be scrapped entirely and focused into the temporal storm, or make it associated with something like ruins, or be an indication of something underground, and if you go to the ruined location underground and wreck it, it removes the surface instability or something. another possibility would be being able to use temporal gears to cleanse an area on the surface of the temporal instability

I am also perfectly fine with surface instability, but I do thing it would be cool if lower stability areas were more likely to spawn ruins, and also if there were larger, non-story ruins which caused their chunks to be lower stability to make exploring them more satisfying.

Like @LadyWYT though, I think it would break immersion for me if we could just simply remove or dull surface instability with basic tools. Ways to deal with instability, yes! but ways to just shut it down sound boring. 

[Loosebearings]

On 11/18/2025 at 2:05 AM, LadyWYT said:

The whole point of temporal storms is that they are supernatural disasters that the player must work around,

Sitting inside with an inventory full of spears isn't exactly a very engaging work around.

In the early game temporal storms mean you need to drop whatever you're doing and sit around for several minutes doing nothing, it's only in the mid/late game where you have a chance to survive when you go outside.

Temporal stability decreasing when you're underground just means you have to go up and wait for it to go back up before you can continue mining/exploring caves.

The way I see it right now temporal storms/stability just wastes time and gets in the way.

I'm not sure how exactly storms could be made to be more engaging, but to add on to @Bruno Willis's suggestion of ruins being more common in unstable areas, maybe low stability areas are more likely to spawn rifts while high stability areas are ralatively safer from monsters.

For me I think monster spawning could be handled a bit differently aswell, as it's pretty hard to light up the area around your base until you have a bee farm set up with metal to spare for lanterns so until then you just have to sit inside until the sun comes up. This isn't as much of a problem in summer but in winter you can't sleep through the entire night.

[LadyWYT]

2 hours ago, Loosebearings said:

low stability areas are more likely to spawn rifts while high stability areas are ralatively safer from monsters.

To my knowledge, this is how stability works already. Or at least, it's supposed to.

 

2 hours ago, Loosebearings said:

Sitting inside with an inventory full of spears isn't exactly a very engaging work around.

It's not, but that is the price one pays for safety. In order to be completely safe from a temporal storm, the player needs to build a small bunker to hide in.

 

2 hours ago, Loosebearings said:

In the early game temporal storms mean you need to drop whatever you're doing and sit around for several minutes doing nothing, it's only in the mid/late game where you have a chance to survive when you go outside.

This is if the player doesn't want to risk death, which honestly I think the respawn mechanic might be an overlooked strategy for early game storms. I died the other day taking on a double-headed drifter in a light storm; only had gambeson and Blackguard shortsword, so not the best equipment but not the worst either. However, I was able to deal with the drifter fairly easily in spite of the death, and the resulting loot felt worth it. Ideally, the death isn't necessary, but it does make me rethink whether a death or two is really that bad, or whether it's an advantage to prepare for and utilize until equipment can be upgraded. 

 

2 hours ago, Loosebearings said:

Temporal stability decreasing when you're underground just means you have to go up and wait for it to go back up before you can continue mining/exploring caves.

You don't need to return to the surface to recover stability. Killing monsters is an option, as is sacrificing a temporal gear and a bit of health. It's also possible, though very rare, to find stable areas underground.

 

2 hours ago, Loosebearings said:

The way I see it right now temporal storms/stability just wastes time and gets in the way.

And this is why there's an option to turn the mechanic off.

[Bruno Willis]

3 hours ago, Loosebearings said:

The way I see it right now temporal storms/stability just wastes time and gets in the way.

I've definitely felt this, especially early on. As I've gotten better at handling the foes, it's gotten more and more fun, but it could for sure be better.

I wonder if changing the way the different sorts of storms feel might help? I had to run al long way through a light temporal storm yesterday, and it was almost do-able. It made me wonder if light temporal storms could be made a little less dangerous, but last longer, medium storms could stay the same, and heavy storms might become even worse, but maybe shorter, with a monster type who can phase through blocks and challenge people in their fortresses. 

The idea would be to give people a storm type which they can actually experience mid-game without guaranteed death. The sort of storm which might tempt people to try and travel through, but which can still spawn a double headed drifter sometimes...

And then also give people a storm which is always, always scary and requires active participation.

[LadyWYT]

1 minute ago, Bruno Willis said:

heavy storms might become even worse, but maybe shorter, with a monster type who can phase through blocks and challenge people in their fortresses. 

About that...https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/35820

Somebody already tried to implement a similar concept via mod, and the comment section...well, speaks volumes.  

[Bruno Willis]

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Somebody already tried to implement a similar concept via mod, and the comment section...well, speaks volumes.

Ah. Yes. 

[Loosebearings]

6 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

And this is why there's an option to turn the mechanic off.

I feel like it's an interesting mechanic and the game does feel like something is missing without it, but I just think it needs to be fleshed out in further updates.

[Wrangler1]

I agree that these are useless. Does not add one bit to game play. In fact, the screen effects are sickening. I have to hunker down and walk away. Performing tasks (like crafting, smithing, ...) are difficult with the screen jumping. And way too many mobs spawn.....even inside my house. It is a waste to keep this in the game

[MKMoose]

On 11/17/2025 at 7:05 PM, LadyWYT said:

Certain past events messed up the flow of time, essentially, and the player character is a lot more sensitive to temporal anomalies than other living creatures are. For those who don't enjoy the mechanic/don't want it to get in the way of building, there is the option to turn the mechanic off, and for those open to modding there are multiple different options for changing the gameplay.

I'll probably never not be mildly annoyed to see lore reasons as justification for mechanics and disabling them as solution for players who don't like the mechanics.

I've been thinking about integrating all three temporal mechanics (ambient stability, storms, rift activity) into the weather system, alongside potentially other changes that are too plentiful to describe in detail here but that I may eventually assemble into a standalone suggestion. I reckon that something like this could solve a bunch of fairly common complaints and criticisms, especially the one about temporal stability making areas unsuitable for building. It would also make surface instability a more integral part to the experience that everyone would have to face semi-regularly (not unlike the current storms), instead of it being almost entirely predicated on whether there happens to be instability near the player's home.

I think the least that a rework of temporal mechanics could achieve would be to address how disjointed and tacked-on these mechanics can feel. They don't give the impression of something that permeates the entire world and exists as part of it, and instead they come and go in very obvious, binary ways. Either it's stable or it's unstable, either there is a rift which will continue spitting out monsters or there is no rift and it's safe, either the storm is ongoing at full force or there's no hint of it ever being there. And the temporal mechanics barely interact and aren't really cohesive with one another, with the most confusing case being that you can be in the middle of a storm with "calm" rift activity, which just feels wrong.

 

On 11/17/2025 at 7:05 PM, LadyWYT said:

The whole point of temporal storms is that they are supernatural disasters that the player must work around, and not natural storms that the player can simply avoid by a short jaunt to a neighboring region. The player needs to either fight their way through it, or otherwise build some kind of bunker and wait out the storm in safety.

For players who really don't want to deal with the mechanic, there is also the option to disable temporal storms, or at the least sleep through them.

I would lean towards the idea that temporal storms could offer a brief opportunity to obtain a rare resource. It probably shouldn't simply be loot from enemies - this may easily be detrimental to the health of the game if not implemented well - but there is a lot of other options as well, primarily revolving around snatching something that briefly crosses the boundary between worlds or in some way exploiting the altered state and properties of the world, even if only using Jonas tech. And by that I mean, do whatever doesn't conflict with the lore, but with that general goal in mind.

The issue here is that while an important overarching goal of the design of temporal storms is undeniably that they should be an uncontrollable supernatural disaster, leaning too hard into this predictably results in storms largely being seen as a tedious disruption. Quite often I would straight up just alt-tab out of the game for a few minutes during a storm if I don't have anything important to do at the moment, and that's the dangerous and immersive storm for you.

I think it is entirely possible to retain the supernatural feel of the storm while creating this one special occasion in the game where the player has a time window to, if they so desire, put in the extra effort to obtain a rare resource, likely while having to defend themselves from monsters. It could get people more excited or nervous about storms rather than just annoyed at the disruption.

We do kind of have a bit of that with the highest tier rotbeasts, but as mentioned, combat should probably stand in the way of what the player is aiming towards, and not be something that the player actively seeks out. Even if it's combat, then it may be better to create something that the player has to put effort into beyond hitting the monster a few times. Maybe, and I'm mostly spitballing here, some sort of a neutral beast that wanders through the world and has to be hunted down, or an incorporeal monster that the player has to lure or trap and only then kill.

There is, as usual, a balance to be maintaned here between different design goals, but I think it's unavoidable that something has to be done about the temporal mechanics eventually, as they create too many undesirable incentives and too many gameplay disruptions in their current state.

 

On 11/27/2025 at 9:13 PM, LadyWYT said:

On 11/27/2025 at 6:36 PM, Loosebearings said:

Sitting inside with an inventory full of spears isn't exactly a very engaging work around.

It's not, but that is the price one pays for safety. In order to be completely safe from a temporal storm, the player needs to build a small bunker to hide in.

A good game mechanic is designed in such a way that it encourages the player to interact with it or with other parts of the system. Nearly all temporal mechanics in the game, but temporal storms most offensively, do the exact opposite, at least in early to mid game - limit player agency and offer little to nothing in return - which reflects in the related complaints and suggestions.

While there's plenty of mechanics which could be seen as time-wasters but are ultimately well-integrated into the game loop and easily justifiable for various reasons, storms are exceptional in how disruptive and restrictive they are, and temporal mechanics overall suffer from lack of almost any player interaction aside from combat or hiding. Quite literally the only thing that works in their favor is that they don't take up too much time in the long run, but then why are we adding annoying mechanics and making them rare and predictable to compensate?

 

On 11/27/2025 at 9:13 PM, LadyWYT said:

You don't need to return to the surface to recover stability. Killing monsters is an option, as is sacrificing a temporal gear and a bit of health. It's also possible, though very rare, to find stable areas underground.

In practice you usually do need to return to the surface, unless you are confident that you can handle the combat (which plenty of people avoid, especially before they have good armor) or have an ample supply of temporal gears and some currently on hand (which generally also requires combat). Keep in mind that, especially if you're not experienced enough to know well what works and what doesn't, you'll often be inclined to take the simple, safe and cheap route, instead of risky combat or an expense of health and valuable temporal gears.

[Bruno Willis]

3 hours ago, MKMoose said:

We do kind of have a bit of that with the highest tier rotbeasts, but as mentioned, combat should probably stand in the way of what the player is aiming towards, and not be something that the player actively seeks out. Even if it's combat, then it may be better to create something that the player has to put effort into beyond hitting the monster a few times. Maybe, and I'm mostly spitballing here, some sort of a neutral beast that wanders through the world and has to be hunted down, or an incorporeal monster that the player has to lure or trap and only then kill.

I've had an idea for a neutral rot-beast, a big-cat oxen type creature, that occasionally travels during temporal storms and could be tamed if approached during a storm and given something delicious, like temporal gears? 

They'd be used to move wagons around, essentially giving you a mechanic where you can sleep in a wagon if it's attached to one of these beasts, and the beast will move it to a new location while you sleep (how to work this in multi-player, I don't know). 

What's most exciting to me though is the idea of going out in a temporal storm and trying to spot a herd of these big, strange, rust creatures. And if you didn't know about them, they could be a terrifying and awe inspiring sight if encountered unexpectedly. It'd add something to witness during the storms which would sit somewhere between the normal rust foes and Dave on the epic-ness scale. It'd also add a game loop to the storms which wasn't just about killing, it'd be about exploring and surviving, which seems more interesting to me. 

[LadyWYT]

13 hours ago, MKMoose said:

I'll probably never not be mildly annoyed to see lore reasons as justification for mechanics and disabling them as solution for players who don't like the mechanics.

Honestly, that's fine. I'm pretty much the opposite--if the lore is presented one way, and the game mechanics directly oppose it, then it's usually highly annoying since it's not really possible to get immersed in a world that doesn't even attempt to follow its own rules.

 

13 hours ago, MKMoose said:

I've been thinking about integrating all three temporal mechanics (ambient stability, storms, rift activity) into the weather system, alongside potentially other changes that are too plentiful to describe in detail here but that I may eventually assemble into a standalone suggestion. I reckon that something like this could solve a bunch of fairly common complaints and criticisms, especially the one about temporal stability making areas unsuitable for building. It would also make surface instability a more integral part to the experience that everyone would have to face semi-regularly (not unlike the current storms), instead of it being almost entirely predicated on whether there happens to be instability near the player's home.

I don't really see how temporal storms and rift activity could be tied to the natural weather system, given that temporal disasters are...unnatural. I'm also not sure how doing such would solve player complaints about building. If temporal activity is tied to weather, what does that mean for the underground, or places with high rainfall, or no rainfall at all?

Part of the running theme of the main VS story is that not everywhere is habitable. For complete building freedom, it's really best to turn temporal mechanics off, or use mods to overhaul it.

13 hours ago, MKMoose said:

I think the least that a rework of temporal mechanics could achieve would be to address how disjointed and tacked-on these mechanics can feel. They don't give the impression of something that permeates the entire world and exists as part of it, and instead they come and go in very obvious, binary ways. Either it's stable or it's unstable, either there is a rift which will continue spitting out monsters or there is no rift and it's safe, either the storm is ongoing at full force or there's no hint of it ever being there. And the temporal mechanics barely interact and aren't really cohesive with one another, with the most confusing case being that you can be in the middle of a storm with "calm" rift activity, which just feels wrong.

I feel the opposite, really. The storms and rift activity feel as dangerous as the world makes them out to be, so it's rather easy to get immersed and take them seriously, rather than treat them like a quick-time loot event. It's also quite clearly something that does permeate the entire world, since it doesn't matter where you go, you'll end up needing to deal with temporal mechanics unless you turn them off entirely.

As for lore reasons:

Spoiler

It's heavily implied, if not outright stated, that the temporal mess is occurring due to a different dimension trying to merge itself with our reality. 

13 hours ago, MKMoose said:

I would lean towards the idea that temporal storms could offer a brief opportunity to obtain a rare resource. It probably shouldn't simply be loot from enemies - this may easily be detrimental to the health of the game if not implemented well - but there is a lot of other options as well, primarily revolving around snatching something that briefly crosses the boundary between worlds or in some way exploiting the altered state and properties of the world, even if only using Jonas tech. And by that I mean, do whatever doesn't conflict with the lore, but with that general goal in mind.

Heavily disagree here, because that essentially turns the storms from disasters that need to be planned around, to quick-time loot gathering events. Likewise, if the unique resource in question does not come from enemies, then how does a player obtain it whilst being assaulted from every direction during a storm? Does the player need specific gear quality to obtain said resource?

I will also note that this doesn't solve the complaint about hiding in one's base during early storms, when one lacks the proper equipment to fight through them. Rather, it's probably going to make such complaints worse, since there's actually something to miss out on.

13 hours ago, MKMoose said:

I think it is entirely possible to retain the supernatural feel of the storm while creating this one special occasion in the game where the player has a time window to, if they so desire, put in the extra effort to obtain a rare resource, likely while having to defend themselves from monsters. It could get people more excited or nervous about storms rather than just annoyed at the disruption.

We do kind of have a bit of that with the highest tier rotbeasts, but as mentioned, combat should probably stand in the way of what the player is aiming towards, and not be something that the player actively seeks out. Even if it's combat, then it may be better to create something that the player has to put effort into beyond hitting the monster a few times. Maybe, and I'm mostly spitballing here, some sort of a neutral beast that wanders through the world and has to be hunted down, or an incorporeal monster that the player has to lure or trap and only then kill.

I mean, as you've already noted here, current storms do have special resources to obtain, in the form of rusty gears, temporal gears, and Jonas parts. However, all of those things can also be obtained in various ways outside of temporal storms as well.

 

13 hours ago, MKMoose said:

A good game mechanic is designed in such a way that it encourages the player to interact with it or with other parts of the system. Nearly all temporal mechanics in the game, but temporal storms most offensively, do the exact opposite, at least in early to mid game - limit player agency and offer little to nothing in return - which reflects in the related complaints and suggestions.

While there's plenty of mechanics which could be seen as time-wasters but are ultimately well-integrated into the game loop and easily justifiable for various reasons, storms are exceptional in how disruptive and restrictive they are, and temporal mechanics overall suffer from lack of almost any player interaction aside from combat or hiding. Quite literally the only thing that works in their favor is that they don't take up too much time in the long run, but then why are we adding annoying mechanics and making them rare and predictable to compensate?

As I've said many times, the storms are present both to present a gameplay challenge/obstacle to survival unique to Vintage Story, as well as serve as an aid to storytelling and otherwise getting immersed in the setting. If the NPCs are describing the temporal storms as supernatural disasters, and battening down the hatches, then temporal storms are something I would reasonably expect to be highly dangerous as well. There's even a tapestry that can be purchased, that depicts a seraph(or humanoid figure, at least) hiding in a bunker of some sort during a temporal storm.

For players who really don't like dealing with the storms, there's already the option to turn the storms off. Same for temporal rifts, and temporal stability as a whole. 

It's also worth noting that the difficulty one picks also affects how dangerous the storms can be. On standard difficulty, they're fairly dangerous, but there's also a decent interlude between them, and it's not really a big deal if the player dies during a storm, unless they built their base far from spawn and didn't reset their spawn point. Lost nutrition is recovered easily enough, and items are typically fairly easy to recover as well if one respawns somewhere nearby. In Wilderness Survival though, the storms are more frequent, more intense, it's easier to die due to lower player health and higher enemy damage, and if the player dies without having set a spawn they're going to be respawning somewhere within a 5000 block radius of world spawn...good luck getting lost items back.

In any case, I do think that if temporal storms are changed so that the player can hang out in the middle of them and survive with relative ease at any stage of the game, then that begs the question...why are bears, wolves, and other large wildlife tier 2 enemies instead of tier 0, so the player can easily counter them with early game equipment(and not have to rely on traps or spear tossing)? Why does the player have to suffer the annoyance of making a bronze anvil to work iron, or an iron anvil to work steel, instead of just using the copper anvil they already casted? And the list can go on...there's a lot of different things that technically limit player agency, but what constitutes an annoyance and what constitutes engaging gameplay is going to vary heavily depending on who you ask.

13 hours ago, MKMoose said:

In practice you usually do need to return to the surface, unless you are confident that you can handle the combat (which plenty of people avoid, especially before they have good armor) or have an ample supply of temporal gears and some currently on hand (which generally also requires combat). Keep in mind that, especially if you're not experienced enough to know well what works and what doesn't, you'll often be inclined to take the simple, safe and cheap route, instead of risky combat or an expense of health and valuable temporal gears.

I would more say that in practice most players return to the surface to recover, simply because that's rather easy to do and there's currently not a lot of reason to spend much time lingering underground. It's fairly simple to dig up a lot of ore within a couple of minutes once you've found it, and as for ruins...they are neat finds, but unless one is after collectibles, decor, or going that route for hunting Jonas parts, there's not a lot of reason to go hunting for underground ruins either.

 

10 hours ago, Bruno Willis said:

I've had an idea for a neutral rot-beast, a big-cat oxen type creature, that occasionally travels during temporal storms and could be tamed if approached during a storm and given something delicious, like temporal gears? 

They'd be used to move wagons around, essentially giving you a mechanic where you can sleep in a wagon if it's attached to one of these beasts, and the beast will move it to a new location while you sleep (how to work this in multi-player, I don't know). 

What's most exciting to me though is the idea of going out in a temporal storm and trying to spot a herd of these big, strange, rust creatures. And if you didn't know about them, they could be a terrifying and awe inspiring sight if encountered unexpectedly. It'd add something to witness during the storms which would sit somewhere between the normal rust foes and Dave on the epic-ness scale. It'd also add a game loop to the storms which wasn't just about killing, it'd be about exploring and surviving, which seems more interesting to me. 

It's an interesting idea, but given what rotbeasts are, and the fact that every single monster has been shown to be extremely aggressive toward humans/seraphs, and described as such in the lore, I don't really think this fits in the setting. But as a mod? Sure.

Spoiler

It's implied that the rotbeasts were humans once, and turned into the twisted monstrosities they are now as a result of what happened when Jonas's Grand Machine when activated.

It's also stated that one side effect of the Rot, on both humans and animals, was extreme aggression and total loss of sanity. https://wiki.vintagestory.at/index.php/Tapestry#Rot_beast

 

[Bruno Willis]

7 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

It's an interesting idea, but given what rotbeasts are, and the fact that every single monster has been shown to be extremely aggressive toward humans/seraphs, and described as such in the lore, I don't really think this fits in the setting. But as a mod? Sure.

It for sure feels like more of a mod than base game, although it is quite Lovecraftian to have 'horrors' which are neutral to humans, if only because they are so much bigger and more powerful than us - Dave's a perfect example. 

7 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

 

21 hours ago, MKMoose said:

A good game mechanic is designed in such a way that it encourages the player to interact with it or with other parts of the system. Nearly all temporal mechanics in the game, but temporal storms most offensively, do the exact opposite, at least in early to mid game - limit player agency and offer little to nothing in return - which reflects in the related complaints and suggestions.

While there's plenty of mechanics which could be seen as time-wasters but are ultimately well-integrated into the game loop and easily justifiable for various reasons, storms are exceptional in how disruptive and restrictive they are, and temporal mechanics overall suffer from lack of almost any player interaction aside from combat or hiding. Quite literally the only thing that works in their favor is that they don't take up too much time in the long run, but then why are we adding annoying mechanics and making them rare and predictable to compensate?

Expand  

As I've said many times, the storms are present both to present a gameplay challenge/obstacle to survival unique to Vintage Story, as well as serve as an aid to storytelling and otherwise getting immersed in the setting. If the NPCs are describing the temporal storms as supernatural disasters, and battening down the hatches, then temporal storms are something I would reasonably expect to be highly dangerous as well. There's even a tapestry that can be purchased, that depicts a seraph(or humanoid figure, at least) hiding in a bunker of some sort during a temporal storm.

I think there is a middle ground here. I like the storms, but I don't think their mechanics at the moment sell the story as well as they could. I want to be able to 'batten down the hatches' literally, rather than just coat myself in dirt. Having to bar the door and use heavy shutters on the windows to keep the rust foes out would make temporal storms so much more exciting without adding combat. Imagine hearing some odd sounds upstairs. "Are they on the roof?" "Did you leave the bedroom shutters open?!" and so the drifters get in. 

I like the idea of taking the temporal storms as unnatural disasters that are mostly bad, and giving the experience of keeping them out more love by:

• Allowing 10% of drifters to be able to open doors and gates, but adding bars and locks which let you keep them out. 
• Allowing drifters to break windows (placing the block on the ground nearby to avoid griefing), but adding storm shutters which can be closed to keep them out (and would look good). 
• Making fires prevent nearby spawns, even in storms, and adding bonfires with a wider range. (Normal fires would have a very small range, bonfires might have a larger range than a rift ward, but require fueling with lots of logs). 
• Give players other things they should do during a storm which feel urgent and storm related, but aren't combat (unless things go wrong).

I think the issue with the storms isn't that they are out of place or too hard, or not interesting, just that they are unfinished.

[MKMoose]

9 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

23 hours ago, MKMoose said:

I'll probably never not be mildly annoyed to see lore reasons as justification for mechanics and disabling them as solution for players who don't like the mechanics.

Honestly, that's fine. I'm pretty much the opposite--if the lore is presented one way, and the game mechanics directly oppose it, then it's usually highly annoying since it's not really possible to get immersed in a world that doesn't even attempt to follow its own rules.

I don't see this as the opposite. I dislike the classic ludonarrative dissonance as much as the next guy, though I see lore and realism as very similar in some regards. Both tend to get used to argue for mechanics in a way that doesn't focus on gameplay enjoyment (I seem to prefer realism, you've often made arguments through lore), and both greatly enhance immersion when used well. If the mechanic you're justifying with lore or realism is fun, then all's good, but the moment that this mechanic becomes detrimental to the enjoyment of the game I start questioning whether the original reasoning is still relevant. And keep in mind, changing the mechanic can perfectly retain its lore accuracy or even improve it.

 

9 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

I don't really see how temporal storms and rift activity could be tied to the natural weather system, given that temporal disasters are...unnatural. I'm also not sure how doing such would solve player complaints about building. If temporal activity is tied to weather, what does that mean for the underground, or places with high rainfall, or no rainfall at all?

Part of the running theme of the main VS story is that not everywhere is habitable. For complete building freedom, it's really best to turn temporal mechanics off, or use mods to overhaul it.

Okay, before I get into other things too far, I'm gonna focus on explaining better what I actually mean by integrating temporal mechanics into the weather system, as it admittedly comes with a lot of implied baggage that probably isn't as obvious as it is in my own head.

When I say "the weather system", I mean a continuous simulation of (usually 2D) distributions for each of various parameters throughout the game world. In a purely realistic game this would just be different weather components, but there is nothing that prevents the system from being used for other things, like the temporal mechanics. They don't have to interact with weather at all, though it wouldn't be unreasonable to, for example, make dry areas more unstable on average.

With that, temporal mechanics would simply be one component of the system that slowly evolves over time, mostly or entirely independent of weather. Dynamic hotspots or fronts of instability would intermittently move over the player's home, bringing with them negative stability and elevated rift activity, in extreme cases perhaps similar to temporal storms.

Ideally, this would come with actual moving rifts, be it small cracks (similar to current rifts) or massive fissures (potentially dozens of blocks across), and other indications that can be seen across the landscape and used to gauge the current and upcoming temporal state of the area. And I will note that signs of surface instability were a big point in a different discussion, so I don't want to bring too much of it here, but more so just mention it because any attempt at reducing reliance on UI has to bring equivalent information into the game world.

I'm not sure how underground stability is implemented currently, but I don't think anything would really change with it. In the simplest case, it would be decided by an equation that combines the player's elevation with the current surface stability, even as simple as a sum, e.g. current stability at the player's position is 0.2, they are 0.7 of world depth below the sea level, so stability at that depth is 0.2 - 0.7 = -0.5.

 

As for the building argument, a dynamic system like this could make it so that all areas of the world are suitable for building, but would once in a few days to weeks face a period of instability. This would mean that even areas which are more unstable on average could still be habitable, but the player would just have to face a bit more instability and rifts instead of having a limit on how long they can stay there before storm-like effects kick in. As long as even the most unstable areas are balanced in a way that makes them still reasonably habitable, the complaint would be addressed.

It would also have the other benefit of making instability into something that can actually catch a player off-guard anywhere on the surface, instead of it being completely irrelevant unless it happens to cover an important spot.

 

Regarding the "not everywhere is habitable" point, I really don't feel like arguing much about it, because from a design perspective risks and consequences always have to be communicated, whereas surface instability offers random encounters, delayed punishment, no tells outside of UI, extremely limited learning opportunities, and no way to counteract it. It's objectively not a good mechanic, and lore-driven reasoning is the only saving grace that makes it tolerable. It's fine to make some areas unwelcoming and inhospitable, but then you'd do well to justify that to the player in a more satisfying way. Nobody is confused that, say, the polar regions are not conducive to creative building, because they clearly can see that it's the polar regions and they know what that means. But surface instability feels arbitrary and annoying.

 

Temporal storms are somewhat separate from the weather system suggestion, because making them dependent on player location wouldn't play well on servers with sleeping disabled during storms. However, I think they can still be improved by slowly increasing instabilty and rift activity for a few hours before the storm properly starts and letting them fade out slowly instead of getting cut off immediately. This would arguably integrate them much better into the world, and it would also reduce reliance on chat messages. The player would be able to see the world change and would be attacked by a few weaker threats before having T4 rotbeasts spawned at their feet. Side note, there should be more proper difference between light, medium and heavy temporal storms.

I'll mention, also, that given the player's low temporal stability having effects very similar to temporal storms, it wouldn't be unreasonable to just remove temporal storms as a distinct mechanic and instead make it so that occasional instability spikes are the cause of "storms" through lowering the player's stability. It would be much easier to integrate naturally into the weather system, though storms disabling sleeping would have to be worked around in some way or just ditched.

 

9 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

23 hours ago, MKMoose said:

I think the least that a rework of temporal mechanics could achieve would be to address how disjointed and tacked-on these mechanics can feel. They don't give the impression of something that permeates the entire world and exists as part of it, and instead they come and go in very obvious, binary ways. Either it's stable or it's unstable, either there is a rift which will continue spitting out monsters or there is no rift and it's safe, either the storm is ongoing at full force or there's no hint of it ever being there. And the temporal mechanics barely interact and aren't really cohesive with one another, with the most confusing case being that you can be in the middle of a storm with "calm" rift activity, which just feels wrong.

I feel the opposite, really. The storms and rift activity feel as dangerous as the world makes them out to be, so it's rather easy to get immersed and take them seriously, rather than treat them like a quick-time loot event. It's also quite clearly something that does permeate the entire world, since it doesn't matter where you go, you'll end up needing to deal with temporal mechanics unless you turn them off entirely.

I don't feel like what you say here addresses what you quoted in any meaningful way, and it seems largely related to other points. Just in case, though, I want to clarify what I meant under the "disjointed and tacked-on" umbrella:

• surface instability, although technically is a continuous value, mostly ends up boiling down to the positive/negative binary - this creates distinct regions of instability, and doesn't really feel like something that permeates the whole world to me, because it is irrelevant most of the time or practically in full effect on those less common occasions; it also doesn't help that it's static, which reinforces the barrier between stable and unstable areas, and it's completely invisible, which easily makes it seem arbitrarily tacked on,
• rift activity doesn't really matter for the most part, because what actually matters is rifts themselves which pop up wherever they want, and for many players a single rift is already too much to keep dealing with for several in-game hours - I've spent many nights in low and medium stability without any combat (at least once I've even had a high-activity night with no encounters, at least for a couple hours), and I've had to retreat back home during many nights in low and medium activity due to seemingly endless monster spawns that were impractical to fight,
• temporal storms are almost entirely self-contained and poorly integrated into the world - they start immediately with no warning aside from the chat messages and end just as suddenly, which makes them feel extremely artificial; there is no variation or in-between events - either it's a storm, or stability is completely normal and unchanging,
• different mechanics barely interact and aren't consistent with each other - one is static, one is completely random, one is cyclical, storms have no relation whatsoever to rift activity and rifts themselves, ambient instability has little to no effect on rifts; it often also feels like there's three separate monster spawning systems that follow different rules and only one of them relies on rifts.

Just so you know, I do realize that I might be kind of splitting hairs with some of those criticisms, but given how integral temporal mechanics are to the game and how unique they are compared to some other games, they kind of deserve every level of scrutiny. And I'm also just trying to explain my line of thought in a sufficiently detailed way.

 

9 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

23 hours ago, MKMoose said:

I would lean towards the idea that temporal storms could offer a brief opportunity to obtain a rare resource. It probably shouldn't simply be loot from enemies - this may easily be detrimental to the health of the game if not implemented well - but there is a lot of other options as well, primarily revolving around snatching something that briefly crosses the boundary between worlds or in some way exploiting the altered state and properties of the world, even if only using Jonas tech. And by that I mean, do whatever doesn't conflict with the lore, but with that general goal in mind.

Heavily disagree here, because that essentially turns the storms from disasters that need to be planned around, to quick-time loot gathering events. Likewise, if the unique resource in question does not come from enemies, then how does a player obtain it whilst being assaulted from every direction during a storm? Does the player need specific gear quality to obtain said resource?

I will also note that this doesn't solve the complaint about hiding in one's base during early storms, when one lacks the proper equipment to fight through them. Rather, it's probably going to make such complaints worse, since there's actually something to miss out on.

I'm gonna leave this one and the rest for myself to think through further (and to avoid making this post even longer), but I'll just mention that the loot gathering doesn't necessarily have to occur in the middle of a storm. It could be just before a storm, to have the player hurry while the world is changing but rotbeasts aren't appearing in droves yet, or it could be right after a storm, to let the player salvage the aftermath of it before everything fades back into how it was before the storm.

Edited November 30, 2025 by MKMoose

[niblhenne]

Chiming in with a reply as a new player (maybe 20-30 hours total);

Surface Instability is just not fun. What it adds to the game can be boiled down to "oh, this area is just Bad For Living In" but otherwise I never think about it. The amount of discussion about this I feel is evidence enough that the mechanic is undercooked, at least. I don't dislike the worldbuilding aspect (i havent managed to get like, any of the lore in the game yet, but its clear that something is there and as such I don't like the common answer of "just turn it off", but seeing 10k+ users subscribe to the mod that just removes surface instability is telling (not to mention how many just turn it off completely.)

I don't know what the solution should be. I had a passing thought about trying to develop a mod to make it more like an ambient value that you drift towards rather than stable regions always returning you to 100% and even slightly unstable regions dropping you to 0% after long enough. So, imagine that stability on the surface goes from 100 to 70 or 80-ish. If you're in a more unstable region, your stability will drift towards the ambient stability, but not past it. So surface stability can still be "felt" without having as much of a gameplay impact (other than, I suppose, giving you less headroom during storms, and not giving you as much initial value to work with when going spelunking)

Like, I live in a relatively cold country (Sweden). It's not like you can't live somewhere where the average temperature is on the colder side. You'll just be a little colder. It being cold outside means it's cold, it doesn't mean that if I stay outside for long enough I'd hit absolute zero. It feels weird that stability works this other way where even the smallest amount will give you acute temporal poisoning over time. (The fact that it's invisible also doesn't help.)

(But as I said, I only have some 20-30 hours in the game. Maybe I have no idea how the stability works with regards to underground exploration and this idea would ruin how underground exploration works)

[LadyWYT]

28 minutes ago, niblhenne said:

I don't know what the solution should be.

Welcome to the forums! You already suggested a very good solution in your post, really:

29 minutes ago, niblhenne said:

10k+ users subscribe to the mod that just removes surface instability is telling (not to mention how many just turn it off completely.)

Temporal storms and temporal rifts both have separate toggles, so having a toggle for surface instability specifically doesn't feel like too much of a stretch(it's a fairly common suggestion as well). The main hurdle, I think, would be overhauling the code to separate the surface stability from the underground.

 

35 minutes ago, niblhenne said:

(But as I said, I only have some 20-30 hours in the game. Maybe I have no idea how the stability works with regards to underground exploration and this idea would ruin how underground exploration works)

Temporal instability tends to be more pronounced underground, but not to the point that the player can't reasonably complete basic exploration and mining tasks. On the surface, what seems to happen is that players wind up neglecting the temporal gauge(there are several reasons this can happen) and end up placing their base in an unstable area, which ends up causing problems later once the gauge drains enough. Temporal stability, unlike other stats, isn't something that is restored at respawn(as far as I'm aware); the only ways to restore it are spending time in a stable area, sacrificing a temporal gear and some health, or killing monsters.

As it currently stands, monsters will start spawning around the 25% mark on the gauge, with the player entering a state similar to a temporal storm and losing health once the gauge is fully empty. The time it takes for the gauge to fully empty though is rather generous, so unless the player is deliberately standing in a temporal rift they should have plenty of time to correct the problem.

As for the lore behind the temporal stability mechanic:

Spoiler

The horrible plague known as the Rot was in the process of wiping out humanity. Jonas Falx and his allies harnessed the power of temporal energy to build a Grand Machine that saved what was left of humanity, but tore the world apart in the process and created the temporal anomalies that still plague it in the present.

The player themselves was once a human, now turned into a seraph as a side effect of the Grand Machine. A unique feature of seraphs is that they aren't as constricted by the rules of time, hence why they "return" after suffering fatal damage or in some cases travel between the past and present. A drawback of that feature though is that a seraph's foothold in the present is tenuous at best, meaning that their much more sensitive to temporal disruptions and risk losing their grip if exposed to such disruptions for an extended time. 

Basically what's happening when the temporal gauge drains too much, is that the player starts slipping from the present reality into a different dimension known as the Rust World. A temporal storm is similar, in that it's the product of the Rust World trying to merge with reality, but temporal storms affect everything in reality and not just seraphs.

 

[niblhenne]

10 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

Temporal storms and temporal rifts both have separate toggles, so having a toggle for surface instability specifically doesn't feel like too much of a stretch(it's a fairly common suggestion as well). The main hurdle, I think, would be overhauling the code to separate the surface stability from the underground.

Oh yeah, for sure, if it was a toggle in the world settings I wouldn't mind it so much, but I do kind of agree with the people I've seen who say it makes the world feel more unique; removing it outright would strip away an interesting fragment of lore. Even for me, whose main world has only 40% landcover so I'm at a lack of good spots to build on and what ones I can find are annoyingly covered by unstable regions, do like the flavor it adds.

(If you did want to removing surface instability altogether, while keeping underground one, you would only really have to edit this single line from TemporalStability.cs, (admittedly that is a rather crude solution, because I don't think it would apply retroactively, but alas. Exposing the constants (0.8 and 1.5 for surface, for example) wouldn't be a bad idea.))

[LadyWYT]

2 minutes ago, niblhenne said:

Oh yeah, for sure, if it was a toggle in the world settings I wouldn't mind it so much, but I do kind of agree with the people I've seen who say it makes the world feel more unique; removing it outright would strip away an interesting fragment of lore.

I can say from experience that it can make resource gathering more interesting as well. Last server my friend and I had, there was an area we dubbed the "happy hunting grounds" since it was the only reliable place to find prey. It was a decent walk from our base, and dominated by instability, so it wasn't really a place we could expect to linger in for more than a day. The stability mechanic also caught me off-guard once when I returned to base from a mining trip deep underground, only to have a temporal storm come rolling in before I had a chance to recover. That's one of the few times I utilized a temporal gear for restoring stability.

As for including a toggle in the settings, one thing I forgot to mention in my initial post is that the settings tab for temporal stability doesn't have many options at all, so cluttering the tab isn't really a concern.

1 hour ago, niblhenne said:

I had a passing thought about trying to develop a mod to make it more like an ambient value that you drift towards rather than stable regions always returning you to 100% and even slightly unstable regions dropping you to 0% after long enough. So, imagine that stability on the surface goes from 100 to 70 or 80-ish. If you're in a more unstable region, your stability will drift towards the ambient stability, but not past it. So surface stability can still be "felt" without having as much of a gameplay impact (other than, I suppose, giving you less headroom during storms, and not giving you as much initial value to work with when going spelunking)

Mulling this one over a little more, I could see this working, although I would still make stable regions return the player to 100%. Unstable regions I could see getting capped at a certain floor, in that the gauge can drain quite a lot but not so much that monsters start appearing or the temporal storm effect triggers. That would allow the player a bit more building freedom, with the obvious liability that if they build their base in that area they're not going to be in for a good time during a temporal storm due to the stability loss(if I recall correctly a light storm can drain as much as 25% of the gauge, while a heavy storm can drain 60%).

Overall, I think I still prefer the current iteration of the mechanic, and would rather see some sort of Jonas device added as a way to make an unstable region stable.

[niblhenne]

34 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

Mulling this one over a little more, I could see this working, although I would still make stable regions return the player to 100%. Unstable regions I could see getting capped at a certain floor, in that the gauge can drain quite a lot but not so much that monsters start appearing or the temporal storm effect triggers. That would allow the player a bit more building freedom, with the obvious liability that if they build their base in that area they're not going to be in for a good time during a temporal storm due to the stability loss(if I recall correctly a light storm can drain as much as 25% of the gauge, while a heavy storm can drain 60%).

Overall, I think I still prefer the current iteration of the mechanic, and would rather see some sort of Jonas device added as a way to make an unstable region stable.

Re-reading my own post I can see where a few rewrites ended up muddying the message. As it stands today, you can calculate the exact instability for every block in the world; every single block above sea level ends up with a score between 0.8 and 1.5; going below sea level starts dropping the value the further down you go (technically down to -0.25).

Any time you're below 1.0 stability, your stability drains; any time you're above 1.0, it increases. Instead of that, the idea would just be to have your score always drift *towards* the value. So most of the surface would return you to 100% (for a block score of 1.0 or above), and the most unstable surface regions would drop you to 80%, (or, if you're coming out of a cave, *restore you* towards 80% but not further than that.)

Your story about having a "hunting ground" where you couldn't spend too long is good though. It's the sort of emergent gameplay I normally really like. Hm.