Just feels... inadequate compared to modpacks that involve TFC+

[cAshewTheAce]

I got the game yesterday, played it over the night and now a little in the morning.

I already watched a lore video that explains the game up to the point where the player gets in the game, and that's i guess what got me interested enough to get the game.

However, the fact that there is a hard limit to progression, that your tech progression just ends at steel is... just not enough for me. I love the idea of coming from the stone age to finally make it to the modern age, but obviously that's not the goal for the game as its bound by the lore.

Just, i looked at the progression in the book, and i feel like you could breeze through the game and the only thing at the end of the game is whatever lore might come from you progressing through the game. That's... not a good payoff to me personally. I am thinking about refunding, though it is only 20 bucks.

 

I'm not hating on the game, i see why people like it, but i'm just saying how it feels like there isn't enough progression to satisfy people like me, not without mods at least and id rather stay away from mods as they become outdated so fast and can break the already fragile performance that this game has on my system.

[LadyWYT]

Welcome to the forums!

9 minutes ago, cAshewTheAce said:

I'm not hating on the game, i see why people like it, but i'm just saying how it feels like there isn't enough progression to satisfy people like me, not without mods at least and id rather stay away from mods as they become outdated so fast and can break the already fragile performance that this game has on my system.

It's worth keeping in mind that the game is far from complete as well. Of a planned eight story chapters, only two have been implemented. You are correct in that the game's tech progression is meant to remain rooted in medieval technology, with steampunk-style steam power potentially being the farthest once can advance, but there are also mods that add things like electricity to the game(from what I've seen, that one is decent at staying up to date).

12 minutes ago, cAshewTheAce said:

Just, i looked at the progression in the book, and i feel like you could breeze through the game and the only thing at the end of the game is whatever lore might come from you progressing through the game. That's... not a good payoff to me personally. I am thinking about refunding, though it is only 20 bucks.

Honestly, I'd give the game a little more time. Progressing sounds easier than it actually is, since the game is very good at punishing mistakes, and certain processes take some time to complete. I will also note that playing the game yourself is quite different from just watching someone else play as well.

There should also be another update arriving sometime in the near future, which I think should include more late game options, but I'm not 100% sure on that either. In any case, it's also okay if the game just isn't your cup of tea either. The refund policy is pretty generous, and you can always try it again later after a few more updates. 

[hstone32]

Well, I mean it is in alpha. According to Tyrone, the game currently has only 2/8 of the planned content, a great deal of which was added not too long ago this very year. You gotta admit, there's a lot here already for jurt 2/8 content, and the dev pace only seems to be picking up.

Minecraft modpacks have 2 advantages in this context: they are at liberty to re-use as much code and assets from other mods as they wish, and they have a pre-built engine to run on. A buggy, unoptomized engine written in a truly awful runtime enviroment, but an engine nonetheless. I was attracted to Vintage Story because it started from scratch completely. In contrast, Vintage story has 2 opposite advantages over minecraft: they are free to develop however and whatever they wish without being affected by any design decision by Microsoft, and it runs on a smooth game engine that can handle all the content so much better.

but at the end of the day, it's a matter of preference I suppose. As for me, VS fulfills what I've long been looking for, and not finding in minecraft modding.

 

Edit: thought I'd also add that Vintage Story's Steel is modded Minecraft's chaos shards. I'm 120 hours in on my current world, and still only on iron. Progression isn't slow and tedious, just so much deeper than you'd think.

Edited November 26, 2025 by hstone32

[cAshewTheAce]

Well no, i don't believe it to be tedius and unrewarding, just seems like it cuts off sharply at 1300-1400s tech. You make steel but you don't make machines with it. And there doesn't seem to be sailboats you can make with multiblock structures either. I don't know how to word it better, i just want there to be stuff to do at the end game, machines to build that take dozens of real life hours. Currently it seems like it advances past a little beyond what vanilla TFC does and then stops there.

[TFT]

Something to consider is that by this point VS and MC are apples and oranges with different goals. VS has a focus on survival, realism to a degree, and has a setting whereas Minecraft is a voxel sandbox with survival elements. You're right in that VS is short of something like a techpack in progression and it still will be even down the road with everything the devs wanted in it. They aren't trying to compete with minecraft. However, I think it's also unfair to compare VS to modded MC since you also dont want mods to solve the problem here.

You know where the devs want to take the game. Anything outside that vision has to be modded, and the fact is that VS doesn't have the sheer popularity of MC nor is modding culture like it was to explode with new biomes, dimensions, magic systems, and a dozen advanced tech packs like we saw in MC. I doubt we're going to see something like Enigmatica 2 any time soon. And MC suffers outdated mods to an insane degree, the game moved on and many tech mods sat behind in 1.12.2 or wherever else, TFC et al. may end up the same. It's a nightmare to mod and get what you want. One final thing to consider with modding is the detail resolution of this game is going to hold a lot of modders back from big ambitious projects because so much more is expected of them; a bunch of 1x1x1 machine blocks with programmer art is going to feel really lazy in VS while it was the standard in MC due to that game's programmer art and textures composing 98% of its graphics.

If the game simply isn't for you then that's fine, I personally never buy things I don't enjoy. I think the game has a lot of potential both from devs and modders and I think it would be cool to see modders make the out there stuff from MC mods like high tech and space stuff, but you get what you pay for and it's foolish to buy a promise or potential. 20 dollars gets you what exists right now and access to mods on the mod portal. I think it's more than worth it, but my tastes aren't yours, so whether you stick out of refund is up to you.

Edited November 26, 2025 by TFT

[Eepy_T1me]

3 hours ago, TFT said:

Something to consider is that by this point VS and MC are apples and oranges with different goals.

this sentence is singlehandedly the most accurate thing I have ever read about both games. I'm no VS expert, but I've been a java enjoyer since I was 12 (so 10 years) and playing VS is not the same ballpark in the slightest. I guess the best comparison aside the apples and oranges is the "car part" discussion: how many parts of a car can you change until it's not the same car as it was when you started? yeah, VS started as a change to vanilla MC. had some changes, focused on survival rather than being a sandbox. but that was years ago now: look how far it's come.

both games are great, even if VS isn't even a quarter of the way done yet. each has their perks, each has their flaws, and there's nothing wrong with OP wanting a refund. but I do like this interpretation of both games, and I hope VS gets popular enough to have a stronger modding community.

Edited November 26, 2025 by Eepy_T1me

[LadyWYT]

8 hours ago, cAshewTheAce said:

Well no, i don't believe it to be tedius and unrewarding, just seems like it cuts off sharply at 1300-1400s tech.

Correct, but this is also the timeframe that Vintage Story takes place. It can't be later than the 1400s since the Byzantine Empire is referenced, but it also can't be earlier than the 1200s since the Hanseatic League is also referenced. There is a bit of wiggle room regarding tech, given that according to the lore there was a sort of early industrial revolution taking place prior to a world-ending catastrophe, however I'll also note that pretty much all of that tech is now a lost art. There are maybe a handful of characters left(player included) that still know how to utilize it.

 

8 hours ago, cAshewTheAce said:

You make steel but you don't make machines with it.

Not currently, but you do need steel in order to craft Jonas tech, make sturdy leather, or make the highest tier of refractory bricks. Steel is the only material tough enough to mine things like chromite, ilmenite, and pendlatite(I think).

I would expect to have some more machine options later, however, I don't expect anything like the full automation you can get with the Create mod in the other block game. Full automation kinda goes against the grain of the kind of game that Vintage Story is trying to be. That being said, I'm sure there will be mods that allow for such in the future, if there aren't already.

8 hours ago, cAshewTheAce said:

And there doesn't seem to be sailboats you can make with multiblock structures either.

I think the idea for these has been floated a time or two, but it remains to be seen if it'll actually make it into the game. If it's implemented though, I would expect more a larger scale version of the sailboat we have already, with a customizable "pocket dimension" interior, and not so much something like the Archimedes Ship mod(I think that was the name) where the player literally designs the entire thing block by block.

 

8 hours ago, cAshewTheAce said:

I don't know how to word it better, i just want there to be stuff to do at the end game, machines to build that take dozens of real life hours.

I'd recommend at least playing through the story, if you haven't yet, as there is quite a bit of interesting things to explore. It's also harder than you'd think. For the machines that are there, in my opinion they do take dozens of IRL hours to build, but most of that time is going to be spent actually finding the materials and refining them into the required machines parts. Building the machine itself is usually pretty straightforward otherwise.

[Mowdan]

That is kind of a weird take.It's true there are some really cool mods and modpacks out there. But that is the whole reason why they exist in the first place, because the game is finite. People have to make new ways to play minecraft because finite minecraft gets boring.You play minecraft, get iron, get diamond go to the nether then you are like okay now what? Then the mod person is like "You get this mod and go the the aether" The problem with this is it only applies to super popular games.The other reason mods exist is to transform a game you don't like as much into one you like more.Too easy? get this modpack!
 

The minecraft paradox, you can walk 20mil blocks in any direction have all these mods servers and can build whatever you want: EVERYONE: "WE NEED TO ADD MORE." Point being every game is finite and/or has patterns and most people will find a end.Or it has so much stuff you can't find what you want because it is buried under so much other stuff that is more popular.

Edited November 26, 2025 by Mowdan

[Professor Dragon]

7 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Correct, but this is also the timeframe that Vintage Story takes place. It can't be later than the 1400s since the Byzantine Empire is referenced, but it also can't be earlier than the 1200s since the Hanseatic League is also referenced.

I'd actually prefer it if there were NO EARTH HISTORY references at all. I believe one of the story missions references France as well.

Let's just have it as a true "alternate world" scenario. Sure, it looks like Earth, but it need not be Earth. Those look like wolves and bears and raccoons, but it is just similar evolution. They're actually space wolves and space bears and space raccoons on an Earth-like planet.

Actually . . . are the star maps ours? Or are they completely different?

It kind of feels like they wanted to go with "Like Earth, but not Earth", and that there are just hangover elements in the lore that need to be scrubbed.

As it stands though, it is a "divergent timeline Earth".

Edited November 26, 2025 by Professor Dragon

[LadyWYT]

2 minutes ago, Professor Dragon said:

As it stands though, it is a "divergent timeline Earth".

Pretty much. There are quite a few real historical things referenced, however, the "real world" was basically left behind when "the incident" happened. I'm not actually sure anyone in the present day is aware of the Old World's actual history, aside from a handful of specific characters that is. The little bits that are known are probably vague details couched in various tall tales and other legends that have managed to survive.

 

5 minutes ago, Professor Dragon said:

Let's just have it as a true "alternate world" scenario. Sure, it looks like Earth, but it need not be Earth. Those look like wolves and bears and raccoons, but it is just similar evolution. They're actually space wolves and space bears and space raccoons on an Earth-like planet.

Honestly, that's also a very good reason not to make it a completely alternate world. One complaint about fantasy/science-fiction settings is that oftentimes, the setting is just a carbon copy of Earth, with exactly the stuff you'd expect to find on Earth, but it's "in space" or whatever. It's not a bad thing to do that, mind you, as familiar things like bears and wolves and whatnot don't really need to be explained to the audience. But it is how you get complaints such as elves just being pointy-eared humans, dwarves/gnomes being short humans, etc. 

Of course, another drawback to making the setting completely alien is the problem of how to explain the various things to the audience, without it seeming too contrived. 

[Professor Dragon]

37 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

Pretty much. There are quite a few real historical things referenced, however, the "real world" was basically left behind when "the incident" happened. I'm not actually sure anyone in the present day is aware of the Old World's actual history, aside from a handful of specific characters that is. The little bits that are known are probably vague details couched in various tall tales and other legends that have managed to survive.

 

Honestly, that's also a very good reason not to make it a completely alternate world. One complaint about fantasy/science-fiction settings is that oftentimes, the setting is just a carbon copy of Earth, with exactly the stuff you'd expect to find on Earth, but it's "in space" or whatever. It's not a bad thing to do that, mind you, as familiar things like bears and wolves and whatnot don't really need to be explained to the audience. But it is how you get complaints such as elves just being pointy-eared humans, dwarves/gnomes being short humans, etc. 

Of course, another drawback to making the setting completely alien is the problem of how to explain the various things to the audience, without it seeming too contrived. 

Yes, on reflection, I don't mind it as a divergent Earth timeline. 

Let's run with that as being the case. I know that we have some astronomically minded people who have looked into this. But is the sky:
1) An Earth sky, but run through a simulation far into the future. So correct - apart from devastation - but future.
Q1) Following from that is the key question "How much time has passed?"

2) Or is the sky completely different?
Then the key question becomes:
Q2A) "Has the Earth moved and is now in a different place in the universe?" or
Q2B) "Has the universe itself changed?"

 

(There probably should be a big ol' "SPOILERS" tag slapped in the thread title by this point )

Professor Dragon.

[LadyWYT]

9 minutes ago, Professor Dragon said:

Q1) Following from that is the key question "How much time has passed?"

This one I can at least somewhat answer:

Spoiler

It's been about five hundred years since the cataclysm that ended the Old World, give or take a few decades. The year 1386, if I recall correctly, is listed somewhere in game files and marked as "present year", however I think that probably refers more to when the Old World ended, rather than the actual present date. Assuming that's true, that would put "present year" somewhere around 1886, if you keep the old calendar system and don't start counting anew, that is.

As for whether or not the starfield itself is accurate...that I'm not sure. It seems like it should be, since I'm not sure that the stars were rearranged, but it could also just be a made-up starfield as a placeholder. My current understanding is that having a rotating starfield accurate to hemispheres and seasonal variation is on the roadmap, but it's not exactly there yet. I'm also not sure if that means copying the actual real-life starfield, or making one up for the "new reality".

[Professor Dragon]

10 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

This one I can at least somewhat answer:

  Hide contents

It's been about five hundred years since the cataclysm that ended the Old World, give or take a few decades. The year 1386, if I recall correctly, is listed somewhere in game files and marked as "present year", however I think that probably refers more to when the Old World ended, rather than the actual present date. Assuming that's true, that would put "present year" somewhere around 1886, if you keep the old calendar system and don't start counting anew, that is.

As for whether or not the starfield itself is accurate...that I'm not sure. It seems like it should be, since I'm not sure that the stars were rearranged, but it could also just be a made-up starfield as a placeholder. My current understanding is that having a rotating starfield accurate to hemispheres and seasonal variation is on the roadmap, but it's not exactly there yet. I'm also not sure if that means copying the actual real-life starfield, or making one up for the "new reality".

Thanks @LadyWYT - Always love reading your posts. Thanks for the calendar update.

As to the star field - this was tickling something in the back of my head, and found it here. Thank goodness for our resident geeks astronomers.

And here:

 

I'm going to try a page out to @Tom Cantine and @IronOre, who have gone into some depths on this (apologies to anyone else who has!), with the question:

Does Vintage Story use an "earth like" star map, or is it completely different?

Thanks, Professor Dragon.

 

 

 

 

[Maelstrom]

No.   VS does not use an earth like star map.  I would expect that level of detail would be daunting to create.  

[Professor Dragon]

Just now, Maelstrom said:

No.   VS does not use an earth like star map.  I would expect that level of detail would be daunting to create.  

Thanks.

That then presents the nub of the problem.

• Earth references throughout
• Sky does not match Earth

So which option is it?

1. This is an "alternate Earth" scenario from the very beginning - from the start of the universe for the stars to be different.
2. The Earth moved through the universe after the event. 
3. The universe changed around the Earth after the event. The whole visible night sky. 

Pulling on a thread, I tell ya . . .

Professor Dragon.

[Maelstrom]

5 minutes ago, Professor Dragon said:

Pulling on a thread, I tell ya . . .

Indeed you are.   

My *ahem* short answer is to refer you to the literary works of one Mr. Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

My not so short answer is that Mr. Lovecraft's universe involved extra-dimensional beings, some of whom are very powerful and most definitely not to disturb, let alone be trifled with.  Said seemingly omnipotent beings have the ability to do such things as we see in game.  Fortunately for the characters, said beings seem to be not care about the ants that crawl around in their proximity.  There are other also explanations that you have not identified that could result in an alternate earth with a different star field than the one you and I observe.

 

I really do recommend reading Lovecraft.   Doing so will give you a great appreciation to the devs for how incredible their work portrays a Lovecraftian world.

[Tabbot95]

both have the same problem of a largely JIT worldgen that doesn't have simulation ticks for the rest of the world outside of 'loaded' areas;

 but VS has at least some level of premise the makes survival sim more possible, (with less to remove and reconstruct in attempting to make that possible).. 

[Venusgate]

On 11/25/2025 at 6:04 PM, cAshewTheAce said:

However, the fact that there is a hard limit to progression, that your tech progression just ends at steel is... just not enough for me.

As a discussion of opinion, when I was making a mod list for my current run, I was first considering ending in modernity with things like Electricity and Vintage Engineering. But the more I looked at them the more I started to think about how Stationeers does granular electricity management much better.

At the end of the day, no one game is going to be everything, even one that spans history, without sacrificing granularity. And VS is nothing if not granular.

 

On 11/25/2025 at 6:04 PM, cAshewTheAce said:

isn't enough progression to satisfy people like me, not without mods

Quote

modpacks that involve TFC+

Where are the corners on this circle?

[Teh Pizza Lady]

2 hours ago, Venusgate said:

Where are the corners on this circle?

TFC inspired VintageCraft which became Vintage Story.  Makes you wonder sometimes.

[Broccoli Clock]

On 11/28/2025 at 8:58 PM, Maelstrom said:

No.   VS does not use an earth like star map.  I would expect that level of detail would be daunting to create.  

Would it? I mean if you want to implement procession, sure, or show the other planets in their precise orbits (including retrograde motion). That would require a bit of time and effort but just reflecting what the sky looked like at a particular time in history? That should be pretty easy, even taking into consideration the different hemispheres.

I've not used the stars for navigation in game, I don't know if it is possible, it would be a shame if it's not. I have however used stars in real life to navigate.

 

 

In regard to the TFC mention, it seems that OP is comparing apples to oranges. TFC is a mod that relies on a framework not designed for it, for me it feels janky and out of place. I dislike it, like all "other block game" mods it feels like a game of jenga, you just keep piling mods on top of mods in hope it doesn't fall over (and it generally does). At least with VS part of the TFC stuff is built into the default game, resulting in a far more even experience where you don't have to worry about mod conflicting or items acting in a "non-standard" way. Does TFC have more to it? Of course, but then TFC is a mod. Are there mods in VS? Yes, again, it's an apples/oranges comparison.

Would it be lovely to have the full functionality of things like TFC or Create? In some ways yes, but also no. Some things just don't suit VS. Create and TFC are based specifically to leverage the meta of the other block game, they just don't have that same analogue with VS. 

Is the game fully fleshed out? No. Has it been in development for the length of time the other block game has been? No. Does Tyron, et al, have the financial clout of the other block game's developers? No. While I do welcome the question being put to the forums, I do think there is a touch of disingenuousness to it, and I would strongly push back at the "finally make it to the modern age" request. This game is set in Medieval times, moving to the modern age would be anachronistic to say the least. If you want to pursue that via mods, cool, but I certainly don't want anything close to the "modern age" as part of the official game.

Edited December 1, 2025 by Broccoli Clock

[DianaDeer]

On 11/26/2025 at 3:04 AM, cAshewTheAce said:

Just, i looked at the progression in the book, and i feel like you could breeze through the game and the only thing at the end of the game is whatever lore might come from you progressing through the game. That's... not a good payoff to me personally. I am thinking about refunding, though it is only 20 bucks.

 

I'm not hating on the game, i see why people like it, but i'm just saying how it feels like there isn't enough progression to satisfy people like me, not without mods at least and id rather stay away from mods as they become outdated so fast and can break the already fragile performance that this game has on my system.

These lines puzzle me because they almost seem to imply that you haven't played actually played through the game progression and are only basing your opinion on second-hand information, in which case i would encourage you to try experiencing the game as it is, instead of focusing on the number of steps in the tech tree; knowing that the endgame involves early modern-ish levels of technology tells you nothing about how it feels like to go through it, figure out how to obtain the required resources, build the necessary infrastructure...

The way you talk about mods also feels weird, vanilla VS comes way closer to the experience you want than vanilla MC ever could yet you're complaining that it's worse than heavily modded MC while also refusing to engage with modded VS, even though VS is so much more mod-friendly: the modding API is so well-implemented that mods often remain compatible through major version updates and the engine is so optimized that even my 2016 laptop can run modded VS on low-medium settings at higher fps than vanilla MC on low with performance mods.

[Venusgate]

On 12/1/2025 at 5:34 AM, Broccoli Clock said:

This game is set in Medieval times, moving to the modern age would be anachronistic to say the least

This.

Imagine popping into a week old server and knapping your first flint knife and someone runs over you in a Subaru.

Edited December 2, 2025 by Venusgate

[Bumber]

8 hours ago, Venusgate said:

This.

Imagine popping into a week old server and knapping your first flint knife and someone runs over you in a Subaru.

PSA: Don't drive while drunk or at low stability. Don't be a lane drifter.

Edited December 3, 2025 by Bumber

[Venusgate]

32 minutes ago, Bumber said:

Don't be a lane drifter.

bmwtorn

[cAshewTheAce]

11 hours ago, DianaDeer said:

 

while also refusing to engage with modded VS, even though VS is so much more mod-friendly: the modding API is so well-implemented that mods often remain compatible through major version updates 

the mods i was interested in were not up to date and there seems to be a lot of mod conflicts, especially around animations