I hope the next update will start fleshing out the early/mid-game experience

[Aklone]

The early/mid-game right now is kind of a pain in the ass once you get out of the honeymoon beginner phase.

• The character's default hunger drain is really high, and it's annoying to deal with especially before you can start making meals. You really can't sprint all that much if you want to preserve hunger, and are kind of forced to sleep nights often to pass time for resources to regrow.
  • All renewable forms of food have extremely long ramp up times, needing a lot of gathering (bushes/seeds), and waiting around (animals to breed, bushes/crops to grow)
  • Bears and wolves are both silent most of the time and extremely aggressive, while also giving poor quality food
• Surface drifters drop nothing most of the time, and honestly it feels like a middle finger when you have to use your time and knife durability to harvest them to check.
• Temporal storms are boring and easily ignored if you just dirt coffin yourself.
• Default world-gen is extremely hilly and lacks any water/real reason to build watercraft
• Some things are just arbitrarily limited, like copper tools for water transportation or having to find salt in caves for food preservation.

That being said, I do like the game and get that it's still in development. I just wished I didn't need to tweak a bunch of settings and download a bunch of QOL/immersion mods to make the early game feel fun and substantial

[Facethief]

4 hours ago, Aklone said:

like copper tools for water transportation

What did rafts do to you?

[Straille]

4 hours ago, Facethief said:

What did rafts do to you?

i think they're talking about buckets

[Facethief]

21 minutes ago, Straille said:

i think they're talking about buckets

Ah. That’d make sense.

[Vexxvididu]

I agree that drifters should be more likely to drop SOMETHING.  I don't think it's too much to ask if they just drop a flax fiber all the time if nothing else.

I like that getting a saw opens up the game so much since boards are so important.  note you can transfer water with bowls prior to that.

I agree early game hunger meter is unforgiving.  Getting over the farming hump is big.

[Loosebearings]

9 hours ago, Aklone said:

like copper tools for water transportation

I feel like if water was made to act something like it does in Terraria so you can't just make an infinite water source right next to your base then maybe jugs and bowls could be used as a worse option for moving water until the copper age.

I have a whole bunch of ideas for how water could be made better, but that's probably for another time.

[Venusgate]

My only complaint about early game hunger is more to do with world selection. 

It feels like unless you get lucky with a large prey or berries, you might as well reload the world. And non-wet starting climates are disproportionally more difficult.

[Vexxvididu]

4 minutes ago, Venusgate said:

My only complaint about early game hunger is more to do with world selection. 

It feels like unless you get lucky with a large prey or berries, you might as well reload the world. And non-wet starting climates are disproportionally more difficult.

I agree.  I feel like early game access to food is maybe subject to a bit too much variance.  The world generation around crops and berries maybe just needs to be more smooth so you can't get borked by RNG too hard.

[Loosebearings]

11 minutes ago, Vexxvididu said:

I agree.  I feel like early game access to food is maybe subject to a bit too much variance.  The world generation around crops and berries maybe just needs to be more smooth so you can't get borked by RNG too hard.

I think having certain things like a treasure hunter and limestone spawn relatively close to the spawn would help with the RNG aspect a bit more

[Vexxvididu]

2 minutes ago, Loosebearings said:

I think having certain things like a treasure hunter and limestone spawn relatively close to the spawn would help with the RNG aspect a bit more

I got lucky with borax in my world, but have never seen a treasure hunter, lol.

[Loosebearings]

Just now, Vexxvididu said:

I got lucky with borax in my world, but have never seen a treasure hunter, lol.

I still haven't found borax or a treasure hunter, though I guess I haven't done much exploring either. Luckily limestone was only 5k west of my spawn

[Facethief]

29 minutes ago, Loosebearings said:

I feel like if water was made to act something like it does in Terraria so you can't just make an infinite water source right next to your base then maybe jugs and bowls could be used as a worse option for moving water until the copper age.

I have a whole bunch of ideas for how water could be made better, but that's probably for another time.

The issue with that is that each block of water is 1000L or something close, so it’d take 100 buckets to move a block of water.

Although come to think of it, I don’t think I’d mind that.

[Loosebearings]

2 minutes ago, Facethief said:

The issue with that is that each block of water is 1000L or something close, so it’d take 100 buckets to move a block of water.

Although come to think of it, I don’t think I’d mind that.

Is it ever stated that 1 block is 1 meter here?

Either way, it could be fudged a bit to make it less tedious.

[Facethief]

1 minute ago, Loosebearings said:

Is it ever stated that 1 block is 1 meter here?

Either way, it could be fudged a bit to make it less tedious.

As I said, I actually think it might be cool; get a bucket of water, move it to the cistern/resevoir, use when needed. A bit of emergent realism, or something like that.

[Loosebearings]

3 minutes ago, Facethief said:

As I said, I actually think it might be cool; get a bucket of water, move it to the cistern/resevoir, use when needed. A bit of emergent realism, or something like that.

I agree, though I think how water affects farming might need a rework if this happens. Maybe be able to make a water furrow with the hoe?

[Mowdan]

Hunger did see really bad early game but I had a 120% hunger bug so I think that made it worse... Also my spawn area seems to have  lower food yield the most areas around it.

The only other thing is that backwards entrance to copper age.Copper pick alone yields zero copper. Like come on when you mine it should give at least a very small amount of copper you can use without the need for a hammer.Even if it is just small like 0.3

You could do something similar with the drifters too.Have them always drop a fragment so the player knows they should kill them. The player would no longer be at the mercy of luck either, I got one so early I didn't even realize it was rare at all it might of even been the first one I killed.The stronger ones could just have a better chance to drop more than one fragment.

I am not too far into the game just about to get the copper hammer...Overall the game has been fun. There are just certain things it does differently than minecraft that really raise the sense of adventure.I think the best is yet to come, The prospecting will add another layer of location value. I could go on but I'll save that for another time and another thread.

[Loosebearings]

3 minutes ago, Mowdan said:

120% hunger bug

The blackguard class increases hunger drain, so does using your off-hand. Are you sure it wasn't those?

[LadyWYT]

First off, welcome to the forums!

11 hours ago, Aklone said:

The character's default hunger drain is really high, and it's annoying to deal with especially before you can start making meals. You really can't sprint all that much if you want to preserve hunger, and are kind of forced to sleep nights often to pass time for resources to regrow.

As @Loosebearings already noted, choice of class can make a big impact here. Blackguard has the highest hunger rate of all the classes, with the worst wild food gathering ability to boot. It's possible for new players to pick this class and manage just fine, but they will definitely struggle more than they would picking any other class.

 

11 hours ago, Aklone said:

• All renewable forms of food have extremely long ramp up times, needing a lot of gathering (bushes/seeds), and waiting around (animals to breed, bushes/crops to grow)
• Bears and wolves are both silent most of the time and extremely aggressive, while also giving poor quality food

Honestly, it sounds like you might be approaching food supply from the standpoint of the other block game, and that kind of logic doesn't apply to Vintage Story. Crops take time to grow, and won't grow at all if the weather isn't appropriate for the crop in question. Animals are more realistic in that you need a male and a female in order for them to reproduce, and the offspring require sufficient time to mature. When it comes to animal proteins, prey animals are also much more valuable than predator animals(likely to prevent the player from relying too heavily on hunting bears and wolves instead of prey animals or establishing livestock).

For the early game, it's best to hunt and forage a fairly wide area in order to make sure you have enough food to work with while you get farms and livestock established. Likewise, you also need to make sure that you have some way to store the food that you can't immediately use, since most will rot rather quickly if not preserved.

Wolves howl quite a lot, so they tend to be easy to notice. Bears unfortunately tend to be quieter, but in the case of both bears and wolves it's a very good idea to be mindful of the surroundings and pause to take a good look around every now and then. The best way to avoid getting mauled, is to spot the danger and avoid it. As for why they're so aggressive...there are lore reasons, but it's also to help keep the game challenging(especially for the Homo Sapiens game mode).

12 hours ago, Aklone said:

Surface drifters drop nothing most of the time, and honestly it feels like a middle finger when you have to use your time and knife durability to harvest them to check.

1 hour ago, Mowdan said:

You could do something similar with the drifters too.Have them always drop a fragment so the player knows they should kill them.

3 hours ago, Vexxvididu said:

I agree that drifters should be more likely to drop SOMETHING.  I don't think it's too much to ask if they just drop a flax fiber all the time if nothing else.

Except the monsters are there primarily as an environmental hazard; that is, they're an obstacle for the player to work around, but not something the player actively hunts in order to advance themselves. If the monsters are consistently dropping things like flax fibers or other low-level useful items, the player has more incentive to build "grinders" or otherwise focus on killing them efficiently, than engaging with intended game loops like ore mining, farming, etc.

 

12 hours ago, Aklone said:

Temporal storms are boring and easily ignored if you just dirt coffin yourself.

They aren't everyone's cup of tea, hence why there is an option to disable the mechanic.

 

12 hours ago, Aklone said:

Default world-gen is extremely hilly and lacks any water/real reason to build watercraft

Currently, there's not really much to do on the water either. Once more aquatic content is added, I would expect the default worldgen settings to change in order to support more water.

As it stands, I've found that setting Landcover to 80% produces enough oceans for the sailboat to feel useful, while still leaving land-based travel as the main focus. Your mileage will vary though; if the defaults aren't cutting it, best to make some test worlds and play around with the settings until you find a combination that works.

12 hours ago, Aklone said:

Some things are just arbitrarily limited, like copper tools for water transportation or having to find salt in caves for food preservation.

To my knowledge, the raft is craftable without the need for metal tools. The sailboat is a major upgrade, as well as a much fancier vessel, so it will require much better tools and materials as a result.

In regards to salt, finding a deposit is very useful, but also not needed most of the time. Survival Goods and Commodities traders both sell salt for quite reasonable prices, and trading is the way I typically acquire salt myself since it's very convenient. If one is playing Homo Sapiens though, trading will not be an option.

12 hours ago, Aklone said:

That being said, I do like the game and get that it's still in development. I just wished I didn't need to tweak a bunch of settings and download a bunch of QOL/immersion mods to make the early game feel fun and substantial

This is true, however, I would say it also depends on what a player is looking for. Modding one's game to suit personal taste isn't a crime. Likewise, as you've noted already, Vintage Story is still early in its development. In spite of there being a lot of content already, the version we have available to play at the moment is probably more of an early alpha version than anything, which is why certain sections of the game still feel rather undeveloped(of a planned eight story chapters, only two have been implemented).

 

2 hours ago, Mowdan said:

Copper pick alone yields zero copper. Like come on when you mine it should give at least a very small amount of copper you can use without the need for a hammer

Now that I think about, I suppose that's one of the benefits of panning over mining for one's copper. Panning certainly isn't exciting, but it is safe, and you don't need to process the ore you get from it(aside from smelting).

[Mowdan]

2 hours ago, Loosebearings said:

The blackguard class increases hunger drain, so does using your off-hand. Are you sure it wasn't those?

It was a offhand bug. There was another post about it. All I had to do was equip and unequip a offhand to fix it.But I was a very new player and wasn't using any offhand. My first post was a reply to that thread if you want the details.

No testing has been done but it is thought I died with a torch in offhand and it didn't reset to 100%. I think dying does have some bugs because another time I appeared to punch a bear while dead..I had already dropped my items due to dying but somehow punched the bear that killed me.For now I will keep enjoying the game as a noob but later I might try to recreate both of those bug/glitches.

[Aklone]

4 hours ago, Loosebearings said:

I feel like if water was made to act something like it does in Terraria so you can't just make an infinite water source right next to your base then maybe jugs and bowls could be used as a worse option for moving water until the copper age.

Yeah, I feel like we should have a clay age option for moving water. Maybe a clay pot that breaks down after a few uses. Though that's if they want to keep the water mechanics similar to MC. But I would also be open to a more immersive/hardcore shakeup like the water transport mod.

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

Honestly, it sounds like you might be approaching food supply from the standpoint of the other block game, and that kind of logic doesn't apply to Vintage Story. Crops take time to grow, and won't grow at all if the weather isn't appropriate for the crop in question. Animals are more realistic in that you need a male and a female in order for them to reproduce, and the offspring require sufficient time to mature. When it comes to animal proteins, prey animals are also much more valuable than predator animals(likely to prevent the player from relying too heavily on hunting bears and wolves instead of prey animals or establishing livestock)

Maybe I should have clarified that I'm not exactly a new player. I can reach iron age pretty comfortably and consistently in the first year (obviously not an impressive flex lol, just to clarify that I'm not confused about basic concepts). My main gripe is that what you do early on is very barebones, in my opinion. And that I dislike how much focus the last few updates have been giving to adding later game content, when I feel there's a lot of missing holes with more fundamental features. And needing to add mods like primitive survival to then bridge those gaps.

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

Except the monsters are there primarily as an environmental hazard; that is, they're an obstacle for the player to work around, but not something the player actively hunts in order to advance themselves. If the monsters are consistently dropping things like flax fibers or other low-level useful items, the player has more incentive to build "grinders" or otherwise focus on killing them efficiently, than engaging with intended game loops like ore mining, farming, etc.

I get this, and mob grinders are definitely something I dislike as well. I'm just saying, maybe the surface drifters should despawn immediately if there's no loot to harvest.

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

They aren't everyone's cup of tea, hence why there is an option to disable the mechanic.

I agree and appreciate it's a setting you can modify, but this is another mechanic that I think should be fleshed out more.

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

Currently, there's not really much to do on the water either. Once more aquatic content is added, I would expect the default worldgen settings to change in order to support more water.

As it stands, I've found that setting Landcover to 80% produces enough oceans for the sailboat to feel useful, while still leaving land-based travel as the main focus. Your mileage will vary though; if the defaults aren't cutting it, best to make some test worlds and play around with the settings until you find a combination that works.

To my knowledge, the raft is craftable without the need for metal tools. The sailboat is a major upgrade, as well as a much fancier vessel, so it will require much better tools and materials as a result.

Here's to hoping the aquatic update happens relatively soon. It feels like every voxel game I know of always has lifeless oceans, which is a shame because I'd love a reason to build an underwater base. Regarding the raft, I was referring to moving water (bucket).

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

In regards to salt, finding a deposit is very useful, but also not needed most of the time. Survival Goods and Commodities traders both sell salt for quite reasonable prices, and trading is the way I typically acquire salt myself since it's very convenient. If one is playing Homo Sapiens though, trading will not be an option.

It's just one of those things that I feel is odd that we can only access through one specific way. Why can't we boil salt water? Etc. The actual necessity of salt is kind of pointless right now since cooking stews and sealing them in crockpots already last for over a year.

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

This is true, however, I would say it also depends on what a player is looking for. Modding one's game to suit personal taste isn't a crime. Likewise, as you've noted already, Vintage Story is still early in its development. In spite of there being a lot of content already, the version we have available to play at the moment is probably more of an early alpha version than anything, which is why certain sections of the game still feel rather undeveloped(of a planned eight story chapters, only two have been implemented).

Again, I will say I think the updates are focusing a bit too much on endgame content, and I hope we will see a bigger focus on early game changes. Why can't we tap trees for resin, especially considering how much you end up needing for windmills? Why are we still using basic sticks as handles for tools, when crafting the tool head is so immersive and involved? Etc. (I know there are mods for these, but the point is that they should be in the base game in some form)

This game has such a great capacity for creativity and immersive survival, I think working towards expanding/polishing the existing mechanics would provide much more value if worked on first, compared to dungeons and lore that, while high quality, loses a lot of impact after the first experience.

Take for example a game like Don't Starve Together. Initially, farming was very simple. Grow a seed in a farm plot, get crop. Feed crop to bird to get extra seeds to propagate. Basically, it was a system not worth interacting with. But after the farming update, the process got a lot more involved, and players were rewarded if they mastered the farming mechanics by getting giant versions of crops they grow. This led to enough interactivity that some players could have fun just being 'base moms'.

In VS, I would rather we get updates for fundamental parts of the gameplay loop first (crossbreeding plants would be sick), rather than new set pieces.

[LadyWYT]

4 minutes ago, Aklone said:

Maybe I should have clarified that I'm not exactly a new player. I can reach iron age pretty comfortably and consistently in the first year (obviously not an impressive flex lol, just to clarify that I'm not confused about basic concepts). My main gripe is that what you do early on is very barebones, in my opinion. And that I dislike how much focus the last few updates have been giving to adding later game content, when I feel there's a lot of missing holes with more fundamental features. And needing to add mods like primitive survival to then bridge those gaps.

Gotcha. Regarding the early game, I do agree that there's perhaps a bit more that could be added. However, I would also counter the same point with the fact that...the early game isn't really anything more than a stepping stone to teach players the basics of what they need to know for the meatier parts of the game. Stone tools are just enough to allow the player to survive and acquire copper tools, and the copper tools are just enough to get players to bronze. The bronze tier, while not the best, is where the game really starts to open up to the player, since it's durable enough to last a while and tackle things such as the first story chapter. It's also tough enough to mine iron and quartz, which opens up better equipment materials and better access to greenhouses.

Late game content, however, is currently barebones. Aside from steel, there are a couple of Jonas tech devices to craft, but that's really it. Once the player has steel, there's not really anything else for them to do once they've completed the main story(the parts that exist, anyway). Given that the mid-late game is where the player will be spending the majority of their playtime, more options are needed in those areas, or otherwise the player is blasting through what's essentially the tutorial tech tiers and having...not much to do after.

15 minutes ago, Aklone said:

I'm just saying, maybe the surface drifters should despawn immediately if there's no loot to harvest.

I wouldn't be against this, but on the other hand, I like leaving a trail of monster carcasses in my wake. Partly because it makes it difficult for live monsters to navigate, but also because it's fun to carve a path of destruction for my friend to find later in multiplayer.

 

17 minutes ago, Aklone said:

Here's to hoping the aquatic update happens relatively soon.

Quite a bit of life has been added to the water recently, and fishing has been teased. I've heard rumors that rivers might be in the works, but we'll see. I wouldn't be surprised though if aquatic content gets even more love in the near future.

 

18 minutes ago, Aklone said:

It's just one of those things that I feel is odd that we can only access through one specific way. Why can't we boil salt water? Etc. The actual necessity of salt is kind of pointless right now since cooking stews and sealing them in crockpots already last for over a year.

From the practical standpoint...it's a lot easier to account for a few select methods in terms of gameplay balance, than it is to try to implement every option under the sun. That being said, it's possible that such features are planned, but just not a priority to add right now since there are already methods of handling the function in the game(ie, mine halite or trade for it, and focus on fleshing out late game tech or other missing gameplay like herbalism before worrying about boiling seawater for salt).

 

22 minutes ago, Aklone said:

In VS, I would rather we get updates for fundamental parts of the gameplay loop first (crossbreeding plants would be sick), rather than new set pieces.

That's essentially what we're getting though--updates to critical parts of the game that are otherwise lacking(like actually adding a way to fish, adding more tech options, etc). As I said previously, the early game is pretty solid already for the amount of time the player is really intended to spend at that tech tier. For more focus on stone age/primitive tech in particular, it's really best to use mods to make that kind of experience the main focus of the game. Otherwise, the game ends up being too "front-heavy" on content(which is already somewhat of a complaint) and feels sorely lacking once one advances past the early game.

[Thorfinn]

6 hours ago, Vexxvididu said:

I agree that drifters should be more likely to drop SOMETHING.  I don't think it's too much to ask if they just drop a flax fiber all the time if nothing else.

Like @LadyWYT said, they don't exist to farm. They are something to avoid. If they always dropped a fiber, a few apoc nights would be more than enough so you wouldn't need to grow flax at all.

But if it's important to you, make it so. Open

.\assets\survival\entities\land\drifter.json

scroll down to (currently) line 329 to the codeblock

			{ code: "harvestable", duration: 2, fixedweight: true, dropsByType: {
				"*-normal": [
					{
						type: "item",
						code: "gear-temporal",
						quantity: { avg: 0.02666, var: 0 }
					},
					{
						type: "item",
						code: "flaxfibers",
						quantity: { avg: 0.2, var: 0 }
					},
					{
						type: "item",
						code: "gear-rusty",
						dropModbyStat: "rustyGearDropRate",
						quantity: { avg: 0.01, var: 0 }
					}
				],

and set the value of each to whatever you think makes sense. Scroll down to the double-headed and you can figure out how to make them drop Jonas parts if you like.

[Bruno Willis]

6 hours ago, Aklone said:

Why are we still using basic sticks as handles for tools, when crafting the tool head is so immersive and involved? Etc. (I know there are mods for these, but the point is that they should be in the base game in some form)

This game has such a great capacity for creativity and immersive survival, I think working towards expanding/polishing the existing mechanics would provide much more value if worked on first, compared to dungeons and lore that, while high quality, loses a lot of impact after the first experience.

I think this is a really solid point. Giving the early game more side progressions would be valuable. Using the tool handles as an example, one player might spend a long time in the bronze age, and get really good at choosing the best wood to carve good tool handles out of, giving their bronze tools good durability. When they eventually get to steel, they'll have an advantage that other players who rush steel don't have.

This'd shine in multi-player, where the player who masters early/mid game mechanics can then combine their skills with the player who rushes steel, to get them both excellent gear. 

The game already does this well with animal husbandry (I think). It's a rewarding, long investment, mid tech process which can reward a whole group if one person is interested enough in it. I feel like weaving and textiles will probably gain a bit of this depth, and it would be good if there were other parts of the mid-game like this. Gardening could do with a bit of added complexity to become something which could be interacted with lightly, or gone into obsessively.

I feel like a lot of the ideas we toss around fit into this bucket: Sluice systems which need tweaking and figuring out, so the panning obsessed player can figure out how to do that extra well for everyone. Fletching, so someone can learn to make personalized arrows, add colour, maybe add weight (+ to damage, - to distance) or improve accuracy and supply everyone with their specific preferences. These are systems which can be skipped, or gone into in depth, depending on personal taste. 

[Vexxvididu]

11 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

Like @LadyWYT said, they don't exist to farm. They are something to avoid. If they always dropped a fiber, a few apoc nights would be more than enough so you wouldn't need to grow flax at all.

I think you're exaggerating a little bit on how rapidly you'd get flax from drifters if they just gave 1 each; but I do get the idea that you are supposed to avoid them as opposed to farming them.  It does seem like surface drifters are just a nuisance by design.

[Thorfinn]

9 hours ago, Bruno Willis said:

I feel like a lot of the ideas we toss around fit into this bucket: ...

These are systems which can be skipped, or gone into in depth, depending on personal taste. 

Agreed. In a word, mods. If you don't care to go into that depth, why have the code in RAM, or even on the hard drive/SSD? With mods, you can have things as basic or immersive or hardcore as you like.