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

[LadyWYT]

9 hours ago, Bruno Willis said:

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. 

I will note that while it's fine for different systems/strategy to shine in multiplayer, the core systems need to be bearable in singleplayer. Using the refined tool handles as an example: if we assume that those can actually be crafted with early game tech and don't require late game stuff, it still bears consideration that the player will be going through a LOT of tools over the course of the game. It might be fun to make fancy handles for a few special tools, but probably not so fun to have to manually refine a tool handle for every single tool that needs to be used(especially ones that break easily).

 

3 hours ago, Vexxvididu said:

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.

Possibly, but I'm thinking along the lines of, if each drifter is guaranteed to drop one flax fiber...I can make a pile of drifter bodies with ease, so at that point I'm going to be hunting them down at all hours and crafting myself linen sacks/gambeson/windmill within the first in-game month or two. And if the drifters are being dispatched via falx, there's no real need to stop to loot them either.

[Maelstrom]

16 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

 I like leaving a trail of monster carcasses in my wake... because it's fun to carve a path of destruction for my friend to find later in multiplayer.

Sounds like a humorous story lies in there just waiting to be mined, refined and crafted.  

[Bruno Willis]

3 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

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.

Why have animal domestication and cheese in the main game? so few people bother. Why put pumpkins in, they're so niche? 

As far as I can see, Mods are really good at moving the base game in a different direction to the dev. team's vision, and good for filling out holes which could do with plugging (sticky dirt mod). 

Textile working is a gap that needs filling, and while there are some really good looking mods that address it, spinning wheels and looms feel like they need to be added to the base game at some point. It's pretty debatable whether tool handles fit into that same category, but I think it's defiantly worth adding sideways complexity to the early and mid game, not through mods. Otherwise, the game tells you "Get to tin bronze! Get to iron" and misses opportunities for interesting gameplay in the early game (where newcomers spend plenty of time). 

[Bruno Willis]

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

I will note that while it's fine for different systems/strategy to shine in multiplayer, the core systems need to be bearable in singleplayer. Using the refined tool handles as an example: if we assume that those can actually be crafted with early game tech and don't require late game stuff, it still bears consideration that the player will be going through a LOT of tools over the course of the game. It might be fun to make fancy handles for a few special tools, but probably not so fun to have to manually refine a tool handle for every single tool that needs to be used(especially ones that break easily).

Yeah. I would have it so you can still just use sticks, or you can get into splitting and carving down oak logs into handles, if you want. I'm not wedded to the idea of tool handles though, just an example of how filling out early/mid game would give late game extra depth. 

[Maelstrom]

42 minutes ago, Bruno Willis said:

Why have animal domestication and cheese in the main game? so few people bother. Why put pumpkins in, they're so niche? 

As far as I can see, Mods are really good at moving the base game in a different direction to the dev. team's vision, and good for filling out holes which could do with plugging (sticky dirt mod). 

Textile working is a gap that needs filling, and while there are some really good looking mods that address it, spinning wheels and looms feel like they need to be added to the base game at some point. It's pretty debatable whether tool handles fit into that same category, but I think it's defiantly worth adding sideways complexity to the early and mid game, not through mods. Otherwise, the game tells you "Get to tin bronze! Get to iron" and misses opportunities for interesting gameplay in the early game (where newcomers spend plenty of time). 

Remember this game is early access.   It's not even up for alpha testing since it isn't even feature complete (For an indicaiton of what the vision is look for the Roadmap), so things like looms, steam power and water driven mechanical power are yet to be implemented.   Patience my friend, it's coming.

As for why cheese and pumpkins and other things?   Flavor.  One upon a past version pumpkins stored as a block did not rot, making it a great way to store future food indefinitely.  Have you thrown a stone at a body of water?   Played a resonator during a storm or near a rift?  There's lots of nice little things in this game that aren't necessary, but show the passion and care the devs are putting into this game.

[Thorfinn]

2 hours ago, Bruno Willis said:

Why have animal domestication and cheese in the main game? so few people bother. Why put pumpkins in, they're so niche? 

They are all proof of concept. Get them working and you can then generalize. If they don't work well in play, you only have to change and test one or two crop instances, not 100 reskins of instances of grains.

If you've only been here a while, you probably cannot appreciate how interconnected everything is, but try to be patient. They don't hate you. It's more of a matter of conscientiousness. They did not release the ocean stuff  because it was not ready. Rather than make people put up with even more jankiness, they decided to put a little more work into it and release on their schedule. I'm sure they are not happy with it yet or default mapgen would have put in more oceans than the Sahara has.

Edited November 28, 2025 by Thorfinn

[LadyWYT]

2 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

They did not release the ocean stuff  because it was not ready. Rather than make people put up with even more jankiness, they decided to put a little more work into it and release on their schedule.

It's also worth noting that they put 1.21 focus to a vote, on whether players wanted new content, bug fixes, or something else, and the overwhelming majority(I think it was something like 2/3 of the vote) went to bugfixes and polish(to Tyron's apparent shock). That's not to say that players don't want new content, but rather that the playerbase as a whole is okay with new content getting delayed if it means that it will release in a more finished state.

Which in my opinion, if it's not ready for testing, it really should be delayed. Test versions of a concept don't need to be perfect, but if it's too ridden with bugs then the average player is going to be focused more on the bugs and less on the content.

2 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

I'm sure they are not happy with it yet or default mapgen would have put in more oceans than the Sahara has.

I vaguely recall that being a thing in the earlier days of Minecraft. Oceans were huge...but had absolutely nothing in them, and boats were an absolute joke(you almost couldn't look at one without it falling apart). It was a source of general complaints, at least until the aquatic update.

[Aklone]

8 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

I will note that while it's fine for different systems/strategy to shine in multiplayer, the core systems need to be bearable in singleplayer. Using the refined tool handles as an example: if we assume that those can actually be crafted with early game tech and don't require late game stuff, it still bears consideration that the player will be going through a LOT of tools over the course of the game. It might be fun to make fancy handles for a few special tools, but probably not so fun to have to manually refine a tool handle for every single tool that needs to be used(especially ones that break easily).

Like Bruno mentioned, I think an elegant solution for any issues like this would be for them to be opt in mechanics. You can do the bare minimum to have the same efficiency as current vanilla, but if you decide to engage with more advanced tool handle crafting, butchery, etc, you get rewarded for it. Those that don't want to bother will have their experiences largely untouched, while those who want to get into the nitty gritty can be rewarded for it. Much like how in DST it actually takes no effort to grow crops from seeds, to get enough seeds to maintain/propagate isn't much more effort, but to grow giant crops you have to account for every factor.

[Bruno Willis]

3 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

If you've only been here a while, you probably cannot appreciate how interconnected everything is, but try to be patient. They don't hate you. It's more of a matter of conscientiousness. They did not release the ocean stuff  because it was not ready. Rather than make people put up with even more jankiness, they decided to put a little more work into it and release on their schedule. I'm sure they are not happy with it yet or default mapgen would have put in more oceans than the Sahara has.

5 hours ago, Maelstrom said:

As for why cheese and pumpkins and other things?   Flavor.  One upon a past version pumpkins stored as a block did not rot, making it a great way to store future food indefinitely.  Have you thrown a stone at a body of water?   Played a resonator during a storm or near a rift?  There's lots of nice little things in this game that aren't necessary, but show the passion and care the devs are putting into this game.

Yes. Sorry, I'm being ironic but keyboards don't express that the best. What I mean is, this game thrives on the little systems which you don't Need to interact with, but offer lots to those who interact with them. The whole "If it's a niche system, it should just be a mod" thing seems to be kind of against the VS ethos. But yes, those good details will only come if the devs are doing it for fun and on their own timeline.

37 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

It's also worth noting that they put 1.21 focus to a vote, on whether players wanted new content, bug fixes, or something else, and the overwhelming majority(I think it was something like 2/3 of the vote) went to bugfixes and polish(to Tyron's apparent shock). That's not to say that players don't want new content, but rather that the playerbase as a whole is okay with new content getting delayed if it means that it will release in a more finished state.

This kind of gets to what the op is talking about. I would like to see the devs focus on systems similar to animal husbandry and pumpkins, systems which fill out holes in the early and mid game, rather than have them race to make more story. I feel like doing more story before establishing how textiles will work (for instance) is maybe not the best idea.

I wonder how certain story locations might have been designed if they'd been designed after sailing ships were added?

[LadyWYT]

5 minutes ago, Bruno Willis said:

I wonder how certain story locations might have been designed if they'd been designed after sailing ships were added?

Given there's at least six more chapters to add, I suppose we'll find out! 

[Slam]

On 11/27/2025 at 2:57 PM, 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).

Yeah, stone to copper, and copper to bronze is much harder then bronze to iron, mainly because most of the tools required to processes iron is before bronze, and your likely to find a good reading of iron while looking for much rarer tin. Still doesn’t stop me from grinding black bronze though, I love the look of it.

[Vexxvididu]

22 minutes ago, Slam said:

Yeah, stone to copper, and copper to bronze is much harder then bronze to iron, mainly because most of the tools required to processes iron is before bronze, and your likely to find a good reading of iron while looking for much rarer tin. Still doesn’t stop me from grinding black bronze though, I love the look of it.

Good point.  I think maybe tin is a little too rare, and maybe iron is slightly too common.

[Tabbot95]

3 hours ago, Vexxvididu said:

Good point.  I think maybe tin is a little too rare, and maybe iron is slightly too common.

meteoric iron is frankly too common; at least in my experience; 

having prospecting being something more "organic" and less prone to "You need to use a magical prospecting pick" would be nice too.

[Bruno Willis]

3 hours ago, Tabbot95 said:

having prospecting being something more "organic" and less prone to "You need to use a magical prospecting pick" would be nice too.

You know how grass has a bit of colour variation? imagine if stone became slightly more rust-red the closer to iron it was, in the same way forest floor gets more and more intense. You might not notice it if you were surrounded by it, but it could also show up as rust-stains on cave walls. Maybe you'd do other colours for other metals, but I don't know what colour stones go when tin ores are present (for example). It could look very nice to have odd discolourations in cave walls though. 

That'd have to come with making prospecting harder though. I think with this sort of thing you wouldn't even need a pro pick, just attentive eyes. 

[Vexxvididu]

I think the most realistic way to make prospecting work is to have little bits of ore on the surface.  Having an increased amount of iron or whatever in surface rocks is how real prospecting mostly works. ...but that wont' really be any harder than the way the pick is used now.

[LadyWYT]

7 hours ago, Bruno Willis said:

You know how grass has a bit of colour variation? imagine if stone became slightly more rust-red the closer to iron it was, in the same way forest floor gets more and more intense. You might not notice it if you were surrounded by it, but it could also show up as rust-stains on cave walls. Maybe you'd do other colours for other metals, but I don't know what colour stones go when tin ores are present (for example). It could look very nice to have odd discolourations in cave walls though. 

That'd have to come with making prospecting harder though. I think with this sort of thing you wouldn't even need a pro pick, just attentive eyes. 

I'm not sure about that. Caving itself is dangerous, due to the denizens lurking within, and you do have to go fairly deep for iron. Likewise, there's no guarantee that caves will cut through, or even come close to, iron veins. However, there's also the factor of...just how attentive is the average player? Granted, I don't think the average player really misses that much, but it's not uncommon either to miss spotting clay deposits, or surface copper, etc.

Overall though, it's a neat idea, but I think it detracts from the prospecting system. 

2 hours ago, Vexxvididu said:

I think the most realistic way to make prospecting work is to have little bits of ore on the surface.  Having an increased amount of iron or whatever in surface rocks is how real prospecting mostly works. ...but that wont' really be any harder than the way the pick is used now.

I think that would be a better spot for stuff like pyrite or bog iron, or other small, low quality deposits. That is, a deposit that relatively easy to find and mine, but requires a LOT more ore in order to produce the same yield that standard iron veins will. My friend and I explored this concept on one of our older servers, and it felt fairly balanced. The surface deposits were definitely easy to find, but didn't produce more than maybe a couple of ingots or so. Thus the player has the option of putting in the effort to find a deep deposit and take the risk of mining it, and therefore have their iron needs supplied for a good long while. Or the player can play it safe and rely on low quality surface deposits, but need to find and process a whole lot more of them to get a decent amount of iron to work with.

[Thorfinn]

The most realistic way to do prospecting would be to get a sample and take it to Tobias and pay him to perform an assay. I think its probably safe to say that no one is that committed to realism.

Well, maybe Tobias is.

[Vexxvididu]

1 hour ago, Thorfinn said:

The most realistic way to do prospecting would be to get a sample and take it to Tobias and pay him to perform an assay. I think its probably safe to say that no one is that committed to realism.

Well, maybe Tobias is.

I 100% agree and also think I'm okay with the prospect pick being a bit magical as a gameplay mechanic since the more realistic alternatives would honestly make the game worse.

[Arisilde]

On 11/27/2025 at 11:53 AM, 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.

There's actually a server setting to disable transport of fluid source blocks, "noLiquidSourceTransport".


Domestication seems to actively be being worked on, based on dev posts. Some of the new AI is already in the game, and you can look at it in the files. So seems like we'll be getting a new system before terribly long.

[Loosebearings]

On 12/2/2025 at 2:39 AM, Arisilde said:

There's actually a server setting to disable transport of fluid source blocks, "noLiquidSourceTransport".

But then you can't transport water at all

[Venusgate]

20 minutes ago, Loosebearings said:

But then you can't transport water at all

Well, you can't have a farm or quenching anywhere you want. You can still use barrels of water for soup/dough.

[Endeavour]

My issue with lack of water transport is that channels between bodies of water should level out but they don't as water runs out after a few meters.
Transporting water is a workaround for that. I like high water worlds but sometimes these worlds are more akin to many small lakes. Rafts become very good modes of transport with some channels here and there. 

[Loosebearings]

4 hours ago, Endeavour said:

My issue with lack of water transport is that channels between bodies of water should level out but they don't as water runs out after a few meters.
Transporting water is a workaround for that. I like high water worlds but sometimes these worlds are more akin to many small lakes. Rafts become very good modes of transport with some channels here and there. 

Hopefully when they add rivers they also rework how water works or a better way to move water sources.

[Arisilde]

7 hours ago, Loosebearings said:

But then you can't transport water at all

Every single water block is an infinite source, so any transport at all fails to fulfill what you were asking for.
Now if we're talking down the road, an option to make water blocks not infinite that's a whole different story. I do think that should be included as well. It's just not supported right now, so I was suggesting a currently available option.

[Krougal]

On 11/28/2025 at 10:44 AM, LadyWYT said:

Possibly, but I'm thinking along the lines of, if each drifter is guaranteed to drop one flax fiber...I can make a pile of drifter bodies with ease, so at that point I'm going to be hunting them down at all hours and crafting myself linen sacks/gambeson/windmill within the first in-game month or two. And if the drifters are being dispatched via falx, there's no real need to stop to loot them either.

This is absolutely what happens. I had modded a guaranteed loot drop and it was just too easy. I got rid of it.