Temporal storms feel too easy.

[LadyWYT]

12 hours ago, Dood4u said:

It would be funny and kind of cool to add in some way to domesticate a monster for resources, Like a SCP.

https://mods.vintagestory.at/shiverpet

[The Lerf]

On 1/5/2026 at 11:31 AM, Zane Mordien said:

@The Lerf Thanks for throwing out some ideas. Usually, its just a bunch of us complaining in these threads.

On 1/5/2026 at 11:59 AM, LadyWYT said:

Agreed. I can appreciate a well-written idea, even if I don't agree with it.

Of course, part of the idea refinement process is disagreement. I mean, I don't even think that what I've offered up is a complete solution, because 

On 1/6/2026 at 12:48 PM, cjc813 said:

Instead of being an avoidable inconvenience, storms become an inconvenience you can't ignore.

I think we should look for ways that make storms interesting and fun, that way more players actually *want* to do them.

I agree with this. My angle focuses more on immersion and integration with other gameplay systems, but he's right that the core problem is some players don't want to be interrupted just to hide for 10 minutes, or to die. But like, I don't know if that can really be helped. Temporal Storms are supposed to interrupt you, and make you say oh ****, I'm in the middle of something that I could absolutely die if I don't stop and prepare (or at least, that's how I react to them). If a player doesn't like that, I don't think there's a solution beyond turning them off... like, is the core of the problem that you've been interrupted, or that you don't like fighting mobs, or that the punishment for dying is too high? Some of these have real, tangible solutions that can be introduced, and some of them can't. And narrowing down the exact reason why players aren't enjoying them is part of it. 

I just don't think that players who are upset at the interruption can be helped. It's the nature of the storm, and the desire of the developers for them to be this way. At the very least, they can be tracked and predicted, so I think that providing ways that the player can either skip (by sleeping) or shortening the storm (by a new storm mechanic involving prep work or actively killing things) is a step in the right direction.

Some players don't actually want better storms, they just want them gone. And that's already in the game. Their actual complaint is that turning off storms turns off all story/lore stuff. And that's a completely different topic, one that I don't think I want to entertain in this one.

[LadyWYT]

7 minutes ago, The Lerf said:

Their actual complaint is that turning off storms turns off all story/lore stuff.

Just to clarify here: temporal mechanics, while important to the lore, are separate from lore stuff in the settings. So it's very possible to just turn off temporal storms and/or temporal stability but keep all the other lore stuff. The Exploration preset has temporal storms and temporal stability turned off by default.

 

10 minutes ago, The Lerf said:

the core problem is some players don't want to be interrupted just to hide for 10 minutes, or to die. But like, I don't know if that can really be helped. Temporal Storms are supposed to interrupt you, and make you say oh ****, I'm in the middle of something that I could absolutely die if I don't stop and prepare (or at least, that's how I react to them). If a player doesn't like that, I don't think there's a solution beyond turning them off... like, is the core of the problem that you've been interrupted, or that you don't like fighting mobs, or that the punishment for dying is too high? Some of these have real, tangible solutions that can be introduced, and some of them can't. And narrowing down the exact reason why players aren't enjoying them is part of it. 

I just don't think that players who are upset at the interruption can be helped. It's the nature of the storm, and the desire of the developers for them to be this way. At the very least, they can be tracked and predicted, so I think that providing ways that the player can either skip (by sleeping) or shortening the storm (by a new storm mechanic involving prep work or actively killing things) is a step in the right direction.

Pretty much, though I think the players that just truly don't like the interruption already turn the storms off. I do think though that there is a subset of players who end up regarding the storms as nothing but an interruption/punishment because monsters don't really drop much loot, and the storms offer no benefits otherwise. Regarding the latter...it's an unnatural disaster so there's really no reason that it should be beneficial.

Regarding monster loot, that may or may not change in the future, but I don't get the impression that monsters are meant to be a steady supply of resources. They're an environmental hazard and the main reason to kill them is to ensure your own survival. In contrast, other games like Minecraft and Valheim actively encourage the player to hunt monsters for their drops, even to the point of being ridiculous mob grinders to farm the loot more efficiently. The best way to handle disappointing monster loot in VS, I think, is mods; that way the player can set the loot tables to whatever they feel is most reasonable.

Ironically, temporal storms really don't take that much time, when you do the math. A day in Vintage Story is equal to 48 minutes; I think the longest temporal storm lasts about 10 minutes, roughly. By default, each in-game month is 9 days long, and temporal storms arrive every 10-20 days. Assuming the player doesn't sleep through the night(and assuming I did the math right), that leaves them around 470-950 real life minutes free to do whatever they want between each temporal storm, which is quite a lot of time.

Speaking of potential solutions though, I wonder if the code governing temporal storms is difficult to mod? That might explain why there aren't that many mods that try to modify temporal storm behavior. If that's the case, a good solution would probably be to make temporal storms easier to mod, so that players can make adjustments as they see fit. Of course, the lack of mods could also be because most of the playerbase is fine with the options that currently exist, and thus not really inclined to mod the mechanic. 

[MKMoose]

On 1/3/2026 at 6:04 AM, The Lerf said:

The second is limited destruction of player placed structures. Minecraft devs had this concept in it's infancy with Endermen moving blocks, but they were too worried about annoying players. I have no such reservations, and would love to see a portion of spawned enemies make efforts to destroy fences and weak building blocks. This would reduce the amount of enemies that aggro to the player, and give some flavor during and after the storm. In my head, these blocks aren't straight up destroyed, but replaced with damaged clutter like we have already in the game, so that way the player can know what got destroyed and where, in order to replace it. Ignoring enemies during storms would mean you need to dedicate time to repairing and replacing things around the outside of your base.

I'm kinda late to the party and you've had a fair share of pushback already on this, but I want to mention that Tyron has said something to the effect that they have a general rule to never damage, destroy or replace blocks through means external to the player, especially player-placed placed blocks, in the Standard mode (outside of special cases like bricks used in furnaces). He didn't go into much detail as far as I remember, but the reasoning seems to be roughly consistent with a bunch of what has been said in this thread. Regardless of how well-intentioned it is, damaging or destroying blocks comes with risk of restricting player creativity, incentivizing cheesing with ugly workarounds, imposing tedious maintenance, or inadvertently creating undesired incentives like running away from home for the duration of the storm, all of which are easily detrimental to player engagement.

That is not to say that it can't work at all or couldn't be added to Wilderness Survival or Homo Sapiens, just that it's unlikely to be added to the Standard mode, or if it gets added in some form then it will very likely come with some simple, intentional workarounds (e.g. a way to lock doors as a solution to drifters being able to open or break them). There have also been suggestions to introduce a somewhat similarly-motivated mechanic but without permanent effects, which included:

• monsters or other threats that can move through blocks or in some other way reach a player indoors,
• monsters that can render blocks temporarily immaterial instead of physically damaging and destroying them,
• large, moving rifts or brief fissures that temporarily modify the world in some way within their area,
• and probably other stuff I don't remember or haven't seen.

 

On 1/3/2026 at 6:04 AM, The Lerf said:

Something I would really like to hear people's opinions on is the introduction of consequences to ignoring Temporal Storms.

Overall, I would personally much rather see an incentive to go out into the storm and voluntarily face the challenge, but keep the player generally undisturbed if they still decide to wait it out in the safety of a hideout. As a general rule, it tends to be better for long-term engagement to incentivize something that you want the player to do instead of punishing the opposite, especially in a game with as large casual appeal as Vintage Story has in the homesteading elements.

Punishment for inaction tends to be a very hard sell. I would expect that adding consequences to ignoring storms would significantly increase the number of people who turn them off, and amplify the feedback about storms harming the overall experience as a disruption that serves only to the player's detriment (which you can even see in this thread).

 

On 1/3/2026 at 9:29 AM, The Lerf said:

The goal of these ideas is to disincentivize hiding or ignoring storms, and I don't think that you can provide too much positive reinforcement (loot) without making farms too lucrative. So yes, I think there should be a bit of extra work involved if you don't bother to defend yourself.

Just a note: it is possible to provide a lot of rewards without making farms lucrative at all, and it only depends on how they are implemented. Conventional monsters have a whole bunch of issues and inherent design limitations that enable mob farms in the first place, but they are not nearly the only possible source of loot.

 

13 hours ago, The Lerf said:

I just don't think that players who are upset at the interruption can be helped. It's the nature of the storm, and the desire of the developers for them to be this way. At the very least, they can be tracked and predicted, so I think that providing ways that the player can either skip (by sleeping) or shortening the storm (by a new storm mechanic involving prep work or actively killing things) is a step in the right direction.

I don't know if you've seen it, but there seems to be a small Temporal Storms Require a Fight mod which allows to reduce storm duration by killing monsters, with a pretty flexible config, if you're interested. There were also at least two other ones that did the same and some other things on top, but they seem to be outdated and less stable.

Personally, though, I would be interested to see the storms actually much longer and impossible to shorten or skip completely, but with much weaker adverse effects for most of their duration, making it so that the player would be able to stay outside without too much risk and enjoy the audio and visual effects of the storms (which could use some improvements, but that's another point). They would just have to stay careful and watch out for signs of imminent extreme rift activity spikes, and hide or fight for a much shorter duration during these intense but brief storm phenomena.

 

12 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Speaking of potential solutions though, I wonder if the code governing temporal storms is difficult to mod? That might explain why there aren't that many mods that try to modify temporal storm behavior. If that's the case, a good solution would probably be to make temporal storms easier to mod, so that players can make adjustments as they see fit. Of course, the lack of mods could also be because most of the playerbase is fine with the options that currently exist, and thus not really inclined to mod the mechanic. 

The thing with temporal storms is that they are hardcoded as a quite low-level, tightly-connected system that's not easy to modify beyond simple changes to a few variables or numbers, which also means that any two mods that attempt to significantly change it are very likely to be incompatible. A proper overhaul would likely require large sections of the code related to storms to be entirely rewritten, and that ideally also requires close familiarity with a bunch of the game's internal workings. Most of the code for the storm's mechanics is here, if you want to take a look.

Edited January 8 by MKMoose
Phrasing.

[CastIronFabric]

On 1/6/2026 at 11:48 AM, cjc813 said:

Instead of being an avoidable inconvenience, storms become an inconvenience you can't ignore.

 

I do not understand why that is a game improvement. 

I do not see the problem with going to the storm if you want or not going to the storm if you do not want to. I do not see an advantage for the game play even for people who enjoy storms to have it be a inconvenience you can't ignore. I know plenty of games that do this, I just do not understand the appeal.

 

[CastIronFabric]

11 hours ago, The Lerf said:

 

I just don't think that players who are upset at the interruption can be helped. It's the nature of the storm, and the desire of the developers for them to be this way. At the very least, they can be tracked and predicted, so I think that providing ways that the player can either skip (by sleeping) or shortening the storm (by a new storm mechanic involving prep work or actively killing things) is a step in the right direction.

 

Its not the nature of the storm. 

Can we have storms just not spawn on a players Deed? yes

Can we have storms spawn everywhere in the world other than a player Deed OR have multiple storms spawn in various locations that a player goes to (like unstable areas)? yes

Should a storm have a reason to go into? yes

Should that reason be something that is obtainable by other means but more time consuming? yes

Does any of those changes conflict with NPC dialogue? no

That is how it should be done and at least to me that is obvious, this is not a feature in which those who are not intrested should be forced anyway as part of standard play.

Edited January 8 by CastIronFabric

[Sleeves]

I agree with OP; I turn storms off because they're really just a mild annoyance as of now. My solution would be to spawn a special sort of rift during the storms which can be destroyed by physical attacks, though preferably with a large health pool. This would encourage players to interact with the mechanic, lest their base be enveloped by an exponentially growing mob of rust creatures. The rifts would need to be "stunned" when attacked so that a shiver doesn't spawn on you from the very thing you're destroying.

[The Lerf]

On 1/8/2026 at 5:56 AM, MKMoose said:

I'm kinda late to the party and you've had a fair share of pushback already on this, but I want to mention that Tyron has said something to the effect that they have a general rule to never damage, destroy or replace blocks through means external to the player, especially player-placed placed blocks, in the Standard mode (outside of special cases like bricks used in furnaces). He didn't go into much detail as far as I remember, but the reasoning seems to be roughly consistent with a bunch of what has been said in this thread. Regardless of how well-intentioned it is, damaging or destroying blocks comes with risk of restricting player creativity, incentivizing cheesing with ugly workarounds, imposing tedious maintenance, or inadvertently creating undesired incentives like running away from home for the duration of the storm, all of which are easily detrimental to player engagement.

Ah, that's kind of unfortunate. I understand why, of course. I just feel some of these things, (incentivizing cheesing with ugly workarounds, inadvertently creating undesired incentives like running away from home for the duration of the storm), are situations we already face with the current implementation. Some situations, I argue, are maybe worse (Death loops and community opposition). 

One thing that I do want to say though (bringing it back to Minecraft), is that if it wasn't already in the game, the Creeper would never be added with the modern mindset of Mojang/Microsoft. Because it's a similar idea of a mob that can damage player placed blocks and kind of has to be considered and engaged with. And I don't think there's nearly any pushback against the Creeper in the Minecraft community calling for it's removal. I get the sentiment behind 'don't mess with the player's creation', but I think that forgetting 'the player can and should creatively use countermeasures' understates the influence that the Creeper had on Minecraft's development and community. And personally, I think it's a stance that's way too risk-averse for VS, that markets itself as a uncompromising, hardcore survival game before as a homesteading one. I would argue that there aren't that many instances of consequences in VS. From what I can think of, is losing your satiation/total health points on death, or losing your dropped inventory to the despawn timer, or not having a spare hammer and getting sent back to the copper age, or losing your domesticated animals to predators/lighting. And this form of loss is what I want to focus in on, because it's so similar to having a creeper blow up your walls. It demands the player prepare with fences or a lightning rod, or potentially suffer losses. Should predator attacks be removed from the game? Or why is that acceptable, but a monster doing the same isn't?

On a greater level, I think the question becomes "Why, if something bad happens, is it bad?"

(These aren't accusatory/hostile questions, but meant to inspire discussion, as on reread it sounds a bit harsh)

 

On 1/8/2026 at 5:56 AM, MKMoose said:

Overall, I would personally much rather see an incentive to go out into the storm and voluntarily face the challenge, but keep the player generally undisturbed if they still decide to wait it out in the safety of a hideout. As a general rule, it tends to be better for long-term engagement to incentivize something that you want the player to do instead of punishing the opposite, especially in a game with as large casual appeal as Vintage Story has in the homesteading elements.

Punishment for inaction tends to be a very hard sell. I would expect that adding consequences to ignoring storms would significantly increase the number of people who turn them off, and amplify the feedback about storms harming the overall experience as a disruption that serves only to the player's detriment (which you can even see in this thread).

One of the things I worry about with creating more incentive via loot, is the emotion around storms becoming one of excitement of what you could find rather than one of worry about what you might lose. We already have valuable and unique loot spawn in storms, but how much more does there need to be until it's deemed acceptable, and players who hide will start to participate? Can you suggest a different incentive that could be implemented that positively reinforces participation over hiding? To me, hiding needs to be disincentivized because it's a neutral outcome. But participating in storms as they are currently usually results in a negative outcome. Disincentivizing hiding would go hand-in-hand with incentivizing participating, and changing the way storms work; I am absolutely not suggesting one or the other because that's not how changing behaviors works.

Listen, I'm gonna play a card here that's kind of hypothetical, should a player who ignored the coming winter not suffer any consequences? We could be having a discussion about how there's not enough animals spawning during winter, and players would like to be able to hunt to survive it easier.

On 1/8/2026 at 5:56 AM, MKMoose said:

I don't know if you've seen it, but there seems to be a small Temporal Storms Require a Fight mod which allows to reduce storm duration by killing monsters, with a pretty flexible config, if you're interested. There were also at least two other ones that did the same and some other things on top, but they seem to be outdated and less stable.

Personally, though, I would be interested to see the storms actually much longer and impossible to shorten or skip completely, but with much weaker adverse effects for most of their duration, making it so that the player would be able to stay outside without too much risk and enjoy the audio and visual effects of the storms (which could use some improvements, but that's another point). They would just have to stay careful and watch out for signs of imminent extreme rift activity spikes, and hide or fight for a much shorter duration during these intense but brief storm phenomena.

I haven't actually, I'm not much into mods because of how often they seem to trivialize certain aspects of the game, or become overly centralizing. I may look into it though, just to see how it feels. It might inspire more ideas about how Storms work.

I like your ideas about storms, but I don't think it would change anything fundamental about them. I agree that the simplicity of mob behavior causes some strategies to work too well, aka farms and such, but I think it directly goes back to some things you bring up here. I've spoken about it in another thread, but the majority of mobs in this game follow the same code of "pathfind to player and melee attack", making swarming the player with high numbers of mobs the easiest way to overwhelm them. If different mob AI behaviors could be programmed in, maybe enemies could be made tougher without increasing their numbers to a ridiculous degree, meaning you could have periods of panic and periods of calm during storms instead of just one overly long kiting fight. I think that the monster spawning rules changing during storms is a game design mistake, and would instead like to see areas where many rifts open and enemies spawn specifically near them, rather than just about anywhere.

 

Ultimately, I don't think hiding can be discouraged without punishing the player, and I don't think that loot for storms should reach the point where the hiders come out, because the real problem is with participating usually being a negative outcome for the player. Until that changes, players will continue to enter the feedback loop of Temporal Storms removing their food buffs just to die, and then hide/skip them. 

Edited January 9 by The Lerf

[MKMoose]

3 hours ago, The Lerf said:

One thing that I do want to say though (bringing it back to Minecraft), is that if it wasn't already in the game, the Creeper would never be added with the modern mindset of Mojang/Microsoft. Because it's a similar idea of a mob that can damage player placed blocks and kind of has to be considered and engaged with. And I don't think there's nearly any pushback against the Creeper in the Minecraft community calling for it's removal. I get the sentiment behind 'don't mess with the player's creation', but I think that forgetting 'the player can and should creatively use countermeasures' understates the influence that the Creeper had on Minecraft's development and community.

That's a nice point. I would say that the reason the Creeper still works decently well has a lot to do with it being very satisfying to kill (rush of dopamine and then relief) and serving as a challenge of sorts, which reinforces skill and game mastery. You can get this from storms to some extent as well, but the whole thing lasting upwards of 9 minutes once it ramps up just gets tedious and drowns out that positive reinforcement. Additionally, the Creeper is fairly easy to keep away due to much more generous monster spawn protection than VS offers - I genuinely don't remember the last time I had a Creeper blow up anywhere near my house, while drifters are constantly in my face at night until I invest into a bunch of lanterns.

The Phantom, for contrast, is quite widely disliked throughout the community, because it's annoying to fight, it's not a challenge or a test of skill, it comes in uninvited even in areas otherwise safe from mobs, and tends to be just overall inconvenient and disruptive. The negative end effect of Phantoms is ultimately rather minimal compared to Creepers, but player sentiment is influenced in many other ways as well. Tyron has said they don't want to permanently modify blocks, but I wouldn't rule out other mechanics that aim to achieve similar effects in different ways.

 

3 hours ago, The Lerf said:

I get the sentiment behind 'don't mess with the player's creation', but I think that forgetting 'the player can and should creatively use countermeasures' understates the influence that the Creeper had on Minecraft's development and community. And personally, I think it's a stance that's way too risk-averse for VS, that markets itself as a uncompromising, hardcore survival game before as a homesteading one. I would argue that there aren't that many instances of consequences in VS. From what I can think of, is losing your satiation/total health points on death, or losing your dropped inventory to the despawn timer, or not having a spare hammer and getting sent back to the copper age, or losing your domesticated animals to predators/lighting. And this form of loss is what I want to focus in on, because it's so similar to having a creeper blow up your walls. It demands the player prepare with fences or a lightning rod, or potentially suffer losses. Should predator attacks be removed from the game? Or why is that acceptable, but a monster doing the same isn't?

I can generally agree that the player should have countermeasures to use and face some risks for not using them, although I would also say that the countermeasures should ideally be intuitive and reasonably accessible, as well as effective enough to be preferred over cheese and other less immersive solutions. Fences specifically are a very good example, because they are the simple and obvious solution to keep livestock in and keep predators out, they are reasonably cheap and easy to make, and they are deliberately made somewhat gamey and not realistic to reduce the incentives of double fences, dirt walls or similar workarounds.

I think that it's borderline impossible to punish the player in a way that somehow ends up making them enjoy fighting the storm. Unclear or weaker consequences (e.g. breaking blocks in a purely cosmetic way) that aren't seen as severe enough to warrant the risk and effort of fighting the storm may not even make the player attempt it in spite of the added maintenance. I just don't see how it would be beneficial to make the player engage more with storms, which they already often don't want to do, by making sitting them out in a hideout even less appealing than it is now - as I see it, it would easily end up highly discouraging instead.

 

3 hours ago, The Lerf said:

Listen, I'm gonna play a card here that's kind of hypothetical, should a player who ignored the coming winter not suffer any consequences? We could be having a discussion about how there's not enough animals spawning during winter, and players would like to be able to hunt to survive it easier.

That's a pretty good point. I think the main counterargument to it lies in that while winter does require the player to prepare, it doesn't significantly limit what the player can do once they make at least basic preparations. It's like if storms lasted many in-game days but only caused rare and fairly weak monster spawns (a bit like what we have with rift activity), which would generally make the player prepare armor and weapons for it, but without heavily restricting what they can do over its duration. As it stands now, temporal storms make it nearly impossible to do anything in open spaces besides combat, even in the late game with steel gear, which is much more limiting than the reduced resource availability in winter. By adding consequences to ignoring storms, you might end up forcing the player into combat to the point where even the optimal solution that prevents greater consequences would often feel like punishment, just because the player would feel like they have to do it.

 

Also, last note, keep in mind that merely adding an incentive to go out into the storms makes hiding less desirable through opportunity cost, reducing the need for other consequences. I'll see if I can comment on some other things later if I think them through.

Edited January 10 by MKMoose

[CastIronFabric]

On 1/6/2026 at 12:30 PM, PoisonedPawn777 said:

Everything you've said that you want from the game is fairly easily configurable on a standard world setup. There's really no need for a specific game mode. You can already start a world that has story elements, traders, ruins and underground mob spawns without temporal storms, surface spawns and temporal stability (each of which can be toggled on/off separately).

I think it's fair to have a discussion on how temporal storms and spawns can be improved to provide a better experience to the player, but those who dislike the features entirely do have the option of removing them without removing other aspects of the game they might enjoy.

there are two setting I would add to this game and call it done (settings wise)

1. add 'provoked' to creature hostility. Currently on 'passive' monsters will not attack you no matter how much you attack them. Currently you can go all the way to the mantle find or make a huge cave and just kill all the monsters you want with a flint knife if you want. 'Provoked' would make them start to attack you within a given radius of the strike you made, until you leave the same radius.

2. Hostiles, rift and storms can spawn on your deed or not spawn on your deed. I would also add a mechanic in the game to create deeds that involves a little less obscurity.

Now these settings does not solve peoples concerns about the Temporal Storm actual mechanics, but setting wise I think those are the only two settings left that would make the settings question complete in it totality.

 

[Metalton]

On 1/1/2026 at 11:38 PM, nougsoc said:

Or the the glitch effect could be upped drastically to make you almost blind the environment around you, but only in intense, heavy storms

Just popped in to mention there already is a slider in options to up (or lower) temporal distortion effects.. Usually play with it maxed, ship really gets a-rockin' in heavy storms

[BabaTheFool]

On 1/2/2026 at 12:33 PM, LadyWYT said:

If you've not tried it already, I highly recommend Temporal Symphony. That mod changes the text warnings into immersive visuals and sounds, which makes the storms much spookier in my opinion. The cues aren't easy to miss, but you do need to pay attention as there will be no text warning to check in the message box. https://mods.vintagestory.at/temporalsymphony

This mod sounds really fun and I'm definitely adding it to my mod list.