1.22.0-pre.1 - Fishing, Mechanisms, Metalworking and More!

[Vratislav]

5 minutes ago, MKMoose said:

Assuming no damage modifiers, pigs now take 5 thrown flint spears, up from 4. Both surface drifters and bowtorn take 4 thrown flint spears, up from 3. In order to two-tap a surface bowtorn, you need at least a tin bronze spear,

Then I am sorry, I miscalculated. Yeah, now I remember, that bowtorn took 2 thrown spears and then I finished him with hunting and repeated poking I did not count. For one shooting guy, it works.

[Vratislav]

13 minutes ago, MKMoose said:

This makes the thrown spears not as bad as they would be otherwise, but is also an indirect buff for all other weapons in that damage range.

I think this is quite good balancing change that simply says that stone spears are kept usable for hunting small animals. As melee weapon in early game (club) is still weaker.

[Cetasaya]

The devlog for this update has over 100,000 views.  The second highest (that I saw) had just over 50,000.  Most barely crack 5000.  And posts announcing the stable version have the overwhelimingly large majority of views and this update is just the first pre-release for 1.22.  Vintage Story is STILL exploding in popularity.  It's in the middle of exploding and the explosion isnt slowing down, it's accelerating.  Almost DOUBLING the previous record is crazy.

Also the content shown here is absolutely brilliant and my god is the post the longest list of features ever added to a game this side of Terraria.

It goes on and on and on and on.  These 20 people are unreal.

Edited Saturday at 02:04 PM by Cetasaya

[LadyWYT]

5 hours ago, Vratislav said:

Trader's outposts (I have found only two building material guys) are nice and stylish. As they are "permanent" now, they would be good improvement if they did not generate in the middle of dense forests, as having the store hidden does not look like good business strategy.

I dunno, I would say it makes some sense. Building out on the open plains leaves the trader a clear field of vision to spot incoming threats, human or otherwise, but it also makes them quite easy to spot as well. I'm not sure exactly how monsters detect humans and seraphs, but they might have a harder time locating targets in a forest. Likewise, the forest provides lots of easy firewood and foraged food, if one knows where to look.

When it comes to threats like outlaws...that's a threat I would expect to be more around a proper settlement, but while the world may be lacking in population, it's realistically not out of the question that there could be a roving band or two out there that would absolutely take advantage of a solitary trader.

[Vratislav]

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

Building out on the open plains leaves the trader a clear field of vision to spot incoming threats, human or otherwise, but it also makes them quite easy to spot as well.

This is good point. I would not mind to have traders settle in a forested area, still, I'd assume rational to have clearance like 10 blocks around, at least to provide to the trader clear view when attacked. Only not to be hidden in the densest shrubs //media.invisioncic.com/r268468/emoticons/smile.png . 

[LadyWYT]

2 minutes ago, Vratislav said:

This is good point. I would not mind to have traders settle in a forested area, still, I'd assume rational to have clearance like 10 blocks around, at least to provide to the trader clear view when attacked. Only not to be hidden in the densest shrubs //media.invisioncic.com/r268468/emoticons/smile.png . 

Oh yeah, for sure. If the trader outpost is sitting in the middle of the bushes, it really ought to be a ruined outpost. I don't know that we'll get ruined outposts, but it would be an interesting rare find, similar to the ruined villages you can sometimes encounter in Minecraft. Except in the case of Vintage Story, there could be little clues scattered about the build that hint at what may have destroyed the outpost.

[Dark Thoughts]

2 hours ago, Cetasaya said:

The devlog for this update has over 100,000 views.  The second highest (that I saw) had just over 50,000.  Most barely crack 5000.  And posts announcing the stable version have the overwhelimingly large majority of views and this update is just the first pre-release for 1.22.  Vintage Story is STILL exploding in popularity.  It's in the middle of exploding and the explosion isnt slowing down, it's accelerating.  Almost DOUBLING the previous record is crazy.

Also the content shown here is absolutely brilliant and my god is the post the longest list of features ever added to a game this side of Terraria.

It goes on and on and on and on.  These 20 people are unreal.

This unironically may be thanks to Hytale. I've seen a lot of people talk about VS since Hytale gets a lot of MC comparisons, so now people who missed VS start to hear about it more and more. And since Hytale gets stale after a few hours they may look into other voxel games that aren't MC.

[Thorfinn]

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Oh yeah, for sure. If the trader outpost is sitting in the middle of the bushes, it really ought to be a ruined outpost. I don't know that we'll get ruined outposts, but it would be an interesting rare find,

Aren't they all ruined outposts? They look ruined, and there's no trader, though there's something like a scarecrow, and the sound of the trader, and a notice about his wares that doesn't seem to do anything.

[LadyWYT]

4 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Aren't they all ruined outposts? They look ruined, and there's no trader, though there's something like a scarecrow, and the sound of the trader, and a notice about his wares that doesn't seem to do anything.

Nope! Look for a trapdoor. Some traders have their living quarters underground.

[pigfood]

IMO, the nerf to ranged spear damage is completely unreasonable. In 1.21.6 tin bronze spears do 7.5 ranged damage. In 1.22 steel spears do 6.2 ranged damage.

IMO, given limited inventory size, ranged attackers, enemies with erratic movements and wonky hit-boxes, spears weren't overpowered at all, even playing as a hunter.

Why would anyone play the hunter class in 1.22 given the large melee debuff? As far as I can tell, the correct choice in 1.22 is playing blackguard. Otherwise, people are massively gimping themselves whenever it comes to combat.

Edited yesterday at 11:58 AM by pigfood

[Saraty]

On 2/6/2026 at 1:07 AM, MKMoose said:

Thrown spears were kind of gutted. Here's a couple notes:

• flint spears at 3.25 damage (down from 5) can still at least one-tap small fish, chickens and hares,
• tin bronze at 5.25 damage (down from 7.5) is the first tier to one-shot common 5 HP targets (foxes and raccoons; on the current stable flint can do it) as well as three-tap common 15 HP targets (wolves and pigs; on the current stable copper can do it, while black bronze can two-tap),
• steel spears at 6.2 damage have lower damage than a bow with steel arrows,
• you can still easily throw more than two spears per second,
• I think they also had their accuracy adjusted, which would mean that you'll have to charge them longer for long distance throws (~0.59 s for optimal accuracy, up from 0.35 s), though it's less significant for short-range use,
• steel spear melee damage is as expected but still unimpressive at 4.4, with roughly the same increase over bronze as falxes have,
• durablity is much lower than falxes, and increases slower with tiers (steel spears only have 700, compared to steel falx's 2125),
• note: the damage of erel, ruined, hacking and ornate spears seems to not have been touched yet.

Spears are now much weaker than they used to be despite the addition of new metal tiers. Arguably the biggest nerfs were done on the Stone Age tier, where spears are the primary available weapon. They can still be decent due to range and raw DPS against bears or something, but I think overall the changes are a net negative for the game as a whole.

I honestly think this is kind of backwards. The spears' charge time could be increased to a second or higher, but instead their damage should be kept at least as it used to be. As it stands, this only further reinforces one of the most common complaints about VS combat - that it feels spammy and weightless.

 

The long claws and antlers of sorts honestly make me think of a Leshy. If it's a rotbeast or other monster, then I would love if it could stalk the player. That said, I could see it just being a regular shiver mid-transformation, or something like that.

Tyron has said in Elvas' most recent devstream that something related to combat will be coming "soon". Dunno if he meant the changes to spears and other adjustments in this prerelease, or something bigger on the horizon.

Yea I agree, spear changes are too drastic. They will most likely be adjusted.

[MKMoose]

1 hour ago, Saraty said:

Yea I agree, spear changes are too drastic. They will most likely be adjusted.

Just a small note: that quote of mine isn't fully accurate, because I initially neglected that the HP of some small animals was reduced (foxes and raccoons from 6 down to 5, hares from 5 to 3, chickens from 3 to 2.5). As a whole, breakpoints for most of the small animals are the same or very similar, and the changes overall have the most impact on fighting high-tier rotbeasts and large animals, especially bears, which can now take many more thrown spears. While this doesn't change my conclusions too much as I still think making spear throws powerful but less frequent should be the way to go, I would correct that quote to something more like this:

Quote

• flint spears at 3.25 damage (down from 5) can still one-tap chickens and hares just like on stable, but struggle with medium and larger fish that tend to have 4 or 6 HP,
• tin bronze at 5.25 damage (down from 7.5) achieves very strong breakpoints for common targets with multiples of 5 HP (foxes, raccoons, surface bowtorn, wolves and pigs) making it unexpectedly powerful compared to copper, though for these specific targets the breakpoints are actually the same as on the current stable; adjusting this might be done by tweaking the health of some of these targets, and not necessarily through further changes to spears,
• steel spears at 6.2 damage have lower damage than a bow with steel arrows, and significantly lower damage than bronze spears on the current stable,
• overall, breakpoints for small and medium targets haven't changed too much, but the nerf can be felt when fighting high-tier rotbeasts and larger animals like bears,
• you can still easily throw more than two spears per second,
• spears have also had their accuracy adjusted to focus the projectile spread slower, so you'll have to charge them longer for accurate long distance throws (~0.59 s for optimal accuracy, up from 0.35 s), though it's less significant for short-range use,
• steel spear melee damage is roughly as expected at 4.4, with a very similar damage increase over bronze to what falxes get,
• durablity has already been already much lower than falxes for bronze, and increases slower with iron and steel (steel spears only have 700, compared to steel falx's 2125); while I'm not sure that this should be changed unless something like more advanced tool handles get added, it is nonetheless a notable balance factor,
• note: the damage of erel, ruined, hacking and ornate spears seems to not have been touched yet.

Spears are now generally weaker than they used to be despite the addition of new metal tiers. Their breakpoints against small targets remain similar and raw DPS in cases where aiming doesn't matter can still be decent, but I think overall the changes took the wrong direction in some capacity. I think the spears' charge time could be increased to a second or higher, but instead their damage should be kept at least as it used to be. As it stands, this further reinforces one of the most common complaints about VS combat - that it feels spammy and weightless.

While it's not tightly related to spear balancing, the reduction to small animals' health does also mean that spear melee damage and weapons other than spears have been buffed indirectly, though the change doesn't seem particularly significant to me. It mostly means that:

• bows with iron or better arrows, as well as meteoric iron and steel falxes, can now one-tap raccoons and foxes,
• a large number of weapons can now pretty easily one-tap hares (which spears could do with a single throw anyways, now they can also do it in melee starting from bronze).

Edited yesterday at 01:44 PM by MKMoose
Mention indirect buffs due to health reductions.

[DejFidOFF]

So buggy.. You cant even connect to ModDB to download mods.. when some are on the server

[Gaelyn]

On 2/5/2026 at 5:58 PM, Tyron said:

Fixed z-fighting on sloped (main) roof segments

This is a bug that I personally reported. The fact that it then got fixed in the very next version of the game makes me feel extra good about having taken the time to file a bug report for it instead of assuming someone else would do it.

[VaelophisNyx]

Bummed about the spear nerf

you don't have to make 'em terrible to let them progress past bronze...

[PineReseen]

This is looking great! More mushrooms and better fish is always welcome.

I hope we'll get ushanka-like hats or something like that from racoon or fox hide, that'd be amazing!

[TeaJay]

For some reason, in the 1.22.0-pre1 patch my game lags a lot every time I try to drag some items across the crafting grid. Can anyone test this too? I turned on the FPS meter and there's always big lag spikes and FPS drops when I do that, be it stones, dirt blocks or whatever. 

e: tested on 1.21.6 stable, there's some slight lag there too but nothing this magnitude.

There's a lag spike also when chopping down firewood in the grid, so maybe the grid is causing the slowdowns somehow. 

 

 

Edited 22 hours ago by TeaJay

[MKMoose]

24 minutes ago, PineReseen said:

I hope we'll get ushanka-like hats or something like that from racoon or fox hide, that'd be amazing!

They're in the changelog and implemented in the game, but not craftable at the moment due to a bug.

[LadyWYT]

8 hours ago, Saraty said:

Yea I agree, spear changes are too drastic. They will most likely be adjusted.

 

8 hours ago, MKMoose said:

While it's not tightly related to spear balancing, the reduction to small animals' health does also mean that spear melee damage and weapons other than spears have been buffed indirectly, though the change doesn't seem particularly significant to me. It mostly means that:

Just throwing my two cents' worth in here, but the spear readjustment hasn't really felt too bad to me as a Blackguard, for either ranged damage or melee damage. The reduction to small animals' health definitely makes the melee attack feel stronger, while the ranged attack feels about the same.

Granted, bumping the ranged damage up a bit probably wouldn't hurt either, but personally, I'm not sure that steel spears should be as good as the black bronze spears of 1.21. Doing around 8 damage per hit at range(excluding buffs/debuffs) is quite strong. The spear does need to hit the target to do the damage, but...it's easy to hit targets at short range and 8 points of damage is a lot more than even a steel falx can dish out(and you have to put yourself at more risk by getting close to the target to do that damage). In my opinion, spears are the middle ground between ranged and melee, since they're the only weapon that can serve in both categories. Spears shouldn't be insufficient for either job, but they shouldn't outclass falxs for melee damage, especially since the spear has a longer reach. Likewise, the spear shouldn't easily outclass the bow when it comes to ranged damage, because the bow can't be effectively used in melee while the spear can.

Basically, the spear strikes me as the jack of all trades, but master of none. It's a great choice for an all-around weapon for players who don't want to carry multiple weapon types, but it shouldn't be so strong that it becomes the choice every player picks for every scenario.

Edit: Crunching a few more numbers, but...

Assuming I did my math correctly(this time)...a black bronze spear for a Blackguard will do 6.8 damage when thrown, while the steel falx will do 6.89 damage per hit. The only other classes to get ranged penalties are Malefactor and Clockmaker; both have -25% to range, but since the spear is a shorter range weapon it's not much of a setback and no damage is lost so they will be doing 8 damage per spear throw. Hunter, however, will do a whopping 9.6 damage per spear throw thanks to their ranged damage bonus, in addition to being able to throw said spear farther and with greater accuracy than any other class. They also have faster movement to make chasing down or running away from targets easier, in addition to other bonuses that remain strong throughout the game, with mostly negligible drawbacks. With a steel falx, they'll still deal 4.5 damage per hit.

Just to be clear, this isn't a call to nerf or buff particular classes. But those numbers are why I think 8 ranged damage even for a high tier spear is a bit much. Like I said before, I'd rather see the spear be a solid general purpose weapon but not the best pick, than have specific classes get nerfed or buffed.

Edited 21 hours ago by LadyWYT

[MKMoose]

4 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Just throwing my two cents' worth in here, but the spear readjustment hasn't really felt too bad to me as a Blackguard, for either ranged damage or melee damage. The reduction to small animals' health definitely makes the melee attack feel stronger, while the ranged attack feels about the same.

Well, in pre.1 melee has barely changed for most targets, while ranged is only really notably worse for some rotbeasts and large animals. Once it turned out that they had also reduced the health of small animals, the changes haven't been too bad anymore. One potential issue now is that bronze offers an arguably excessively large effective damage boost over copper as it hits better breakpoints on five common targets that have a multiple of 5 HP.

That said, here's a fun thing: they've doubled the spear's windup time in pre.2, so they are now slower than bows. I'd argue it's a good change in terms of design, but it's nonetheless a pretty large nerf. I don't doubt that spears' balance will be evaluated and further tweaked as needed before 1.22 hits stable, and I'm somewhat wondering if they're nerfing them further now to see how much is too much and whether there's actually a need to bring the damage back up.

 

4 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Basically, the spear strikes me as the jack of all trades, but master of none. It's a great choice for an all-around weapon for players who don't want to carry multiple weapon types, but it shouldn't be so strong that it becomes the choice every player picks for every scenario.

That's a pretty good way to look at it, and, coincidentally or not, it's even quite realistic with the caveat of range in which spears excel. In melee, spears are rather well-designed in that they have low damage and poor durability, which makes the falx outright better whenever range doesn't matter. Ranged combat is a bit more finnicky to balance in its current state, though.

My personal thought is that spears should be capable of dealing ~8 damage, maybe even ~10 on the steel tier, but in exchange for being more difficult to throw effectively. In the current stable throwing is basically the default choice in many contexts (and is also made unreasonably good due to a double-hit issue that greatly increases damage), and while a ranged damage nerf has made melee more viable, it may also easily make throwing very unrewarding against anything that doesn't die in at most three hits due to the need to carry a large number of spears to achieve reasonable total damage before having to retrieve all of them.

For related reasons (make throwing less universally good, even if it has high damage) spears should ideally also be more risky to throw at short range, potentially done through further penalties to drawing a ranged weapon while running. It would allow to further differentiate melee and throwing between each other and potentially make throwing into a high-risk high-reward play even more so than it is now. Increased windup time largely seems to achieve that, but I'll have to play with it more to see how it feels.

For balance against bows, spears could be made more sluggish and heavy to make throwing them more optimal at close-to-mid-range (while keeping in mind that throwing shouldn't be preferable at point-blank), while bows could have increased projectile velocity to be preferable at longer ranges, especially for the bowtorn and for hunting more easily spooked animals like deer.

All that said, these are general ideas and suggestions and not concrete recommendations, so I'll be especially interested to hear more opinions on the doubled windup time and on where spears should go from there.

Edited 19 hours ago by MKMoose

[LadyWYT]

2 minutes ago, MKMoose said:

Well, in pre.1 melee has barely changed for most targets, while ranged is only really notably worse for some rotbeasts and large animals. Once it turned out that they had also reduced the health of small animals, the changes haven't been too bad anymore. One potential issue now is that bronze offers an arguably excessively large effective damage boost over copper as it hits better breakpoints on five common targets that have a multiple of 5 HP.

That said, here's a fun thing: they've doubled the spear's windup time in pre.2, so they are now slower than bows. I'd argue it's a good change in terms of design, but it's nonetheless a pretty large nerf which I may or may not be partly responsible for. I don't doubt that spears' balance will be evaluated and further tweaked as needed before 1.22 hits stable, and I'm somewhat wondering if they're nerfing them further now to see how much is too much and whether there's actually a need to bring the damage back up.

Oh yeah for sure. I didn't really think the spears were that OP in previous versions, but after doing the math...well...it says quite a lot when the best weapon for the class that's supposed to be weak at ranged combat is a ranged weapon. 

I have noticed the spear's longer windup and I do agree that's a good change, as that will help balance the spear against the bow. I don't know that I expect the spear to get nerfed further, as that would definitely be too much and there have already been several complaints about the current change. While the current damage feels fine to me, I think it could be bumped up to 6.5-7 ranged damage for the steel spear. Melee damage...maybe 4.5?

8 minutes ago, MKMoose said:

My personal thought is that spears should be capable of dealing ~8 damage, maybe even ~10 on the steel tier, but in exchange for being more difficult to throw effectively. In the current stable throwing is basically the default choice in many contexts (and is also made unreasonably good due to a double-hit issue that greatly increases damage), and while a ranged damage nerf has made melee more viable, it may also easily make throwing very unrewarding against anything that doesn't die in at most three hits due to the need to carry a large number of spears to achieve reasonable total damage before having to retrieve all of them.

For related reasons (make throwing less universally good, even if it has high damage) spears should ideally also be more risky to throw at short range, potentially done through further penalties to drawing a ranged weapon while running. It would allow to further differentiate melee and throwing between each other and potentially make throwing into a high-risk high-reward play even more so than it is now. Increased windup time largely seems to achieve that, but I'll have to play with it more to see how it feels.

 Maybe make some sort of minimum effective range for the spear? In that as a heavy projectile, it has to actually have the momentum behind it to be at its most effective. Kind of like how if you're going to get kicked by a horse, you want to be standing closer to the horse's butt and not be at the maximum range of the hoof. It's still going to hurt either way when you get kicked, but it'll hurt much less if the hoof hasn't had time to build momentum. Of course, maybe that isn't the best analogy, but it's the only one that comes to mind at the moment. 

 

11 minutes ago, MKMoose said:

For balance against bows, spears could be made more sluggish and heavy to make throwing them more optimal at close-to-mid-range (while keeping in mind that throwing shouldn't be preferable at point-blank), while bows could have increased projectile velocity to be preferable at longer ranges, especially for the bowtorn and for hunting more easily spooked animals like deer.

This is pretty much already how they work, I think, save for the numbers being off. What I'm looking forward to with the new balanced, is playing around with the spear as a main weapon and using a spear or two to soften up tougher incoming enemies before finishing them off with a quick jab or two. Also--poking enemies to death in holes underground. There's been several times that I've encountered small drop-offs with enemies at the bottom, and lamented the lack of a good poking stick to poke at them from a safe perch.

[LadyWYT]

@MKMoose One thing I haven't seen mentioned yet in the spear discussion--spearpoints can be tempered and quenched to boost durability and damage. Obviously there's some risk involved for players who push the limits, but it looks like the first quench is risk-free while offering the biggest boost. How big that boost is, I'm not sure, but I'm guessing that it might boost a steel spear's damage up to 6.5-7 for ranged damage, with the potential to go higher with further quenching(8 maybe, or perhaps even higher than that). 

Arrows, on the other hand, can't be tempered or quenched, giving spears quite an advantage when it comes to ranged damage potential, especially if spearpoints can be sharpened at the grindstone for crit bonuses as well. The bow would still take fewer inventory slots and be faster to fire, but I'm not sure that the faster fire rate would make up for the lack of quenching and sharpening.

[Guimoute]

I think kids are coming to Nadiya in 1.22. That's how I interpret this doll in the image showcasing cabinets.

[VaelophisNyx]

hang on, how do you cool a tool head to use it Without breaking it now? Is it seriously just "wait 10 hours for it to cool in your pocket"??

[LadyWYT]

7 minutes ago, VaelophisNyx said:

hang on, how do you cool a tool head to use it Without breaking it now? Is it seriously just "wait 10 hours for it to cool in your pocket"??

Try sticking it into a barrel of water, or toss it into a water source to cool it off. I think that's how the quenching is supposed to work, though I've not messed around with that mechanic yet.