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

[VaelophisNyx]

Just now, LadyWYT said:

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.

per the patch notes, both of those risk breaking the hot item

[LadyWYT]

1 minute ago, VaelophisNyx said:

per the patch notes, both of those risk breaking the hot item

Right, but from what I've heard the first quench is basically no risk. The player can continue working the item indefinitely to keep increasing the stats, but the returns diminish and the breakage chance increases for each additional quenching attempt.

Basically, there's a sweet spot in there somewhere, but the breakage risk is there, I think, to keep players from just pushing every tool to the absolute maximum with little effort.

[TFT]

51 minutes ago, VaelophisNyx said:

per the patch notes, both of those risk breaking the hot item

Only if you push it with repeated quenchings. There's no percentage chance on the tool before you cool it so it's zero risk. And if you are still worried about that then you can work the tool below 800 C which is the start of the temperature range for quenching and applying bonuses/shatter chance. You'll have a completely normal tool head.

[MKMoose]

3 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

One thing I haven't seen mentioned yet in the spear discussion--spearpoints can be tempered and quenched to boost durability and damage.

First quenching increases damage by 10%, which means that steel spears get 6.82 for free (not sure about rounding). Spear durability is already better than arrows, but ultimately doesn't matter much. Keep in mind you can do the same to a falx. It is a significant balance factor that I did admittedly kinda neglect, though it can only be done on ferrous metals, while spear balance discussions often focus on flint and early metals which is where spears will likely continue to see by far the most use.

 

3 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

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.

Only blades can be sharpened at the moment, that is swords and falxes, but I'd expect the mechanic to be more developed in the future, so I wouldn't want to say too much about it specifically.

I'd argue it should be possible to quench and temper arrowheads, but if not then it will make them effectively a bit weaker, true.

[Dilan Rona]

I find it hilarious how the boars suddenly go into Warp 6, and learned how to fly, and teleport so far away that they are gone with the wind within 2 seconds of you trying to hunt them.

[Nyarra]

The sheer number of changes, including the commitment to making modding even more lightweight and easy is a breath of fresh air. I know not much of it is "adding" any progression, but it's all the little things which really add up and are sadly overlooked by too many games these days.

[TeaJay]

What's the deal with food bowls burning you now and needing tongs? Intended change? Placeholder for something that's not quite as dumb as lifting a bowl with tongs?

[Dilan Rona]

Bowls with hot food (over 100 deg celcius) are too hot to handle with the hands now. It works normally once the temperature gets around 90 deg celcius and below

Edited 10 hours ago by Dilan Rona

[Vratislav]

24 minutes ago, Dilan Rona said:

I find it hilarious how the boars suddenly go into Warp 6, and learned how to fly, and teleport so far away that they are gone with the wind within 2 seconds of you trying to hunt them.

They can also glitch through walls now!

[Vratislav]

Did you anybody managed to process the animal fat? I have melted it, but cannot get it from the pot.

[Vratislav]

Still thinking about spears.

Maybe if the high tier spears damage was capped just above bronze, and pikes as a higher tier multi-use weapon were introduced.

They would work a bit differently (longer melee reach and shorter throwing distance), and they would be gated behind saw, requiring to make special bar, similarly as for bows. This way, early game balance would be kept, and for the mid- to later game we would have something stronger but also more demanding to produce.

[Brady_The]

17 minutes ago, Vratislav said:

they would be gated behind saw, requiring to make special bar,

That's a very interesting idea and would certainly add to the feeling of progression, while still being reasonably authentic in my opinion. If you spend all these resources on making high-tier metal heads, you certainly would want the weapon to be stable and reliable. Attributes I wouldn't necessarily apply to sticks.

Edited 9 hours ago by Brady_The

[Dark Thoughts]

3 hours ago, Dilan Rona said:

Bowls with hot food (over 100 deg celcius) are too hot to handle with the hands now. It works normally once the temperature gets around 90 deg celcius and below

Just let me carve a spoon to eat directly out of the pot. That's how I do it in real life too. Have a base time and add a decreased speed modifier based on temperature instead.

[LadyWYT]

6 hours ago, Dilan Rona said:

I find it hilarious how the boars suddenly go into Warp 6, and learned how to fly, and teleport so far away that they are gone with the wind within 2 seconds of you trying to hunt them.

Has been fixed in pre2, though it was a rather funny bug.

 

6 hours ago, Vratislav said:

Did you anybody managed to process the animal fat? I have melted it, but cannot get it from the pot.

Apparently it's possible to use a bucket to retrieve it, but yeah...not the most intuitive way to get it based on the handbook.

 

6 hours ago, TeaJay said:

What's the deal with food bowls burning you now and needing tongs? Intended change? Placeholder for something that's not quite as dumb as lifting a bowl with tongs?

I'm not sure if the change is intended or not, but given that the food is boiling hot when it finishes cooking, it does make sense to let it cool down first before trying to eat it. I've chalked it up as a similar situation to seraphs being able to hold blazing hot crucibles in their bare hands once upon a time.

[Ravensblade]

2 hours ago, Dark Thoughts said:

Just let me carve a spoon to eat directly out of the pot. That's how I do it in real life too. Have a base time and add a decreased speed modifier based on temperature instead.

I think it's general problem how fuel temperature works. A firewood and fireplace go to 700 degrees - something a fireplace for cooking never would achieve. And that causes food to also heat to ridiculous temperatures - a stew at over 300 degrees would be called coal, and good luck warming soup over 100 degrees and it still being soup.

Whole cooking would need to be reworked, ideally so we can convert temperature to time. A option would be to make actual stoves/fireplaces for cooking that use at different speed but achieve lower temperatures.

[williams_482]

5 hours ago, Vratislav said:

Still thinking about spears.

Maybe if the high tier spears damage was capped just above bronze, and pikes as a higher tier multi-use weapon were introduced.

They would work a bit differently (longer melee reach and shorter throwing distance), and they would be gated behind saw, requiring to make special bar, similarly as for bows. This way, early game balance would be kept, and for the mid- to later game we would have something stronger but also more demanding to produce.

Using a pike as a personal weapon wouldn't be very realistic. In the real world pikes are much to long and clumsy to be practical outside of the dense formations they were designed for. Something like a halberd or a glaive is slightly more practical, but still dangerously awkward. These weapons mostly existed for use in formation against mounted opponents, nothing like the individual duels or "one against the world" melees that dominate combat in Vintage Story and similar games. 

Broadly speaking: if the combatants are heavily armored then someone with a shorter weapon better at defeating armor (like a warhammer) is going to be difficult to stop before they close to a range where a halberd is useless, while in a lighter armor context, the shield + one handed spear combo is much better defensively while retaining plenty of reach and damage. 

[LadyWYT]

13 minutes ago, Ravensblade said:

I think it's general problem how fuel temperature works. A firewood and fireplace go to 700 degrees - something a fireplace for cooking never would achieve.

I somewhat agree, however...wood that is burning will get very hot. This is probably an overly simple explanation, but I think lower heat tends to be more ideal for a lot of cooking, since lower heat cooks the food more evenly. High heat risks cooking the outside before the inside, which can be ideal for some dishes but not all. I also think the cookware itself places a pretty important role, in that it does absorb heat from the fire while also acting as a sort of insulator so whatever's inside isn't getting too hot.

Or at least, that's the explanation that comes to my mind.

10 minutes ago, williams_482 said:

Using a pike as a personal weapon wouldn't be very realistic. In the real world pikes are much to long and clumsy to be practical outside of the dense formations they were designed for. Something like a halberd or a glaive is slightly more practical, but still dangerously awkward. These weapons mostly existed for use in formation against mounted opponents, nothing like the individual duels or "one against the world" melees that dominate combat in Vintage Story and similar games. 

Broadly speaking: if the combatants are heavily armored then someone with a shorter weapon better at defeating armor (like a warhammer) is going to be difficult to stop before they close to a range where a halberd is useless, while in a lighter armor context, the shield + one handed spear combo is much better defensively while retaining plenty of reach and damage. 

Pretty much, however, a pike could have an interesting niche in caves or base defense--that is, situations that you're able to poke at enemies from safety.

Spear balance I'm still mulling over. I don't think they should hit as hard as they did in previous versions, as the math there seems just way too strong, especially when you start comparing character classes. The new spears do, however, have a much slower windup, which might be the primary balance factor, since in previous versions the spear could be thrown basically as fast as the bow could be fired.

Overall, I'm more inclined to say that spears and arrows should both be able to be quenched, tempered, and sharpened, with perhaps some limits on how many times the item can be tempered and quenched. The arrows seem like they should be easier to work with, especially since they're easier to lose in combat, or otherwise fire and forget about. A spear could potentially have higher damage per shot than a bow, but it seems fair to require a bit more smithing effort from the player to get a spear to that point, with the drawbacks of being an expensive loss if the player is unable to retrieve the spear, and the slow rate of fire making it more likely that the player really only gets one shot before the target closes the gap.

Either way, I'll definitely have to play around with it more, and potentially rope my hunter friend into helping test some things out. Spears shouldn't be so weak that they just wind up ignored by most players, but they shouldn't be so strong that they become the default weapon of choice for every situation either.

[TeaJay]

41 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

Apparently it's possible to use a bucket to retrieve it, but yeah...not the most intuitive way to get it based on the handbook.

 

The crafting recipe for the solified fat seems to be bugged right now, if you try to pick up the cooking pot with the hardened rendered fat, it just vanishes into thin air. I couldn't get it with a bowl or a bucket from the pot either. 

If you somehow have the fat in the bucket (as you spawn it), then you can ctrl+click it into the ground. But organically you can't, so it needs a fix. 

Regarding cooking: I know there are mods for it, but I'd really like if the logs wouldn't burn out quite as fast or that there was a "decorative" fire option. I like the feeling of having a fire going on in my house, but just keeping it going for a little while will take a full stack of firewood. 

Edited 3 hours ago by TeaJay

[LadyWYT]

3 minutes ago, TeaJay said:

The crafting recipe for the solified fat seems to be bugged right now, if you try to pick up the cooking pot with the hardened rendered fat, it just vanishes into thin air. I couldn't get it with a bowl or a bucket from the pot either. 

If you somehow have the fat in the bucket (as you spawn it), then you can ctrl+click it into the ground. But organically you can't, so it needs a fix. 

I did report the issue on the tracker, so it's definitely on the radar for now.

[williams_482]

I think spears should have higher ranged damage than comparable arrows (they've got a bigger pointy bit on the end and more weight behind it, even if they move a little slower) but throwing them at point blank range shouldn't be a better option than stabbing, and readying a thrown spear should probably be slower than nocking and drawing a fresh arrow. The niche of a thrown spear should be relatively high damage per hit at medium range, but lower practical DPS than equivalent arrows or melee attacks. 

Thrown spears being significantly more damage than stabbing spears is the weird quirk that makes balancing spears difficult. It seems like this damage boost for throwing is supposed to balance the downside that a thrown spear is no longer in hand and ready to be used again, but in practice that's not much of a problem because anyone planning to throw spears will cary several, and they can be thrown very quickly. 

I'm inclined to argue that spear throwing and spear stabbing damage should be the same or close to it. I'd balance it such that spear damage (thrown and held) is equal to or slightly better than a falx of the same material. Falxes should be updated to include an armor penetration ability, while rust monsters and mechanicals should be updated to have fewer hit points but some amount of innate armor of the same tier as their attack. This makes spears equivalent or arguably better at fighting animals, which is reasonable (spears are historically a very popular weapon for good reason), but the falx reigns supreme as the monster masher, in keeping with it's in-game description. 

[LadyWYT]

3 minutes ago, williams_482 said:

I'm inclined to argue that spear throwing and spear stabbing damage should be the same or close to it. I'd balance it such that spear damage (thrown and held) is equal to or slightly better than a falx of the same material. Falxes should be updated to include an armor penetration ability, while rust monsters and mechanicals should be updated to have fewer hit points but some amount of innate armor of the same tier as their attack. This makes spears equivalent or arguably better at fighting animals, which is reasonable (spears are historically a very popular weapon for good reason), but the falx reigns supreme as the monster masher, in keeping with it's in-game description. 

The main hurdle I see to making the damage the same, is that Blackguard and Hunter throw a wrench into that balance. If the melee damage is too high Blackguard will be too strong, since the extra reach makes it harder for a target to get away from a brawl. If the ranged damage is too low, then a lot of players are going to be upset, since I think more players tend to throw spears than use them in melee.

I do like this proposal though--it feels pretty fair. I would throw a quiver into the mix as well, with the idea being that the player can fit it with a poison capsule to soak their arrows in until they're fired. To my knowledge, poison loses effectiveness when it dries, and it's not really practical to try to poison a spear or sword in the middle of combat, nor is it always an option to poison the weapons right before a fight occurs.

[Dark Thoughts]

Another thing... If we add psilocybin mushrooms, then we should severely reduce the health damage of fly agaric too. Fly agaric has a long history for being used as a drug, and to eat enough to be lethal, you would have to shove more into your stomach than you could handle. You'd be vomiting your guts out long before that - and the same happens with psilocybin shrooms too btw, hence why you typically dry or even bake them to reduce that effect on your stomach.

[Vratislav]

3 hours ago, williams_482 said:

Using a pike as a personal weapon wouldn't be very realistic.

OK, I accept this explanation. I am not medieval weaponery expert, of course.

I was looking on it from a gameplay point of view, trying to figure out something useful from iron different way that adding damage points or nerfing lower tiers. So I went after longer reach as an extra advantage.