Thoughts on new fruits in handbook and linseed oil

[Facethief]

I’m really excited to see the first bits of the berry bush rework and the oil rework, despite the fact that most of their parts aren’t implemented as of yet. I especially find the plant debris item interesting, as it leads me to believe that berry bushes might have different propagation methods soon.

[LadyWYT]

I haven't really had a thorough look through the handbook yet, but I like the new berry models, as well as the concept of turning flax grain into seed oil for uses elsewhere.

[MKMoose]

1 hour ago, Facethief said:

I’m really excited to see the first bits of the berry bush rework

Boooi, I didn't even notice the new fruits initially. Beautyberry, blackberry, cloudberry, gooseberry, guava, kumquat, big num-num, raspberry, strawberry and cactus fruit. And they exist as items already, unlike potatoes which have only had shapes for a while but no implemented items. No new bushes or trees so far, though, so they're presumably coming at a later date.

One thing I kind of worry about is whether there's not too many of them. It's still got nothing on Wildcraft, but having 28 fruit types that barely differ between each other besides climate preferences seems a bit pointless to me. That's mainly because they can't be too common if they're a food source, so they'll probably just be small and fairly visible patches of bushes and solitary trees that stick out from the landscape more than they add variety to it.

 

1 hour ago, Facethief said:

I especially find the plant debris item interesting, as it leads me to believe that berry bushes might have different propagation methods soon.

To me the plant debris looks like it's just gonna drop from berry bushes (and potentially other stuff) when broken without an appropriate tool (maybe shovel). My biggest request is honestly just to never make me pick it up accidentally, because it looks like it's gonna have zero use except as fuel or compost. As long as that's fulfilled, I don't expect much from it, but it seems like a pretty good addition.

 

1 hour ago, Facethief said:

oil rework

Regarding oil, a lot depends on what they want to do with it. Linseed oil could be used as a lubricant, as protective coating for metal tools, or for oil lamps. Its production method is kinda weird. Olive oil can already be used for oil lamps, and realistically it's very commonly used culinarily, so maybe they're gonna try something there. It could cause a bunch of changes to progression by reducing demand for animal fat and increasing the usefulness of some plants, though I'm not sure how to feel about flax getting another use.

Edited February 10 by MKMoose

[LadyWYT]

12 minutes ago, MKMoose said:

That's mainly because they can't be too common if they're a food source

I do agree, but I think a bush rework may very well make berries a seasonal food item. That is, there may only be one or two crops of berries per year, depending on the species, and the different species will probably produce their crops at different times of the year as well. Thus it could be very possible to have lots of different species in one area, without being overpowered.

Basically, having a big berry patch available at spawn isn't going to do much good if they only produce one crop, and it's either not in season yet or the player has no means to preserve the harvest. Or if they're several different types with differing seasons, there may only be enough berries available to serve as a light snack at the best of times.

16 minutes ago, MKMoose said:

To me the plant debris looks like it's just gonna drop from berry bushes (and potentially other stuff) when broken without an appropriate tool (maybe shovel). My biggest request is honestly just to never make me pick it up accidentally, because it looks like it's gonna have zero use except as fuel or compost. As long as that's fulfilled, I don't expect much from it, but it seems like a pretty good addition.

I agree here. It would be similar to how Wildcraft handled it, in that breaking bushes would yield sticks or dry grass, depending on the size of the plant.

Though I'm not sure about requiring a shovel to transplant berry bushes though. For actual bushes it probably works, but for stuff like blackberries and raspberries those grow on thorny canes that spread via sucker shoots. It makes more sense to take clippings in cases like that, rather than try to dig up the entire parent plant. Perhaps the propagation method might be dependent on the species? It might be a little clunky to implement, and learn to use, but it would give more depth to that area of farming.

[Bruno Willis]

39 minutes ago, MKMoose said:

One thing I kind of worry about is whether there's not too many of them. It's still got nothing on Wildcraft, but having 28 fruit types that barely differ between each other besides climate preferences seems a bit pointless to me. That's mainly because they can't be too common if they're a food source, so they'll probably just be small and fairly visible patches of bushes and solitary trees that stick out from the landscape more than they add variety to it.

There's an excellent mod: https://mods.vintagestory.at/novelty which adds an additional nutrition bar which is gradually filled by maintaining a varied diet. It makes having a larger fruit patch with all sorts of berry bushes really rewarding i.e. "I'm sick of eating red current all the time, I wonder if I can find some ripe blueberries somewhere?"

Actually filling that bar is pretty challenging, and actually requires you to have a well-stocked and varied garden, an interest in mushrooms, and a willingness to catch fish. The reward for filling it isn't quite as smooth as filling the vanilla nutrition bars. It feels like the game devs could take this idea and make it pop.

I think something like this mod would really really help V.S. justify having a lot of different interesting foods. The world looks better when there is more variety, and exploration is more fun too, when you start seeing unusual fruits, animals, trees, etc. It's a lot more fun when those things have a mechanical impact. 

[LadyWYT]

1 minute ago, Bruno Willis said:

I think something like this mod would really really help V.S. justify having a lot of different interesting foods. The world looks better when there is more variety, and exploration is more fun too, when you start seeing unusual fruits, animals, trees, etc. It's a lot more fun when those things have a mechanical impact. 

I actually disagree, to an extent. The fun of variety, in my opinion, is just having all the options. There doesn't really need to be mechanics tied to every bit of it to justify its existence. I tried a mod similar to Novelty in Minecraft quite some time ago, as I had the same idea--give some buffs to a varied diet, to give a reason to actually eat something different. And it was fun for a little while...until I figured out that now it really wasn't possible to just eat whatever I wanted to eat in the game, without getting penalized for the choice. Thus the whole process becomes just an exercise in min-maxing, figuring out which food has exactly the right nutrients next in order to maintain all the buffs without triggering any debuffs. Maybe with the low variety that vanilla Minecraft offered for food, it would have been better, but that mod just really did not pair well at all with mods like Pam's Harvestcraft, which adds a TON of options.

Thus I think the simple nutrition system we have for vanilla VS is just fine. It encourages the player to add a bit of variety every now and then, instead of surviving exclusively on steak or whatever(like Minecraft). But it's not so complex that the player can't just stick to a handful of specific foods if that's how they enjoy playing.

Basically, if a player wants to survive on redmeat-turnip stew and cranberry pie, I think that's fine. Most players will probably take advantage of the variety of options, just for the sake of variety, which is also fine.

[Bruno Willis]

8 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

I actually disagree, to an extent. The fun of variety, in my opinion, is just having all the options. There doesn't really need to be mechanics tied to every bit of it to justify its existence. I tried a mod similar to Novelty in Minecraft quite some time ago, as I had the same idea--give some buffs to a varied diet, to give a reason to actually eat something different. And it was fun for a little while...until I figured out that now it really wasn't possible to just eat whatever I wanted to eat in the game, without getting penalized for the choice. Thus the whole process becomes just an exercise in min-maxing, figuring out which food has exactly the right nutrients next in order to maintain all the buffs without triggering any debuffs. Maybe with the low variety that vanilla Minecraft offered for food, it would have been better, but that mod just really did not pair well at all with mods like Pam's Harvestcraft, which adds a TON of options.

Try Novelty. It does a really good job at encouraging you to pick mushrooms and make berry gardens without punishing you. 

I think because V.S. already has 5 nutrition bars, adding an extra one doesn't feel like it is pressuring you to fill it out. It's like how you don't even think about the dairy bar until you've got a decent house and garden set up, and then you go "well, let's go find some goats now!"

With the novelty bar, you'll notice it ticking up as you eat all sorts of weird mushrooms and berries from all over the place, just passively. Then when you get all set, it just encourages you to expand your diet a little, but it doesn't punish you for not doing that.

Edited February 11 by Bruno Willis
for more context

[MKMoose]

8 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

8 hours ago, Bruno Willis said:

I think something like this mod would really really help V.S. justify having a lot of different interesting foods. The world looks better when there is more variety, and exploration is more fun too, when you start seeing unusual fruits, animals, trees, etc. It's a lot more fun when those things have a mechanical impact. 

I actually disagree, to an extent. The fun of variety, in my opinion, is just having all the options. There doesn't really need to be mechanics tied to every bit of it to justify its existence. I tried a mod similar to Novelty in Minecraft quite some time ago, as I had the same idea--give some buffs to a varied diet, to give a reason to actually eat something different. And it was fun for a little while...until I figured out that now it really wasn't possible to just eat whatever I wanted to eat in the game, without getting penalized for the choice. Thus the whole process becomes just an exercise in min-maxing, figuring out which food has exactly the right nutrients next in order to maintain all the buffs without triggering any debuffs. Maybe with the low variety that vanilla Minecraft offered for food, it would have been better, but that mod just really did not pair well at all with mods like Pam's Harvestcraft, which adds a TON of options.

I feel like this mostly comes down to how difficult it would be to achieve complete nutrition. If you need to cycle ten types of fruit just to fill the bar, that would quickly get a bit tedious. But if it means you need to eat two or three types of fruit instead of just one when you have ten available, then that doesn't really restrict you to eat specific ones.

That said, I would love to mention the idea to give different food items more varied amounts of satiety and nutrition, and perhaps some new mechanics related to how much energy or fat the food can contain. An effect similar to Novelty could still be included as part of this, potentially by reducing nutrition for a single food item if the player eats too much of it in a short amount of time, but the point is that the primary incentive to variety should ideally lie in the items themselves and not in an external system that somewhat artificially enforces it. Then choosing food items would be more influenced by the player's playstyle and momentary needs in a hopefully believable way:

• preparing food for travelling or preserving it for winter would call for something more fatty, filling and space-efficient, not just long-lasting,
• anticipating combat or hunting may get the player to pick up high-sugar snacks to eat in breaks during combat to replenish stamina,
• staying back home would allow to put more time and effort into highly nutritional and varied meals to get the maximum health boost.

 

[williams_482]

18 hours ago, MKMoose said:

Regarding oil, a lot depends on what they want to do with it. Linseed oil could be used as a lubricant, as protective coating for metal tools, or for oil lamps. Its production method is kinda weird. Olive oil can already be used for oil lamps, and realistically it's very commonly used culinarily, so maybe they're gonna try something there. It could cause a bunch of changes to progression by reducing demand for animal fat and increasing the usefulness of some plants, though I'm not sure how to feel about flax getting another use.

Allowing flaxseed to be turned into lubrication oil would give another use to flax, but it's not like it motivates planting even more of the stuff. It just gives a machine-related purpose to something you already have a ton of if you've grown enough flax to power machines in the first place. That if anything encourages growing more of other grains, as you won't have quite as much surplus flax grain to feed to your livestock. 

I've been playing a modded world recently that allowed pressing flax grain into flax oil (2 stacks grain = 10L oil) and using that to grease the wheels of my mechanisms. It meant I could build a complicated windmill despite doing almost no hunting except the occasional inconveniently placed predator and failing to find capturable pigs until early winter, and as noted above it didn't cost me anything I wasn't looking to find a use for. That might be a little too convenient, but if the vanilla version of this will require grinding flax flour and cooking it down to get a fat replacement, that's probably a fairer investment of effort. 

[LadyWYT]

9 hours ago, Bruno Willis said:

Try Novelty. It does a really good job at encouraging you to pick mushrooms and make berry gardens without punishing you. 

I think because V.S. already has 5 nutrition bars, adding an extra one doesn't feel like it is pressuring you to fill it out. It's like how you don't even think about the dairy bar until you've got a decent house and garden set up, and then you go "well, let's go find some goats now!"

With the novelty bar, you'll notice it ticking up as you eat all sorts of weird mushrooms and berries from all over the place, just passively. Then when you get all set, it just encourages you to expand your diet a little, but it doesn't punish you for not doing that.

Maybe some day, but I mean...that's basically why I haven't bothered with that mod. I've already tried Gourmand, which did similar, and while it was fun to play around with, in the end I found more frustrating trying to maintain the buffs than actual fun. Novelty I expect would be very similar, decently fun, but ultimately more of a thorn in the side by putting too much focus on food choices.

I already eat a good variety of food in the game just because I don't like to eat the same thing all the time. However...there's also just some foods I really like, for whatever reason, so I'd rather not be pushed to choose between eating what I actually want to be eating, and needing to eat something I don't want to eat just to maintain a buff. Basically, if I want to use blueberry pie exclusively to satisfy that fruit nutrition for a while, let me. 

[MKMoose]

11 minutes ago, williams_482 said:

Allowing flaxseed to be turned into lubrication oil would give another use to flax, but it's not like it motivates planting even more of the stuff.

That's pretty true in the current state of the game, though I'm not sure if it will continue to be true when any alternatives to flax get added. Cotton, jute, hemp, wool, silk, whatever the devs choose, I'd expect at least one or two to be added sooner or later (though some of them wouldn't be an exact alternative to flax, especially not jute). It would be a bit lame to feel forced into flax in spite of having alternative fibers - you might then end up with the opposite problem of needing a bunch of flax in nearly every single game just for easy oil.

Adding some other sources of oil could then serve to make flax more of an optional convenience than a must, but I'd imagine that many people would still default to it just due to how common, universal and simple it is (sure, it has to be ground and boiled for some reason, but that's still nearly free and just takes time). Linen with all its uses, easy animal feed, emergency food if need be, one of the best sources of compost in the game, and add oil to that as well? While linseed oil doesn't have any really inherent issues and I don't really mind its addition, the main worry of sorts that I have is that it could make hunting borderline worthless for many players. Right now it's primarily useful for leather and fat - meat is a thing, of course, but once you get either soybeans or chickens going, then meat from hunting is pocket change in many cases, and it's less reliable. Removing fat as a significant incentive by giving oil nearly for free alongside linen which the player already wants for windmills would only leave leather.

[Bruno Willis]

4 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Maybe some day, but I mean...that's basically why I haven't bothered with that mod. I've already tried Gourmand, which did similar, and while it was fun to play around with, in the end I found more frustrating trying to maintain the buffs than actual fun. Novelty I expect would be very similar, decently fun, but ultimately more of a thorn in the side by putting too much focus on food choices.

It has a superficial similarity to gourmand, in how it looks, rather than how it plays. No negatives, just a benefit if you fill the bar up, just like the other nutrition bars, except it's tracking how recently you at that meal. You fill it up naturally, gradually. It doesn't take anything away from the nutrition of other foods, even favorite foods.

But I get it, it suits my play style, and that's why it's a mod. I personally think it helps the game without changing much, but we all have different tastes.

[Gaelyn]

On 2/10/2026 at 9:22 PM, MKMoose said:

Beautyberry, blackberry, cloudberry, gooseberry, guava, kumquat, big num-num, raspberry, strawberry and cactus fruit

Holy cow, that's so many new fruits. Why was this not mentioned in the patch notes? Wow. Much more hyped for this than for new flowers and mushrooms, although I do like having more of those as well.

Having only five types of berries was a bit sad. I'm very excited for all of these new berry types.

[LadyWYT]

30 minutes ago, Gaelyn said:

Holy cow, that's so many new fruits. Why was this not mentioned in the patch notes? Wow. Much more hyped for this than for new flowers and mushrooms, although I do like having more of those as well.

Having only five types of berries was a bit sad. I'm very excited for all of these new berry types.

I'm guessing it's due to the fact that the bushes for said berries aren't yet in the game. They'll likely be added when the berry bushes are reworked.

[TFT]

1 hour ago, Bruno Willis said:

It has a superficial similarity to gourmand, in how it looks, rather than how it plays.

From my understanding of it gourmand is a pita since you have to chase down every type and variation of food in a checklist, and something like expanded foods makes this even more of a headache. Whereas novelty is an incentive for some variance and changing things up as opposed to eating nothing but hearty red meat cabbage stew and meat pies.