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

[EnbyKaiju]

Just testing out the rc in creative and... yeah, okay, I'm definitely waiting till stable to start the long-term world. lol

At least waiting until they fix the handbook so that it stops crashing whenever I try to look up recipes and the current recipe list gets fixed. But hey, rc means we're almost there!!

I cannot wait to see what folks start to build in the new version when it hits stable. I hope y'all will be sharing your progress in the builds channel!

[LadyWYT]

6 minutes ago, Shoom said:

True, by no means do I wish to stifle progress of the game for the sake of.. backwards combability.. or uh forwards combability? Not sure what the term is, but you get what I mean. I don't expect my world to be compatible with updates forever. I do really appreciate the effort from the devs though. 

I think in terms of backwards compatibility, I think this is where creative mod is a rather useful tool for helping update older worlds in an easier, less risky fashion than trying to regenerate a lot of chunks. For something like rapids, placing the source manually at a spot that looks like rapids would naturally occur or otherwise replacing a regular pre-existing waterstream with rapids is a convenient way to adjust an older world without feeling too cheaty.

 

2 minutes ago, EnbyKaiju said:

I cannot wait to see what folks start to build in the new version when it hits stable. I hope y'all will be sharing your progress in the builds channel!

I wouldn't mind having a granite world again like my last one. That being said, I'd like to use andesite for its blue color, but peridoite would make an interesting start. I wouldn't mind having access to slate either.

Am I likely to get those things? Eh...probably not, but one can always hope. 

[EnbyKaiju]

3 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

Am I likely to get those things? Eh...probably not, but one can always hope. 

Never knowing is part of the fun!!

I think I worked out the balance in worldgen I want so it's 90% water, give myself a challenge but not stifle myself on options to go bigger, but until you jump into the world and have a run around you never know.

I still happily remember one world I started up, years back, and it was the most gorgeous chalk hills area that lead down to the coast. Will I ever land on that kind of terrain again? Who knows, but I'm gonna have fun finding the perfect space to build my various plans this time around.

[Shoom]

2 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

I think in terms of backwards compatibility, I think this is where creative mod is a rather useful tool for helping update older worlds in an easier, less risky fashion than trying to regenerate a lot of chunks. For something like rapids, placing the source manually at a spot that looks like rapids would naturally occur or otherwise replacing a regular pre-existing waterstream with rapids is a convenient way to adjust an older world without feeling too cheaty.

Agreed, creative mode is really useful for things like this, I used it to decorate my local lake with some of the new aquatic plants we got along with 1.20 as the lake was generated before we had anything but seaweed.

You just have to resist the urge of "accidentally" spawning 64 iron doors into your backpack while you're scrolling through the creative menu. they look so cool but take so long to craft 

[EnbyKaiju]

2 minutes ago, Shoom said:

You just have to resist the urge of "accidentally" spawning 64 iron doors into your backpack while you're scrolling through the creative menu. they look so cool but take so long to craft 

Just imagining the iron door maze you could make with all of those, haha.

Build a full on labyrinth underground and make your friends try and escape before the monsters get them.

*makes note: build full underground labyrinth under a city one day and invite friends to try and escape*

 

But yeah, totally agreeing, using creative to fix/update is a totally valid thing. I often use it when there's things that don't make sense, like water blocks not filling back in in the ocean...etc. Adding in some rapids to older worlds makes total sense as long as you aren't spamming it.

[LadyWYT]

Speaking of rapids...they do make very fun waterslides, if you manage to find one with the right setup.

[EnbyKaiju]

2 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

Speaking of rapids...they do make very fun waterslides, if you manage to find one with the right setup.

They are also a great way of losing track where things you throw on the ground go, lol.

Kind of hope someone makes a full on waterslide mod at some point. Make one that starts at build height all the way down to mantle.

Zoooooooooom!

[Warmbo]

Yeah, the new berry system doesn't exactly match real-world shrub cultivation hardly at all. I hate to be like "you should do it completely differently" but there are other mechanics you could have used to prevent transplanting an entire bush farm willy-nilly. For example, berry bushes could act similar to trees, where new ones are small and produce little fruit, but grow to a maximum output within a number of years (say, 5). The model need not exceed one block. You could keep the fertilizer boosting mechanic and use it to instead increase the chances that a newly planted bush survives. (Say, 20% without, 50% with.) These mechanics would really slow down new bush farms without making them require long-term maintenance. Additionally you could require pruning at the end-stage for growth in order to get/keep maximum output. Depending on how much you wanted to incentivize/require maintenance you could adjust the end-stage penalty for not pruning every year.

[LexicalAnomaly]

I love the berry bush changes, although the cuttings not stacking due to trait differences can be a little annoying. A bundle type system where you can stack multiple of the same kind of item in the same slot as described earlier in this thread would be awesome.

I like that it doesn't really effect early game berry picking but makes establishing a fruit farm more difficult. 

Also, beautyberries are my favorite, I'm so happy to see them in the game. 

[Mladen Mihajlovic]

So will adding fertilizer change the mechanic of having the different fertility type ground types? I assume in future you will just add fertilizer to increase a standard grounds stats?

I tend to play this game in a very much lower-stress and lower-effort way so I turn a lot of the difficult settings down - please make the whole fertility mechanic configurable so that the few of us who don't really spend hundreds of hours in a game can also enjoy it

[BlunderingFool]

Hi there, just chiming in.

Berry bushes are more like a weed than a tree, you have to actively combat some of them to keep them in check, at the very least they are not particularly picky about where they grow or their needs.

The new system for berry bushes needs to be stripped back (Har) and replaced. Have them shatter on trying to pick them up, keep the cutting option but put it on a tool, the humble secateurs (basically gardening scissors) with a toggle option to either cut or prune.

Why prune? Because berry bushes need pruning to get the most out of them, this would be how you enable the player interaction > reward loop.

 

Tl;Dr Don't treat bushes like crop plants, treat them like bushes.

Edited Sunday at 10:22 AM by BlunderingFool

[hstone32]

I tend to go through periods of high and low activity in games that I love. I foresee this update signifying the start of another great period of VS goodness!

[TeaJay]

Some earlier pre had an issue with the new berry bushes where it was incredibly hard to see if they were ripe or not from a distance, which never was an issue with the old ones. Haven't tried the new version so I don' know if they fixed it yet but if they didn't, they definitely could make the berries stand out more. 

[Tom Cantine]

I'm generally positive about the new berry bush mechanics, not because I know a lot of about horticulture (I don't), but because it creates a nice role opportunity for specialization/ and division of labour on servers.

In the village I had on TOPS, we had a player who started a vineyard that looked quite beautiful: rows of neatly spaced berry bushes, each "supported" by a wattle fence next to it. Trouble is, there were also berry bushes all over the rest of the town, undercutting the ambitions of this player to serve as the town's vintner, or rather rendering his contributions entirely cosmetic. 

With the new system, building and tending to a productive berry farm now takes as much attention as other roles like cheesemaking or baking. I like this a lot.

 

[Mathathian]

I'm here just to give my two cents.

I have played 1.22 rc-1, and I dislike the new berry propagation and maintenance system for a few reasons:

1: The "NEED" for fertilizers, emphasis on need.

2: The amount of time it will take to grow and propagate, 4 to 8 months to mature, and having a one year cooldown per cutting is too slow.

3: The inability to improve or mix traits.

4: Soil degradation.

I do like that it's harder to get a massive amount of berries, I just think it's a little too much.

 

Here's my suggestion:

Remove the soil degradation and the "NEED" for fertilizers, having fertilizers being used to increase yield, reduce cutting growing time, and fix bad traits.

To expand on that, certain negative traits could require a specific nutrient to be corrected, for example: potassium being used to increase root growth.

Adding a pruning mechanic alongside the aforementioned use of fertilizers would also serve as a solution that would keep tending to the berry bushes engaging.

Coupled with improving and mixing traits, growing berries would be a viable job in servers, like it was pointed out in a previous comment.

Because of the way the system is implemented so far, if you are looking to have a small orchard with berry bushes with good traits, you'll need to pray to the RNG gods or spend a massive amount of time, not counting the bottleneck with compost.

Lastly, berries are so much harder to farm that they will occupy the same niche as fruit trees, making them pretty much useless since fruit trees need less tending.

Edit: Maybe add the ability to have berry bushes with two vertical blocks, like the old bushes, by adding a support structure (shift right click with a stick or something).

Edited Monday at 12:32 AM by Mathathian

[Warmbo]

I think that's a good point Mathathian. If berries are this difficult, why bother? Just go for trees and wait a few years. I'm biased, sure, but I think my suggestions do a good job of matching real shrub management and punishing a user for trying to just move their whole berry farm.

[dakko]

1 hour ago, Mathathian said:

Maybe add the ability to have berry bushes with two vertical blocks, like the old bushes, by adding a support structure (shift right click with a stick or something).

I love this idea!

I'm also not a fan of the NEED for fertilization, strictly as a matter of principle. As an avid gardener, some of these berry changes just rub me the wrong way as they are completely unrealistic -- much the same objection I had to gating farming behind copper working, back in the day. I get it that there is an effort being made to balance the game, but this method is hard (for me) to accept due to it being so unrealistic.

[Doctorgeo7]

Lot of negative knee jerk reactions in here about the berry bush changes. I have to wonder if many people have taken for granted how it is extremely easy to pick up 100 bushes near your start position and put them all near your base. Meanwhile, the old berry bushes have none of the downsides of crops like needing irrigation and high-quality soil to be productive. It was so easy that my friends and I, who have played Vintage Story fore years now, have never seriously looked into fruit trees or pineapple crops because of how easy it is to care for berry bushes. Now there's proper barriers to make you earn those stacks of berries from each harvest. 

[Warmbo]

I wouldn't call it knee-jerk, I'm literally suggesting different mechanics to achieve the same goal. The proposed mechanics just don't make any real sense from a horticulture perspective, and there's easy ways to take mechanics from the real-world and achieve the same results. That's all.

[dakko]

I don't think I've seen anyone object to making berries less exploitable, @Doctorgeo7. The objections are to the way it is being implemented, and there have been some thoughtful alternatives suggested.

[UtaYuui]

Dunno where to report bug. Hay (grass) have same crafting as Grass shirt, it is impossible to craft Gay Grass for bed

[OrekiWoof]

It's really great that berry bushes aren't exploitable, that they have variety and better models, I was extremely excited for this update. The bushes always felt lacking.

It's way worse that they are now unrealistically tedious. The inability to pick them up and immediately replant them is good enough. Waiting 8 months? Requiring fertilizer? Guys, you never tried having berry bushes in real life and it shows. You will accidentally have them take over your garden.

There is so many cool changes with them, please don't ruin that by making them useless and tedious.

[Bumber]

Maybe you should just need to fertilize if you cram too many bushes in one place.

[williams_482]

38 minutes ago, Bumber said:

Maybe you should just need to fertilize if you cram too many bushes in one place.

I think this would be a positive change. A berry bush with no adjacent bushes could consume nutrients at the replenishment rate, while more densely packed hedges require some artificial assistance. That seems more consistent with reality than either the current system or a nutrient-agnostic implementation. 

[Yukia]

I´d also like to see rebalancing of berry bushes. The issue is:
 
1.berry bushes are often entry-level food, mostly used in early game, later with farming and husbandry, their utility fades. With the new rework, they will be used even less.

2. To complement the new berry bushes requirements, we´d need some food preservation for berry bushes, other than juicing/fermenting. Like creating long term jam, drying berries to make them last long, or making compote. Berries last such a short time, it would be more logical to just go with apple trees

Thankies!