Fast travel, better caves, and empty desert or gravel landscapes

[WilliamClyde]

I truly love the game and it consumed me completely, thank you for the great work. But some aspects seem unpolished. Fast travel would be good addition, because everything is far away and i use /tp anyway. Caves look very barebone, and some landscapes lack life and interest. Maybe some POIs should be added, not necesseirly villages, or even houses. Something original and low key, that seem natural.

[Vratislav]

2 hours ago, WilliamClyde said:

I truly love the game and it consumed me completely, thank you for the great work. But some aspects seem unpolished. 

Welcome to the forums!

I am sure that more veteran players will extend. First, surely good you are enjoying the game.

About travelling, not sure, how far are you with the story content. You will get access to faster travel device (mount) after finishing chapter one. Also, there are translocators you may use if you find (and fix) them underground. You may find mods to utilize these tranclocators to be more convenient, if you want (like move them to desired locations). 

It is valid to point out some unpolished areas (particularly caves), it partially goes to the early access stage of the game. Some things will be reworked for sure. Partially, the feeling of empty wilderness fits well to the survival aspects of the game. I have learned, that one is not ever lucky enough to find the landscape he desires, and wordgen may be sometimes directly evil to the player.

As the game is heavily configurable and there is great support for mods, you may try to adapt almost every aspect of the game to your needs. If things seems to far away, you may half distance to the story locations. You may change the size of generated landforms or use worldgen mods to change the feel of the landscape. There is great mod Better Ruins that adds a lot to the exploring, there are mods adding various flora, fauna and even geologic variety. Some mods may be added to existing worlds, just check the mod library, you will not miss with these most commonly used. 

So if you get unsatisfied with a vanilla run, there is lot of things to try to change. Still, starting without many mods is a good way how to enjoy the game at least for the first time.

 

[LadyWYT]

Welcome to the forums!

5 hours ago, WilliamClyde said:

Fast travel would be good addition, because everything is far away and i use /tp anyway.

I only agree since there are teleporters in the game to support such. Currently, the player can't exactly craft their own outside of mods, but I think it would be a good(but expensive!) late game tech option for some future update. For now, the player can find and repair broken translocators around the world to serve as a teleport points.

As for the videogame concept of fast travel? I get that it's a feature that exists entirely for player convenience, but I don't think it really fits in games like Vintage Story that are meant to be slow-paced. To cite Skyrim as an example here, fast travel is very convenient for completing quests and skipping the walk to High Hrothgar, however, if the player fast travels everywhere then the world ends up feeling very small as a result and the adventures had within in it aren't as interesting since, well, the player isn't actually out in the world dealing with other travelers or getting distracted by points of interest. 

5 hours ago, WilliamClyde said:

Caves look very barebone, and some landscapes lack life and interest.

As @Vratislav already noted, the game is still early in development and some features, like caves, will feel barebones because, well, they are. Jonas tech and caves both, I think, might need another story chapter or two before they receive a full update, since there's lore tied to those things that may need to be established a little more first.

 

5 hours ago, WilliamClyde said:

Maybe some POIs should be added, not necesseirly villages, or even houses. Something original and low key, that seem natural.

The first procedural dungeon has been added in 1.22, which should help flesh out the world a little more. They're still supposed to be pretty rare finds, but are more interesting to explore than the typical ruin. Rivers didn't make it to 1.22, but it sounds like the devs have made good progress in that area so we might see them in 1.23.

For some natural finds, I'd like to see something more like the hot springs, in that it's a rare natural feature that's not necessarily incredibly useful, but very neat to see. Something like Devil's Tower, Niagara Falls, the Matterhorn, etc. Some extinct flora and fauna would be cool as well, like dodo birds and the Hawaiian 'o'o bird(honestly not sure how to spell the name), since they hadn't gone extinct yet in the medieval times.

[Pascaloubicou]

If you host or play solo i really suggest you to check the sandbox options, world generation settings and some mods to get better ruins, to move TL or just the teleporters in creative !
A lot of servers use them. It's not my playstyle, i would prefer even bigger biomes 1 to 1 like Earth  

[Silfrenbirce]

On 3/16/2026 at 3:43 AM, WilliamClyde said:

I truly love the game and it consumed me completely, thank you for the great work. But some aspects seem unpolished. Fast travel would be good addition, because everything is far away and i use /tp anyway. Caves look very barebone, and some landscapes lack life and interest. Maybe some POIs should be added, not necesseirly villages, or even houses. Something original and low key, that seem natural.

Can't agree on fast travel because that defeats what I'm pretty sure is one of the core mechanics of the game.  There are already means within the game to accommodate fast travel - but they are story-based and you have to progress to them.  Beyond that, no, the game absolutely does not need a fast travel option a la Skyrim or similar.  You already noted that you use /tp.  You already have access to a fast travel option.  Given that there's a means of such that you can earn through playing the game, and a cheat option that players are free to use at their own volition, I just don't see any reason to add another one.  It's certainly not accurate to imply that the lack of a free fast-travel option is a lack of polish.  The default, vanilla nature of the world is SUPPOSED to be one where travel is difficult and time-consuming!  It's a survival game, after all, and the fact that traveling around is difficult, time-consuming, and full of environmental dangers that you have to learn to manage...that's part of the point. It defeats the entire purpose to just have a fast travel button.

Edited March 17 by Silfrenbirce

[LadyWYT]

4 hours ago, Silfrenbirce said:

It's certainly not accurate to imply that the lack of a free fast-travel option is a lack of polish.  The default, vanilla nature of the world is SUPPOSED to be one where travel is difficult and time-consuming!  It's a survival game, after all, and the fact that traveling around is difficult, time-consuming, and full of environmental dangers that you have to learn to manage...that's part of the point. It defeats the entire purpose to just have a fast travel button.

There's also an option to shorten the distances between story locations in the World Generation settings at world creation, if the default prove to be too far/not far enough.

Ironically, the distances for some of the chapter 2 locations have been shortened a bit since their initial launch, and while the new balance is better for the majority of players, I do think the story lost a bit of its punch as a result.

[Loosebearings]

On 3/16/2026 at 11:31 PM, LadyWYT said:

or getting distracted by points of interest. 

I do feel like there should be more points of interest to come across. After a while travel just feels slow and repetitive. The only structures you find are ruins which are mostly early game loot and traders, which while useful I feel most players don't even interact with them very much outside of treasure hunters or for decorative blocks.

The only thing I would be excited to find while traveling would be limestone, though once you find one limestone biome you have enough for hundreds of hours of gameplay.

I would like some more grand ruins, though mods provide that. I think an update to world gen would help make travel more interesting, with more varied plains and mountains. Rivers are something I think would help, and possibly ruins could be more common along rivers representing communities growing alongside them for easy access to water. It would also give the player something to follow while exploring or if rivers are big enough, a challenge to overcome.