Thoughts from a first winter

[Jubal]

Hi all, been playing a game on standard mode for a while, currently working through my first winter. I enjoy a lot of features of this game so far, I'm aware there's still a lot to explore, but I thought I'd comment on a couple of mechanics from the new player learning curve POV. I should also say I wouldn't consider survival-crafting my "main" game genre, the main analogues I have for this are a lot of playing Return to Moria which is very different in many ways and a bunch of playing Haven & Hearth which is a beautiful but also terrible game with kind of similar vibes to this but a player base from actual hell. I've never played e.g. Minecraft: a lot of my gaming is more RPGs, and I develop little free games when I get time. So that's my background for thoughts.

Anyway, my main gripe with the winter is twofold: first, that I've ended up in a situation where the optimal strategy to do the thing the game is telling me to do is not fun or interesting or realistic, and secondly, the game is telling me to do something but then seemingly there's no actual benefit to me in doing so.

Part one of this: I did my year, reached the first winter. It hit a bit earlier than I'd realised, so I was drawing on my stores earlier, and I think by my calculations I might have enough food to make it through until spring if I actually try to survive properly. But it'll be touch and go. In future years I'm sure I won't have this problem, but I spent a while learning the game in year one for obvious reasons. Now here is the problem: if I want to survive, the thing the game absolutely requires me to do is conserve energy. Things that don't conserve energy include doing literally anything, and especially doing anything outside. So my most viable strategy if I wanted to survive the winter (which is what the game prompts me to be trying to achieve) is to stand still and do absolutely nothing for quite a few real-world hours of gameplay. This isn't actually realistic, insofar as if you literally stood still in a small room all winter you'd get atrophied muscles, vitamin D problems, etc etc. And it also isn't fun. I've done a few tasks that don't require going into the cold, but going into the mines means getting injured or killed by monsters, and I've done about as much copper smithing as I have obvious use for, and I'm only one third of the way through winter.

Part two: whilst I currently am trying to survive, I'm not actually sure why I'm meant to be surviving. The bits of this game that feel rewarding are generally tech advancements or discoveries when digging through ruins. I'm pretty close to my spawn zone and it's easy enough to find my way home if I die as long as I'm not adventuring too far: I know I also lose some nutrition score but my nutrition scores are garbage anyway because I'm scraping together on 1-2 bowls of multigrain porridge a day with occasional mashed turnip added for a treat. So it feels like there's a disconnect between the game selling itself on, and telling the player to work on, survival, but a gameplay loop that isn't really encouraging survival. I know I could change the settings to discourage death more by speeding up item loss or even going permadeath, but that would just make the game wildly frustrating I think given how easy it is to be jumped by a bear or monster when you're not expecting it. So it feels like on standard settings there's a disconnect between what the game wants you to do and builds its core mechanics around, and what behaviours it actually encourages or discourages.

So two things I think could be fun answers to these issues as food for thought: first, it could be interesting to have some part of the nutrition system that actually checks for sunlight and physical activity, so there's at least a mild reason to encourage some sort of activity in winter. Second, and this would be a bigger chance, I feel like the game might do well to positively reward surviving, such that there's an obvious "oh hey if I just survive a bit longer I can do/get X", which would be something to weigh against "but I could just die repeatedly all winter and then by spring I'd have been able to dig a canal at the paltry price of 30+ of my own corpses". I'm not sure exactly what the latter would look like but something like a "hey you didn't die at all this month/season, have a gear/temporal gear" could be an interesting way to make the act of surviving feel like it actually aids game progression for the player.

Meanwhile, only a bit over twenty days to go until my little guy can go outside again...

[Bruno Willis]

Welcome to the forums, and thank you for such an in-depth response. 

22 minutes ago, Jubal said:

Part one of this: I did my year, reached the first winter. It hit a bit earlier than I'd realised, so I was drawing on my stores earlier, and I think by my calculations I might have enough food to make it through until spring if I actually try to survive properly. But it'll be touch and go. In future years I'm sure I won't have this problem, but I spent a while learning the game in year one for obvious reasons. Now here is the problem: if I want to survive, the thing the game absolutely requires me to do is conserve energy. Things that don't conserve energy include doing literally anything, and especially doing anything outside. So my most viable strategy if I wanted to survive the winter (which is what the game prompts me to be trying to achieve) is to stand still and do absolutely nothing for quite a few real-world hours of gameplay. This isn't actually realistic, insofar as if you literally stood still in a small room all winter you'd get atrophied muscles, vitamin D problems, etc etc. And it also isn't fun. I've done a few tasks that don't require going into the cold, but going into the mines means getting injured or killed by monsters, and I've done about as much copper smithing as I have obvious use for, and I'm only one third of the way through winter.

Yes, I think this is an area the game could improve on. I found that chiseling was a very rewarding winter pass-time, but it does chew through nutrition. It feels like this might be a good time to weave and do little, time intensive, low effort tasks, but then we have the problem that spending lots of time on minor tasks might not be all that fun. I imagine when the devs add weaving properly, that could end up being a really fun, time intensive mini-game which you might want to do during winter, but it's still a challenge to fill that winter time. Panning, again uses heaps of nutrition. Maybe chiseling and panning should use less nutrition to encourage saving up those jobs for winter? 

I would say, going hunting is still viable in winter, and it is beautiful out there in the snow. 

27 minutes ago, Jubal said:

Part two: whilst I currently am trying to survive, I'm not actually sure why I'm meant to be surviving. The bits of this game that feel rewarding are generally tech advancements or discoveries when digging through ruins. I'm pretty close to my spawn zone and it's easy enough to find my way home if I die as long as I'm not adventuring too far: I know I also lose some nutrition score but my nutrition scores are garbage anyway because I'm scraping together on 1-2 bowls of multigrain porridge a day with occasional mashed turnip added for a treat. So it feels like there's a disconnect between the game selling itself on, and telling the player to work on, survival, but a gameplay loop that isn't really encouraging survival. I know I could change the settings to discourage death more by speeding up item loss or even going permadeath, but that would just make the game wildly frustrating I think given how easy it is to be jumped by a bear or monster when you're not expecting it.

I would love it if there were more of a reward for surviving a long time, but I think the game wants to keep the cost of dying low because you will almost certainly die a bit if you interact with the storyline, or go out and have fun during temporal storms. It's a bit of an issue, where they want to encourage not dying, but they also want to encourage adventurous risk taking, and those things just don't align. I find filling up the nutrition bars really rewarding, so that's a good encouragement for not dying for me, but I'd love it if there were a solid reward for surviving a full year, which helped you survive just a bit more. It could even just be an extra little bit of health. That way, if you're trying really hard not to die at all, you can gradually tick up your total health, which would be a nice reward for people who play perma-death: as their investment in a world increases, they get slightly better odds for surviving. 

As it is, I would recommend improving your base over winter. It's a great time to just tinker round, especially with interiors. If on your next play through you want something closer to perma-death but less brutal, you might try increasing the re-spawn radius to something ludicrous as a death punishment. It'd be like starting a new game each time you die, except occasionally you'd run into the remains of your past lives. 

[williams_482]

One thing to keep in mind is that there is still some food out there for the taking if you brave the outdoors during the winter. You can still hunt, forage for mushrooms, or if things get really desperate dig up cattail and tule roots. If you're really looking for an adventure, booking it south for 10,000 - 15,000 blocks will burn through a fair bit of food, but get you out of the snow and into territory where berries and wild crops are available again. Plus whatever random animals you come across on your travels. It's certainly a gamble though, as it will be much harder to recover your stuff if you die en route and wind up back at spawn. 

You've got an interesting point with the game mechanics not really doing much to pressure your immortal seraph to avoid death when dying and being reborn comes at fairly little cost. As you note it's difficult to create a stronger mechanical incentive for avoiding death without harsher punishments (which would make unintended bad luck deaths feel much worse). A reward system has the opposite problem, where more experienced players who know how to prepare and aren't at serious risk of starving to death would be getting a steady stream of free whatever just for playing the game.

In your case, I'd recommend just doing whatever building and tech progression stuff is available to you, preferring indoor over outdoor when given a choice but not ruling anything out. That will be much more rewarding than sitting still in an empty room. If your food stores run dry and you wind up hunting wolves and bears for bushmeat to avoid starving to death, well, that will be an interesting adventure of another sort, still a better experience than sitting on the floor indoors all winter would have been. 

[LadyWYT]

Welcome to the game and forums!

5 hours ago, Jubal said:

Now here is the problem: if I want to survive, the thing the game absolutely requires me to do is conserve energy. Things that don't conserve energy include doing literally anything, and especially doing anything outside. So my most viable strategy if I wanted to survive the winter (which is what the game prompts me to be trying to achieve) is to stand still and do absolutely nothing for quite a few real-world hours of gameplay.

Conserving energy is generally ideal, but it shouldn't become such a focus for the player that that becomes all that they do. If food stores are running a little thin in winter, they can be supplemented with hunting or foraging up what mushrooms and edibles there are to find. It'll be rough, but doable.

One of my primary wintertime tasks, aside from just sprucing up my base, is working the forge and refining steel. Winter usually brings lots of wind, which is great for powering a helve hammer via windmill. The forge will keep you toasty warm, and the refractory will also provide a great spot to warm up while it's being fired. Same holds true for the beehive kiln. Mining and underground exploration are also good activities if you've got the gear for it, since the underground tends to hold a relatively stable temperature year-round.

5 hours ago, Jubal said:

Part two: whilst I currently am trying to survive, I'm not actually sure why I'm meant to be surviving. The bits of this game that feel rewarding are generally tech advancements or discoveries when digging through ruins. I'm pretty close to my spawn zone and it's easy enough to find my way home if I die as long as I'm not adventuring too far: I know I also lose some nutrition score but my nutrition scores are garbage anyway because I'm scraping together on 1-2 bowls of multigrain porridge a day with occasional mashed turnip added for a treat. So it feels like there's a disconnect between the game selling itself on, and telling the player to work on, survival, but a gameplay loop that isn't really encouraging survival.

The way I tend to look at it is that while the player might have infinite lives by default and death isn't too terribly punishing, it's also not really great to be dying multiple times in a row either, nor is it typically very fun. Generally, when player death occurs, it tends to mean that there is room for improvement regarding strategy. That might mean storing more food for winter, or acquiring better equipment to go fight monsters, or just not poking the bears when all the player has is improvised armor and a stone spear. Really depends on the situation.

Another way to put it is that surviving is a little more than just not dying. In order to survive and thrive, the player needs to figure how to stay alive and acquire the resources and equipment needed to accomplish what they wish.

4 hours ago, williams_482 said:

You've got an interesting point with the game mechanics not really doing much to pressure your immortal seraph to avoid death when dying and being reborn comes at fairly little cost. As you note it's difficult to create a stronger mechanical incentive for avoiding death without harsher punishments (which would make unintended bad luck deaths feel much worse). A reward system has the opposite problem, where more experienced players who know how to prepare and aren't at serious risk of starving to death would be getting a steady stream of free whatever just for playing the game.

I think this might change with a status effect system, if some of those effects persist through death. Death itself, or multiple deaths within a short time, might have negative effects of their own as well to help encourage players to actually try to stay alive rather than just take the dirt nap and respawn like nothing happened. World of Warcraft had a similar idea, in that typically when the player died they could run back to their body as a ghost and respawn at that spot with a fraction of their health. If they couldn't reach their body or just wanted an easy out though, they could respawn at full health with the spirit healer in the graveyard, though they would be severely weakened for one hour as a result.

[DarkGold]

Welcome!

8 hours ago, Jubal said:

I'm not actually sure why I'm meant to be surviving

I understand what you mean! It becomes relevant later in the game, as you start exploring further from spawn and changing your spawn point. Up until then, it's really not too much of a problem to die if you are near world spawn.

As LadyWYT has said...

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

I think this might change with a status effect system, if some of those effects persist through death

This could change in the future, but I like how the inevitable deaths that you suffer as a new player aren't too punishing at the moment. Another game I enjoy playing is Valheim, and they have a food system that buffs your stats, but you don't have to worry about starving. This means you eat before doing something risky, but you don't have to worry about eating while just pottering around your base. While the early game in Vintage Story is training you for later, and rewarding longer term investment in your nutrition, that mentality of "if I'm just at my starting base, food isn't so important compared to if I am out and about" reminds me of Valheim's design.

[DarkGold]

I think, at this time in the game, when you have nothing to really lose from dying, it is a great time to take some "risks" that won't really hurt you in the long term. Fighting some creatures that spawn from rifts where you will be able to quickly respawn and grab your dropped weapons is a good way to get some resources that it took me a very long time to get playing more conservatively.

[DarkGold]

Something else it took me a long time to notice, because I didn't make my first falx until I reached the bronze tier, is that falx have a unique weapon property when fighting the enemies mentioned in their flavor text. It can come in handy when you are dealing with more than 1 enemy and want to make a quick getaway, so don't have time to loot all the corpses.

Edited March 25 by DarkGold
Correcting typos

[Jubal]

Thanks for the advice everyone! Though I have ended up taking a home-bound approach in part because when I tried deviating from this method I just got attacked immediately every time I stepped outside. I ca't even go and take screenshots of the snow without multiple bowtorns taking potshots at me or a bear decapitating me it seems

 

23 hours ago, williams_482 said:

One thing to keep in mind is that there is still some food out there for the taking if you brave the outdoors during the winter. You can still hunt, forage for mushrooms, or if things get really desperate dig up cattail and tule roots.

That is a good point. I've not really tried hunting much in the game - and from my experience I guess I'd be concerned that mushroom foraging would probably burn more energy than I gained?

23 hours ago, williams_482 said:

As you note it's difficult to create a stronger mechanical incentive for avoiding death without harsher punishments (which would make unintended bad luck deaths feel much worse). A reward system has the opposite problem, where more experienced players who know how to prepare and aren't at serious risk of starving to death would be getting a steady stream of free whatever just for playing the game.

This bit I slightly disagree with - which is to say, I think "experienced players get a small leg up in the early game" is much less of a problem than "new players get really dragged down by the early game". Experienced players can do other things to stretch themselves and are more likely to be able to tweak settings etc in any case if they're dissatisfied. And I think if the reward was something like a small reward paid in gears then the game economy outpacing it would mean that it'd be fairly viable to not have a vast balance impact long-term while giving first-winter players something to feel they're really aiming for.

I would agree with everyone who's said they don't think the default-mode death should be more punitive: I do think a survival reward system feels like a better route. 

21 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Generally, when player death occurs, it tends to mean that there is room for improvement regarding strategy. That might mean storing more food for winter, or acquiring better equipment to go fight monsters, or just not poking the bears when all the player has is improvised armor and a stone spear.

That's fair, but VS is quite a long game for strategy: I've played a fair few tens of hours in this game and I haven't played a full year yet, so if the strategy adjustment needed was "store more food for winter", that's something a player can only fix over the next 30-40 hours of gameplay. I think a lot of the problems I'm noting here are very much first-winter problems, but also, if I see a third winter in this game I'll have played it for longer than the average blockbuster-scale RPG takes to run through, so I think it's worth bearing in mind the situation of "if the long term strategy is wrong, does the player have something fun to do in the meantime", given the meantime is more than a real physical day of their life.

[DarkGold]

It took me a very long time to find a reasonable source of lime, so a long time to get more than a tiny bit of leather. So I would guess that you don't have access to leather yet (though you might be luckier than I was!). If you happen to have access to lime though, leather armor has none of the downsides of some of the heavier armor, while making a big difference to how many hits you can take.

Some of the other armors, available to you before you find leather, aren't going to be as durable, or protective, and they might come with downsides, but still can also do a lot for your survivability if you want to pick some fights earlier in the game.

Edited March 26 by DarkGold

[Jubal]

On 3/26/2026 at 8:19 AM, DarkGold said:

It took me a very long time to find a reasonable source of lime, so a long time to get more than a tiny bit of leather. So I would guess that you don't have access to leather yet (though you might be luckier than I was!). If you happen to have access to lime though, leather armor has none of the downsides of some of the heavier armor, while making a big difference to how many hits you can take.

I found some borax so I've been using that, not got tons of leather so far but also I've only occasionally been out hunting.