First time I am getting frustrated w/ Vintage Story (content)

[Moltrey]

So I mentioned this issue in one of the recent release threads: Lack of enough interesting POIs other than Traders (which are nigh useless at the onset). Combined with more often than not spawning in with bears and/or wolves nearby is making my experiences with VS less than appealing for the first time.

I know, I know. VS is not meant to be an easy experience unless you nerf difficulty settings. About all I adjust these days is slightly higher walk speed and 25hp combined with a 5 day grace period on monsters. I will show a list with my installed mods below. But here is the thing; I have played this game for quite a while now, perhaps 2 years and I have never felt this frustrated with "Meh" spawn worlds. Very few ruins let alone buildings or larger POIs. There needs to be SOME interesting "bits and bobs" here and there or I lose interest eventually. I don't want too many of them either, that would be worse imo.

I do seem to find the Giant Tree a fair %, had one or two small towns, but after generating map after map and spending around an hour to an hour and a half my frustration overall is starting to make me want to set Vintage Story aside for the first time.

Am I just an anomaly here? Does anyone else have these issues with a change to less points-of-interest?  I don't want to be "that guy" who complains a lot. 

I imagine with enough walking/exploring of the map some of these issues would be lessened, but again, I don't ever remember having this many maps end up boring enough I choose to close and delete and start over.

Here is the Mods List: I have tried various settings with Algernons Watersheds, usually the next highest world height combined with Landscape at 120/140%. as well as vanilla. 

 

Edited July 9 by Moltrey

[CastIronFabric]

54 minutes ago, Moltrey said:

Does anyone else have these issues with a change to less points-of-interest? 

 

was there a change in world gen that creates less points of interest or am I not understanding that statement?

Regardless, for me Better Ruins really helps. I would not mind see a bit more but its pretty cool running around finding castles and building a road system between them but how feasible that is depends on RNG

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, Moltrey said:

I do seem to find the Giant Tree a fair %, had one or two small towns, but after generating map after map and spending around an hour to an hour and a half my frustration overall is starting to make me want to set Vintage Story aside for the first time.

Honestly, it might just be time to set Vintage Story aside and play something else for a while. Or just do something else in the game rather than focus the story on every world. In any case, it's a fun game, but burnout is real, and taking a break every now and then is a good thing.

 

1 hour ago, Moltrey said:

Am I just an anomaly here? Does anyone else have these issues with a change to less points-of-interest?  I don't want to be "that guy" who complains a lot. 

You're definitely not the only one with such sentiments, though I would note that what constitutes "enough points of interest" or "interesting points of interest" varies from player to player.

More procedural dungeons are supposed to be coming in later 1.22 versions, at least as far as I'm aware, and those should help spice up world exploration. More flora and fauna would also help, since it's fairly easy at the moment to see most of what the world has to offer within a couple thousand blocks of spawn. 

One thing I've been mulling over is Morrowind-style navigation. That is, instead of NPCs just giving players a map, and the player navigating from point A to point B, perhaps the NPCs describe landmarks that the player needs to follow to reach certain locations. These landmarks could be relatively minor themselves, but unique enough to stand out from the standard ruins and land generation. For example, from chapter two:

Spoiler

Instead of the treasure hunter just giving you a map to the Lazaret, perhaps they describe a series of landmarks to follow to get there, starting with some sort of landmark near the world spawn. Maybe there's a large hand-dug well near world spawn--a unique enough feature to stand out, but mundane enough to not seem too out-of-place, especially with a trader always being somewhere near spawn. From there, the player could need to travel until they find a wolf-shaped rock, and then need to continue east/west until they find a "Stonehenge" structure(that perhaps contains a campsite). After that could be another minor landmark, or perhaps the Lazaret itself. The trader could also mention roughly how long it should take the player to reach each of these landmarks, or just mention one of them as a good place to camp in order to subtly suggest that it will take a day by default to reach that location. 

The Lazaret could still contain a map to the village itself; especially since this map was drawn/written in a language the player can understand.

The map to the Devastation could be replaced simply by the hunter telling the player to travel north/south for a couple of days. They'll know they're getting close when they see the tainted air on the horizon.

Tobias's cave is fairly close to the village, so it's easy enough for someone to draw a map, if Tobias himself didn't leave a map for the player.

For maps in general...parchment/paper is expensive, and probably not something NPCs want to just give away. Likewise, it's also fairly clear that the language has changed over time--the NPCs speak differently than the player, and some express surprise that the player can read the "old writing" left in the village notes. Given that NPCs still have books in their homes, they're obviously not illiterate, but the written language probably isn't something the player would realistically be able to understand.

Of course, there could still be an option for players to get a map directly to the location. They just might have to supply the parchment for such or otherwise pay a few gears in order to get that kind of thing.

[Ceridith]

7 hours ago, Moltrey said:

So I mentioned this issue in one of the recent release threads: Lack of enough interesting POIs other than Traders (which are nigh useless at the onset)

It would be nice if we could get some POI distribution and density sliders for worldgen parameters to specify if we want more or less ruins, dungeons, special natural features, etc.

7 hours ago, Moltrey said:

Combined with more often than not spawning in with bears and/or wolves nearby is making my experiences with VS less than appealing for the first time.

I've noticed this seeming to happen a lot more often on fresh world starts as well, which seems to be even more of an issue with bear agro being tweaked for the worse in my opinion. I don't mind aggressive wildlife being able to spawn on the first day in the general area, but loading into a fresh world literally two blocks away from a bear that immediately agros is just nonsense.

[CastIronFabric]

13 hours ago, Ceridith said:

It would be nice if we could get some POI distribution and density sliders for worldgen parameters to specify if we want more or less ruins, dungeons, special natural features, etc.

I've noticed this seeming to happen a lot more often on fresh world starts as well, which seems to be even more of an issue with bear agro being tweaked for the worse in my opinion. I don't mind aggressive wildlife being able to spawn on the first day in the general area, but loading into a fresh world literally two blocks away from a bear that immediately agros is just nonsense.

I have set creatures to passive and turn off temporal stability. I am not traveling 2000+ blocks to find a great spot to then not be able to live there, nope not have any of that. Although I personally would prefer all 'Deep creatures' or higher to be hostile but I take what I can get. 

I am also not going to be locked in a geographic area because I am surrounded by forest I can not even explore until mid to late game on a map that is 1 million by 1 million, not going to do it.

Edited July 10 by CastIronFabric

[Moltrey]

Update:

After watching TakTangent's latest start on a new world I decided to try the Conquest Landform Mod, using the recommended settings. So far, so good. The terrain is much less spiky and difficult compared to the average vanilla world, refreshing. Also, I am tending so far in a small sample size to discover a few different ruins. I need to start a lot more worlds to have a better sample, but the better and arguably more realistic terrain has removed a smaller irritant in vanilla; too much difficult terrain on average.

Note: The Conquest Landform Mod does seem to work well with the Algernons Watersheds Mod. 

So on the whole, hurrah! 

Edited July 16 by Moltrey

[Moltrey]

Second update: Overall things are going much better. I do have to set the Conquest Landform Mod parameter Landform up from the default of 70 to 90 as otherwise I seem to get far too many island starts with no other islands in sight.

I have been updating the various mods from the thread's first entry above. While not IMO a true "river" mod, Watersheds is a very nice substitute until whenever Tyron & Co get around to presenting rivers in the base game. The running water can get a tad annoying due to being so loud, but Algernon has done a good job (I think) in easing up on the volume (well, it seems that way to me at least, can't be certain).

Interesting POIs can still be scarce depending on the map but I am just happy that I can play the game again without getting frustrated.

[Blaiyze]

I would love to see more in depth ruins and references to the past: VS Archeology anyone? This game is ripe for it. 

Pan/dig up pieces of broken pottery, etc, which leads to discovering information/landmarks that hint at places to visit/the past/etc. As well as dig up some fun trinkets to wear/decorate with. A few more small villages would be lovely - I know there's already the one story village (yet to discover it so maybe take this with a grain of salt), but a liiiiittle bit more life that give a logical reason for the traders to live out in the middle of nowhere would be nice - perhaps they live along trade routes or something. As is, if there's only one true city left in the world, what money are the traders actually earning by living so isolated from... their customers?

[Moltrey]

Yeah, given that we are so early on in VS- as a newb who hasn't scratched the story yet, it does seem a bit far fetched. I try not to think about it too hard for now. Between the Devs and mods like Better Ruins it looks like we will get there bit by bit.

[CastIronFabric]

5 minutes ago, Moltrey said:

Yeah, given that we are so early on in VS- as a newb who hasn't scratched the story yet, it does seem a bit far fetched. I try not to think about it too hard for now. Between the Devs and mods like Better Ruins it looks like we will get there bit by bit.

Better Ruins is core to my game experience and very long term goals for my current play. I consider it fundamental for the game now.

[Ravensblade]

Terra Prety works with Watersheds. It's the one i use. And i see it's not mentioned. The mod page of Terra Prety gives new recommended world settings for it. Terratag is also fun if you like map creation as you can actually create regions with it. 

I can't help with POIs since i'm not that interested in them. I'm much more focused on building myself then exploring ruins, so i didn't even install Better Ruins mod yet.  For me good mine location or port location is more interesting POI then same random cathedral ruin.

On 7/9/2026 at 3:14 PM, Moltrey said:

 I have played this game for quite a while now, perhaps 2 years and I have never felt this frustrated with "Meh" spawn worlds. Very few ruins let alone buildings or larger POIs. There needs to be SOME interesting "bits and bobs" here and there or I lose interest eventually. I don't want too many of them either, that would be worse imo.

I think it's fine to lose interest in something after playing it for a while. There is no single game I didn't lose interest in, after playing for like 6 months and then I take a break. A good game for me is not the one i play constantly but the one i return too. So I don't believe in "Single Eternal Game", and i think trying to achieve that status broke many games. 

 

Edited August 14 by Ravensblade
a