Dyed carpet?

[Phillip Susi]

Can you dye cattail carpet?

[Professor Dragon]

No.

You can buy however different carpets from traders: https://wiki.vintagestory.at/Carpet

And who knows what the world of mods holds?
EDIT Eg - This one might be useful for coloured carpet: https://mods.vintagestory.at/dyedcloth

Professor Dragon.

Edited July 13 by Professor Dragon

[Phillip Susi]

Ahh, I have yet to see a trader in my world.  Then again, I also have yet to find any sedimentary rock.  Only Andesite and Periodot.  I would love to find some chalk so I can make mortar.  Or some better than low fertility soil... I don't know if I got a bad seed or what.

[Professor Dragon]

15 hours ago, Phillip Susi said:

Ahh, I have yet to see a trader in my world.  Then again, I also have yet to find any sedimentary rock.  Only Andesite and Periodot.  I would love to find some chalk so I can make mortar.  Or some better than low fertility soil... I don't know if I got a bad seed or what.

Travel some more - it sounds like you have only been a few hundred blocks, because if you'd been further, you should see sedimentary rocks on the surface layers easily.

Bauxite is rarer - you may need to stock up and do a few overnight trips. To clarify, bauxite is not rare . . . it is just one of the rocks that many people have to travel for. It is, however, bright orange - so you know when you find it. But it is of no use until you've reached the mechanical age and have a pulverizer. (Unless you just really like orange rocks.)

Likewise, Traders are out there, but you need some day trips. They are harder, in my view, to find on this patch, as they don't stand out as much on the world map - but they're there, if you know what to look for. They're easier to see from a distance at night, as they are lit up. So standing in a high place surrounded by flat areas at night, with a high render distance, should help. (Of course, monsters are out at night, so take care.) 

I also on my current world needed to have a big long trip before I found a medium soil area. Again, this is not rare. It's just sometimes you can start in a bad spot.

LONG STORY, SHORT: Treat your spawn location as just a place to gear up to do a bit more traveling. Then all of the things you mentioned will reveal themselves over time. My recommendation would be to focus on medium soil location first, as it will help with early game farming. Oh, and keep a note of that Periodot, that's good to know - you'll need that later as a possible Olivine location. You can't use Traders until you have gears or trade goods. And chalk is a rarer rock - but limestone plains are "easier" to find.

Professor Dragon.

[LadyWYT]

19 hours ago, Phillip Susi said:

Ahh, I have yet to see a trader in my world.

How far have you explored? There should be a trader somewhere near the world spawn, though sometimes the little outposts can be difficult to spot, especially in forested or hilly areas. Still, if you explored roughly a 1000 block radius from the world spawn, you should have found at least one or two. 

However, if you're playing Homo Sapiens mode, or otherwise turned the lore content off, there won't be any traders or other lore content in your world at all. In which case, your only option, outside of turning lore content on, is going to be chiseling patterns into the floor, using dyed leather(you can turn it into decorative sheets), or finding a mod that fulfills what you're looking for.

19 hours ago, Phillip Susi said:

Then again, I also have yet to find any sedimentary rock.  Only Andesite and Periodot.  I would love to find some chalk so I can make mortar.

Sediment rock isn't uncommon at all, but depending on the world seed, you may need to travel a few thousand blocks before you see something other than igneous rock.

For mortar, you don't necessarily need chalk. Limestone will work just fine, as will marble, though marble is quite rare so if you find it you may want to save it for building. Seashells can be ground into lime(each shell yields two), but this is a rather tedious way to acquire lime if you need a lot of it. If you have lore content enabled, you can also purchase lime from commodities and survival goods traders.

19 hours ago, Phillip Susi said:

Or some better than low fertility soil...

Higher fertility soils tend to be in areas with more rainfall. Forests might have it, but you'd need to dig underneath the top layer in order to find out, and forest floor always turns into low fertility soil when dug up. Assuming you're playing on default settings, you probably just need to explore a little more.

High fertility soil seems to be a bit random as to when it appears. You won't find it in deserts, but I've seen it in both medium and low fertility areas. It only occurs in small patches though, not whole biomes.

Terra preta doesn't exactly occur in the wild, so you'll need to craft it yourself. It is, however, the best soil in the game for farming.

I will differ from @Professor Dragon's advice here though: low fertility soil is fine for a first farm if you've got nothing else to work with. The key to remember though is that you'll need to get your crops in the ground earlier so they'll have time to mature before winter arrives, and you'll probably only be able to get one harvest instead of two. As long as you're not past July, a low fertility farm should still be able to produce a yield, as long as you work quickly to set it up. To help make up for its shortcomings, you'll want to make sure it's irrigated, and you'll want to till a larger area since you won't be able to rely on getting more than one harvest out of it before winter.

20 hours ago, Phillip Susi said:

I don't know if I got a bad seed or what.

I agree with Professor Dragon's general thoughts here though--the world seed is probably fine, you likely just need to do a lot more traveling. The general rule of thumb I use is to try to explore a couple thousand blocks in each direction from spawn to see what I have to work with. In most cases, most of what I need is within a thousand blocks of spawn, with one or two important resources I may need to travel a little further in order to acquire.

[Phillip Susi]

Wow, thousands of blocks?  I've built a road about as far as I can reasonably go and return in a day and am getting ready to build a hovel to spend the night in there before going further and that appears to be about 300 blocks away from my main home.

[Professor Dragon]

11 hours ago, Phillip Susi said:

Wow, thousands of blocks?  I've built a road about as far as I can reasonably go and return in a day and am getting ready to build a hovel to spend the night in there before going further and that appears to be about 300 blocks away from my main home.

You don't need roads to begin with. 

And by the time you can really afford roads, you're probably capable of completing the first story mission and getting the reward <Spoilers>

Spoiler

Story Mission 1, Resonance Archive, rewards the ability to purchase an Elk for travel

, which kind of makes roads redundant.

Edited July 16 by Professor Dragon

[ifoz]

43 minutes ago, Professor Dragon said:

which kind of makes roads redundant.

I'm pretty sure the elk actually gets a speed boost from roads just like the player does, so road infrastructure is still very handy even post-elk!

Edited July 16 by ifoz

[LadyWYT]

18 hours ago, Phillip Susi said:

that appears to be about 300 blocks away from my main home.

Three hundred blocks in Vintage Story is practically nothing, at least in terms of general distances. You don't necessarily need to go thousands of blocks for absolutely everything, but it's not unusual at all to need to trek a couple thousand blocks to find some critical resource, or find a specific thing for decorative purposes.

 

18 hours ago, Phillip Susi said:

I've built a road about as far as I can reasonably go and return in a day

As others have already noted, roads are useful, but they aren't absolutely required for travel. I tend to just build them around my base, both for aesthetics and utility, and will sometimes build roads to nearby traders or other places I visit regularly to make travel easier. For general travel purposes, having a mount is optimal; currently the only mount available in vanilla is the elk, which you can get via trading after completing the first story location or acquire via catching and raising a baby elk. Trading will be much easier, although if you have lore content disabled trading won't be an option.

[williams_482]

My general rule for roads is this:

- if it's a trip I only plan to make once or twice, just go. Expect to cover ~4-6km per day (assuming no snow and roughly 12 hours daylight) on foot, 8-12 depending on terrain with an elk (and a bone flute!).

- if it's a long distance trip (thousands of blocks, such as to a story location or down south) which I expect to make multiple times, I'll cut a path through forests, bridge over inconvenient pits and ponds, and find passes around/between mountains when possible, marked intermittently with packed dirt pillars at prominent spots and anywhere the path changes direction. This ensures I have a trail which an elk can easily traverse at full speed regardless of local terrain, which I find can cover ~14km per day. 

- if it's a medium distance trip (<2km) I expect to make frequently, such as visiting specific traders, translocators, or a coastal base/dock if my main base is inland, I'll first clear a road as described above, and eventually come back to put down a two wide gravel path. This gives a speed boost to me and the elk alike (the elk is too wide to benefit from a single block wide path) as well as making the path more visible both in world and on the map, especially during the winter. I'm guessing an elk can manage ~16km per day on a two wide gravel path with minimal turns, but it's so rarely practical to make a paved road that long. 

- If it's a short trip (a few dozen to maybe a hundred blocks) I do regularly at a place I expect to be a permanent base, I'll pave it as soon as I have the time and resources to do so.