An inversion in monster distribution philosphy

[Rainbow Fresh]

When thinking about why monster encounters are so frustrating to me I recently got to a realization that gave me an idea. One that could hopefully alleviate some of the pain and annoyance while keeping the general notion of monsters as a threat intact, aswell as the overall balance in the long run.

Monster encounters come in exactly two categories: the 99% random spawns all over the world and the 1% fixed dungeon encounters. Think story locations and the occasional locust nest. The advantage of random spawns is variety and that they are endless while the downsides are that they are endless even if you want to get rid of them and they are unpredictable. On the other hand fixed spawns are predictable and finite whereas the problem is that they are finite even if more combat encounters would be beneficial. Meanwhile we have the game's implicit way of pushing the player into a specific behavior pattern. Armor sucks for anything other than protecting you from immediate death. Slower movement, debuffed abilities, more hunger drain. The game *wants* you to not wear them unless specifically necessary, which makes sense. The problem I am seeing though is that the situations in which you'd be reasonably incentivized to wear armor and come prepared contradict the situations in which you'd need armor.

Here is an example: Nothing is more frustrating than being at home, doing virtually anything else with your in-game life and RNG shitting on you with higher-than-calm rift activity, pooping out monsters that molest you. As it is a random spawn you cannot do anything against it since the only influence we have is making sure the spawn conditions are no longer met which is neigh impossible. Pretty sure rifts occasionally poop out monsters even in lit areas. And building enough underwhelming rift wards and keeping them fueled 24/7 to protect against rifts in the first place is certainly impossible. Meanwhile, home is the one place in the game where you should really not wear nor need to wear armor. You will want to do anything but fighting and it should be a semblence of safe. On the other hand imagine you are out exploring. You come across a dungeon/BetterRuins dungeon/story location. Assuming you don't run into a bell there will only be a couple, usually easily seperable groups of enemies. Once dealt with, that's it. Dungeon's safe. Come back anytime to back more bags full of goodies.

The one time where you may reasonably prepare for combat (though more armor means less loot to carry) it is a finite, predictable situation. Depending on circumstance and player skill you might even "accidentally" end up clearing the whole thing without armor and preparation because you just curiously wandered in, took out the one drifter or shiver lurking at a time and now you never need to "come back later when prepared". Meanwhile all the parts of the game where you should be focussing on anything but wearing armor and bringing supplies for a war is when the game throws all the monsters at you.

Which got me thinking - what if we just inverse the polarity? What if we made the parts of the game that shouldn't focus on hostile encounters more predictable, controllable, maybe even "finite". While making the areas that are intentionally and naturally hostile-heave just that; hostile-heavy. What if we made rifts act like locust spawners; a finite amount of mob spawns and once dealt with it's harmless. Incorporate that one mod I was initially searching for but couldn't find that makes rift wards more powerful and allows it to destroy rifts in the radius aswell. Remove random night time spawns. That way general existence still has variance and unpredictability while making individual forced encounters more controllable and predictable. Calm rift activity means safe. Higher rift activity means not. It changes at random but dealing with what it causes can be a "one and done" deal. With more protections in general. Meanwhile on the other hand, dungeons allow random monster spawns or get atleast respawning fixed monsters. That way the locations intended to be hostile-heavy and intended to be where you go "prepared" actually require you to be. Come back for a second loot run cause your inventory was full? Prepare again to fight more hostiles. That way the overall uncertainty outside of a safety of your own making remains while allowing for such safety to even be created. That way the overall threat from monsters remains the same while making encountering monsters less counter-intuitively annoying and frustrating.

That's just an idea though. Now what are *your* thoughts on this?

Edited Thursday at 09:47 AM by Rainbow Fresh

[CastIronFabric]

I vote on the following which is the same as always really, most people on the forums are very much against it.

 

A. remove 'surface drifters completely.

B. (OR) Just surface drifters not spawn in your base, I assume some people really like that but for the life of me I can not image why or how but regardless. If enough people like monsters spawning in their cellar or outside while walking to their cellar then we can make option A an option.

C. expand the 'procedural dungeons' and make it more robust (which they are likely doing anyway) thus threat becomes a place you go to and can prep for instead of having it happen while you are getting more carrots to make a stew. (a concept I advocated long time ago and got almost entirely negative response to) 

this is not a tower defense game

 

Edited Thursday at 12:09 PM by CastIronFabric

[LadyWYT]

4 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

Which got me thinking - what if we just inverse the polarity? What if we made the parts of the game that shouldn't focus on hostile encounters more predictable, controllable, maybe even "finite". While making the areas that are intentionally and naturally hostile-heave just that; hostile-heavy.

This is kind of the direction the game is headed in, but I think it's important to note that the game world is designed to be dangerous, with very few places that are truly safe. Just because you can't see the dangers doesn't mean they aren't there, and the drawback to making the world mostly predictable/controllable is that you get Minecraft. Not that Minecraft is bad, but that's one reason Minecraft isn't as satisfying to play in some ways--the game never really pushes the player to get better and there's very little that's a real threat.

 

4 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

What if we made rifts act like locust spawners; a finite amount of mob spawns and once dealt with it's harmless.

It's not the worst idea, but this makes rifts much less of a threat and opens to the door to players ignoring the rift ward entirely. I think a better solution would be to take this idea, but make it so that rifts change their locations frequently rather than opening in one place and then sitting there for several in-game hours(as long as the player is in the area). That way they're still dangerous and the rift ward remains valuable for dealing with them, but they aren't locking the player out of certain areas for entire days.

 

4 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

Remove random night time spawns.

The random nighttime spawns aren't really random though. Monsters are more likely to appear from rifts during the night, since they like darkness. A calm night won't have monsters, aside from the rare one that strays from a nearby cave. However, a calm night could easily turn into a nightmare if the rift activity goes from calm to high. And that's one of the things that really helped set Vintage Story apart from Minecraft, at least in my experience.

 

4 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

Meanwhile on the other hand, dungeons allow random monster spawns or get atleast respawning fixed monsters. That way the locations intended to be hostile-heavy and intended to be where you go "prepared" actually require you to be. Come back for a second loot run cause your inventory was full? Prepare again to fight more hostiles.

Some dungeons should definitely have more monsters, as well as traps and puzzles, but I don't think every dungeon needs to be swamped with monsters. Sometimes it's enough to just have a creepy atmosphere to keep the player on edge, but not actually throw anything particularly dangerous at them. 

As for the "loot run" respawns...in general, loot runs happen rather quickly, so unless the location is extremely far away the player should be able to carry off all the loot they want before anything respawns. If they can't do that because the monsters are respawning too fast, then they tend to end up frustrated more often than not. There's also the fact that dungeons that have set spawns and allow respawning aren't places that the player will be able to really clear out and turn into a base. That's not necessarily bad, but I think the purpose of some of the dungeons is that they're locations the player could choose to clean up and call home if they so wished.

There's also the potential issue of dungeons getting turned into mob farms, if the monsters respawn fairly often and the locations can be altered without affecting the spawns. In fairness, I don't think mob farms can ever truly be stopped, since games will always have a few exploits or "cheaty" strategies, but it is something to consider.

5 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

That's just an idea though. Now what are *your* thoughts on this?

The only other thing I really want to note is that I don't think monsters themselves are the problem. I think the issue is more that combat currently has some issues, like hitboxes and animation timing, that make combat a little clunky and frustrating to deal with sometimes.

[DarkGold]

6 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

Nothing is more frustrating than being at home, doing virtually anything else with your in-game life and RNG shitting on you with higher-than-calm rift activity, pooping out monsters that molest you. As it is a random spawn you cannot do anything against it since the only influence we have is making sure the spawn conditions are no longer met which is neigh impossible. Pretty sure rifts occasionally poop out monsters even in lit areas.

My experience has been that monsters never spawn in my base, except during temporal storms, but I believe that is because I have placed big lanterns within at least 12 block of each other, and my base is not enormous (so lighting it all isn't hard). Pictures attached of my base (blue stars on map are the radius of the lightning rod on my windmill roof).

I would like it if powered rift wards kept an area safe from a temporal storm, but besides that, I have very little problem with the existing system, because the 3 high fences and lights keep me safe when I am at base at all other times.

This set up was working for me before the 1.22 lantern update, where large lanterns became even better.

I also always run around in leather armor, since there is no down side to wearing it (besides style), unless I am preparing to actually fight something (in which case I gear up to the best armor I have). That's also done a lot to keep me safe, since the leather basically prevents me from getting killed in 1 hit, and after taking 1 surprise hit, I can run away.

Edited Thursday at 04:16 PM by DarkGold
Note on 1.22 lantern update. Note on leather armor.

[Liefeling]

This is honestly a valid critique. I can't think of a truly clean solution that doesn't make the game feel overly easy, but the core complaint is definitely something I've also had gripes with, especially when I played for the first time.
Finding out how much armor debuffs you when I was first playing felt "unfair" with how much fighting we were expected to do. Not that it has to be easy, but the options that are given to alleviate the burden need to actually serve that purpose.
That doesn't necessarily mean armor needs to change though, it is a very realistic aproach in line with the concept of the game. However as LadyWYT mentioned, combat itself is too clunky a system to add that extra layer of complexity onto it without feeling immensely frustrating at times.

[Zaph42nd]

Regarding monster spawns, for the most part my issues are that the current light-levels for spawns maybe could use some tweaking and I'd also, much like many others, like to see changes to combat to make monsters more worth fighting (as it stands, boxing yourself in during temporal storms or avoiding monsters all together is more worthwhile than fighting). As it stands, the current spawns really discourage playing with dimly-lit bases and make cellars a bit tedious, lowering the spawn threshold (e.g. light levels of 5 or below for drifters and other rust creatures) helps but currently no option in-game to tweak that (this I think would be a good option to world-creation settings or server-operator commands, it'd also be nice to increase spawn rates in some instances too).

I'd also be interested to see temporal storms either majorly reworked or altered in some way as currently they feel a little unfinished mechanically speaking (e.g. there's no effective way to decrease intensity, though a story-progression based tool could be good for this perhaps). Same goes for temporal rifts, they prove more annoying than mechanically satisfying for me at least since while I like that you need to work around their locations when building bases, the amount of control over them players have is limited at best.

[MKMoose]

7 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

Pretty sure rifts occasionally poop out monsters even in lit areas.

Assuming good player stability and no temporal storm active, they can't spawn at all in areas which have an artificial light level of 8 or more even while in range of rifts (technically "OnlyBlockLight", so only light emitted by blocks, but that's synonymous with artificial light for most purposes). It can be annoying to light up a large area sufficiently, and having some small spots with lower light level can sometimes make it seem like they occasionally spawn in lit areas regardless.

It is also true, though, that rifts can occasionally spawn monsters in broad daylight - at just ~0.63% of the standard spawn rate, or slightly higher when multiple rifts are close together.

 

7 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

Which got me thinking - what if we just inverse the polarity? What if we made the parts of the game that shouldn't focus on hostile encounters more predictable, controllable, maybe even "finite". While making the areas that are intentionally and naturally hostile-heave just that; hostile-heavy. What if we made rifts act like locust spawners; a finite amount of mob spawns and once dealt with it's harmless. Incorporate that one mod I was initially searching for but couldn't find that makes rift wards more powerful and allows it to destroy rifts in the radius aswell. Remove random night time spawns. That way general existence still has variance and unpredictability while making individual forced encounters more controllable and predictable. Calm rift activity means safe. Higher rift activity means not. It changes at random but dealing with what it causes can be a "one and done" deal. With more protections in general.

Somewhat reminds me of Project Zomboid, which has a relatively high initial density of zombies with a low respawn rate. For that game it works very well, retaining the danger of exploring and looting new locations while reducing pressure on the player in already-cleared areas, though it is a quite different game.

I think it could be nice to have something like this implemented for monster spawns in VS, and it could be done in many ways, though I have some doubts about the specifics of your suggestion. Currently rifts last 24 hours if I recall correctly, and new rifts would still bring with them new monsters (unless the maximum is tied to chunks or whatnot, instead of directly to rifts). Having a maximum number spawned per rift could still be useful, as it would prevent a single stray rift spawned close to home from potentially ruining a whole night, though it solves a somewhat different issue from what you've described. Also, "random nighttime spawns" are not exactly a thing, as those either come from rifts or crawl out from caves or other dark areas.

At least a small quantity of respawning monsters would probably be desirable - I feel like it could be cool to allow reliably blocking or exhausting rifts, but also to let drifters drift through the world, stumbling upon the player occasionally.

 

7 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

Meanwhile on the other hand, dungeons allow random monster spawns or get atleast respawning fixed monsters. That way the locations intended to be hostile-heavy and intended to be where you go "prepared" actually require you to be. Come back for a second loot run cause your inventory was full? Prepare again to fight more hostiles. That way the overall uncertainty outside of a safety of your own making remains while allowing for such safety to even be created. That way the overall threat from monsters remains the same while making encountering monsters less counter-intuitively annoying and frustrating.

Overall I would appreciate something like this being implemented as long as it's not completely endless spawns, as that would defeat the point of clearing the place of monsters in the first place. It could be implemented via closable rifts. Or a sort of depletion mechanic, where monsters would be more plentiful initially, but after being killed they would replenish very slowly, perhaps over several months if not longer.

 

Personally, though, I don't think it's really debatable that some changes to temporal stability, rifts and storms on the whole are overdue, so I feel like reworking monster spawns as part of a larger overhaul would be more worthwhile than just reworking monster spawns themselves. Spoiler-marked just because it's long.

Spoiler

My thought for a while has been that it would be ideal to integrate all temporal mechanics into a single dynamic system managed in a way similar to weather, because the current implementation feels largely disjointed and overcomplicated for no apparent benefit.

First of all, just have a slowly-changing stability noise, a lot like the current stability but changing over time. We could still retain a constant stability component added on top of the dynamic one to make some areas more or less stable on average. This would also make it easy to address complaints about some areas being inhabitable, as well as prevent new players from getting caught in permanently unstable areas with seemingly no way out.

Once we have that, we can just spawn rifts in low-stability areas (removing rift stability which is currently completely disconnected from stability). Regular rifts could basically be implemented as small-size extreme instability pockets, so extreme as to twist and warp a small area a couple blocks in radius, or perhaps larger in some cases (especially during storms). They should even move slowly and change size as stability changes, making it possible to gauge and predict it based on rifts.

Temporal storms can be implemented in a couple simple ways (or possibly a combination of them), for example (1) a localized, moving instability region which is just added on to the regular dynamic stability, (2) a brief global instability spike, or (3) a surge in the quantity and size of rifts. The storms don't even need to have any special effects of their own, since storm-adjacent effects are already applied at low stability - if the storm lasts long enough and is strong enough to bring player stability down to zero for a while, then the effect could be effectively the same. Just imagine how unnerving it could be to see your stability slowly degrading instead of the storm just starting in an instant, and knowing that you can't just leave like you can leave a cave or mine.

And then put in some effort to integrate the stability system with the rest of the game. There's a lot of things that could be added, but I think the game would benefit from having a polished baseline system first, not a messy collection of incohesive, tacked-on, individually rather uninspiring mechanics.

If we want to make the mechanic more immersive and engaging, then I personally don't know any change better than to remove the gear indicator from the UI or at least reduce its reliability. It would serve well to keep the player on their toes and introduce more uncertainty, although naturally it would likely have to come with a bunch of other concurrent changes.

For some other things I would be interested to see:

• Monster spawning should be more involved than just having them pop out of thin air. It would be really cool to have them actually crawl out of rifts.
• Arguably, monsters should normally only ever come out of rifts, and not be spawned in any other way. Those rifts, in turn, should be much more common in unstable areas, in ruins and underground.
• Some monsters wandering across the surface (actually moving long distances, ideally many drifters in the same direction and and not just haphazardly) could be added as replacement for the current random spawns.
• Large, static rifts which spawn monsters ad infinitum but can be closed with some improvised contraptions or Jonas tech would be a very cool element of ruins, story locations and other instability hotspots. They could also be tied with specific blocks, devices or artifacts. The monsters would still be somewhat limited in quantity due to the ability to close the rift, but it would require to actually push through and put in the effort to close the rift, which seems inherently more engaging and less cheesable than just having a very specific number of monsters. This could be used to make some dungeons or unstable regions into a big challenge to seek out with an appropriate reward.
• Stability really should have any sort of environmental impact and likely some effects on fauna and flora, especially in heavily unstable regions and during storms.
• Various other kinds of anomalies and other nonstandard effects of instability could be added - the options here are basically endless.
• The player should be given something to seek out during storms (not just monsters), incentivizing going out rather than just hiding (the devs have said as much in a relatively recent interview). This could be as simple as pseudo-magical flowers or other growth that only blossoms right before the storm, or random metal scraps littering the ground after it, this sort of stuff. The dimension system from Chapter 2 or some new feature could be used to generate temporal ruins and potentially even interact with some sort of ghosts from the past during temporal storms.
• Various improvised devices, pseudo-magical trinkets or Jonas tech could be added to allow gauging current stability and predicting upcoming stability as well as perhaps interacting with it in some ways (especially important if the UI indicator is removed).

 

For a bit of added context, Saraty and Tyron have said in the interview with Mahjong Blonsky in March that:

Quote

[Temporal storms] are far from fleshed out. I think we have quite a bit more ideas how to make them bit more interesting and not something that players kind of like want to skip rather. [...] So basically more encouragement to participate and take part in those storms instead of just wanting to sit and wait for them to pass.

There's going to be some new mobs for sure. New visual effects and some more loot probably or more specific loot. We're thinking of a way that a temporal zone could become mechanically useful to the player, but we don't have a clear idea yet on that.

 

7 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

Now what are *your* thoughts on this?

Broadly speaking, the way I see it, this tends to boil down to a couple simple design rules which aren't respected by VS particularly well:

• Especially at the start of the game, any monster spawns should be finite, periodic or just very slow to give the player breathing room - this is partially already achieved by the fact that monsters for the most part spawn at night only, but it is also not achieved particularly well because sometimes monsters just spawn in forests or in caves and can keep harassing the player almost 24/7. At least there's the grace period in world configuration, but a new player often won't think to deliberately make the game easier for themselves.
• In an area that the player treats as home, monster spawns should be greatly limited or entirely absent, especially if the intent is to facilitate a feeling of ownership over the homestead and allow creating a safe zone in which the player can prepare for a trip into more dangerous areas - lighting up the area already somewhat protects against spawns, but temporal storms break it, the rift ward doesn't help, and there is basically no hostile regions or locations that the player could prepare for anyways.
• Respawning threats, especially those that harass the player periodically even in a home location, should be designed in such a way that even a new player is expected to fight them, and can learn to do so organically - rifts and temporal storms are almost a complete failure in this regard. They should also ideally offer some sort of reward for dealing with them efficiently and let off in the late game once the pressure they apply risks becoming tedious, cheesing becomes more appealing, and voluntary challenges are more desirable.
• In special locations that are designed to be looted like ruins or story locations, respawning should only occur if some loot respawns as well, or at least the enemies can be looted. Ideally, though, don't make it into a regular farming spot. If there is no loot to respawn, then I see no reason to respawn enemies as well.
• Overwhelming, high-frequency monster spawns should be used almost exclusively as a means of communicating that head-on combat is not the optimal option, plus in extreme optional challenges - while temporal storms do kind of seem like they are supposed to be avoided so they could fit the bill, the devs have also said that they want to encourage interacting with storms more. Plus, I think it goes largely without saying that hiding during storms as it is now just isn't really fun.

The fix to all of the above is pretty much just to create dedicated high-risk areas and challenging dungeons, while limiting random harassing spawns from rifts and storms to be less disruptive.

Also as a side note, respawning or persistent threats out in the world are useful to make travel more challenging and engaging, while fast travel options and non-respawning threats are useful to facilitate a sense of progression for exploring and clearing out an area - both are generally optional and are currently done in some capacity. I see no need for any big changes here (or if any changes were to be done here, I would focus on world generation and animals, not monsters).

 

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

The only other thing I really want to note is that I don't think monsters themselves are the problem. I think the issue is more that combat currently has some issues, like hitboxes and animation timing, that make combat a little clunky and frustrating to deal with sometimes.

Thing is, though, that when people are complaining about rifts or storms or whatnot, they aren't always complaining about combat. Sure, better combat would make things more manageable and less frustrating, but I think a lot of the issues that people have stem from a feeling that the game doesn't respect their space and time, which seems closely related to when and where monster spawns occur.

While some level of pressure on the player is only natural in a survival game, it just gets frustrating and tedius when I want to do one thing, but the game basically goes "nuh uh" and makes it impossible to do anything except sit about until the night ends or the storm wanes. In this context, how good combat mechanics are starts to more properly matter only when combat is unavoidable - and the funny thing is that combat is almost 100% avoidable, but the way to do so is just sit about and do nothing, which is not exactly the definition of fun either, and if a player doesn't feel prepared to fight then they will just have to sit it through.

Well, combat also matters when I specifically want to try my hand at combat and take on something difficult, though there are currently almost no interesting challenges, and a huge portion of combat in the game boils down to either out-damaging a crowd of basic enemies while wearing heavy armor or cheesing them with ranged weapons. Improving hitboxes or animations is important but it won't meaningfully change the basic combat loop or provide difficult challenges and new ways of player expression.

Edited Thursday at 05:11 PM by MKMoose

[Aranyani]

Until drifter and animal hostility settings are offered separately (and ideally expanded), my game mode is always rifts 'off' and creature hostility 'passive.' I would love to have caves be dangerous and fun to explore, but unfortunately that is currently not an option if you want relative peace on the surface. 

It's the number one thing I have wanted since my first experience with VS. Why it's not an option already is baffling.

[CastIronFabric]

4 hours ago, DarkGold said:

My experience has been that monsters never spawn in my base, except during temporal storms, but I believe that is because I have placed big lanterns within at least 12 block of each other, and my base is not enormous (so lighting it all isn't hard). Pictures attached of my base (blue stars on map are the radius of the lightning rod on my windmill roof).

I would like it if powered rift wards kept an area safe from a temporal storm, but besides that, I have very little problem with the existing system, because the 3 high fences and lights keep me safe when I am at base at all other times.

This set up was working for me before the 1.22 lantern update, where large lanterns became even better.

I also always run around in leather armor, since there is no down side to wearing it (besides style), unless I am preparing to actually fight something (in which case I gear up to the best armor I have). That's also done a lot to keep me safe, since the leather basically prevents me from getting killed in 1 hit, and after taking 1 surprise hit, I can run away.

Speaking for myself, I like putting some workstations out doors and I do not like waiting until mid game before I start to make things the way I want. The design I currently have to not have any monsters spawning or coming into my base I would need about 14 laterns and a wall. Never mind the fact that I personally like low light. So I just turn the roaches to passive, and every once in awhile I have to do some bug management. Game wise for me its just static noise. Ironically the very workstations I want outside are the very workstations I would need to make around 8-14 copper plates. .

I still hold the position a simple option in the game setup to not have surface drifters would instantly solve this problem, those that want to have monsters in the base and/or create 12 lanterns to make them not spawn they can do that, if not then change the option.

 

 

 

Edited Thursday at 08:39 PM by CastIronFabric

[ifoz]

6 hours ago, MKMoose said:

My thought for a while has been that it would be ideal to integrate all temporal mechanics into a single dynamic system managed in a way similar to weather, because the current implementation feels largely disjointed and overcomplicated for no apparent benefit.

This kind of thing would be really nice.
I never noticed it when I was a new player, but over time I've slowly come to realise just how disjointed the temporal mechanics are, in a game that usually does a great job at interconnecting its systems.

Rifts spawn monsters, but so does darkness underground. Temporal storms spawn monsters, but without darkness or rifts. Monsters can't normally spawn in lit-up areas, aside from during temporal storms. Having low stability spawns monsters, but without rifts. Low stability surface areas as far as I am aware do not have a chance to have higher rift activity, since rifts and instability are not connected.

There's three main systems here (rifts, storms, surface instability) that you would think would all be linked in some way, but they aren't really.
Darkness and rifts are at least connected, though darkness isn't connected to storms and instability.

[LadyWYT]

7 hours ago, MKMoose said:

Thing is, though, that when people are complaining about rifts or storms or whatnot, they aren't always complaining about combat. Sure, better combat would make things more manageable and less frustrating, but I think a lot of the issues that people have stem from a feeling that the game doesn't respect their space and time, which seems closely related to when and where monster spawns occur.

Right, and I'm not saying combat is entirely to blame. But when it comes to complaints, I think many people can easily point out the effects of something, but don't necessarily stop to fully consider what's actually producing the results they're encountering. It's easy to point at temporal storms/monsters and say it's a system that needs some work, and that's not entirely untrue. But I do think several of the complaints ultimately lead back to combat, because if the combat were smoother, dealing with the monsters would be less hassle.

[Rainbow Fresh]

Oh boi, time to catch up.

14 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

but I think it's important to note that the game world is designed to be dangerous, with very few places that are truly safe. Just because you can't see the dangers doesn't mean they aren't there, and the drawback to making the world mostly predictable/controllable is that you get Minecraft. Not that Minecraft is bad, but that's one reason Minecraft isn't as satisfying to play in some ways--the game never really pushes the player to get better and there's very little that's a real threat.

Indeed, which is why I want to specifically not mess with the overall threat or balance. Monsters will always be dangerous, monster spawning will always be a threat. Jumping ahead to MKMoose's response later with the part about "like Project Zomboid" I'd even have no complaints if random groups of drifters were just roaming the world potentially eventually wandering by the player's base. Hell I wouldn't mind (not that it'd fit VS, like, at all) an RPG-style progression system where the minimum tier of monsters increases the further you go out; something like further than 1000 blocks only deep versions+ spawn. Go 10000 blocks out and you deal with tainted across the board - if that is what it takes to earn the right and ability to make the one tiny spot in this world that I designated "home" safe enough that I can truly relax and enjoy the other 99% of the game. That's why I just want to redistribute where and how monsters spawn; ultimately everything stays the same it's just bundled differently.

14 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

It's not the worst idea, but this makes rifts much less of a threat and opens to the door to players ignoring the rift ward entirely. I think a better solution would be to take this idea, but make it so that rifts change their locations frequently rather than opening in one place and then sitting there for several in-game hours(as long as the player is in the area). That way they're still dangerous and the rift ward remains valuable for dealing with them, but they aren't locking the player out of certain areas for entire days.

I don't think I quite understand how this particular change would enable players to ignore the rift ward. I agree that rifts just... existing. Menacingly. For what feels like up to 48h. With you never knowing when light levels will hit low enough that suddenly 5 drifters, 3 bowtorns and a shiver will fall out again. Is the prime problem I see with them. And this particular change would somewhat address that without requiring big changes to the entire rift/temporal stability system. Rifts spawn to a cap in a loaded area, that cap being tied to rift activity. These rifts also produce monsters at a rate tied to rift activity. The only change here would be that the amount of monsters a single rift can produce is finite and determined by rift activity and their spawns happen in a predictably fast manner of time. This leads to smaller amounts of monsters at low rift activity and notably dangerous hordes at high+. But atleast you know that once you beat that horde, you get a breather for the time being as the rifts still exist, still clog up the rift cap in that area and still take a while to despawn. Move around and new rifts will spawn. Run away to despawn your current horde of monsters and come back - rifts will also have been unloaded and as such new ones spawn. The rift ward still blocks 97.5% (current game code) of them and if one does slip through your ward you just have to deal with one group of monsters and can focus on other things. It is certainly much more predictable without removing the unpredictable nature of when rift activity will decide "There be hell upon earth". Anything out of your rift warded safezone at home will be as, if not more dangerous.

14 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

The random nighttime spawns aren't really random though.

I swear sometimes monsters just materialize in a dark corner. But then again, rifts are neigh invisible at nights so I could just be missing them...

14 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

but I don't think every dungeon needs to be swamped with monsters. Sometimes it's enough to just have a creepy atmosphere to keep the player on edge, but not actually throw anything particularly dangerous at them. 

Agreed. I more meant dungeons already officially designated to be "hostile". Especially the ones with the big loot to try and counteract the availability of free resources.

13 hours ago, DarkGold said:

My experience has been that monsters never spawn in my base, except during temporal storms, but I believe that is because I have placed big lanterns within at least 12 block of each other, and my base is not enormous (so lighting it all isn't hard). Pictures attached of my base (blue stars on map are the radius of the lightning rod on my windmill roof).

I would like it if powered rift wards kept an area safe from a temporal storm, but besides that, I have very little problem with the existing system, because the 3 high fences and lights keep me safe when I am at base at all other times.

Aside from what MKMoose said about there being a tiny chance for monsters to spawn from rifts even in light, I am aware that one could always go and do a Minecraft and place lightsources in a 500 block radius to cover all render distance and prevent most any spawns. The thing is though that is A: kinda lame, B: ridiculously expensive in Vintage Story and C : really ugly when Vintage Story is Minecraft but with good building options. Dimly lit areas fit the medieval vibe more than a sun tan studio. I feel like there should be better ways than turning an entire landscape into the surface of the sun just to try and prevent monster spawns by "unfulfilling their spawn conditions". That feels like unnecessarily game-ified logic to deal with a system that ought to be better integrated into the rest of the game.

12 hours ago, MKMoose said:

but also to let drifters drift through the world, stumbling upon the player occasionally.

This and your mention of Project Zomboid gave me another idea; wild groups of drifters roaming the world. The issue I am trying to solve is, as mentioned, not to make the game easier or lower the density of monsters. I just want monster occurrences to be tied to logical sources and the ability to live in piece at home. If nerfing rifts with limited spawns would be too easy, let's add roaming drifters. We don't need the zombie apocalypse but drifters are, for all intents and purposes, just reskinned Minecraft Zombies. Their name suggests they drift about, and since other monsters com from rifts too this cannot be referring to them. So what if rifts just become a mechanic tied to storms; rift activity (as someone once suggested in a different thread) tied to imminence of the next storm. After the last storm ended, you will have mostly calm, sometimes low rift activity. The closer the next storm is the higher both the min and max intensity go with shortly before the storm you being guaranteed to have medium+. This ties systems together and makes things more predictable, independently from the aforementioned "finite spawns from any individual rift" suggestion. To counteract that 50% of the time is no a cakewalk on the surface, we add groups of drifters roaming the lands (like zombie hordes in PZ). You can encounter them and decide "Yes lets fight" or "Nah, no interest in fighting them right now, I'll go around". They sometimes wander (would need background simulation) to where your base is making walls actually good for something. And officially having roaming hordes is a more believable random threat than "Oops. Calm turned into Apocalyptic your day is ruined now".

13 hours ago, MKMoose said:

Overall I would appreciate something like this being implemented as long as it's not completely endless spawns, as that would defeat the point of clearing the place of monsters in the first place. It could be implemented via closable rifts. Or a sort of depletion mechanic, where monsters would be more plentiful initially, but after being killed they would replenish very slowly, perhaps over several months if not longer.

Sounds good to me. Haven't fleshed out how the respawning is supposed to work myself yet so this is a good starting point.

13 hours ago, MKMoose said:

Once we have that, we can just spawn rifts in low-stability areas (removing rift stability which is currently completely disconnected from stability). Regular rifts could basically be implemented as small-size extreme instability pockets, so extreme as to twist and warp a small area a couple blocks in radius, or perhaps larger in some cases (especially during storms). They should even move slowly and change size as stability changes, making it possible to gauge and predict it based on rifts.

That is also an interesting approach to how rifts could utilize better, if the previous suggestion of tying rift activity to storm imminence isn't cutting it. It doesn't really help with RNG just deciding your ideal base area is off-limits due to low stability though; just highlight it more visibly. The logical implications of the world being fucked and rifts being part of that is nicer than just rifts randomly spawning anywhere though.

13 hours ago, MKMoose said:

Just imagine how unnerving it could be to see your stability slowly degrading instead of the storm just starting in an instant, and knowing that you can't just leave like you can leave a cave or mine.

I feel like there needs to be a big tell though. If you just "exist" and suddenly your temporal gear goes wheeeeee, people won't be too happy. So I'd say storms should remain the spectacle they are but their inner workings could very well be akin to what you suggested. A global event but with it's actual dangers being moving, localized clusters of "shit is bad here now".

13 hours ago, MKMoose said:

Thing is, though, that when people are complaining about rifts or storms or whatnot, they aren't always complaining about combat. Sure, better combat would make things more manageable and less frustrating, but I think a lot of the issues that people have stem from a feeling that the game doesn't respect their space and time, which seems closely related to when and where monster spawns occur.

Exactly my thoughts. I do play with Combat Overhaul and sub-mods so combat is more engaging for me than vanilla's; and the fighting itself is not the issue. The game constantly asking me to fight by dropping drifters on my head when all I want to do is figure out how to smith/craft XYZ to add to my base is what turned me into an avid "*sigh* /player s[] entity health 1" user these days.

[DarkGold]

1 hour ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

I am aware that one could always go and do a Minecraft and place lightsources in a 500 block radius to cover all render distance and prevent most any spawns. The thing is though that is A: kinda lame, B: ridiculously expensive in Vintage Story and C : really ugly when Vintage Story is Minecraft but with good building options. Dimly lit areas fit the medieval vibe more than a sun tan studio. I feel like there should be better ways than turning an entire landscape into the surface of the sun just to try and prevent monster spawns by "unfulfilling their spawn conditions". That feels like unnecessarily game-ified logic to deal with a system that ought to be better integrated into the rest of the game.

I'd like to explain why I find the current system satisfying, not overly expensive, and not immersion breaking.

I found it really enjoyable to go from having a little 6x6 (4x4 inside) building that was only lit by a torch, to gradually increasing the size of my base as I found candles by panning bony soil and crafting copper lanterns. I started playing in 1.21, where the 1.22 small lanterns were basically the best light source available. Copper is pretty plentiful, and candles were rare, but it felt really satisfying every time I was able to make a lantern and replace the torches I was using and expand the footprint of my base. Going from replacing torches every day to now having a permanent source of light that was even more powerful felt like great progress.

I happened to have a treasure hunter and commodities trader on the next island over. This made trade very viable; I could sell longbows to the treasure hunter for 4 or more gears, and sell cracked vessels for a profit to the commodities trader that I'd bought from the treasure hunter. This made it very rewarding to save up a couple of trades worth of profit, then head to a furniture trader and buy a lantern with my hard earned gears. This meant I had a more reliable source of lanterns than waiting for a candle to drop from panning. It took me in-game years to actually find a bee hive and start making my own candles.

I find the idea of rifts not spawning in high enough levels of artificial light to be reasonable. Light pushing back darkness, civilization pushing back wilderness, is very thematic. Artificial light being something that interferes with rifts spawning seems plausible given what little we know about rifts. The lore of the game involving alchemy (which has concepts like opposed elements) further bolsters the potential of light to interact with the supernatural.

I don't light up a radius of 500 blocks, I merely keep my base light. My base started out small and grew over time, but from the very start it included fences, to prevent wolves and bears attacking me if I stepped outside. After winter and snow, the fences became 2 high because snow drifts would let bears jump a 1 high fence. After being shot often enough by bowtorn who just happened to be standing somewhere they could clear 2 fences, the fences became 3 high. Now I am very safe inside my compound (outside temporal storms), and everything I need is inside it. It did not require much more materials or planning to make this happen.

I understand not everyone loves the aesthetic of fences, but the cost of making wattle fences is low, you can still see through them, and the idea of having a somewhat fortified base seems very in keeping with the themes of the game and what we see with traders. I understand deciding to set monsters to passive as a desired play style, but as the standard setting, I think encouraging the player to be thoughtful about how they build a defensive base makes sense for the game?

[CastIronFabric]

3 hours ago, DarkGold said:

I'd like to explain why I find the current system satisfying, not overly expensive, and not immersion breaking.

I found it really enjoyable to go from having a little 6x6 (4x4 inside) building that was only lit by a torch, to gradually increasing the size of my base as I found candles by panning bony soil and crafting copper lanterns. I started playing in 1.21, where the 1.22 small lanterns were basically the best light source available. Copper is pretty plentiful, and candles were rare, but it felt really satisfying every time I was able to make a lantern and replace the torches I was using and expand the footprint of my base. Going from replacing torches every day to now having a permanent source of light that was even more powerful felt like great progress.

I happened to have a treasure hunter and commodities trader on the next island over. This made trade very viable; I could sell longbows to the treasure hunter for 4 or more gears, and sell cracked vessels for a profit to the commodities trader that I'd bought from the treasure hunter. This made it very rewarding to save up a couple of trades worth of profit, then head to a furniture trader and buy a lantern with my hard earned gears. This meant I had a more reliable source of lanterns than waiting for a candle to drop from panning. It took me in-game years to actually find a bee hive and start making my own candles.

I find the idea of rifts not spawning in high enough levels of artificial light to be reasonable. Light pushing back darkness, civilization pushing back wilderness, is very thematic. Artificial light being something that interferes with rifts spawning seems plausible given what little we know about rifts. The lore of the game involving alchemy (which has concepts like opposed elements) further bolsters the potential of light to interact with the supernatural.

I don't light up a radius of 500 blocks, I merely keep my base light. My base started out small and grew over time, but from the very start it included fences, to prevent wolves and bears attacking me if I stepped outside. After winter and snow, the fences became 2 high because snow drifts would let bears jump a 1 high fence. After being shot often enough by bowtorn who just happened to be standing somewhere they could clear 2 fences, the fences became 3 high. Now I am very safe inside my compound (outside temporal storms), and everything I need is inside it. It did not require much more materials or planning to make this happen.

I understand not everyone loves the aesthetic of fences, but the cost of making wattle fences is low, you can still see through them, and the idea of having a somewhat fortified base seems very in keeping with the themes of the game and what we see with traders. I understand deciding to set monsters to passive as a desired play style, but as the standard setting, I think encouraging the player to be thoughtful about how they build a defensive base makes sense for the game?

which is why it really should just simply be an option. I personally am so opposed to the idea of monsters spawning in my base for any reason at all that I do not even want to entertain understanding the reasons why other people like it. Its not personal its just that I am very much against it. So, just make it an option. No surface drifters, or surface drifters. Simple. I am ok with turning everything to passive and just doing some house cleaning now and again but I think turning everything to passive just so I can not have them in my base seems to be a setting that could use some refinement. Seems obvious simple problem to be solved because at least for me personally, I will never be convinced that its cool to smith cooper plates outside while rocks are being thrown at me.

[CastIronFabric]

4 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

Oh boi, time to catch up.

Indeed, which is why I want to specifically not mess with the overall threat or balance. Monsters will always be dangerous, monster spawning will always be a threat. Jumping ahead to MKMoose's response later with the part about "like Project Zomboid" I'd even have no complaints if random groups of drifters were just roaming the world potentially eventually wandering by the player's base.

1. The large majority of all crafting/building games are in affect tower defense games. From Project Zomboid, 7 Days to Die, The Forest, Mist (enough already)

2. The one thing I worry about this game is that some day it will turn into 7 days to die. I enjoyed 7 days to die, in fact I have well over 1000 hours in that game but it is nice to see a game that has a lot of building and crafting in it that is actually not a tower defense game for a change. The market is over saturated with tower defense already.

Edited Friday at 11:00 AM by CastIronFabric

[LadyWYT]

8 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

The only change here would be that the amount of monsters a single rift can produce is finite and determined by rift activity and their spawns happen in a predictably fast manner of time.

This is why I say that such a change would reduce the value of rift wards. The main reason to build them is to keep an area rift-free. However, rift wards are somewhat expensive, so if the player can just...kill everything that comes out of the rift and thus close the rift almost as soon as it opens, then why bother building rift wards at all? 

 

8 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

Aside from what MKMoose said about there being a tiny chance for monsters to spawn from rifts even in light, I am aware that one could always go and do a Minecraft and place lightsources in a 500 block radius to cover all render distance and prevent most any spawns. The thing is though that is A: kinda lame, B: ridiculously expensive in Vintage Story and C : really ugly when Vintage Story is Minecraft but with good building options. Dimly lit areas fit the medieval vibe more than a sun tan studio. I feel like there should be better ways than turning an entire landscape into the surface of the sun just to try and prevent monster spawns by "unfulfilling their spawn conditions". That feels like unnecessarily game-ified logic to deal with a system that ought to be better integrated into the rest of the game.

Honestly, the lighting rules probably need some adjustment. I don't love the idea of preventing monsters from spawning in spaces that qualify as insulated rooms, however, that's probably a decent tradeoff for removing the spawn protections from artificial lighting. That way the player doesn't have monsters spawning indoors, for the most part, but they can't expect to skip making rift wards by placing lanterns everywhere. Placing lanterns could still cut down on the number of monster spawns somewhat, but it's not going to be nearly as effective as daylight or a rift ward.

 

9 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

A global event but with it's actual dangers being moving, localized clusters of "shit is bad here now".

Bring back the rift bug.  It made rifts invisible and removed the sound. The stability drain still happened, but at a much slower rate, and I think the gear turned the wrong direction while it was draining. In any case, the only way to notice there was a problem was the appearance of monsters in the area, unless you happened to look at the gear and actually notice what was going on.

In fairness I'm not sure most players would go for this, but it was a pretty fun bug while it existed.

7 hours ago, DarkGold said:

I understand not everyone loves the aesthetic of fences, but the cost of making wattle fences is low, you can still see through them, and the idea of having a somewhat fortified base seems very in keeping with the themes of the game and what we see with traders. I understand deciding to set monsters to passive as a desired play style, but as the standard setting, I think encouraging the player to be thoughtful about how they build a defensive base makes sense for the game?

If we look at the NPCs for an example of what kind of bases are expected for the world, pretty much all of them have palisades or other defensive structures like bunkers, walls, towers, or actual forts. So yeah, I agree here--not everyone likes fencing, and it's not a hard requirement to succeed at the game, but it's not an unrealistic design choice at all.

In which case, it's a good idea to give the player some palisades and stakes to build with. They don't necessarily need to be functional, but it would be nice to have a perimeter fence that looks like a proper defense rather than something you'd find in a suburban backyard.

[Rainbow Fresh]

49 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

This is why I say that such a change would reduce the value of rift wards. The main reason to build them is to keep an area rift-free. However, rift wards are somewhat expensive, so if the player can just...kill everything that comes out of the rift and thus close the rift almost as soon as it opens, then why bother building rift wards at all? 

Even if rift spawns are finite and predictable it still doesn't change the unpredictable nature of when they will pop up. Yes, if rift spawns are finite and during Low activity there may be... what, 2 rifts around which poop out 4 - 5 monsters total? Yes you can kill them and be on your merry way. That doesn't help though if the activity silently changes when it was "calm" just a second ago and you are busy doing something else, focused. The Rift Ward exists (or should exist at which it currently does, at best, a mediocre job) to give you a reasonably expensive option to ensure a chosen, small area is so safe (while you maintain the ward) that you can confidently go solely focus on doing some other tasks that occupy you for the next real hour, or even go afk waiting for something to finish, without being jumped, slapped or even murdered out of nowhere.

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

Even if rift spawns are finite and predictable it still doesn't change the unpredictable nature of when they will pop up. Yes, if rift spawns are finite and during Low activity there may be... what, 2 rifts around which poop out 4 - 5 monsters total? Yes you can kill them and be on your merry way. That doesn't help though if the activity silently changes when it was "calm" just a second ago and you are busy doing something else, focused. The Rift Ward exists (or should exist at which it currently does, at best, a mediocre job) to give you a reasonably expensive option to ensure a chosen, small area is so safe (while you maintain the ward) that you can confidently go solely focus on doing some other tasks that occupy you for the next real hour, or even go afk waiting for something to finish, without being jumped, slapped or even murdered out of nowhere.

Sure, but I'm looking at it from the standpoint of...it only takes 2-3 hits with a decent weapon to kill a surface monster on default settings, and that's what the rifts produce. Early in the game it would be more of a problem, since the player doesn't have access to the better weapons and armor yet, and a rift ward certainly won't be an option here. However, late in the game, when the rift ward can actually be acquired, it's no longer very useful because iron and steel will make short work of anything that pops out of a rift. Unless the rift activity is high, and it usually isn't, the rifts and monsters both should be easily manageable.

And as a general rule, the player should have their base lit up well enough to see what's coming, as well as pay attention to their surroundings. While AFKing to wait on a task isn't an uncommon practice in the other block game, I don't think it's a strategy that should be at all encouraged in Vintage Story, since one of the main points of the general game design seems to be getting the player to pay more attention to what they're doing and account for the potential consequences their choices could have.

[Maethius]

I'm probably in the minority here, but I personally dislike the concept of light levels affecting monster spawns at all. That is a leftover MC mechanic. I would rather see the lore honored through the use of wards preventing spawns, even if you need to fuel them using temporal gears over time, and larger bases need more wards. Again, in keeping with the lore (or at least the feeling of the lore), rifts being random and in varying concentrations are fine, but I think if there were a way to increase their concentration and duration in locations where iron or other metal deposits occur would be interesting. Also, activating a translocator should serve as a point of monster spawns; making your distance-jumping points also a point of peril. Wards could be placed in translocator areas to stop local spawns as well... but I can see the pain of a glut of expensive devices. Maybe there needs to be a new device that is less powerful than the ward, such as a Jonas Lamp that kicks spawns back 10 blocks as opposed to 50. I know that lore can't supersede play experience, but it should influence it.

I think I'm rambling.

[MKMoose]

15 hours ago, DarkGold said:

I found it really enjoyable to go from having a little 6x6 (4x4 inside) building that was only lit by a torch, to gradually increasing the size of my base as I found candles by panning bony soil and crafting copper lanterns. I started playing in 1.21, where the 1.22 small lanterns were basically the best light source available. Copper is pretty plentiful, and candles were rare, but it felt really satisfying every time I was able to make a lantern and replace the torches I was using and expand the footprint of my base. Going from replacing torches every day to now having a permanent source of light that was even more powerful felt like great progress.

[...]

I don't light up a radius of 500 blocks, I merely keep my base light. My base started out small and grew over time, but from the very start it included fences, to prevent wolves and bears attacking me if I stepped outside. After winter and snow, the fences became 2 high because snow drifts would let bears jump a 1 high fence. After being shot often enough by bowtorn who just happened to be standing somewhere they could clear 2 fences, the fences became 3 high. Now I am very safe inside my compound (outside temporal storms), and everything I need is inside it. It did not require much more materials or planning to make this happen.

I've also found this kind of progression very satisfying, though I think the current system can easily fall flat in a lot of ways. To me, the progression from a couple torches out in the open to a large number of lanterns in a fenced-off area feels almost like an unintentional consequence of a few unrelated design choices, which isn't really reinforced in any way (and many players just never seem to experience it, if they just make some different choices as they progress). Games like Don't Starve Together or The Long Dark tend to really make a point that darkness being dangerous, and they make sure that fire is critical to survival. But in VS, there is little intentionality - monsters don't spawn in lit-up areas, sure, but then they aren't in any way repelled by fire or even interact with it in any way besides sometimes burning, and temporal storms ignore the spawning restriction either way. Fire is basically a non-issue, it is almost entirely free, and has little purpose besides lighting up firepits and pit kilns.

I've been thinking that it could be interesting to make fire more crucial to the game by at least implementing some sort of fear of fire into monsters, and possibly some other changes like making most if not all light sources expendable, increasing the utility of fire, adding better firestarters and various long-lasting sources of fire. Imagine how unnerving it could be to see monsters moving into the light of a torch or brazier then cover their eyes and recoil, clearly trying to get to the player but kept at bay by the fire. Or even how cool it could be to maintain a huge fire in something almost akin to a ritual in the center of a settlement through the duration of a temporal storm.

 

7 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

The main reason to build them is to keep an area rift-free. However, rift wards are somewhat expensive, so if the player can just...kill everything that comes out of the rift and thus close the rift almost as soon as it opens, then why bother building rift wards at all? 

Frankly, I've never seen the point of rift wards, and as I see it there's already practically no reason to bother building them:

• they are pretty expensive to make compared to simple light sources - three Jonas parts, iron plate, electrum ingot, and some miscellaneous stuff.
• they require maintenance with temporal gears, whereas light sources are infinite,
• they aren't fully reliable, unlike light sources - they occasionally still allow a rift to spawn, plus rifts can spawn monsters in a 20 block radius which can sometimes greatly reduce the apparent range of the rift ward.

I think I would like it if light and rift wards served two distinct purposes - light could be used to deter or repel monsters in some capacity, especially once they've already spawned (serving as a protective tool in some sense), whereas the rift ward could be used primarily to increase the stability of an area and reduce spawns in a large radius (as the primary method for large-scale prevention). Regardless of how it's done exactly, I think that it would be better if they complement each other rather than compete for almost the same function.

 

16 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

I feel like there needs to be a big tell though. If you just "exist" and suddenly your temporal gear goes wheeeeee, people won't be too happy. So I'd say storms should remain the spectacle they are but their inner workings could very well be akin to what you suggested. A global event but with it's actual dangers being moving, localized clusters of "shit is bad here now".

Yeah, very much so. I would imagine that some storm-related effects could start upwards of around ten minutes before any threats start appearing. The point is to make the start of a storm (and then the storm itself) into an immersive atmospheric event, not unlike how real-life storms might start with strong winds, birds flying low, rain clouds closing in from the distance, and so on. I've been saying somewhere around here that anything which can be made more immersive by moving it from the UI to the in-game world should be given these diegetic tells, and I think all the temporal mechanics would especially benefit from it given their otherworldly nature.

I would argue that storms should be an environmental effect first, and a combat challenge could even be almost entirely optional. Naturally, low stability should be risky and inadvisable over prolonged periods of time, if storms are to remain notably threatening, but a storm just dumping a dozen monsters on the player like they owe something to it is not great - it would be ideal to find a good balance there, not swing the pendulum between extremes.

 

2 hours ago, Maethius said:

I'm probably in the minority here, but I personally dislike the concept of light levels affecting monster spawns at all. That is a leftover MC mechanic.

It seems to me that the maximum light level for spawns is there largely just to prevent annoying spawns inside of the player's home - while it is pretty gamey, it is also pretty important, and removing it would require that some other way to prevent random spawns in player-owned spaces is added (and the simplest solution of preventing spawns in rooms is probably not enough, plus it could be finnicky and frustrating to make sure that everything is a room to prevent all spawns). There are options, naturally, and they would just have to be implemented, while light level is right there, free to use, and it's a quite simple and intuitive solution, even if somewhat flawed.

Fun fact: many animals also don't spawn at high light levels, specifically (as indicated by comments in the assets) to prevent them from spawning straight inside farms or animal pens and eating all the crops (in the case of herbivores) or killing the domesticated animals (in the case of predators).

Edited Friday at 11:19 PM by MKMoose

[DarkGold]

3 hours ago, MKMoose said:

But in VS, there is little intentionality - monsters don't spawn in lit-up areas, sure, but then they aren't in any way repelled by fire or even interact with it in any way besides sometimes burning, and temporal storms ignore the spawning restriction either way. Fire is basically a non-issue, it is almost entirely free, and has little purpose besides lighting up firepits and pit kilns.

Agree, for the most part. Fire is temporary and comes at cost in the early game (you might feed it fuel, regularly maintain torches), or requires some investment to get an ineffective (when it comes to preventing spawns) permanent light source (fat or beeswax, oil lamps and candles). As soon as one invests metal (torch holders or lanterns), the cost is paid in perpetuity.

I think the challenge with removing perpetual light sources is that maintaining torches simply isn't that fun for the player, at least at the frequency it is currently required, and it is not intuitive that light sources would last longer (their fuel reserves are not large). So making them last several months would seem strange, but making them last less time would be frustrating. I think a temporal gear powered light source would be less strange to last in perpetuity though. If lanterns were to remain waterproof, and last a long but finite amount of time before needing refueling, I could see a perpetual tier of light above them being added, but it sounds like many people already struggle to invest in lanterns, so adding yet another tier might not be fun, even if it made more sense? It would also be a problem for game modes like Homo Sapiens to put perpetual light behind temporal gears.

I agree, it would be thematically satisfying if monsters were scared of fire, but because players need to be able to make torches easily to be able to see anything in the dark, they must be very accessible. However, an extremely accessible deterrent would make it very easy to use to ignore the monster threat. It would change the game from one where combat is relatively necessary on occasion to one where you would just place torches instead of fight anything that isn't a boss (more than one is already encouraged to do this). This is the major issue I see with making fire a more thematic deterrent. One is already carrying a light source when one is most likely to encounter monsters (at night or underground).

 

3 hours ago, MKMoose said:

It seems to me that the maximum light level for spawns is there largely just to prevent annoying spawns inside of the player's home - while it is pretty gamey, it is also pretty important, and removing it would require that some other way to prevent random spawns in player-owned spaces is added (and the simplest solution of preventing spawns in rooms is probably not enough, plus it could be finnicky and frustrating to make sure that everything is a room to prevent all spawns). There are options, naturally, and they would just have to be implemented, while light level is right there, free to use, and it's a quite simple and intuitive solution, even if somewhat flawed.

Fun fact: many animals also don't spawn at high light levels, specifically (as indicated by comments in the assets) to prevent them from spawning straight inside farms or animal pens and eating all the crops (in the case of herbivores) or killing the domesticated animals (in the case of predators).

I agree, fire is the easiest way to solve the player-owned spaces problem, else it would be limited to too late in the game if it relied on any more advanced tech. I can see "rooms" either having a far too restrictive definition, or else players just filling mines with doors to make everything a room. I can't see a better way than light to solve the problem in the early game.

Edited yesterday at 03:08 AM by DarkGold
Note on Homo Sapiens mode.

[DarkGold]

6 hours ago, MKMoose said:

I've never seen the point of rift wards, and as I see it there's already practically no reason to bother building them

This is also the case for me. I was surprised to find out they did nothing to stop temporal storms, which is what I expected them to do since, as you say, lighting is cheaper than rift wards, and that control of player-spaces is necessary far earlier in the game.

I am not certain when they are more useful than lights. I thought perhaps underground, but if monsters can still spawn in darkness without a rift, then you would need light anyway, yes?

I agree that rift wards being repurposed as a source of stability would be good. This would allow the player a tool to stay underground mining longer, rather than have to come up or spend a temporal gear to refresh their stability. Or settle unstable areas if they really wanted to pay the upkeep. This could have narrative purpose in later chapters (if you need to make a base near or explore a story location in an unstable area). These would be valid purposes that are not "negate the effects of a temporal storm within an area".

I see people have discussed some possibilities here:

 

Edited yesterday at 05:32 AM by DarkGold
Correcting typos. Added thought on repurposing rift wards.

[Rainbow Fresh]

9 hours ago, MKMoose said:

Frankly, I've never seen the point of rift wards, and as I see it there's already practically no reason to bother building them: 

• they aren't fully reliable, unlike light sources - they occasionally still allow a rift to spawn, plus rifts can spawn monsters in a 20 block radius which can sometimes greatly reduce the apparent range of the rift ward.

I think I would like it if light and rift wards served two distinct purposes - light could be used to deter or repel monsters in some capacity [...] whereas the rift ward could be used primarily to increase the stability of an area and reduce spawns in a large radius (as the primary method for large-scale prevention).

4 hours ago, DarkGold said:

I agree that rift wards being repurposed as a source of stability would be good. This would allow the player a tool to stay underground mining longer, rather than have to come up or spend a temporal gear to refresh their stability. Or settle unstable areas if they really wanted to pay the upkeep. This could have narrative purpose in later chapters (if you need to make a base near or explore a story location in an unstable area). These would be valid purposes that are not "negate the effects of a temporal storm within an area".

I agree that vanila rift wards, in their current state, are a notable waste of resources compared to how little usability they add. Small range, unreliable, do nothing other than prevent rifts from openening. But cost a late-game fortune and as much upkeep. That's why I literally just made a fixed, standalone version of the rift ward tweaks from the Better Jonas Devices mod (didn't want all the other features and it was kinda outdated) so that rift wards now have a notably larger radius for rift prevention, a smaller radius for rift destruction every half minute and a reasonable amount of restored stability for players in a smaller radius.

[CastIronFabric]

1 hour ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

I agree that vanila rift wards, in their current state, are a notable waste of resources compared to how little usability they add. Small range, unreliable, do nothing other than prevent rifts from openening. But cost a late-game fortune and as much upkeep. That's why I literally just made a fixed, standalone version of the rift ward tweaks from the Better Jonas Devices mod (didn't want all the other features and it was kinda outdated) so that rift wards now have a notably larger radius for rift prevention, a smaller radius for rift destruction every half minute and a reasonable amount of restored stability for players in a smaller radius.

I read a lot of various late game solutions to early game issues. Not just rift wards but a lot of various topics, it causes a balance problem.

 

[DarkGold]

On 7/24/2026 at 11:33 PM, LadyWYT said:

it's a good idea to give the player some palisades and stakes to build with. They don't necessarily need to be functional, but it would be nice to have a perimeter fence that looks like a proper defense rather than something you'd find in a suburban backyard.

I was thinking about this. I have a couple of thoughts.

First thought... when I was at a traders and a bear climbed over the stakes to attack me, I found that quite distressing. It felt immersion breaking and like the stakes were not behaving as expected. So regarding their need to be functional, I would like more functionality than currently exists.

However, I do see the ability for players to abuse stakes if they did damage, for example. Make kill boxes, etc. What I expect from stakes is basically how I use fences right now; shivers can't climb them, you can't just jump over them. This is the functionality I would like to see implemented.

Second thought... I would like to see the option for palisades and stakes in the game, but I think they would mostly be an alternative aesthetic choice to fences, because wattle fences are just so cheap. We assume a palisade would be made of logs, not sticks, and is therefore going to be more resource intensive than wattle fences, so less immediately useful for the player to build when they are trying to set up a defensive perimeter in the early game. They are also just less functional; being able to see through a fence is very useful, a palisade blocks your vision. So while I like the cosmetic option for players who want to build a thematic defensive encampment, I don't see the game actually encouraging the choice of palisades over fences for any other reason.

My final impression is that monsters appear very unintelligent and incredibly hostile. Drifters will run at your door, but they can't figure out how to open it. They really want to kill you, but they just can't figure out how to get at you. They also seem to disperse when it's bright enough outside. Their priority goes from desperately trying and failing to murder you, to seeking less bright places to lurk? But if you happen to be somewhere they can attack you when it's bright outside, their bloodlust outweighs their discomfort and killing you becomes their number 1 priority again. So having a fence instead of a palisade seems less secure, but it's enough to deal with the low intelligence of your opponents. Palisades look sturdier, but we don't need to be stronger than the enemy, just smarter.

Edit: If the game made monsters make choices based on line of sight and made them able to climb fences (only if they saw you were on the other side), then palisades could become more useful, as blocking line of sight would be a meaningful advantage they had that wooden fences didn't (stone fences block line of sight too). But then palisades wouldn't be much better than a 2 high wall of dirt blocks either. I guess nothing could spawn on top of them? There could be something done with enemy logic here I feel, but it seems unlikely the game will go that route. It seems like that road leads to stakes on top of fences/walls, like the equivalent of modern razor wire.

Edited 7 hours ago by DarkGold
Added thought on giving palisades a unique purpose.