The Dull Experience of Finding One Specific Type of Rock

[DazedByGravity]

One of the worst parts of Minecraft is how essential Chunkbase has historically felt if you want to search for certain biomes to obtain building blocks - like the pale garden, which only spawns rarely and are usually tiny to begin with - or if you want to seek out an ancient city, whose only alternative is to get lucky caving or find a big mountain and hope this one has a city underneath. But Mojang has recently(ish) announced their next game drop will feature campsites containing maps to locate specific biomes, which sounds like it'll help a great deal with this problem.

Unfortunately, I felt a similar frustration in Vintage Story when searching for specific rocks. I'm a pretty new player, and have got about 20-30 hours on my current world (only 2 short-lived worlds prior.) I'm playing all default settings at the moment. I've gotten to bronze tools and really wanted mortar to building with bricks, and also to make some leather with the extra hides I got from my hunting trips, which I've been making to stock up food for the winter. Both take lime that comes from chalk, so I felt a strong inclination to go and find chalk while the leaves are changing, but before the proper winter cold snap comes and makes long exploration trips more risky.

The handbook tells you how sedimentary layers work, but everything I'd explored was granite, granite, granite - I hadn't seen a single other rock type for miles, especially not sedimentary. Thousand blocks I'd explored from my spawn in various compass directions, but it was just granite the whole way, until I found andesite and peridotite - but those aren't sedimentary either! No hope of chalk; I suddenly dreaded the idea of finding bauxite later. And the process of travelling all these distances is, past a point, really uninteresting - I have food and crops and minerals, so hunting and foraging and mining just detract from my actual goal of finding my desired rock type. What else is there to find? Ruins are rarely worthwhile and the pots are only really useful pre-bronze I've found; all the wilderness looks basically the same with some cool mountains here and there; you just pick a direction, run in it, deal with the hassle of wolves and bears occasionally... there's not a whole lot going on. I made my peace with the idea of losing what I had in my inventory, so the threat of bears and wolves was more of an annoyance than anything. It's boring to walk for so long and find nothing. A whole lot of time, not a lot of interest, and frustrating terrain/wildlife... all to fail at finding chalk. There's not even a clue for which direction *might* be the right way, you could head thousands of blocks south only for the nearest chalk or whatever rock to be a couple thousand blocks north from your spawn, but you'd have no way of knowing!

I understand my current options for making this hopefully a bit better are

1. Translocators, hoping they put me somewhere with sedimentary layers, but I only have the one temporal gear, and am dubious about exploring caves with only bear armour and bismuth/tin bronze tools and weapons.

2. Tame an elk for better move speed, but i'm not sure I'm quite established enough to feed animals on top of myself. A greenhouse is on my build list. I assume the elk needs feeding, like chickens?

I gave up and used a seed/map viewer to find it. Check yourself for seed 1878539379 - there's huge swathes of land without ANY sedimentary rocks at all! What the hell do you want me to do with that??? What kind of game experience am I supposed to get out of that, just fannying about walking over land that is worth nothing to me??? Chalk isn't essential, but Bauxite is a progression requirement...

I got my chalk, but I had to go out of the game to do it, and the experience left me feeling pretty sour. This isn't something you can really alter in the world settings as far as I can tell, except maybe making the world smaller? I'm not sure what solution there is which fits the design goals of the game - maybe a special version or mode of the prospecting pick which indicates a compass direction towards the nearest part of the world that hosts that rock type? Changes to worldgen so you don't need to travel so far to find different environments? I'd take anything.

[KahvozeinsFang]

You don't need to feed elk. Exploration is part of the game. I've traveled as far as 35k blocks south in my single player world. I've found everything I could ever need. Just grab some food and an elk and travel overland. I've found bauxite on the surface and other times I've found it under the first layer of rock. If you want to progress, you'll have to put some effort into finding the things you want. This isn't Minecraft. 

Edited October 7 by KahvozeinsFang

[VANTABlack2000]

3 hours ago, DazedByGravity said:

One of the worst parts of Minecraft is how essential Chunkbase has historically felt if you want to search for certain biomes to obtain building blocks - like the pale garden, which only spawns rarely and are usually tiny to begin with - or if you want to seek out an ancient city, whose only alternative is to get lucky caving or find a big mountain and hope this one has a city underneath. But Mojang has recently(ish) announced their next game drop will feature campsites containing maps to locate specific biomes, which sounds like it'll help a great deal with this problem.

Unfortunately, I felt a similar frustration in Vintage Story when searching for specific rocks. I'm a pretty new player, and have got about 20-30 hours on my current world (only 2 short-lived worlds prior.) I'm playing all default settings at the moment. I've gotten to bronze tools and really wanted mortar to building with bricks, and also to make some leather with the extra hides I got from my hunting trips, which I've been making to stock up food for the winter. Both take lime that comes from chalk, so I felt a strong inclination to go and find chalk while the leaves are changing, but before the proper winter cold snap comes and makes long exploration trips more risky.

The handbook tells you how sedimentary layers work, but everything I'd explored was granite, granite, granite - I hadn't seen a single other rock type for miles, especially not sedimentary. Thousand blocks I'd explored from my spawn in various compass directions, but it was just granite the whole way, until I found andesite and peridotite - but those aren't sedimentary either! No hope of chalk; I suddenly dreaded the idea of finding bauxite later. And the process of travelling all these distances is, past a point, really uninteresting - I have food and crops and minerals, so hunting and foraging and mining just detract from my actual goal of finding my desired rock type. What else is there to find? Ruins are rarely worthwhile and the pots are only really useful pre-bronze I've found; all the wilderness looks basically the same with some cool mountains here and there; you just pick a direction, run in it, deal with the hassle of wolves and bears occasionally... there's not a whole lot going on. I made my peace with the idea of losing what I had in my inventory, so the threat of bears and wolves was more of an annoyance than anything. It's boring to walk for so long and find nothing. A whole lot of time, not a lot of interest, and frustrating terrain/wildlife... all to fail at finding chalk. There's not even a clue for which direction *might* be the right way, you could head thousands of blocks south only for the nearest chalk or whatever rock to be a couple thousand blocks north from your spawn, but you'd have no way of knowing!

I understand my current options for making this hopefully a bit better are

1. Translocators, hoping they put me somewhere with sedimentary layers, but I only have the one temporal gear, and am dubious about exploring caves with only bear armour and bismuth/tin bronze tools and weapons.

2. Tame an elk for better move speed, but i'm not sure I'm quite established enough to feed animals on top of myself. A greenhouse is on my build list. I assume the elk needs feeding, like chickens?

I gave up and used a seed/map viewer to find it. Check yourself for seed 1878539379 - there's huge swathes of land without ANY sedimentary rocks at all! What the hell do you want me to do with that??? What kind of game experience am I supposed to get out of that, just fannying about walking over land that is worth nothing to me??? Chalk isn't essential, but Bauxite is a progression requirement...

I got my chalk, but I had to go out of the game to do it, and the experience left me feeling pretty sour. This isn't something you can really alter in the world settings as far as I can tell, except maybe making the world smaller? I'm not sure what solution there is which fits the design goals of the game - maybe a special version or mode of the prospecting pick which indicates a compass direction towards the nearest part of the world that hosts that rock type? Changes to worldgen so you don't need to travel so far to find different environments? I'd take anything.

At least in the case of Lime there are a few ways to get it.

1. Get lucky enough to find Limestone or Chalk.
2. You can crush Seashells to get a little bit of Lime.
3. You can buy Lime at least from Survival Goods Trader and maybe from Commodities Traders too.

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, VANTABlack2000 said:

1. Get lucky enough to find Limestone or Chalk.
2. You can crush Seashells to get a little bit of Lime.
3. You can buy Lime at least from Survival Goods Trader and maybe from Commodities Traders too.

4. The new procedural dungeon ruin often seems to have chalk/limestone stones within, if it doesn't have lime itself.

 

4 hours ago, DazedByGravity said:

I'm not sure what solution there is which fits the design goals of the game - maybe a special version or mode of the prospecting pick which indicates a compass direction towards the nearest part of the world that hosts that rock type? Changes to worldgen so you don't need to travel so far to find different environments?

As far as I'm aware though, what you've described about your adventures so far is the intended game design, at least somewhat. Once in a while you get a super lucky seed and have everything you need within a couple thousand blocks of spawn, but more often than not there's going to be a couple of resources that you're lacking, that you will need to actively seek out. It's not everyone's cup of tea, but that is why many of us gravitated to Vintage Story rather than stick with Minecraft. One of the core weaknesses of Minecraft is that it tends to just hand everything to the player, and there's not really much effort or skill involved in acquiring most resources. That quality makes it a very good game if you just want to build cool stuff and play casually to unwind, but it's not very satisfying if you're after a game that will actually push you to sharpen your skills and knowledge.

 

4 hours ago, DazedByGravity said:

I made my peace with the idea of losing what I had in my inventory, so the threat of bears and wolves was more of an annoyance than anything.

Do keep in mind that turning on "keep inventory" is an option, as well as an option that can be toggled on/off anytime after world creation as well. I played with this rule enabled for a while in my early days, and it helped a lot.

 

4 hours ago, DazedByGravity said:

1. Translocators, hoping they put me somewhere with sedimentary layers, but I only have the one temporal gear, and am dubious about exploring caves with only bear armour and bismuth/tin bronze tools and weapons.

Bear armor is okay, as long as you don't delve too deep and have good situational awareness. Bronze lamellar or gambeson are better options though, as both will block more damage and have more durability. You don't want to go toe-to-toe with nightmare enemies or regularly fighting corrupt level enemies until you have better equipment, but it is fine for general poking around.

 

4 hours ago, DazedByGravity said:

I assume the elk needs feeding, like chickens?

As others have already said, mounts don't need to be fed(at least at the time of this writing). Likewise, livestock doesn't need to be fed either in order to stay alive--all they need is bright light, since they will despawn if it's too dark. The only reason to feed your livestock is if you want them to breed, or otherwise want to fatten them up before slaughter. Chickens specifically are an exception, since you do need to feed them regularly in order to keep them laying eggs or sitting on nests(in my experience, they seem to stop brooding if you don't keep them fed).

 

4 hours ago, DazedByGravity said:

The handbook tells you how sedimentary layers work, but everything I'd explored was granite, granite, granite - I hadn't seen a single other rock type for miles, especially not sedimentary. Thousand blocks I'd explored from my spawn in various compass directions, but it was just granite the whole way, until I found andesite and peridotite - but those aren't sedimentary either!

Honestly, I think what happened is that you got dealt a tougher world by RNG. Granite/igneous spawns can be quite fun and have some unique benefits of their own(like surface tin), but they can also be a bit more challenging due to the leather bottleneck.

I wouldn't discard your current world, but you may wish to set it aside for a while and start a new world, making sure that it has sedimentary rock at spawn. You might also consider enabling the true map colors, since this can make it very easy to find different types of rock simply by opening the map. In any case, this option allows you to play around with your settings, try different classes, or try different strategies using the new skills and knowledge that you've learned.

Aside from that, you may also consider talking to your friendly local treasure hunter and doing them a small favor to get a special map. Acquiring this map will get you started on the main story; working on the main story for a while should not only be interesting, but you may wind up discovering valuable resources along the way(I use this strategy if I'm having trouble finding a specific thing). Likewise, treasure hunters also sell temporal gears from time to time, so if you're up for a bit of bartering you can just buy the gears that you need rather than fight monsters or delve deep underground trying to find them.

[KahvozeinsFang]

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

It's not everyone's cup of tea, but that is why many of us gravitated to Vintage Story rather than stick with Minecraft.

You are absolutely correct. I haven't played Minecraft in years. It was too easy. There was no challenge after "beating" the game one time. I like vintage story for it's unpredictability and randomness. 

[Rainbow Fresh]

Yeah, I agree with the responses before me. Vintage Story isn't Minecraft, it's supposed to be more challenging, less forgiving and a whole lot more complex than that. I didn't know Minecraft is now adding random ass maps for biomes but, while it doesn't surprise me in the slightest, that is just another step of lobotimization. It works for the chill sandbox building simulator kids game that Minecraft is and may alleviate some of the frustration you mentioned having - but it also even further kills any sense of exploration. In Minecraft that is bad because exploration is nice; the world generator is amazing and everytime I played that game I spent the vast majority of the beginning just running around until I find "The Spot" to build my base. But then you have easily obtainable maps that tell you where everything is. Woodland mansion? Back in my days *cough cough* they were that really special, really rare find you come across. These days, they spawn what feels like every 500 blocks of dark oak forest and you can abduct a villager to sell you a map for free(tm) - more effort than the building with its lack of loot and content is even worth. Trial chambers spawn one per region iirc (aka 16x16 chunks) and yet you can still get a map if finding the giant structure in a minisculy larger search radius is too much work. Ocean monuments spawn what feels like every 500 blocks making ocean travel more of a nuisance; but even then you can get a map telling you where one is. Ironically enough the one map you'd need, treasure maps, are usually useless because they point to a place you have already been to. What about just going around exploring, looking at the world, drawing your own atlas map grid? You get Elytra aprox. 20 minutes in and at that point your only limitation is your gunpowder production and how fast your PC can generate new chunks. And if you really need to find something very specific and you need it NOW - "/locate biome/structure/poi xyz" exists. No external tools required. So making that available to even the survival player feels like yet another step down.

Granted, traveling in Vintage Story is different. The world isn't nice. It is empty and samey. You don't travel to find beautiful scenery because the big, flat, green area next to a lake you built your base on is probably the nicest you will find outside of going 20k blocks north or south to see "change". But instead, traveling is a logistical challenge incentivized through exactly that need for resources you don't have with no clue where to get them. You need lime? You can search for a trader. Then, once you found one or more selling lime on rotation plan and establish a trader route network to earn gears and buy lime with them every so often. Or you can explore to find the necessary rock strata to get it for free and in notable quantities. Plan for a longer expedition. Invest into an elk to speed things up. Invest a sailboat if there is enough ocean(s) in your world. Invest into translocators. Then, once you found what you need far away, establish an outpost(s). Having maps to specific things outside of the story locations (which are fully optional) and the treasure maps? negates that challenge. You just know where things are and can do the minimal effort required; and then what's left to do? Your map with your own waypoints after you went exploring is what tells you where everything is.

[MKMoose]

7 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Likewise, livestock doesn't need to be fed either in order to stay alive--all they need is bright light, since they will despawn if it's too dark.

Animals don't need light in almost all cases. They need to have access to the sky (technically, sunlight prior to multiplication by current brightness), or alternatively artificial light if they're somewhere underground or in an enclosed room where sunlight can't reach.

 

7 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

As far as I'm aware though, what you've described about your adventures so far is the intended game design, at least somewhat. Once in a while you get a super lucky seed and have everything you need within a couple thousand blocks of spawn, but more often than not there's going to be a couple of resources that you're lacking, that you will need to actively seek out.

It's not just about having to search for something. It's about being spawned in a low-value area which is lacking in important resources with no way to tell as a new player, and being given practically zero hints as to where those resources might actually be found. The most common advice is literally just to run around until you stumble upon what you need, because that's in certain cases literally the only option - and because it's purely random, you may get unlucky and find no limestone/chalk, bauxite or whatnot after walking dozens of thousands of blocks.

Some of those issues can naturally be mitigated by just approaching the game with different expectations as well as finding other things to do while exploring, but ultimately frustrating the player to the point of resorting to effectively cheating if not quitting the game is not the game's design goal - and there are almost always methods to minimize it without compromising the game's actual design goals.

 

12 hours ago, DazedByGravity said:

This isn't something you can really alter in the world settings as far as I can tell, except maybe making the world smaller? I'm not sure what solution there is which fits the design goals of the game - maybe a special version or mode of the prospecting pick which indicates a compass direction towards the nearest part of the world that hosts that rock type? Changes to worldgen so you don't need to travel so far to find different environments? I'd take anything.

As far as I'm aware, it's not normally possible to alter the geologic province size. Some mods change things up by allowing sedimentary rocks to spawn in the shield province, which is what you've spawned on.

My preference for this kind of issue tends to be that wherever the player is, they should as a default rule be able to either obtain all resources available at the stage of the game within a relatively small amount of effort, or to find a clue regarding where a missing resource can be found. Breaking this rule is naturally allowed, and it may be preferable to break or difficult not to break in certain cases, but leaving the player with no information to go off of should generally be a justified decision and not a common pattern.

Broadly in the context of rock strata, this is difficult to do, because even rock types which only form in specific environments can move elsewhere because of plate tectonics, and there's not much that can be done which isn't completely gamified - probably the most defensible option I've come across is to allow obtaining some information about nearby rock strata from traders. Increasing sedimentary rock coverage to a more realistic ~75% if not more from the current ~60% could also be justified, especially as long as igneous stones are always present under sedimentary ones regardless.

Specifically for lime, I would strongly consider adding it to some caves and making lime from seashells more viable. Or just making limestone more common, because realistically it seems to be considered the third most common sedimentary rock covering ~10% of exposed or near-surface continental bedrock if not more.

And particularly well this applies to everyone's favorite clay, which really ought to be easy to find near water, often in river floodplains or on riverbanks. There would still be ample uncertainty and effort involved, but it would give the player a clearer goal to work towards instead of leaving them almost entirely directionless.

Edited October 8 by MKMoose

[Maelstrom]

18 hours ago, DazedByGravity said:

The handbook tells you how sedimentary layers work, but everything I'd explored was granite, granite, granite - I hadn't seen a single other rock type for miles, especially not sedimentary.

Indeed.  I've had those worlds too.  As I understand world gen for rock strata, granite is the default and the other types override granite.  This can lead to truly massive expanses of nothing but granite top rock.

The best way I've found of finding other rock strata is to take a cook pot full of food (and a full bowl for a seventh meal) best if it's just meat stew and run in a single direction.  You may have to run and run and run.  And run some more.  In my first long term world I didn't find bauxite for about 7,000 blocks or so.  And it was in the last direction I chose to run.

[DazedByGravity]

  

18 hours ago, KahvozeinsFang said:

Exploration is part of the game.

But a deeply boring, not-fun part, at least as the game stands now. There's nothing to *DO* but walk.

I have no issue with exploration being a core activity inherently, but my problem is that you can go thousands - tens of thousands - of blocks without finding a single thing of remote interest, even aside from whatever specific thing you might be exploring for. I certainly haven't travelled as far, maybe more like 10,000 blocks (which still feels like a stupidly high amount to walk and a huge waste of time), but there was never a a moment where I went "Ooh, what's that?" and got side with something cool, fun, interesting to do, or even any noteworthy resources or novel new creatures or biomes. I just walked. And walked. Saw granite. Grey. Bushy leaves. No dungeons; the odd trader selling nothing of interest (pots, tapestries, clothes); patches of copper (useful but all you do is drop a pin for later and move on; hardly gameplay). And that was so! so! boring! I'm playing a video game; I don't mind that it's slower paced (and I'm pretty happy with the metal/tech progression in general so far) but if I really *must* go great distances to find something, there has to be more stuff to do on the way besides hold W, eat food, occasionally outrun a wolf - or if there's really nothing to do, there has to be a shortcut that trims the boredom of it. Boredom != difficulty; realism != fun inherently (and indeed the game already makes concessions in realism for video game reasons!)

Exploration without anything to create a feeling of wanderlust on the way is just a very long, very boring hike. The logistical challenge of food isn't *nothing* but it also isn't *interesting*, when you already have a good supply of wax-sealed crocks to go. Obviously there's a factor of, it's early access, it won't be content rich in every area, but at that point I feel you have to make a concession for the sake of gameplay, because boredom is the antithesis to video game. Difficulty, fine; boredom, no. Quiet moments, good for pacing; nothing happens for hours, dull.

6 hours ago, MKMoose said:

probably the most defensible option I've come across is to allow obtaining some information about nearby rock strata from traders.

I like this idea, it gives me an obviously compelling reason to try and go caving to find rusty gears or start making things to trade. I'm not really sure what traded goods are valuable at the moment; most of the trader inventories look like decorative/cosmetic junk like pots and tapestries - which is totally fine, I'll get to the point that I want that stuff, but early days I can only afford time and resources for what's useful.

22 minutes ago, Maelstrom said:

The best way I've found of finding other rock strata is to take a cook pot full of food [...] and run in a single direction.  You may have to run and run and run.  And run some more.  In my first long term world I didn't find bauxite for about 7,000 blocks or so.  And it was in the last direction I chose to run.

And this experience sucks. There is no joy in this, no fun factor, no interest... am I supposed to doomscroll while I do this? Pop on a live stream? I didn't know Vintage Story was meant to be second-screen gameplay... The scenery in this game is alright but it's not *that* amazing, there's little wow factor here, especially with the short list of relatively featureless biomes to choose from. I've heard rivers are on the horizon which will be very nice for terrain! But also make this exploration slower on account of the extra water to tread.

13 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

One of the core weaknesses of Minecraft is that it tends to just hand everything to the player, and there's not really much effort or skill involved in acquiring most resources. [...] it's not very satisfying if you're after a game that will actually push you to sharpen your skills and knowledge.

[...]

Do keep in mind that turning on "keep inventory" is an option, as well as an option that can be toggled on/off anytime after world creation as well. I played with this rule enabled for a while in my early days, and it helped a lot.

[...]

Honestly, I think what happened is that you got dealt a tougher world by RNG. Granite/igneous spawns can be quite fun and have some unique benefits of their own(like surface tin), but they can also be a bit more challenging due to the leather bottleneck.

1. There is no skill or knowledge expression in walking one direction for a very long time. The interesting part, planning out the inventory/food situation, happens for a short period at your base, then the moment you set foot on your travels there ceases to be real gameplay for potentially several real life hours while you slowly whittle down what food you took with you (right clicking to drop a crock, fill a bowl, and eat is not really much "gameplay" when it's the only thing you really do the whole time).

2. I'm aware of the keep inventory setting; dropping my inventory isn't what I take issue with actually. The real annoyance is that if I die and need to continue in that direction, I have to retread the same several thousand blocks I've already seen, which exacerbates the exact issue I have, which is that travel! Is! Boring!

3. I haven't found surface tin unfortunately, so no benefit felt there. The only thing I appreciate about the granite is that I very much like the classic grey stone textures it provides for building. Everything else is grey misery.

[DazedByGravity]

I do appreciate all the other knowledge you've all shared though, especially around animals which I didn't know a huge amount about! And I have found a treasure hunter or two; I didn't realise this specific NPC was your way into the story content (maybe this could be signposted a little more clearly...? you come across a couple traders, see the same dialogue options, and reasonably assume all the traders have the same basic dialogue tree - except... one that has no obvious difference besides their wares.). But I'll definitely check this out.

[Maelstrom]

11 minutes ago, DazedByGravity said:

And this experience sucks. There is no joy in this, no fun factor, no interest... am I supposed to doomscroll while I do this? Pop on a live stream? I didn't know Vintage Story was meant to be second-screen gameplay... The scenery in this game is alright but it's not *that* amazing, there's little wow factor here, especially with the short list of relatively featureless biomes to choose from. I've heard rivers are on the horizon which will be very nice for terrain! But also make this exploration slower on account of the extra water to tread.

Take a pro-pick and explore for ores.  Check out caves for ruins, translocators or ores; and as you've mentioned traders.  There's lots to be done along the journey.   In that world one of my early explores ended up getting me over a stack of high fertility soil and some tree seeds of trees I hadn't found yet.

Edited October 8 by Maelstrom

[Teh Pizza Lady]

1 hour ago, Maelstrom said:

And it was in the last direction I chose to run.

usually it is because you stop running when you find it.

1 hour ago, DazedByGravity said:

And that was so! so! boring!

1 hour ago, DazedByGravity said:

travel! Is! Boring!

I bet you're fun on road trips. Sometimes it's less about the destination and more about what we find along the way. If you're looking for a game that doesn't require you to have an attention span longer than 15 minutes before you find something new, then you might enjoy a different block game.

Vintage Story is an adult's game. It expects you to act like one.

[Maelstrom]

24 minutes ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

usually it is because you stop running when you find it.

In this case it was my fourth trip out.  If it had been the second or third I'd have stated that instead of last.

[Hanril]

I feel like lime is important enough that finding it shouldn't be left to rng. Seashells are too scarce to be a valid source, but I remember Gneiss saying that it could be found as stalagmites commonly in all rock areas, and it sounds like a good idea for me. Not too common, but another reason to delve into the caves. Other than that, I would look whether ash could be an alternative for that.

I don't have as much of a problem with looking for other certain types of rock. You will find igneous rock much easier, or deep enough. You will get your quern and machinery bases easily.

For halite, I don't feel like it's that critical. Nice to have, but I got by without it. Makes sense to look for it in warmer climates, and historically it was a well travelled resource.

And as for specific rock colors, that is acceptable for me. People usually worked with what they had around. It also makes first trips through translocators more exciting. And they sure went a long way for their obsidian.

Edited October 8 by Hanril

[LadyWYT]

5 hours ago, DazedByGravity said:

And I have found a treasure hunter or two; I didn't realise this specific NPC was your way into the story content (maybe this could be signposted a little more clearly...? you come across a couple traders, see the same dialogue options, and reasonably assume all the traders have the same basic dialogue tree - except... one that has no obvious difference besides their wares.).

All traders have the "Know of any interesting places around here?" dialogue, but only the treasure hunter actually knows of such a place. Other traders will simply point you to the nearest treasure hunter they know of, for a small fee, of course.

Regarding story content and clues, Vintage Story isn't a particularly straightforward game in that regard. It's not overly cryptic, but much of it is left for the player to discover and explore on their own, rather than the "guided tour" that other games tend to resort to. 

6 hours ago, DazedByGravity said:

I have no issue with exploration being a core activity inherently, but my problem is that you can go thousands - tens of thousands - of blocks without finding a single thing of remote interest, even aside from whatever specific thing you might be exploring for.

Depends on what you find interesting, really. I like watching the wildlife and appreciating the neat little bits of world generation, along with the sweeping vistas that happen from time to time--pretty much just...living in the world. There's also the aspect too of just wandering around and marking down resources and other points of interest you may want to revisit later.

However, I'm guessing that what you might be after when it comes to travel, is things like the jungle temple, trail ruins, and whatnot from Minecraft. Which Vintage Story is currently lacking right now. Traders are kind of hit-or-miss. Surface ruins are useful in the early game, and can be a good source of aged building blocks, but otherwise aren't the most exciting thing to find. For dungeons, there's really not much to see yet, since they were only just recently implemented in 1.22 as a proof-of-concept. There's only a single type available right now, and if you aren't paying attention it's quite easy to miss since the entrance looks like a small hill. There are more dungeons coming in the future though, and I daresay travel will be a bit more interesting once they arrive.

In the meantime, you might consider checking out a mod like Better Ruins. Do be aware that it does add some of its own lore, so not every lore detail you come across is necessarily accurate to what's actually canon, but I do think this mod offers the kind of content you seem to be looking for. https://mods.vintagestory.at/betterruins

[Rainbow Fresh]

I was about to suggest Better Ruins too. I do agree that the world of Vintage Story as it currently is is empty and that makes it certainly more boring than Minecraft's; but as you mentioned at the beginning, there are two ways to try and remedy this and the "shortcut" option that just tells you where everything is so you can minimize interacting with the world isn't it so we ought to rather make it more interesting by itself. Rivers will be nice and once we get content to go along the procedural dungeon mechanic there might be more interesting things to find. I'd also love for slightly more variety in intra-climate-zone "biomes"; not just forest of up to 4 kinds of trees, plains, gravel deserts, lakes and mountains. And atleast Better Ruins does add things to find, alongside a fair share of more story locations maps tell you to go to which are usually about 10-15k blocks away. Better Ruins is by no means a fix-all solution as it does drastically change exploration and will eventually become dull too; in my singleplayer world of 200h I have traveled around in a ~6-10k block radius from my home base. It's nice to have things to find, constantly scanning the horizon and uncolored map to find traces of something out of the ordinary. But then the biggest problem becomes needing 3 trips to even reach my original destination as every second ruin my inventory will be full of loot that I need to haul back. And by the time you run across the third giant identical cathedral ruin you might even start considering to skip that one as it's not worth the effort anymore.

[KahvozeinsFang]

Well, it's probably not too late to get your money back. That's what I would do if I bought such a "boring" game. 

[Vratislav]

On 10/8/2026 at 5:50 AM, LadyWYT said:

On 10/8/2026 at 4:08 AM, VANTABlack2000 said:

1. Get lucky enough to find Limestone or Chalk.
2. You can crush Seashells to get a little bit of Lime.
3. You can buy Lime at least from Survival Goods Trader and maybe from Commodities Traders too.

4. The new procedural dungeon ruin often seems to have chalk/limestone stones within, if it doesn't have lime itself.

5. For leather production, you may also use Borax. 

[VANTABlack2000]

3 minutes ago, Vratislav said:

5. For leather production, you may also use Borax. 

I forgot you could use Borax for that. There's a surprising number of ways to get items when you really look into different possibilities. In the case of the original poster they said something about building blocks, so I don't know if Borax will work for that, but it at least gives more things you don't need lime for.

[Stralgaez]

On 10/8/2026 at 1:24 PM, MKMoose said:

Broadly in the context of rock strata, this is difficult to do, because even rock types which only form in specific environments can move elsewhere because of plate tectonics, and there's not much that can be done which isn't completely gamified - probably the most defensible option I've come across is to allow obtaining some information about nearby rock strata from traders. Increasing sedimentary rock coverage to a more realistic ~75% if not more from the current ~60% could also be justified, especially as long as igneous stones are always present under sedimentary ones regardless.

I'd be more of getting rumors from traders about abandoned mineshafts that could give you the materials you want, but not in abundance - If you are willing to brave them.

I figure traders won't be very good in processing infos about rock strata or sedimentary rock coverage and be viable enough to pass it on reliably, but instead know of old locations like abandoned mines, quarries or logging places since its more tangible information for them to use and pass on.