Crimeo

By "drifters" I meant "every single time enemy outside of any bosses". Which ones of them are interesting or strategic? The tougher ones literally just get more HP and attack, that's it. it's like the old janky NES video games where you level up, and you run into "Ruby bad guy" instead of "sapphire bad guy" with just a palette swap

This is already in the game, you put salt in a barrel with fish and it will salt cure. There does desperately need to be a way to make salt from salt water though not just mined salt.

A normal sized intermediate kiln would be nice and doable for bronze age. I'd argue that steel age needs content more desperately though. There isn't really one single new mechanic whatsoever unlocked by steel, unless I'm forgetting something?

The most annoying thing to me about the shallowness of the combat is that it actually gets MORE shallow as you advance, and thus even less fun, instead of at the very least being the other way around. Early game, you use a spear and dance around enemies, which requires some skill and tactics. You try to dodge things, gain positional advantage, etc. Ranged weapons also involve more skill, and fighting individual monsters or bears and deer etc makes those viable. Late game, you are directly prevented from moving quickly due to movement debuffs of the heavy armor you need, you face swarms of enemies so poking and positioning degenerate to raw mindless DPS, ranged weapons become not good enough and hard to use due to swarms and tight spaces, and you can't creatively position yourself because it all starts to take place in cramped caves and dungeons. So every kind of fun thing we did have already is systematically removed as a reward punishment for doing well and advancing...

No, it wouldn't, only if it actually had something on it. Same as how every single stone block in the world can be chiseled, but NOT every single stone block currently stores 16x16x16 miniblocks of data. Only the ones actually chiseled, and even then only the ones chiseled to that level of precision (like a complex sculpture). Anything not chiseled is handled by a single bit 0 or 1 "not chiseled" the end, no further data needed. Similarly only ones with stuff placed on them here would have meaningful extra data, and how much data would further depend on how much junk is stored on them. By the same token, obviously not every block in the world right now stores 24 empty slots of space just in case it might be a chest someday, lol. Only actual chest blocks gain that data structure, etc. So this would only be an issue if you put lots of junk down on thousands of surfaces.

That's why I listed counterplay for all of them. Keeping in mind that the final counterplay listed applies to every bullet point above it: storing 2x more than you need for this winter covers you for anything/everything befalling you next harvest, worst case. That's really the main goal: "food, which is like 75% of all game mechanics, not becoming completely irrelevant almost right away after 1 year" Yeah "early frost" means like 5 days earlier than normal or something, not in the middle of June. Just to get in the way of super minmaxing "I plant today, I will harvest PRECISELY 3 hours before it gets damaged" nonsense, etc. Storms are more of a threat, but some crops could be much more storm resistant than others. Grains are pretty susceptible, sunflowers would be extremely susceptible. Whereas turnips are almost immune. Ah yeah, realistic clothing does make a massive difference in real life too For weather, perhaps, for any sort of pests, as you yourself mentioned the pests realize an area is available more over time. The mice/crows/whatever haven't clocked that you've started a farm yet in year 1, and haven't started breeding and settling in.

I found it extremely concerning that all of the things listed in the announcement had nothing to do with drifters, which need massive overhauling. As in the fact that they are just kind of placeholder HP sponges (the least effortful way to code a ""hard"" enemy in any video game, period), instead of having interesting AI/tactical relevant/whatever. "Ah they're dumb as a bag of hammers, but I just have to hit them four. hundred. thousand. times" is not a fun enemy, and doesn't feel badass, it just feels like the game is cheating. Overhauling that would be super welcome and awesome, but the release announcement exclusively talked about hitboxes, aesthetics, and armor customization... stuff that seems almost all multiplayer relevant. They didn't mention drifters once. Yes I know it said "And more" too, but not a good sign of where the focus is. Drifters should be like 80% of a combat overhaul, not something of so little importance that it doesn't even get listed.

This would be completely your own fault for putting random junk on 4,000 block surfaces, and has an obvious solution if your rig can't handle it (dont'... do that then?) I don't actually see any real downsides to this suggestion at all. People can and would self regulate data, and nobody's really even suggested any other problems

Yep, quenching multiple times is fine and is a thing in real life, but with tempering in between properly, it's almost zero risk. It's just a thing you can put more effort into if you want higher "power". It should also come directly at a cost of durability in exchange for power (the exact same reason things can shatter more also applies to normal use... kinda "duh") So you'd do it for weapons and maybe armor and that's about it. Items where lower durability is worth it for minmaxed momentary peak performance (to not lose the fight). Possibly picks if higher "power" was required to mine some things. And it would be a measure of tedium for a reward, not gambling. Like everything else in the game, leathermaking etc.

The main reasons why real life medieval peasants didn't all just advance to steam power in a decade or something while swimming in tons of excess food, is that unlike in this game, every single harvest didn't go 100% perfectly like clockwork, and stores were not 100% sacrosanct once laid in. Extreme non-scheduled weather events, storms strong enough to kill crops, unscheduled early or late frosts, heat waves, etc. (Being more conservative with your planting schedules or holding seeds in reserve; more benefit to greenhouses by mitigating damage) Locusts (kill crops but you can catch and eat the locusts themselves to an extent or slow them down as crawling nymphs with trenches and burning/drowning) Blights for certain crops that make them non viable for awhile (probably need an exception for flax prior to wool being in the game as a viable alternative) Flying raiders like crows that go over fences (scarecrows/guard animals can deter, scarecrows need to be frequently moved or they realize it's not alive) Rats get into storage if you don't have cats or dogs prowling your property Year 1 could be chill with weather and plagues to give you a reliable chance, but opens up after that. Overall, the main defense against all of these in addition to individual defenses listed, is just having bigger farms than now, more excess, and storage methods that last 2+ years to absorb a bad harvest