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.

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. 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. 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. 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.

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.