TrashMammal

You're right about that, now that I think about it the only way to really make it a true survival challenge would be to have a player start there from scratch, not sure how it would work for a longer term playthrough. Deserts would definitely need a heat stroke mechanic or thirst bar, and adding thirst would probably make the game a bit too tedious. Arctic on the other hand actually tends to help the player with the reduced food spoilage and if the cold effects were increased to the point of not being able to explore outside of a fire too frequently then gameplay would be quite painful. I'll be interested to see what the devs do if they want to make long term survival in these climates more challenging and interesting to survive in.

Vintage story is definitely one of the best survival games out there with its in-depth mechanics. With the new update making long distance travel much easier I think a good idea would be to force the player into more extreme environments as part of the story. Something like having to survive for a year in the extreme arctic and a year in the desert. Of course these areas would need to be more fleshed out, with more content in them to help the player battle the harsh environment. I think this would be a good addition to the game to push player's game knowledge and mastery of the survival mechanics. I also like the idea of establishing multiple homes with a greater purpose to the games story. With this though, comes the default settings of player death and restarting at their original spawn point, creating a huge loss of progress. Maybe there could be certain ruins that can be easily tracked that could act as a permanent spawn point and checkpoint without the use of a temporal gear, or maybe just more ways to teleport around. Any mechanic that facilitates exploration to see and experience all the wonderful climates and biomes is good in my eyes.

Recently there's been a lot of talk about the newest release of a Minecraft mod called Distant Horizons. For those who don't know, it's basically a level of detail mod that simplifies distant terrain for a massive performance boost, which allows for render distances that were impossible without the mod. Obviously the mod is made for a different game, but since both games are so similar I'm sure the technology could be ported to vintage story somehow. Vintage story is already so immersive, imagine it with a render distances in the thousands! Here's a link to the mod to see what it's all about. https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/distant-horizons I'm sure one of the devs have acknowledged the potential of this mod, just posting this here to show ppl how cool it is.