Headshotkill

This honestly sounds more like you've entered the late game and experience a lack of meaningfull things to do yet can't bring it to words, this is something I've also experienced in other games and it just may simply be time to start over and enjoy the early to mid game again. I'm not suggesting beams or support structures to prevent cave-ins, I don't actually like that extra work myself. Instead if the knockers want to collapse a part of the cave it will collaps regardless of any playermade structures. The idea is to gain favour of these creatures so they 'tolerate' you wandering inside their caves and mining things. You're sort of obligated to decent into the caves and collect ores in order to progress through the game so it's inevitable you'll encounter these things compared to the sheep example. One thing I don't understand is, where do you draw the line between things that are engaging and things that are annoying so you avoid them. Given your answers I'd be inclined to think you also find drifters lurking in caves annoying cause they interrupt you from safely mining ores.

First one of the top of my head is variation, the things that threaten the player are all kinda predictable melee/ranged enemies. I guess I want to see some more meat on the bones of this game, it's very good in terms of crafting and creative playing but I find fighting/exploring to be kind of lacking at the moment. I read that thread about cave-ins which I linked and the devs seemed open to the concept of cave-ins but wanted to change it from the way it worked in Terrafirmacraft so I came up with this. Haha, thanks for the compliment but this idea wasn't the most indepth idea I ever came up with by far, that would be my economy simulation concept for Crusader Kings 3: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/coinage-and-trade-economy-simulation-for-ck3.1585762/ As weird as it may sound I often derive more joy from imagining and proposing ideas for games than actually playing them, the discussion that follows keeps me engaged. I understand this idea may seem unneseccary if you consider caves currently ingame to be fun as they are with the drifters/spiders/bells but I personally find them lacking, monotonous and a bit boring. That may sound rude but then again, the devs themselfs have mentioned they want to spice up caves and combat so they probably also find it lacking at the moment.

Suggesting the return of cave-in/collapses isn't something new, I've found several threads in the past which brought it up. This one even has devs commenting in the thread: I really like the idea a cave could collapse at any time, but the basic routine in Terrafirmacraft of placing wooden beams and mining doesn't translate well into gameplay, destroys caves in an unrealistic way and got old pretty quickly. It both adds another chore on top of what some already consider a chore itself (mining), and if you did it well you never ever risked a serious cave-in so the whole system was either too extreme or completely bypassed without anything inbetween. That's why I suggest a new approach to the cave-in concept through the use of a new mob: Tommyknockers! If you don't know what Tommyknockers are here's a good video: Or if you want to read about it, the wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knocker_(folklore) The cool things is these creatures are reported all over the world in different cultures, they can be both helpful or dangerous depending on their mood, even if they're happy they may decide to do some mischief. Ingame the knockers would be invisible mobs that wander caves, they produce a distinct knocking sound which reverbs through the cave. They prefer to hang out around ore deposits so players could use their noise to get closer to ore veins. However there's a twist, you never really know if the creatures are helping you or luring you into a deathtrap, their way of attacking the player is making part of the cave collapse on them, burrying them alive. If you hear knocking sounds getting closer to you and they increase in intensity it may be a good idea to run out as fast as you can. There's a way to gain favor of these mischievious little buggers, build an altar inside the cave and leave offerings for the knockers on them. Miners all over the world actually did this to keep themself safe. If you keep them very happy they'll help you locate rich veins, but there's still a small chance they may trick you and pull of pranks. Besides directly killing you with cave-ins they could extinguish light sources behind you, throw a rock at you from a random direction, or collapse a part of the cave behind you thereby trapping you underground. All of this would best be combined with good scary cave ambience and a reduction of generic drifters roaming caves cause this may make caves too dangerous to make them worth the reward. If you got a cave with knockers inside, don't spawn drifters and vice versa. You could make them appear as dark figures briefly before going invisible again to startle the player and add to the tension of mining. What do you think?

This demonstrates one of the points I'm trying to make, low intesity nights aren't dangerous and thus serve no real purpose, just a lot of moaning. So why not save the supernatural stuff for high and apocalyptic nights, keep a clear boundary and keep calm nights truly calm. I realise my opinion isn't shared by everyone so I'm willing to make compromises, it also feels like I've struck some crazy RNG where I've never experienced a night without drifters in this game yet, while others say they don't hear it every night. I'm fine with keeping some nights where drifters lurk around but I'd like 1/3 to 1/2 of all nights to be drifter free, it's the constant moaning drone that really takes away my concentration when doing chores inside.

So I've read a lot of replies which refer to the lore of the game and use that as a way to decide drifters spawning at night is inevitable, but to my knowledge a lot of the lore is flexible and should never overrule good gameplay. You can easily make use of corrupted biomes with a large rift in the center which potentially spreads outwards over time to get the same effect, this way you have true stable calm areas and temporal instable areas. This way everyone gets to choose where they want to settle and what they want to experience. Like the sound of drifters moaning every night? Set up camp in a corrupted biome, or perhaps you're forced by circumstances to set up camp in a corrupted biome. This can be combined with better loot spawns/ruins to make the increased danger worth the price. If a biome is extremely corrupted you can spawn drifters and other supernatural stuff at day time as well. Even if you settle in a calm area and enjoy the quiet nights you still have to watch out for nocturnal predators lurking in the dark. This and you still get temporal storms anywhere on the map so at regular times you'd experience the crazy supernatural stuff anyway. There's just no need for the constant drifter presence every night.

I've decided to rename the title to something more relevant to the topic of this thread, should've done this sooner but forgot about it.

I don't think VS is boring, really not, it's miles ahead of minecraft. I proposed this idea out of the viewpoint that drifters spawning at night in the overworld doesn't actually influence the difficulty of the game. This mechanic was directly ported over from minecraft so my suggestion to change it actually moves the game away from being like minecraft and more towards it's own identity. Once you have a base, drifters just roam out there and function as a deterrent against leaving after dark which to me devalues the supernatural part of the game to something weak and annoying cause they can't reach you anyway, you can fulfill this same role with more dangerous natural wild life as well. When you're under attack from supernatural enemies it should feel like a step above your average wolf roaming outside your base. I guess an important missing piece of the puzzle I'm trying to explain is the game 'Darkwood', it's a full on horror game where you hide inside your base every night and experience different scary events which you need to survive. My point is this, if drifters can't get to you and only moan outside your wall, they're not dangerous, in this case it's just something that annoys me personally, others may ignore it or say it adds to the atmosphere. Why not have regular nights be peacefull so you can enjoy the calm/relaxing vibe of the game, maybe even watch the stars sitting next to your campfire. Then on random nights(temporal storms) truly go all out with the supernatural stuff and ramp up the tension: looking out the window you see dark figures standing in the distance, an eerie ambience of moaning and crying descends over the entire region, a thick black fog oozes through the cracks in your doors and windows, you start to hear banging/scratching on the walls, suddenly the door opens and all the torches in your base begin to snuff out, you panick and retreat to your cellar and barricade the door waiting for morning. Perhaps I went a bit overboard with the scary story and not every supernatural night has to be this intense but I hope you get my point that drifters currently add little danger and atmosphere to the game so I think they're just annoying.

Well yeah, what I'm describing in the OP is not the game we have right now, it's what I think would make the game work better with less annoyance and more fun throughout. This is all my opinion, lore wise it would still work given we have regular temporal storms but I agree with you that spelunking isn't as exciting as it should be right now but I'm sure the devs will work on improving this in the future anyway so I expect it to become more interesting. I wouldn't say the game would suddenly be easier, drifters can't get you inside your base anyway so there's no difficulty difference between having them moaning outside your door or not. And ideally there would be natural nocturnal predators lurking around, combined with the darkness you'd not want to be roaming outside at night. I see no reason why we need the additionall supernatural drifters on top of that, it kinda makes the whole supernatural part of the game feel less unique/special when it's all over the place. The game would be more 'compartimentalized', where each of the different categories of fun (relaxation and excitement) are better seperated from each other so they both can be enjoyed to the maximum.

Elegant idea, this 'nest block' could also determine the agression level of carnivores, if they have enough food in storage they'd be more passive. This could also serve as a way to make the shallow caves near the surface an early game challenge to explore without the need to spawn drifters, the risk would be fighting carnivors while the reward is food/bones/animal hides/fat, enough to help the player make leather armor needed for deeper exploration. Keep the supernatural stuff reserved for temporal storms and deep underground so it remains something special. Because drifters are so common every night even early game they have to also be relatively easy(and thus boring) to deal with. If you seperate the supernatural stuff for late game you can remove the weak drifters and really emphasize the horror and danger of these things with unique abilities and effects. Things you mention are actually good things, depletion of animals in a biome should be unlikely to archieve early on but possible with consequences. If you kill all wolves in a biome, herbivores population will increase and natural resources are exhausted until they migrate away unless you start hunting them on mass. You could always randomly spawn a carnivore nest in a herbivore rich area after some time to restore the ecosystem, perhaps run a check every spring. If all herbivores are wiped out then carnivores become more and more desperate in an area and begin to agressively stalk the player, this could be a time when a more secure base is needed to protect yourself at night. Eventually the wolves leave and the area becomes quiet. I don't know if IRL this results in a boom of plants because nobody eats them or not but it's probably more of a bad thing than a good thing for survival if all animals are gone. Again you can run a check every spring season and randomly spawn a herbivore nest in the area if it has food and low predator population. I wouldn't use this system for smaller animals like rabbits and vermin, they should still spawn out of thin air to disrupt your food supply at home. This also incentivises the player to set up animal husbandry mid game to establish a secure and stable source of animal products without the risk of depleting the surrounding area.

This is my first post here so hi to everyone, I've watched several YT series about Vintage story last year and played a bit myself. I like the game very much, it really brings back that old minecraft mixture of excitement/fear nostalgia back when I played it in 2011 as a 13 year old. The progression from stone age to medieval basic industry is extremely rewarding. However the game suffers from a bad design choice which hurts the overall gameplay in my opinion. I've identified 3 broad categories ingame which provide different kinds of enjoyment: Homesteading: Surviving in nature, gathering food, building a shelter, farming, industry, mining, base design, etc. Except for the very early game this category is very relaxing to play, it's similar to stardew valley where you perform chores like farming, food cooking/preserving and metal crafting which improve your situation and prepare you for exploration/expeditions. This IMO is the game's strongest quality at the moment and the main reason I want to play it. Creativity: Decorating your base with nice rooms, a garden, etc. This is also a category which provides relaxing enjoyment. The great variety of blocks and ability to chissel also make this one of the game's strong points. Exploration: Spelunking, discovering ruins and dungeons, fighting enemies, etc. This is the exciting part of the game, the thrill of high risk and reward, you gather trophies as I'll call them and bring them back to your base for crafting advanced recipes or decoration. At the moment IMO this is the game's weakest category, I read an improved combat system/caves is on the devs roadmap which is nice and I won't focus on suggestions like how to improve caves/ruins/mobs, that's not for this thread. The main flaw I see in this game is the use of the outdated 'enemies spawn at night' concept which dates back over a decade ago when Minecraft first introduced it to my knowledge. At the time this was an exciting concept but it quickly becomes useless as you get a decent base and gear, the mobs which spawn can be simply ignored at best or become downright annoying at worst. I think it's necessarry for good gameplay if the exploration category is seperated from the 2 other categories. When it's night and I'm safe inside my base metalsmithing or baking bread I don't want to listen to the constant moaning of drifters outside. There's no way they're getting inside so it serves no purpose and hurts the homesteading/creative part of the game. Am I proposing completely peacefull nights? No. Player's should still be incentivised to hunker down for the night and set up camp, this can be archieved by nocturnal predators becoming more active and simply the darkness of night will make it difficult to navigate. However there's no reason why we need more than a burning campfire to keep predators at bay, if it's raining or cold you'll also probably need a lean-to shelter or a tent. This opens up surface exploration early on without forcing the player to hide in a mudhole every night, I've always wanted to spend a night in a forest with a simple camp sleeping under the stars. If a campfire is enough for safety, why build a secure base when settling down long term? Because we still have temporal storms, I'd like to see temporal storms fleshed out with new mechanics beyond just being a 'horde night' type event but that's also a topic for another time. Temporal storms should be the only time when supernatural enemies invade the surface, this and a possible 'corruption spreading over the world' type mechanic is also something that popped into my head. With the exception of temporal storms this means a player will only encounter supernatural enemies if they willingly enter a dangerous zone, the danger would gradually increase as we descent deeper into caves. (or a corrupted surface biome) This establishes a solid game loop where we prepare our gear and supplies for an expedition inside our base --> explore dangerous territory/find valuable loot --> return to base and use loot to upgrade gear --> explore deeper more dangerous areas/find even better loot --> repeat I understand this loop is already what the devs are probably aiming for, it's just having supernatural enemies spawn every night muddies everything, interferes with the relaxing part of the game and creates annoyance. So yeah, that's what I currently think about the game. I wasn't sure if this is more of a suggestion or a discussion, I'm not really suggesting a new feature, rather rearranging things that are already in the game so I guess it's a discussion. Let me know what you think. Image: Difficulty/reward gradient