Bumber

Do any of them buy a thing the other is selling at a profit?

You might be able to shave off some time with beds?

Isn't it basically inevitable with auto-pickup enabled?

PSA: Don't drive while drunk or at low stability. Don't be a lane drifter.

You're essentially modding the game in your example, so you're pointing out that there are inefficiencies in the way we're allowed to modify game data. As mods cannot be created without access to game data, this is 100% at odds with you telling players to mod things they don't like. The alternative is that Anego puts the Cooper's reeds drops in compiled code. Then you can't change the number of reeds dropped. You definitely can't give them a chance to drop some dry grass. There is no Wild Farming mod to let you craft more reeds, because a flexible system that lets you specify a cattail root and a bucket of water as a recipe would take up too much precious RAM. (We'll just have a code loop that iterates crafting slots for integer IDs of items, and a little function to check the contents of a bucket, then rule out recipes using "if" statements. No need for a "liquidContainerProps" attribute or anything human-readable to make dough. Just store an integer for a bucket's fluid type and a float for the amount. The program knows the memory offsets of these fields for the item type; nobody else needs access.) What it comes down to is that allowing mod customization in the first place has a far greater RAM cost compared to exposing an internal variable to an in-game menu.

IDK which mod is causing it, but the crash happened when attempting to pour a crucible. (As if the player stopped existing mid-pour.)

You're talking about mods here, which are unpacked from .zip files each time you start the game because that's how Anego implemented modding. There are also .dll mods (mostly involving shaders), which are compiled (making it harder to check for malicious code) but still need to be hacked into the game using Harmony. Recent updates have added large amounts of models and sound files. I don't see you complaining about these non-optional RAM hogs. (Maybe you really enjoy listening to insects and watching uncatchable fish?) Anego actually has the option of just adding lightweight compiled code for "uncompromising" gameplay changes, but there's always a bunch of .json files anyway to support modding (i.e., your suggested solution). If the option sliders themselves use any significant amount of RAM, then there's an optimization problem on Anego's end, and suggesting people use mods is just an excuse to ignore the problem.

TBH, this particular talking point is nonsense. VS is already doing so many checks per tick that any option not enabled is a pebble on a beach. The real issue is development time. A game needs to work for any combination of features, so it needs to designed and tested as such. It's the developer's responsibility. The tradeoff with mods is that they will break with other mods and future updates. A mod creator can disappear without giving permission to use their code, and then the mod is permanently broken unless someone makes another from scratch or violates intellectual property guidelines. The decision for which route a feature goes should be based on if it fits the dev's vision for the game and can be implemented without ugly workarounds.

A different block game. One of the other block games.

Are distilleries still an issue? (I'm not sure that's related to being across chunks, though.)

IDK what yours even was because I still had them off. Your new one links to a 404 error. I was thinking of DUCATISLO's (seen here).

Aren't they off by default? That's probably why. I'm leaving them disabled because at least one user has a distracting gif in theirs.

There are likely more resin nodes than iron nodes in the game, and the later don't even regenerate the resource. Given a continuing demand for iron (and very little for resin), I feel like there's already enough friction in the iron making process. Don't forget the fire bricks that aren't recovered from the bloomery. (Traders actually sell resin and fire clay, but not iron.) You can turn the quern by hand. Regardless, you can simply do something else while you wait for the wind to blow again, losing nothing. The helve is unique in that your metal will cool down and become unworkable. So you attempt pull out your hammer and bang it into shape really quick. Except... D'oh! Double whammy! I don't think it's done well at all. For starters, the helve is not a logical solution for a problem of missing voxels. You'd need a different problem involving a lack of player strength. Secondly, the hammering of the bloom already requires more player attention than the entire bronze casting process. The layout of the bloom even has more variation than smithing bronze tools from a uniform ingot. It's like saying the clay forming process is missing a little something to disrupt the player from making their boring bricks. (You encountered a hard lump! Try spinning the clay on a potter's wheel to remove the lumps until it's properly brick-shaped!) The whole process is already demanding enough that I tend to use bronze heavily even after obtaining steel. Certainly not going to waste iron to make firewood or collect charcoal. Wolves howling outside? Take the bronze chain; steel is for spelunking and temporal storms.

Still needs to be milled, despite ultimately reducing satiety. Practical for travel food, but you might as well bake some meat pies if you're preparing for a longer journey.

I use porridge because it doesn't require preheating the oven. Just throw whichever fuel you want on the campfire, then store the result in a crock, sealing if desired.

Really wish they had a forum thread to tease this content. I avoid those other avenues of communication wherever possible.

None of these undergo spontaneous failure. They are all improvements of efficiency. The helve hammers out ingots and plates automatically without wasting durability. There's value even in helving copper plates for chutes, or of any material for repairing armor. None of these require RNG to justify their existence; they're just better. I think this resin's actually a visibility issue. I've got the mod that lets you see it on all sides of the block, and it's basically everywhere. Same with bees and buzzwords. Time invested in crops and charcoal are never wasted unless the player screws up. You always get a reasonable amount of the end product for your efforts.

That's not what I said. The player can overcome all the situations you mentioned with sufficient skill. They're merely at a slight disadvantage. (You didn't mention getting struck by lightning, but even that can be countered.) The bloomery process is not a skill issue. The result is entirely out of the player's hands. Roll a die. If it lands on 1, do the exact same process with no variation. You cannot improve beyond not screwing up viable blooms.

IIRC, all blooms give you 20 bits back, so you'd need to nerf them to only give you ~19 due to missing voxels. Then you put the material and coal into the bloomery and hope that the result is a complete bloom (which you don't find out until another day later and some hammering). It would be practical to be able to put a little extra iron ore into the bloomery to reduce the risk of wasting time resmelting blooms to near zero. But I have to ask: At which step in any of this does the fun occur? Is it the chance to fail? Is planting fruit trees and hoping they don't die fun? Can we improve the game by pottery randomly shattering when heated? Unpreventable crop and livestock disease? Tripping while running and fighting? Choke while eating (2x chance blackguard)? It's all realistic, but definitely not why I bought the game. I find no entertainment in having to do restart a task just because I got shafted by the RNG.

Fun is subjective. A lot of players seem irritated by it. The solutions not mimicking IRL remains my gripe with using IRL as an argument. Not enough iron in bloom → Hit it with a bigger hammer That line of reasoning shatters my immersion more than never having a defective bloom.

If it's for realism, you'd need to be able to throw a bit of extra ore into the bloomery to compensate. Chiseling it down and re-smelting is a huge waste of time. Never mind that the 20 bits you need are in the bloom the entire time. (Also, your reasoning for it never being fixed seems to be predicated on the devs focusing on IRL over gameplay? Somewhat shaky logic, as they're known to make allowances in either direction.) As a feature, fixing the problem with a helve hammer cannot stay. If you're set on VS being uncompromising and realistic, you need to not only chisel it down, but also add additional iron ore/bits to replace what's missing. Naturally, smelting entirely from bits must still allow for defective ingots, because you could spill some. This will finally bring the level of difficulty the late Rudometkin would've enjoyed.

Given Jonas's tech, it's soft sci-fi. Quotes about sufficiently advanced technology aside, the setting is framed as a result of using crude devices to poke at forces beyond comprehension. Fantasy is when bad things happen from just reading a tome aloud (even if you've got a chainsaw). Hard sci-fi is when temporal gears are explained using quantum physics, and any zombies are caused by a pathogen that aggravates the hypothalamus. It's a matter of narrative.

The issue I have with the "realism" argument is that we're hammering off parts of the ingot to make tools anyway. We don't realistically need a full ingot. It's a gameplay mechanic that ingots need X voxels and a knife takes 1 ingot. We can identify the quality of our ore before smelting, so every bloom should contain sufficient iron by any reasonable metric. Why not both? I hammer the bloom while the helve works on it, letting it handle the stray voxels. I try to get through as many as possible while they're still hot from the bloomery, with minimal re-heating on the forge.

You don't have to kill any sawblade locusts to reach the boss room. Considering they actually deal more damage than the boss, the smart thing to do is run. (I locked one in a room and tried to cheese it using the door, and still got killed from a careless mistake. Really ought to wear iron for those.) Eidolon deals less damage, but is harder to dodge, and then starts summoning minions in case you thought you could fight extra carefully.

That might be useful to exploit if farm crops didn't just stay fresh forever until you harvest them. Still, emergency rations you can store basically anywhere is potentially valuable.