Soliton

The Roadmap offers a goodly number of new challenges and they will have corresponding technologies to resolve, But "caffeine9999" had the insight about "instead of getting them for free" that made me think about new technologies for the game at present. Just to satisfy my curiosity, I built a version of Stonehenge to see if it could be used to track seasons in Creative mode. I learned that not only is it possible, you can also make a reasonably good sundial to approximate the time of day. Obviously I wouldn't do this in survival mode, because we have the date/time displayed in a window. I also don't need a level and inclinometer as there is a tooltip with my Y-Level . The game has complex weather/climate models so a how about a barometer to know when it is going to rain/snow? In another post I went on about other simple instruments, i.e. surveying tools, and won't bore you by rehashing. So the technologies I would like to see are those instruments needed to understand the condition of the world around the player. If nothing else, change the windows in Wilderness Survival mode so as to suppress freebie information to make it worthwhile to make instruments.

Thanks the topic. Whether by intent, or coincidence, Vintage Story's (VS) climate and environmental model closely approximates the Holdridge Life Zone Classification Scheme (Figure 1). As such it would be possible to use it to determine what animals could realistically be added to the game. Taking a group of similarly titled zones (i.e. Desert or Rain Forest) you could create representative animals that follows the Trophic Pyramid (Figure 2): 1. 1 x Tertiary Consumer 2. 1-2 x Secondary Consumer(s) 3. 2-4 x Primary Consumers 4. 3-10 x Producers Some of the Producers and Consumers could overlap multiple similar zones to lower the total number of new models (i.e. rabbits thrive in a great number of zones). Moreover this could prove to be an interesting late game mechanic. Tired of wolves? Just disrupt their food web and they no longer spawn! No Tertiary Consumer? Consumers explode in population and destroy all the Producers!

While its to late to be included into the 1.15 update, having a metal spring added to the game would be helpful. Pending other's suggestions, the single use proposed would be adding it to doors so they close slowly behind you.

I tend to build on the dividing line between forests and grasslands to abuse this mechanic. By making a 1 x wide by 2 x deep trench around your farmland and you will trap enough rabbits to offset the effort of raising of pigs for red meat and hides. Even better, if you put bees on one side, and extend the trench accordingly, you get a significant amount of fat from raccoons and foxes during the warmer times of the year. I usually include a fence between the farmland and trench so that I can tend to the farmland throughout the night without fear of drifters and wolves. By the way, if I leave one of the crops (usually turnips or parsnips) in the ground during winter, rabbits will continue to be attracted. One last addition, if you use a 2x wide trench then wolves will be attracted to the rabbits and you can essentially farm them. Changing the AI would be one solution. Another would be if there was a diminishing probability for rabbits to spawn in a region. This maintains the experience of rabbits finding your farm as an new food source, but doesn't allow the aforementioned abuse over time.

For Jungle/Desert biomes, I think Shaelin's observation about heat sensitivity would be a good feature to have before creating expedition mechanics or ruins. When combined with the ability to slowly shift your character's Body Temperature Hardiness, depending on average temperature over time, part of the process of conducting an expedition would be just acclimating to that climate. It does make you wonder if populations of server players would naturally split along median climate lines as going to the opposing one could be thought of a a sort of level-of-effort tax. I really like your comment about setting up an encampment just outside of the ruin, delving should an arduous task and there is significant historical precedence for their creation. Dealing with the constraints of temperature at the same time would make this an epic experience.

Two things, first, I am old. So old that I am not exactly sure what most of the emoji things mean and used the cookie as an indication of reward for an idea that spurs further discussion. Hopefully it is not actually an insult of some form. On that topic, what does "Wolf Bait" even mean? Second, adding to your comment about additional Ruins, I wonder if they should be on game claimed land? That way you don't take your pickaxe and just burrow in to the center to avoid all the traps. Taking that one step further, it would be cool if once you survived all the traps and got to the treasure (technically the "MacGuffin") the land claim would be forfeited and you could start mining all the specialty blocks

I tend to use saltpeter in the early game to support K nutrients as it is usually far easier to find. Even as such, it is slow release and won't help much if you have planted in already depleted block of farmland. Going forward I find it easier just make an extra plot or two of farmland and rotate the crops.

Welcome to the game and the community. To my knowledge there is no way to change the height of the character and I am not quite sure I understand what you are seeing. Would you be willing to post a screenshot (if you can get a view that best depicts your concern)? Also, the forum tends to be a bit slower expected response time. You may want to try their Discord server where they also have a questions chat section if you need quicker feedback. I log in on occasion and everyone has been super helpful.

It is my experience that animals will wander off (despawn?) if you don't have a fence. The only benefit that I am aware of for domestication is that you can use a cleaver on animals that have 3 our more generations. Please let me know if you have had a contrary experience as I am still learning about animal husbandry mechanics.

Prior to building it in my survival world I evaluated a version of (most famously) Stonehenge as a way to determine in-game time without using the clock on the character gui. After a couple of days of playing with it in a creative world, I was able to determine season, month, day, and even (very) rough time from the position of the Sun. My sincere appreciation to the development team for giving us lots of tools to make this an interesting, while not onerous, task. Not surprisingly, this same build works just as well regardless of your location, since making Suns motion relative to your location in the world would be computational intensive for a mechanic that no one would ever really use. To my question, afterwards I wondered if the Moon's relative motion could be used as a way to gather additional information. So far I haven't been able to discover a workable correlation and was curious if anyone else had researched this issue and found a exploitable relationship? Thank you for any insight you can offer. Respectfully Submitted,

What do you suggest to balance their use in the game? Would you suggest they consume coal or temporal gears to keep working? Do they degrade and need repairs?

Your suggestion for a special polar ruin would be an excellent reason to explore these regions and is reflected in both the Roadmap and Tyron's post "Choose your favorite theme for v1.15! Gasp!" As opposed to the a nomadic lifestyle experience mentioned above it would be more of an expedition. Right now the polar regions would be an excellent biome to host this idea as it would be easy to restrict food (much, much lower spawn rates for wild plants), the environment is inherently dangerous, and covers vast areas (Standard world size: 100,000 m in the Z direction and ~20,000 m in the X direction). At a normal rate of movement (assuming sleeping at night and setting up an occasional hunting camp and scavenging for fire fuels) means it would be possible for the character to unsuccessfully explore for multiple in-game years before finding it. That would be enough to create game experiences in line with the great expeditions of history (ala Lewis and Clark). I can see at least two new game mechanics necessary to give a more full experience. The first being the capability to create mobile storage, whether this takes the form of a pack animal and/or some sort of sled/cart. I think copygirl's excellent mod, CarryCapacity, is good start. As normal there should be tradeoffs (i.e. increased storage for slower movement and higher hunger rates). If pack animals are created (seriously the cow skulls in deserts had to come from somewhere) then they would also be subject to predation by wolves and bears, the cold, hunger, exhaustion, and possible drowning. Expedition playstyles demand meticulous management of resources. The second is that the current map mechanic is too powerful and just turning it off would be overly restrictive. I wonder if a compromise can be struck? I am thinking that chunks only fill in when two conditions are met. One, they are in direct line of sight of a character who has surveying tools in their hands. This could be another use of the plumb and level tool (to function as an inclinometer). A telescope would be the second survey tool and would be required to meet the second condition. Survey's start from a known point and daisy chain from them. So the character would need to be in a position where a previous visible chunk would be, in turn, visible. That was why mountain peaks were so important as they can be seen from greater distances thereby reducing the number of surveyed points necessary to extend a map. Obviously game balance is always important in these things, but to meet the standard of "an uncompromising wilderness survival sandbox game" sometimes the bar has to be set higher.

Exploring the polar regions would be ideal for playing a nomadic lifestyle rather than the normal base building experience. So what would be the unique qualities of living in a polar region? How would someone maintain their fruit, vegetable, and grain nutritional levels? How do you protect yourself from -50 deg C temperatures as well soaking rains? As with the Inuit and S`ami indigenous peoples, meat becomes your primary food source. The animals suggested are good if you are following a coastline, but what happens inland? Maybe some form a cariboo would be reasonable. Spawns should be rare and there should be a significant chance when any of the food animals spawn there is a good chance a pack of wolves or a bear also spawn. Personally I want bears that are terrifying and require significant effort and ingenuity in order to kill. I want bears that will come running when they smell blood from any loaded chunk. And as were are talking polar bears, I want an animal that can either climb better than the player or can break soil, wood, and ice blocks to get to the player. That being said, the cold is the primary danger. Special clothing should be made by combining normal hides for the warmth and seal hides for the water protection. Also larger items like tents should be available. All these should be made with some form of specialized crafting. I would suggest salt water gathered in clay pots to be boiled into a brine as well as sinew in the place of thread and bone needles in order to sew. Penalties for not having all the clothes items should be severe. To mitigate some of this I wonder if it would be possible to have the player's Body Temperature Hardiness value slowly lowered reflect normal physiological acclimation? While it is not possible to cultivate native plants for food in the Arctic, indigenous peoples have traditionally gathered foods such as: Berries (crowberry and cloudberry), Herbaceous plants (grasses and fireweed), Tubers and stems (as cached by voles in burrows), Roots (tuberous spring beauty and sweet vetch), and Seaweed.

You made an interesting suggestion and I began to wonder how could permafrost be implemented as a game mechanic? To start with, soil should be effected by block gravity. Freezing temperatures should act as block reinforcement on soil, much in the same way when the plumb and level is used. At a particular level of reinforcement the physics of the block changes and it no longer becomes susceptible to block gravity. Much in the same way that water becomes ice during winter. To maintain that level of reinforcement, the "permafrost" block would need to be placed next to a block of ice. While glacier ice is currently harvestable, I would suggest making lake ice harvestable with a saw. Repurpose existing greenhouse multiblock mechanic to make a "ice house" but the walls and floor are two blocks thick and comprised of an ice block next (below or adjacent) to a permafrost block. This results in a 3x3 open area. Food stored in this area would have significant reduction to decay. Alternatively, if you placed glass over the top, maybe it could be used like an inverse greenhouse? Farmland in 3x3 open area would be 5 degrees cooler than environment. Extends the growing season of some vegetables in warmer climates.

Did you know that Thaumcraft, and about a dozen other well-known MC mods, were based on the role-playing game Ars Magica (https://www.atlas-games.com/arsmagica)? I would encourage anyone interested in how to do fantasy role-playing mechanics correctly to peruse the staggering number of support materials for this, now, no longer supported game. In essence, the game explored the hypothetical consequences, on medieval culture, if magic could be manipulated according to certain rules. Just so you know, one of factors being the generation of "Warp", which became the corruption mechanics you mentioned. To your original point, players (3-5 max) gathered together into "Covenants" to synergistically access and manipulate magical resources. However, as with any resource, if you consume too much it depletes and if consume too fast it causes corruption/Warp. So if you want to keep your Covenant alive you can either explore the world to gather raw magical resources or raid other Covenants to take their resources. This competition for resources could form the backdrop of a complex end-game scenario and would equally apply to either a SP (a big dungeon developed according to game rules) world or a Covenant vs Covenant MP free-for-all.