Pentatope

Winter is a great time to go on long-distance adventures to warmer climates. You can travel south for several thousands of blocks, collect tree saplings, fruit tree cuttings, crops, flowers, and other materials that you can only find in the south. Then by the time you return home, you can start planting them in your greenhouse (or fields if its hot enough).

I definitely agree with this sentiment honestly. Don't get me wrong, I love the richness of this game and the complexity that enforces the need to take things slow. It seems like the saturation of time intensive activities is baked into the structure of the game and time is something that the game expects you to forfeit hand over fist. Which has both positives and negatives aspects to it. Allow me to use the leather-working process as an example. Assuming that the player never sleeps, the average IRL time that it takes to prepare leather from start to finish is 6.664 hours (wherein 48 = the number of IRL minutes one single day of Vintage Story takes, 48 * (3 + 4.5 + 0.83) = 399.84 minutes / 60 minutes per hour = 6.664 IRL hours). This is an egregious amount of time wherein the player is simply waiting for leather working to be complete. The important thing to mention about leather working is that the player is likely preforming other tasks while waiting for the curing processes to occur, so the 6.664 hours is not for waste. So when the player, after several hours of waiting (possibly over several play sessions), finally obtain their precious leather- it can feel very satisfying. The wait was long, but there is a lot to accomplish in 6.664 hours, so it doesn't feel boring and it feels like a reward for waiting so long. This is the positive examples of how Vintage Story uses time well. It rewards patience, while not enhancing tedious (or boring) gameplay loops. This rewards the brain with dopamine from the delayed gratification of completing the task. You absolutely can achieve the same delayed gratification dopamine from the long trek to the story locations. However, unlike with our leather-working example, the trek to the story location is the only thing that the player is accomplishing during that trek. Depending on the world settings, the long trek is unlikely to force the player to see anything interesting or allow the player to find new resources (at least in my three times completing Chapter 1, I have never found anything "cool" during my adventure). And the trek could be simply annoying depending upon the conditions of the terrain, which could limit/slow travel, which extends the amount of time it takes to reach their destination (anyone like those short but jagged "hills" that spawn with just enough space between them that it is inconvenient to cross & are also low-key ugly?). So, if a player reaches the story location and finds the story location to be lack-luster or uninteresting... then yeah... suddenly your story locations have become a good representation of one of the downsides of major time requirements. If the player feels like they wasted their time (and not just a little bit of time either, mind you), then the player may just not pick up the game again. If a game doesn't respect the player's time, then the player won't get that dopamine, and the brain will lose interest. Unfortunately, this comes down to a player mentality. Some players will be more tolerant to spending absurd amounts of time, while others... not so much. Certain players have more IRL responsibilities, obligations, etc. and don't have the time to give hours and hours into a game trying to craft leather or travel to a story location. Which is why I often stumble into the hard decision whenever I'm recommending Vintage Story to people. The "maybe, but" sentiment is real. And in my opinion, mostly comes down to time availability & attention span. If a friend doesn't have the MANY hours to spend on a game, then I can't in good faith suggest VS. Which is a real shame, because the game is so beautiful and rich and intricately crafted.

I want to expand on this topic because it is one of my more sour gripes about the game. Firstly, I am definitely influenced by my Mediterranean-pilled climate preferences. I am not a personal big fan of winter's snow lasting 5-7 months (depending on elevation & latitude), as I personally experience winters from December to February. That isn't to say that I believe temperate climates should have snow longevity conform to a Mediterranean climate and weather cycle. All of that lengthy introduction is just to say, I want to settle down in a location that is slightly warmer than the temperate/default world setting. No problem, most would think to themselves, "Just change your starting climate to 'Warm'". This is where the second disappointment kicks in. At least in my experience playing in the multiple "Warm" worlds I have started, the starting climate is warmer than my preference. Most "warm" worlds are too hot for snow to form during the winter, ergo In both world types, I have to travel 5-10k south or north (temperate and "warm" respectively) in order to reach my desired climate pattern. Personally, I don't agree/disagree with the sentiment that any "x" starting climate setting is too hot/cold. Temperate winters lasting 5-7 months may be accurate to the real experiences of temperate regions. Many "warm" regions on Earth never experience any snow year-round. However, I wish there was greater control or at least expanded options as to where I can start my world in the realistic climate distribution model. Currently, you are shoe-horned into long winter starting climate vs no winter starting climate, when players should be able to pick a climate with a "moderate winter". (It is not lost on me that many VS players may already consider temperate winters to be "moderate", but I can assure that not all feel this way) Why is this so important? Couldn't you just spend a few in-game days traveling to a location with your desired climate? I'm sure many have already identified why this may be frustrating to players or have personally experienced this problem in your games. When you generate the world, all of the story content for chapters 1 & 2 will have generated based on the world spawn. This means, that depending on where those structures spawn, you would be forced to travel a far greater distance than if you were to just stay at spawn. You could remedy this by reducing the distance that these story locations spawn, but you then risk the chance of simply running into them during your 5-10k trek either North/South. Most importantly, the only thing that all of this additional traveling in order to reach your desired climate is doing is bloating your world size & somewhat wasting your time. I say somewhat, because you can technically find/forage for materials during your travel, but if you don't find anything then you don't find anything. Plus, many people wouldn't WANT to spend the first few days of a world walking in one direction straight. Let me tell you, as someone who has done this in several worlds so far, it is not nearly as fun as it sounds. That is also several in-game days where my inventory is severely limited, ergo limited on how many materials I can collect, can't start clayforming b/c it takes up too much space in the inventory, etc. etc. These are all minor gripes, but it is something that I hope gets addressed soon. Not that I don't find temperate or hot starting climates fun, I've played in both and can say they both have their ups and downs, but I wish it was easier to get to that perfect sweet spot in the middle.

Does anyone know the percent drop chance to receive diamonds from mining suevite impact rocks?

Basically what the title says. Does the in-game clock continue running even if no one is on the server? I'm thinking about buying a server for a few friends, but we have pretty inconsistent schedules so I would hate to be gone a week and return for our game in Winter and all our food rotted.