ifoz

With the instruments being implied in the "Ghosts" short story to be a representation of different accents, it's very funny to imagine monsters being drawn to/scared of a specific accent. It's an interesting suggestion though, and I do agree with the damage noise ideas. I feel like the hunger noise has been changed in 1.22 though, I was testing the release candidate and it seems shorter and a little lower pitched than I remember.

Killing the trader does not remove the claim, and they should respawn after a while. However, they might still be angry. The only thing that killing traders really accomplishes is hurting yourself later down the line if they're still upset at you. The easiest way might just be going into creative mode, since creative allows you to modify things regardless of land claims, like what @PoisonedPawn777 said.

I really hope we get the palisades too, maybe introduced like fences so that you don't need to craft all the corner pieces seperatley. All of the NPC structures in the game now use palisades, and it feels strange that we can't use them as well, given they are shown to be such an important part of survival against the Rust monsters. For actual gameplay I think a decent way of balancing them if they were to do damage would be having enemies attempt not to pathfind over them (like fences), and potentially having the ground-placed wooden stakes break or go blunt after damaging an enemy a few times, so they couldn't be used for mob grinders.

Honestly I also think sewing kits should be split into two items. There would be a regular sewing kit, crafted by any class. It would be used for clothing repair instead of linen sheets, and would also be used when crafting basic clothes. There would also be a special tailor sewing kit that repairs 75% instead of 50%, and is used to craft the tailor-exclusive clothes. This could also be the type sold by traders, since it would be slightly more valuable to non-tailors due to the higher repair amount. I feel like this would help clear up some of the confusion surrounding clothing repair for new players. Using linen sheets isn't very intuitive, and I've often seen people who think clothing repair is actually impossible without a sewing kit.

I could see that. Or alternately, allowing sewing kits to repair past 100%, capping at some higher value. That'd make the clothes last longer, without needing to nerf linen sheet repairs.

In my eyes I think this mightn't be the best idea, since for it to actually work like this you'd need to remove clothing repair from everyone except tailor. Clothing repair is already something tailor has a 25% efficiency bonus to, and taking that ability away from everyone else would make a big incentive for ruin hunting and trading lategame (finding/buying unique clothing) basically useless if those clothes couldn't be repaired. Story locations and ruins would become less interesting since clothing is a big part of their loot, and things like Nadiyan fur would be a painful gear sink to maintain - you'd have to spend around 100 gears per set each time it degraded to buy an entirely new one. The only way I could see removing repair being an okay design choice would be if clothing traders and the Nadiyan tailor could repair clothes for you at a cost, but that's just less convenient, impossible for Homo Sapiens players and less interesting than having to ration out linen sheets for the repairs yourself. Personally I think that the current repair system is pretty fine, considering that non-tailor Seraphs know how to make things like windmill sails, boat sails, and basic gambeson. It makes sense that they could use those basic sewing skills to fix up clothing, but not make entirely new clothes aside from a handful of basic/survival-oriented things like the homespun set, rawhide set, fur set, fur-lined vest and arctic hunter set, among a couple others any class can craft.

The classes all get unique NPC interactions at a certain point in the story, and have a few special dialogue choices. Assuming there will be more of this in the future, I think classes might help add to the replay value of the main storyline by having slight differences/different paths to take. They're all shown to be somewhat established characters with their own backstories, though left vague enough that the player can project personality onto them and fill in the finer details themselves. In terms of balance though, I do agree there could be changes made. Some classes feel a little weak compared to the more powerful ones like Hunter and Blackguard. Tailor especially feels very arbitrary to me, since their perks are all to do with the crafting grid and stat screens rather than actual gameplay.

Oddly enough the waterwheel (and windmills) use the "generic wood" texture, rather than the normal oak. It's strange, since other mechanical power parts use the normal debarked oak texture. I'd actually really like if waterwheels and windmills used debarked oak, so they could blend in to other connected devices a little better.

I've talked about this before in another thread of mine, but I thought I'd make a separate post for discussion about this and how it could potentially be fixed. I have also put this info on the bug tracker, since it seems a bit strange and unbalanced to me. Anyway, clothing balance in 1.22 seems a little all over the place. It's kind of got me thinking about how the warmth system might be due for an overhaul at some point, perhaps with the future addition of status effects. There's only so much you can do with the current warmth system, where the difference between +2 and +3 degrees on a clothing item is a big progression point. One of the main things breaking the balance of warmth in 1.22 is the new grass clothing. For 8 dry grass per piece, you can craft grass pants and a grass shirt. Both are worth +2 each, totalling at +6 if you are wearing the grass shirt, grass pants, straw hat and straw sandals. Considering these are so cheap to make, it seems strange to me their warmth matches that of rawhide, the previous inexpensive clothing option. As I touched on in another post, I think a decent solution would be reducing this to either +1 or +1.5 per piece instead of +2, and also potentially having their niche be in providing some rain protection despite the lack of warmth. Speaking of rawhide, the rawhide tunic has been added, a shirt slot item that costs either 4 small pelts or 2 medium/large/huge pelts. It gives +3 warmth, which surpasses the previous best shirts in the game, Nadiyan fur. The previous +2.5 shirts were difficult to get and required story progression, but now a +3 is only a few hides away. This one I think could be fixed just by changing it to +2, in line with nearly every other shirt in the game. The fur-lined vest is also a +3 shirt, though it requires both leather and pelts to craft. This one I think is okay, since the leather cost means the player will likely have barrels before making it, but I think it is strange to be a shirt slot item. All other vests in the game are coat slot, which allows you to wear a shirt underneath as you'd expect. I think this could be fixed by making the fur-lined vest a coat slot item, allowing it to function as an aesthetically different option to the fur coat for the same warmth. (Seriously, the fur-lined vest looks so awesome, this would be a go-to clothing item for me if I could just wear a shirt underneath it!) Another smaller thing I noticed was that the new broadbrim hat (which I really like by the way, it's the closest thing we have to a cowboy hat ) only offers +70% rain protection, despite the size of its brim. It is larger than something like the small bamboo cone hat, which offers +85%. I think it could probably stand to be changed to +85%, or even +90%. It is quite large, after all. One thing I do really like in regards to 1.22 and new clothing warmth is the arctic hunter set. It's a new winter set that can be crafted by any class, and offers some of the best warmth in the game. The shirt is +3.5, the parka is +4, and the pants are +4. However, it requires cinnebar to craft, which can be a difficult resource to find. I think this balances it out nicely, offering a quality winter set lategame for players who don't want to do the story content, or don't want to spend their gears to buy Nadiyan fur. Anyway, that's what I've noticed of 1.22's clothing warmth values! Let me know what you think about all this, or how you think it could be improved/changed, if you think it should be.

I've been thinking about swamps and marshlands recently as well. I think they'd just be a really cool area to pass through, especially if they had unique environmental challenges like mud that slowed you down. Honestly, more varied environments would be really fun, if they are dependant on climate/temperature/rainfall/etc. Much like VS' deserts and gravel lands I imagine you'd only get swamps and marshes in very wet areas with the right conditions. I also think being caught out in the rain for extended periods should probably be a bit of a bigger deal than it currently is, incentivising you to make camps to rest or warm up, as well as coming packed with a decent hat or poncho. Prolonged exposure to the rain only makes you freeze if temperatures are already very low, and at that point it's more likely to be snowing than raining.

The problem with spears in 1.21 was mostly that they weren't just a reliable all-round weapon, they were the best weapon in the game by far, with bronze spears outclassing steel falxes in terms of DPS. To me the spear changes have felt okay from the small amount I've messed with them, and even with their now reduced damage, you could get that back up with the new quenching and tempering system. The main change has been that their windup to throw is considerably longer, so you can't shotgun them at enemies and rapidly deal insane amounts of damage.

Honestly I think dry grass clothes could be better put to use as rain protection. Have the shirt worn in the coat slot, and provide some level of rain protection with the tradeoff of not being very warm. Dried grass raincoats were a real historical thing, after all!

Just another odd balance thing, has anyone else taken a look at the grass shirt and grass pants? They're both +2 warmth each and only require a handful of dry grass to craft, which means they outclass the majority of clothing in the game through virtue of being decently warm and extremely inexpensive. I feel like if they were reduced to +1 each or +1.5, that would fit a lot better into the balance. Otherwise I can see a large amount of players only ever bothering to remake endless grass clothes every winter, not even bothering with rawhide, the previous cheapest option.

The 1.22 warmth values are kind of all over the place right now in terms of balancing - the rawhide tunic for example is a whopping +3 degrees in the shirt slot (better than Nadiyan fur) while also being very cheap to craft earlygame. (I know I mentioned both this and the fur vest earlier, but they both stand out to me the most. The fur vest really should be an upperbodyover / coat slot item instead of a shirt, as all other vests in the game can be worn over the top of a shirt like you'd expect). It's interesting to me that the tailor's new embroidered fur / arctic fisher boots aren't as good as reindeer herder shoes, I suppose that's because the shoes need cinnabar. Still, the whole cinnabar thing is a bit arbitrary in itself, considering red dye was not an uncommon luxury in the irl middle ages.

Yeah, I get that. You're right, it's just tricky to think of a way to balance tailor that makes sense when some fancy clothes can be crafted by any class - I think really the root problem is that tailor is the only "job" class, entirely focused on exclusive items rather than actual gameplay, but that would be hard to remedy without a proper weaving system or a total tailor rebalance, which seems a bit extreme. Another option would be gating some of the fancier options available for everyone behind tailor, but that just gives most players less choice overall and isn't really fun in any regard. Something else interesting is that tailor is slowly losing the one gameplay aspect they used to have - making warmer clothes than everyone else. They already lost most of that when Nadiyan fur was introduced in 1.20, though that was latergame story-gated. Now though with the arctic hunter set and some of the warmth values on the new clothes, tailor really only makes extra cosmetic choices rather than especially warm clothes. (Some of the new clothes feel like they need a balance look-over, the rawhide tunic is very cheap to craft but is one of the second warmest shirt slot items in the game, at +3 degrees. The fur-lined vest is another +3 degree item, but it goes in the shirt slot instead of the coat slot like you'd expect. I hope they move it there, since then it could be a fur coat alternative with identical stats, and would allow players to wear a shirt underneath it). EDIT: I will say though, I am very glad that all classes have the arctic hunter set. It feels to me like it rounds out winter progression a bit more, since it's a very warm set you can craft with rare materials (cinnebar) that offers an alternative to Nadiyan fur.