ifoz

I think it's a thing probably all builders (really, all artists in general) experience at one point or another. Builds also always look terrible when you start out - I have had many builds where I blocked out the floorplan and walls, thought they looked terrible, only to slowly work to improve them and end up with something I was proud of. Probably my favourite build I've made so far (this was in creative mode) is the tavern in my village - and I did not like the way the blockout/basic layout looked at all. I spent a couple days wracking my brain about it and eventually managed to find a way to cram details and a proper interior into that blockout, and everything kind of just went from there. I think a decent way to make nice builds in survival is starting small - making a large base often means you need to grind more for resources, construction takes longer, and it is easier to get demotivated, burnt-out, or begin to dislike the project. I'm also posting some images here so you might be able to see what I mean. I don't want to show off a build of mine to say "look at how this looks, you should build like this, problem solved!" but instead to say that even a build whose end result I am very happy with went through a stage where I was doubting the entire thing. Image below of blocking out the back side of the tavern, which I thought looked terrible. Image below of the finished back exterior, which I am now really pleased with. Even now I still think there are improvements to make, like making the shingled roof beams more staggered than straight. The point is though, with enough effort, even builds that start out bad can end up as something you are proud of. It really just takes practice and trial and error, and usually the builds you work the hardest on are the ones you end up the happiest with just because of the effort put in.

Looking into it a little further, looks like the command to bring it up might be ".dev aedit", though I don't know if you need to turn developer mode on in settings or be looking at an NPC for this to work. I haven't found any documentation either, it seems like nobody has really discussed or used this feature since it was added. I'm working on a village mod myself, and this is probably going to be something I'll have to figure out once I get around to actually implementing NPCs. Let me know if you end up finding out anything about it!

If we're talking about the vanilla NPCs, there's an 'activity editor' that you can use (I forget how to pull it up, but it exists) to pre-program NPC schedules. The way it looks to work is pretty much like "at (time) wake up, pathfind to (coordinates), play (this animation), at (time) pathfind to (coordinates)" etc. as far as I can tell. Do be warned though, there isn't a way to give NPCs custom dialogue and trades without making your own mod for it. All the NPCs spawned in creative will be without a specific trade and only with the default dialogue. The way actual NPC trades work in vanilla is that it's hardcoded for that specific NPC. All of this is assuming you're talking about the vanilla NPCs, not the VSvillage mod NPCs or the vanilla traders (since vanilla traders don't have this kind of pathfinding yet).

Personally, I disagree. VS has been in development for over 10 years now (they celebrated their 10th anniversary earlier this year), and given the steadily increasing player count, I can't really see it going anywhere any time soon. Sure the general modern audience is after something more fast-paced, but that doesn't mean that there isn't a more niche audience after something slower. As an example, UnReal World released in 1992, and is still being updated to this day. That's a far more niche and somewhat more hardcore survival game than VS is with an even steeper learning curve, and I think that just goes to show that usually when your game hits a niche audience, they don't just pack up and leave when the next interesting thing comes along like a more general audience might.

I think a decent way to alleviate some queue frustration would also be introducing a feature where for about a minute after a player disconnects, they could rejoin and they would regain their position in the server or in queue. TOPS (and just internet connections in general) isn't/aren't the most stable, and it is a frequent occurrence to wait in queue for hours only to get disconnected in the single digits, or to finally get in, play for five minutes, and then get disconnected and sent straight back to 130 in the queue.

I think the comment about megabuilds is an important point - many popular Minecraft builders probably won't want to do much with VS due to the fact megabuilds aren't as viable. Megabuilds sell very well in thumbnails, whereas you can't really show off the average VS base in a single still image. VS generally encourages you to have multiple rooms/areas, and then use chiselling, wrench offsetting, support beams etc to really make those areas packed full of detail and function. Sure you might be able to make a thumbnail of the base exterior, but a likely equal amount of work will have been put into the different parts of the interior. As much as I love building in VS (I think this game has a genuinely amazing building system with so much creative potential), the block palette is also a little lacking. I get that the game is going for more grounded, realistic textures, and I like that a lot. But the real life middle ages were full of colour! I'd love if we were able to paint/dye plaster to create a brighter blockset than wattle and daub, as well as stain wood to finally get planks with a nice deep brown tone. (RedRam did mention linseed oil being used to treat lumber in the future, so fingers crossed!) Having blocks of dyed cloth and leather would also be very nice, even if not the most immersive. That way you could chisel custom furniture and carpets using textiles rather than rock, daub or sand like people currently do. Saraty did mention custom carpets when weaving is eventually introduced which is very exciting, but I still think chiselling could benefit from cloth blocks.

I think a marker for where boats are would also be nice, maybe tie it to having an anchor equipped in the boat's front slot. This is already something you can do, the anchor just serves no current purpose. I also think a marker for a ruined house would be nice, as the current "ruins" marker with the pillars is a bit skinny and hard to see sometimes on the map. The trader wagon marker could also use an update in 1.22, since traders no longer live in wagons. I did hear they are working on doing that, though.

I actually had an idea a while back of being able to use a linen sack and a stick to make a bindle - this would allow for a couple extra storage slots, but would need to be held in the offhand. Helpful for exploring in the daytime or moving base, but risky at night or underground due to the fact you'd need to put it down on the ground first to hold a light source in your offhand.

The VS lore we currently have is so intentionally vague and requires specific historical knowledge to understand some parts of, that I can't imagine an AI would be very good at interpreting it and creating content from it. At least if the idea was to make the content lore-accurate. Personally in the past I've just used screenshots of content for my mods, as it gets straight to the point and shows off a bit of what is added. Usually with some stereotypical 'medieval' font featuring the mod name on top because I think that's funny.

I was generally trying to give them small debuffs with the idea that the player could opt not to subclass, instead just staying with their original class. With debuffs, it creates a reason for certain players to stick with their original, kind of giving each class three different variants.

Agreed. While I don't know how well my own proposed subclasses would fit a theoretical playthrough experience, I tried to generally keep them somewhat similar to the niche of their original classes (both Malefactor subclasses still play into being a scout and a scavenger, for example) so that the subclasses hopefully wouldn't play wildly different from their base class. They are moreso designed with multiplayer and roleplay purposes in mind though, so players with similar playstyles could still spec into slightly different niches depending on which aspects they preferred. One malefactor player might like exploration and stealth, opting for the wanderer subclass, while another might like raiding ruins and so opt for the treasure hunter. No matter which they pick their malefactor is still good at both, they are just slightly better in one or the other. It's kind of like choosing what elements of the original class' playstyle you like best, and further amplifying them a little bit. I do think VS' base classes are decently balanced though, aside from tailor who would greatly benefit from the future addition of immersive weaving. The fact you can ask around and get all sorts of different answers to "which class is best?" questions goes to show that generally, all of the classes are about roughly as good as each other.

While a knight of the order would be cool, I don't know how they would be all that distinct from the existing blackguard. Both are soldiers/fighters, the main difference being that the forlorn hope were cavalry fighters while the blackguard fought on foot in the enclosed tunnels. I could potentially see a forlorn knight getting a faster riding/turning speed when on an elk as some kind of rider/horsemanship perk, but other than that I imagine they would both play somewhat similarly. I would propose a slight movespeed perk to a forlorn knight given that they fought in slightly lighter armour, but I think that would make them a bit too powerful, if they were a combat-focused class with a speed buff.

I had an idea about an interesting way to handle class buffs/debuffs and expanded classes - allowing players to subclass into one of two options depending on their starting class, or remain as they are. At some point in the gameplay progression or the story progression, the player's Seraph would have been in the new world long enough to form a subclass, somewhat distinct from what they used to be. What is a malefactor who is no longer on the run, a blackguard without their squadron, a clockmaker without the grand machine? The subclasses would also not influence class-specific NPC dialogue or class backstory, as they are just adaptations of the base classes the Seraph has made after being in the world for some time. The subclass choices would play into one specific aspect of that base class - tailor for example might have a choice between staying as a tailor, becoming an artisan (some cheaper crafts) or a merchant (cheaper trades, higher sell prices). ----- These are the (very rough) ideas I've had for subclasses: Hunter: Archer / Tracker Archer would gain a further +5% ranged damage, +10% ranged accuracy and +5% ranged distance, at the cost of a +15% increased bow draw time. They have to line up their shots, after all! Tracker would only really work if some way to track game was added. They would be able to track injured animals for longer without tracks fading away, and tracks would be more visually obvious to them. This would come at the cost of -10% ranged distance, since they would incentivise getting closer to prey. Malefactor: Wanderer / Treasure Hunter Wanderer gains the fleetfooted trait (+10% movement speed), as well as a -10% hunger rate, making them ideal for exploration and scouting work. This comes at the cost of a 10% ranged damage penalty, as well as a further loss of 1.5 health points. The treasure hunter has the unique ability of rerolling loot tables. When they open a chest and the item inside is generated, the game rolls the loot table twice. Whichever option was rarer (had a lower % chance to appear) is the one that shows up instead. If both rolls have equal chances to appear, the game rolls a 50/50 chance for one or the other to appear. This comes at the cost of halving their default chances for double foraged items and cracked vessels. Blackguard: Skirmisher / Bulwark Skirmisher gains a further +5% attack damage, and +5% movement speed, at the cost of a 15% ranged distance penalty. Not all that different to regular blackguard, but I hope different enough that some might subclass into them while others remain as a normal blackguard. Bulwark is designed as a pure tank. They lose 10% movement speed, making them the slowest class in the game. To compensate, they gain a further 10% attack damage, 10% attack speed, and shields will protect up to 15 damage per hit instead of the usual 10. Clockmaker: Tinkerer / Engineer The tinkerer would be able to turn any Jonas part into a different Jonas part, at the cost of some metal parts, cupornickel nails and strips and a temporal gear. Probably more useful once more Jonastech is added to the game. This would come at the cost of a furthered -5% melee damage, and +5% hunger rate. It was a little hard to come up with debuffs for them, so let me know if you have any better ideas. The engineer would be able to command up to three regular locusts at once, two corrupt locusts, or one sawblade locust, making them into a sort of pseudo-summoner class. They would also gain an additional +5% damage to mechanical enemies. The tradeoff for this would be taking 10% more damage from mechanical enemies themselves, and -5% walkspeed, leaving them still faster than average but not quite fleetfooted. Tailor: Artisan / Merchant Artisan gets reduced requirements for certain important crafting recipes. Things like windmill sails, hides having a better fat-pelt ratio (1 fat for 3 medium hides, rather than for 2), and gets more clay voxels per clay item when making pottery. Merchant gets 15% lowered prices on trades, and will sell items for 15% more. Basically just designed to give tailor players a lategame buying/selling clothes, and setting up trade routes to offset their weaknesses with bought items. I really don't know what kinds of downsides I would give to each of these, as tailor is already quite weak. Let me know if you can think of any! ----- I don't quite know how well these proposed stats would fit the basegame in an actual playthrough or multiplayer scenario, but even then something like this would be fun to see as a mod. I just thought subclasses would be an interesting way to flesh out character progression and add some variety, and tried to make a good few of them somewhat unique and not just reliant on stat buffs. Anyway, this was just a fun idea I had! Let me know what you think, how you would balance it, or if any of these sound a bit too overpowered compared to their regular class.

Currently in the game we have scrap weapons, which can be crafted from one metal scrap, a stick and some rope. They're a sidegrade/alternative to copper, having identical damage but slightly lower durability. I was thinking a little while ago about having upgraded scrap weapons that would function as a bronze alternative/sidegrade, and would be quite fitting with VS' post-apocalyptic theme. We already have a soldering iron and solder bars in the game, used for the distillery, and I think it could be interesting to give those another use as required tools to make "welded scrap" weapons. These would be similar to the existing scrap weapons, though visually more sturdy, being welded together instead of tied together. Statistically they would be as good as bronze tools, though have worse durability. Originally I came up with this concept as part of a malefactor class exclusive, though I also think it could be made available for everyone. The main idea was to give use to the soldering iron since it is quite the neglected tool currently, and to offer an interesting way to get some better tools through going out exploring and looting ruins. Vanilla scrap weapons offer an interesting sidegrade to copper, and meteoric iron is a nice sidegrade to regular iron found in a different way, but bronze only has its multiple types, all acquired through similar mining and casting/smithing methods. Anyway, what does everyone think? Do you like this idea, do you think it's wildly unbalanced or something, let me know!

In a new interview with Tyron and Saraty by Mahjong Blonsky, Saraty mentioned she'd like to have immersive weaving in the game at some point, and being able to make custom carpets pixel by pixel. Very exciting stuff!

Yep, it's definitely some of the psychedelic mushrooms from 1.22

Update on this part, this happened in 1.22 rc-3! It now does indeed function as an alternate look for the fur coat, since their stats are identical.

That'd be fun, I like that idea. Having the rack as an optional upgrade to make the process easier or speed it up a little. Maybe something like a fleshing tool could be gated behind iron (not really realistic, but just for gameplay balance) and could be used to remove the fur much more efficiently than with a knife.

It's been on the roadmap for quite some time that the plan is eventually to do away with grid crafting, and a step towards this was implemented in 1.22 - to scrape a hide, you now have to place it on the ground, hold right click on it with a knife, and wait a few seconds. (By the way, I'm not talking about smithing and clay forming in this post, since those are both really good examples of the kind of gameplay/engagement I'm talking about). (Edit: I just realised grid crafting to scrape hides still works. I don't know if that's intended or not though, since it is much easier than scraping them on the ground manually. Maybe it's a sign the current scraping is a placeholder?) This got me thinking about the future of the in-world crafting systems in the game, and how I hope this mechanic is something of a placeholder rather than a finalised design. I don't actually dislike this change or anything, I think it makes sense and isn't that annoying. However, I do hope other in-world crafting mechanics are not similar to it. Scraping the hide on the ground only adds a bit more tedium to the process, since each hide must be placed on the ground and scraped individually, and doing so takes a little bit of time. I personally feel like this could be a more engaging mechanic if something like a hide rack was added, where players would hang their hides and then play a very basic minigame where they have to move the knife over the hide a few times to scrape it. Something like this would give a reason for hide scraping to be in-world crafting, rather than being a slightly more tedious version of grid crafting. Having the player actually scrape the hide themselves would add that small element of gameplay to the system, as opposed to just having to press and hold down a button. The current system doesn't really have a reason for why it needs to be done in-world rather than in the grid, and a small minigame would give it that reason. What I'm getting at is that if other systems were eventually changed from grid to in-world, I'd hope they have some element of interactivity. As a theoretical example, instead of stirring ingredients in a barrel by looking at it and holding down shift and right click, which would feel a little clunky and only add waiting time to the process, players might actually have to interact with the barrel and then move their mouse in circles a few times. Anyway, let me know what you think! I just wanted to put my thoughts out there on the topic, and how I think in-world crafting could go about being implemented in a way that adds to the gameplay rather than only adding to the time taken. The idea of in-world crafting is so vast, with so many interesting things that could be done, and I'd love to see it given a real reason for being implemented. (Edit: In the meantime, a way to swap which keybind is used for these in-world interactions would be nice. I bind my sprint to shift and my crouch to ctrl, but having the choice to hold shift instead of ctrl to scrape hides would be more ergonomic. )

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.