ifoz

I haven't really weighed in much at all with this whole drama, since I didn't feel like I had anything unique to say about it that hadn't already been said a thousand times before. However, I do think it'd be good if the VS team actually disclosed the basics of what Maltiez' job currently is. We know he's an "advisor", but beyond that as far as I'm aware there is no concrete explanation of what that position actually entails. A lot of the fearmongering around this issue seems to stem from the idea that Maltiez could sneak further malicious code into the game in some way, and I think a decent potential way to help quell some of that would be letting it known just what parts of the code he's actually got access to and the basic gist of what he is doing with it, if anything. If it turns out he's really just there to say "yeah, this looks good" or "here's how I would have done that" to changes in the combat update, I think that could help to clear some of the air. And if he is touching further code beyond that, at least then we would know roughly what areas he's working in.

Iirc it was removed because the code for it was kinda buggy (monsters would sometimes spawn in fully enclosed and lit-up rooms if your bed was against a wall, pretty sure) - but then just never re-implemented for some reason. Personally I quite like it conceptually, though if you go back and play those versions it does become a bit annoying when the aforementioned incorrect darkness detection thing happens. Yeah, that is true. I'd hope that before a theoretical trapping update (or hunting update) that animal AI would get some tweaks and improvements. I have also seen people utilise that crop trap method, but haven't tried it myself because I've never really seen the need (I usually get by fine on berries, wild crops and hunting until my first harvest). Maybe next playthrough I'll actually give the basket and crate traps a shot, just to see how worthwhile they actually are.

Honestly, a trapping expansion could be quite cool. We do currently have the basket and crate traps, though something more involved like pit traps could be interesting. While the latter two are just items you place and bait, you'd at least have to dig a pit trap by hand, which plays into this being a block game where you can do that dynamically. While you can currently just dig a hole and then aggro an animal into running into it, I think it'd be nice if there was a more passive way to do this. Having to make wooden spikes or a camouflaged covering for the trap could have animal pathfinding treat it like a solid block, only to naturally fall in. On the topic of combat being required for story progression, I think there's both positives and negatives. Combat does incentivise the player to gear up, utilising the game's other systems like cooking (more max health) and smithing (armour and weapons), while also providing a soft difficulty gate for certain story locations. On the other side, combat isn't necessarily the main focus of the game. While I think it being a large part of certain story locations makes sense, I'm more on the fence about a certain location in chapter 2 being a parkour gauntlet. It's fun for the types of players who enjoy it, and I think it's interesting, but it also feels to me personally more like it was designed that way because "our game can handle parkour, so we should include parkour" rather than something more fitting of the general gameplay loop. If there was some way to avoid certain combat/parkour sections of story locations by optionally substituting them with different systems/pathways (eg; solving puzzle/s to open a door the leads past an area rather than fighting your way through) I wonder if that would help to accommodate alternate playstyles. On the other hand though, that might detract from the soft gate that combat has on the player's story progression, meaning they wouldn't have to interact with other systems that aid them in combat as much. (For the parkour though, I do think an alternate sidequest that allowed the player to skip a chunk of it would be a nice compromise )

Since these are logo concepts, I'm assuming it's probably likely that the finalised logo won't be monochrome. I do wonder in that case how well the gear will stand out if the tree's leaves are green, though if it is mostly in the bark area (like in logos 1A, 1B and 4A) it'd probably still be quite noticable. Personally I think if I had to choose, I'd go with 4A or 1B. In both of these the gear is big enough to be noticeable, but not so big it overpowers the entire image. If I had to guess I'd think the new logo (and the old one as well) are meant to be metaphorical. Mild lore spoilers, but; .

I have one in particular that comes to mind; (This was a vanilla ruin too, not even Better Ruins!) Other than that, I did once find the "candlemaker" buried treasure within the first month or two of a new world, which gives you a gold-lined silver lantern and some extra gold plates (that I then used on another lantern I'd found in a ruin). Another time I found one of those 0.3% chance gold lanterns inside a ruin chest, which was lucky as well. (Actually, why are so many of these stories about lanterns? )

This is a really interesting interpretation of the Rot - while I'm not sure that's the direction the devs will take it in, it might help explain why the prison-themed ruins in the game often contain high status clothing, given the descriptions we have of how some of them treated the lower classes. While we know the Lazaret was where those too wealthy or important to simply be let die were taken, some of the other prison-themed ruins (like "mistery_grave" [sic]) also contain high status clothes. It could also be that while lower status criminals were just directly exiled to the surface, only those with enough influence were kept in the (relative) safety of the underground, though under lock and key. The following is a bit less about the Rot, but I've been wondering about the high status prisons for a while now; I also wonder what use the jailors actually were in the underground - their set's description makes it sound like they were torturers, but for what reason I don't know. We know criminals were exiled to the surface because they could spare no manpower, and torturing them seems pointless as it would only reduce their chances to come back with useful supplies in tow. Perhaps they were used by the Blackguard to extract information about rebels, though there is also no real evidence that connects them to the dread company other than one Blackguard ruin containing a small holding cell. Oddly enough, "mistery_grave" seems the most like a torture chamber (what with the skulls on spikes and the chains hanging from the cieling), though is filled with discarded high status items - the belongings of nobles, aristocrats and the like. Exile to the surface also already covers the main reason for torture in the middle ages - a particularly grizzly way to show would-be criminals what would happen if they were to be caught, hopefully deterring them. The exile also has the added benefit of showing offenders just how valuable a position in the shelters was, hopefully making them play nicer if re-integrated. The one group I could see connections drawn between to the jailors is the Forlorn Hope, due to their identical blue colouring on parts of their sets. However, that same blue is used quite a bit throughout the game - certain Nadiyan sets, the Malefactor's sash and scarf. I think it most likely is supposed to be the deep blue of lapis-dyed cloth, since the tailor in Nadiya will buy lapis from the player. It could be that there were still factions vying for power in the underground - while Jonas was the main thing humanity banded around, perhaps others with power were still plotting to outlast the Rot on their own terms and re-establish their own empires afterwards. The nomad set does mention a khanate, though we don't know if that was specifically around underground or not.

Kind of off topic, but just something I've been thinking about in regards to In Memoriam and player character lore; (I also don't remember if this is something I've talked about on the forums before, but I don't think it is. Pretty sure. ) Ever since I read it I've wondered if In Memoriam was originally planned to be the Malefactor's backstory, before they decided to make player lore more open-ended and never directly confirm anything. It hits most of their established beats - commoner steals something (the fancy garments), sneaks into somewhere (the Lazaret), and then pushes a woman down a pit, killing her but allowing them her food and jewellery ("terrible things are done in the heart of despair - she is gone, but you remain"). This might not be the case at all and personally I'm glad they decided to take player backstory in a more vague direction, but I just thought it was at the least an interesting coincidence. Tobias also seems sympathetic of the Malefactor, moreso than any of the other classes, which I doubt he'd be if they killed someone in colder blood instead of out of necessity, if that is indeed what they did. While he says he doesn't know their exact crime, I've noticed Vintage Story likes to have NPCs be able to infer certain things/aspects about the player through physical characteristics. For the Malefactor specifically, Sedna says she can tell they have a 'secret', and Kat warns them to watch themselves, as if she can tell by demeanour alone that they're a thief. If their crime was in cold blood (it's kind of debatable if the killing in In Memoriam was out of necessity/self-preservation (starvation) or jealousy), I doubt Tobias would be so glad to see that they survived. (A little further off topic, but it is kind of interesting that the Malefactor is amongst those who Tobias seems the happiest to see alive. Not that he isn't happy to see the other Seraphs, but for the Malefactor specifically he state's he's "truly glad [they] survived to find [their] freedom again". Given Tobias' already revolutionary stance in the old world, this makes me wonder if the Malefactor wasn't also a rebel, or a member of the Flock). Anyway, all that to say I think class lore is interesting, and I wonder if In Memoriam's outline was originally written as a prototype for some before they took a different direction and it was rewritten/repurposed. I'm pretty sure the devs have talked before about eventually adding the other named locations, but as alternate paths to Nadiya. So you could choose to visit the Lazaret, or some of the others instead. We don't know if that is in reference to every single one of them or just some of them, but it's worth keeping in mind if speculating that the other named locations will be part of future chapters rather than an expansion of chapter 2. EDIT: This is all speculation, but I wonder if one of them won't be the "Innswood ruins" mentioned in the Ghosts short story. In that story a Seraph asks around a village for directions to "Innswood", unknowing it was overrun decades ago. They way this is worded makes it sound like Innswood was a new world settlement, so their knowledge of it couldn't have come from old maps. I speculate it might be that this Seraph came across one of Tobias' letters, and was directed to Innswood by it. That'd explain why a Seraph established to be so clueless would have knowledge of the place to begin with, as well as why they'd be searching for it without knowing it is now in ruins. I have my own theories regarding Jonas, mostly around the fact I doubt the game/writers would let him get out of things unscathed. Personally I believe that Jonas is in some way, shape or form the "machine god" mentioned in The Morning. In the old world Jonas was seen as a messiah figure, and in the new world Tobias is hailed as a 'saint'. Tobias is also said to "command angels", which could be in reference to his search for the Seraphs. If the Seraphs are 'angels' and Tobias is a 'saint', it'd make sense for Jonas to be the metaphorical 'god'. Not to say that Jonas (if he turns up) couldn't still blame himself for the disappearance of the Seraphs and the return of the Rot, but I just doubt he's going to show up as a human or as a Seraph, rather something else entirely.

I just chisel blocks of the same texture as the underside of the roof to look like a slope - it does make the roof line a bit thick, but there currently isn't a much better way to make the underside of your roof sloped unless you decide to go all out and make a fully custom roof via chiselling and/or support beams. We know from the devs that a roof rework is planned at some point though, so hopefully whenever that comes out the problem of the blocky underside is resolved.

The devs have said that one day down the line they'd like travelling traders, but that it probably won't come any time soon due to the difficulty of implementing it in a realistic way. I think the idea is that traders could ferry goods between one another, and/or have a courier that does it for them. To do this though, the game would need some way of making/validating 'trade routes' between traders, to make sure they could path there without getting stuck. Elvas also mentioned carts in the dev stream where he discussed this, and how while the devs have thought about them, they probably won't be added if/until they can come up with a way to make them not look janky when rolling through VS' blocky terrain. I also heard from Elvas in regards to villages that they had the idea to have the player able to more permanently rent a room at the inn in Nadiya, which would revoke claim protections for that room and allow players to decorate it as they wished. Again, no idea if/when this will be implemented, but we know they've been thinking about it. There was also mention of smaller settlements whose claim radius wouldn't be so large, as so the player could set up shop close by. We don't know though if these smaller settlements would be the size of the rare trader outposts or larger, though.

I think I've mentioned it before on another Devastation thread, but I think another smaller, optional sidequest to allow players to repair the elevator early would really go a long way. That way there's an element of player choice - do the parkour like normal, or go to some other smaller location, fight through it, and retrieve some item that allows the elevator to be partially or fully repaired, taking the player higher up the Tower. I still think it'd be a really fun detail if the game tracked if players had died at least once - if they had, use the normal dialogue when you tell Gerhardt that you're immortal, but also include some hidden dialogue for deathless Seraphs who don't know that yet! Something along the lines of "You need not worry about me. I may have been through hell and back, but I always manage to come out the other side". The game does after all already have hidden dialogue for if you talk to Tobias before finding his note about the Lens.

I think the main problem with enemies breaking doors is that this is a block game, and so players would likely just start blocking up their doorways with things that are fast to break, like hay or dirt. This already happens in the earlygame, where players will often use hay / dirt or fence gates as 'doors', since the crude door has a chance to break when used. Allowing enemies to break blocks would fix this, but opens up a whole other can of worms in regards to player freedom / creativity. Honestly one of my favourite suggestions for making enemies a little scarier / bases less safe is palisades becoming craftable and some changes to fences - monsters would be able to climb 1-tall fences, and shivers 2-tall fences. Animals wouldn't be able to, so fences would still serve their purpose of protecting crops and livestock. Palisades (like the traders have) would become craftable, and would stop monsters from climbing over. To balance this they'd probably be more expensive than fences. That way you'd actually have to invest some time (and tree chopping) into properly fortifying your base (or just build larger walls out of regular blocks). This wouldn't really be related to any sort of 'siege/raid' mechanics, but just a way to give palisades a use, incentivise players to make bases that look realistically defensible, and cut back on using basic wooden fences as a hard barrier to the horrors of the night.

This reminds me of a similar experience of my own - while I've gotten a few ruined chests from buried treasures in my time, there is one that comes to mind as even more insulting. I forget exactly how much the map cost me, but it was buried directly behind the treasure hunter's wagon, not a few paces away (this was back before traders had huts). I dig down, find the treasure, and... Inside are a few rusty gears. In total, exactly one less gear than I paid for the map. I have a sneaking suspicion that treasure hunter set me up, no wonder the traders play that laughing idle animation all the time!

Unless it's bugged, I'd recommend looking around the site of the X. The X is usually never directly on top of where the treasure hunter is, but just somewhere roughly nearby.

As far as I'm aware this is still accurate, but here's a chart going over all the possible buried treasure loot tables that I made a while back for anyone curious. In my eyes "candlemaker" is probably the best one to find, followed by "machinist" and then "royal" (two guaranteed high status clothing items is cool!)

I like this idea, and to add onto it wonder if it'd be interesting if palisades couldn't be placed on top of stone. Maybe not things like stone bricks since that might limit player freedom to build, but specifically raw and cracked rock. I say this because that way the classic cheese of placing fences in caves to wall off monsters would require a bit more time to pull off, since suitable blocks would have to be placed first and then palisades.

This kind of thing would be really nice. I never noticed it when I was a new player, but over time I've slowly come to realise just how disjointed the temporal mechanics are, in a game that usually does a great job at interconnecting its systems. Rifts spawn monsters, but so does darkness underground. Temporal storms spawn monsters, but without darkness or rifts. Monsters can't normally spawn in lit-up areas, aside from during temporal storms. Having low stability spawns monsters, but without rifts. Low stability surface areas as far as I am aware do not have a chance to have higher rift activity, since rifts and instability are not connected. There's three main systems here (rifts, storms, surface instability) that you would think would all be linked in some way, but they aren't really. Darkness and rifts are at least connected, though darkness isn't connected to storms and instability.

While a body type option would be fun (and the game supports such things, as seen with the clothing the traders wear - they're internally Seraph-sized, but trimmed down to fit the trader model) I also think just giving certain clothes 3D detailing could also go quite a long way. Some jackets/coats having the sleeves flair slightly at the ends instead of just being flat, more gloves being worn over the sleeves and given 3D geometry, etc. Quite a few of the gloves feel too flat to me actually, things like fur gloves and the different craftable mittens should probably be worn over the top of sleeves (unless the sleeves belong to something that would realistically be bulkier itself, like a fur coat or parka).

Even if so, I'd imagine it would still have been a lot - the merchant set description makes mention that the Hansa had to charter a massive amount of goods and refugees. Given that the Commoner is also described as a refugee, I think the "goods and refugees" described were those going toward the Grand Machine, or at least the large shelter civilisation that developed around it. In regards to food underground, it does seem to have been incredibly valuable. The most abundant resource found in the fortified "vaults" of the dynamic dungeons is rot, which would have once been foodstuffs. There is also some evidence of attempted farming underground, a small handful of ruins have areas with fences, troughs, aged hay and animal bones.

I also wonder if Malefactors could hold off longer before feeling the effects of starvation (assuming hunger and starvation are to become status effects rather than a flat HP drain when the bar hits zero). Given their expeditions to the surface and criminal background, it'd make sense if they were more used to going without food for a longer time as opposed to a class like the Clockmaker or Tailor who worked a trade. I always thought it was weird the vessels dropped stone tools - back when I was a new player I thought this implied the ruins were left behind by some other stone/copper age civilisation, but I soon learnt that no, most ruins are supposed to come from the old world. In a society that had Jonastech and steel production, I doubt anyone would really be using stone or copper tools unless absolutely necessary. Personally I think your idea of them dropping scraps could make more sense, or even dropping rusted/corroded tools. It'd make more sense for tool vessels to drop things like heavily corroded knives and axes that are just as functionally bad as stone, but aesthetically different and more thematically fitting.

I think a proper stealth system could help Malefactor out a lot, and incentivise their 'scout/stealth' playstyle by giving players options to avoid/sneak around combat encounters. I'm unsure about this one, as I think it leans a bit too far into restricting gameplay considering just how important flax is in this game. Windmills, armour, repairing clothes, sailboats. The Malefactor also seems like one of the classes with the most theoretical survival skills - realistically the tailor might be better at weaving fancy things, but the Malefactor's whole shtick is supposed to be that they're an adapt improvisor, capable of working with what they've got. If anything, the class that makes the most sense to get crafting debuffs would be the Blackguard, since they are described as "not having the talent for delicate work". I think it'd be nice if this was the aspect leaned into further for the Malefactor - alternate recipes for certain items, and maybe even a few outright new ones. I like your ideas of them being able to use nettle for certain flax recipes, as well as moss for early healing. I had an idea a while back that the Malefactor should be able to make upgraded (bronze-tier) versions of the current vanilla metal scrap weapons, that are copper tier, which would also tie into their ruin-hunting traits. You mentioned adding more scrap tools for them to use, and I think that'd bring some unique options to the table.

I also think a doctor class could be fitting, but I do also wonder if some medical gameplay could be integrated into the Tailor. I say this because the tailor blouse has faint pink staining, consistent with other bloodstains in the game (barber surgeon apron, Nadiyan barber gloves), along with the description of "artisans provided what assistance they could and plied their craft when able". Together to me this kind of implies the Tailor might have also been stitching up the wounded in emergency situations. I think a herbalist class could also potentially be integrated into Malefactor, given they already have the "forager" trait. Forlorn Hope knight I've always been unsure about, given that the Blackguard already covers the melee/fighter playstyle. I think the only way they could offer unique gameplay would be if they had more to do with alchemy or the sciences. The Forlorn Hope were also scholars, so they might usurp the role of a Noble class, unless the Noble was explicitly something of a challenge class.

Honestly, right now I don't think they really have all that much of a point. This is totally subjective, but I assume the reason for them to exist gameplay-wise (they make sense within the lore, but I mean from a purely 'why is this a mechanic' perspective) is probably to nudge the player towards gearing up, especially since they gradually get more severe the longer you play in a world. With their current implementation though, this kind of falls apart. They're easy enough to cheese, and they're so unpredictable that hiding yourself in a dirt box and waiting them out is usually the far safer option. They also don't encourage you to interact with building at all, since monsters spawned by storms will ignore things like valid rooms, lighting and proximity to the player. I think they're also tricky to design though, since you'd want some way to encourage the player to gear up without having to resort to going AFK in a box or having monsters destroy player builds (given how in-depth chiselling is and how intricate builds can be, myself and many other players would probably be quite unhappy if that was a mechanic). The best solution I can think of is having the storms spawn rifts, which monsters will then emerge from (tying the rift mechanics to storms, as currently they are oddly disconnected). The rifts could spawn at a certain radius (eg, 50 blocks) from the player, but spawned enemies would aggro instantly, creating a sort of "horde" event that a good base can still protect from. This kind of implementation would also line up better with what storms are said to be in the game's lore, as their current form doesn't really match with how they are described. In the lore there's importance placed on survivors building fortifications and defending themselves from storms, but currently since enemies can spawn anywhere during a storm, fortifications don't matter as much as they probably should. Luckily, we do know the devs are planning to rework storms at some point in the future!

I'm pretty sure the elk actually gets a speed boost from roads just like the player does, so road infrastructure is still very handy even post-elk!

I don't know how to add a quote to an existing post so this can just be a separate message, but the sturdy pillion is actually already in the game! It doesn't really serve any functional purpose considering it's just a retexture of the regular pillion, but it is at least nice for consistency's sake. It'd be cool if we also had sturdy saddles and bridles too, so that your entire ensemble could match in colour.

Kind of off the topic of specifically the merchant class a little bit, but I wonder what the tradeoffs between mount types and the saddle with backpacks will be. If I had to guess, maybe horses can only step up one block heights unlike elk, but run faster. I feel like it's also decently safe to assume that since backpack mounting seems to be unique to a new type of saddle, there will probably be some tradeoff there, maybe in lowered movespeed. I do wonder though if the moose and camel will have some unique traits or not.