The Lerf

To answer the OP-- an antler pick is a great, optional item that feels in the same vein as finding out you can use bones as handles for stone knives and axes. Personally I see no issue with making it a copper or bronze equivalent tool either, as it isn't something that's likely to be found until the first year passes. It's optional, and can play into character costuming/trophy collecting. Wish we had more of that, looking at the ruined weapons in-game. To answer the current discussion-- hwhy should we need antler to knap? hwhat is the player going to do without progression tools? hwhen does the game get fun with this change?

Hefty worm stew when?

We've already got special inventory bags for ores and rocks, but what about second special inventory bag? Or third? Plant Cutting Carrier This backpack slot item would provide a much greater inventory space specifically for bush and tree cuttings, sticks, logs, firewood, and other long bits of plant matter that I can't recall! Intended to have an 'improvised' version for early game, and an 'improved' version for late game, similar to the ore bag. Visually, it resembles a harness worn on the upper back, holding long plant matter in a horizontal bundle with a leather or cloth wrapping. The improvised version would be crafted similarly to a rope ladder, with a piece of leather where the stick goes, and reeds in the top two rope positions. The improved version would use a piece of linen instead of leather, and (up for discussion) shield hoops, or chain to replace the reeds. The intent of this bag is to reduce the feeling of inventory bloat with the new cuttings trait system, and as an early game assist with materials gathering. This is the bag you grab when you need a charcoal pit, visit a dense forest for material, or are cultivating fruit. Hunting Bag Completely different from the Hunter's bag! A backpack slot bag specifically for holding large amounts of edible things! Red meat, poultry, bush meat, bones, fat, hides, even shove some mushrooms and berries in there, I don't care! Made from 2 medium pelts arranged vertically in the crafting UI, with rope in the top corners. Visually, it's like the Hunter's backpack, but on the other shoulder. I don't feel like this bag needs an improved version that provides more slots for things, but possibly instead an improved version that decreases the spoilage rate for raw food. Maybe made from leather, with a linen internal lining. This bag is intended to help reduce inventory troubles during early game. Specifically grabbing the hunting bag for your hunting trip should allow the player to keep all their edible spoils at the sacrifice of 25% of their catch-all inventory. This rewards planning ahead for trips with specific purpose of food gathering, as then you may even have the general purpose inventory space to grab some other needed material. Overall: All in all, more specialized bags available during the early game will provide players with more inventory space, with the catch of it being specific to critical items. This can reinforce planning ahead trips with purpose, as long as you switch out your backpack slots. The general purpose backpacks can continue to have their weakness in number of slots compared to specialized bags, and that weakness decreases as the player gets to the higher tier leather backpacks.

If you haven't discovered it already, the mod duo Expanded Foods and A Culinary Artillery will provide you with the addition of syrups for your game. I do think that vanilla VS would benefit from allowing fruit juice to be a substitute for honey in jam making though. For me, honey is usually found in the mid-game/ second year, and so I usually don't ever make jams because I get my fruit saturation from convenience foraging for berries during exploration or alcohols/tree fruit. Jams are simple though. A large portion of juice per serving of jam can represent reducing the juice during cooking, and it could have less satiety than if you used honey, in order to balance out having only used one type of ingredient. I think this would help with early game fruit preservation for winter. For me, if I don't find bees, I usually have to watch my fruit satiety drop to zero over the first winter. It also creates a bit of a decision tree on what to do with fruit for preservation. Once it gets juiced, you can only turn it into alcohols.

I'd just loop calendar functionality into the clock too, just for streamlining. A typical analog style clock face for telling time, and then a mouseover tooltip for the date. I don't think it's unheard of for a clock to do that, especially if it's a design from the Jonas Era. I don't even think you'd need to make 3 individual clock designs. If the 1x1 clock face was clean enough, let players chisel around it to create what they want with it. Drop it on a table for a small basic clock, chisel a lower structure for a grandfather, but I personally think a wristwatch is a bit out of the player's engineering capability. If a wristwatch is added, it shouldn't be crafted, only found out purchased as a Jonas tech antique treasure. Maybe one found at the Resonance Archives?

It's in game, but it's part of a UI overlay. What OP is suggesting is a diagetic way of determining time and date. With the recent moves towards diagetic procedures in 1.22 (such as scraping hides on the ground instead of the crafting interface), I think an in-game clock/ calendar is inevitable, just a matter of when or how. I can see it being a class exclusive item to the clockmaker, because.... of course... but also hopefully something that can be purchased from a trader. Some questions to ask though: should it be a 1x1 block like the Resonater? Should it be a bigger, multistep/multiblock build like a large wooden gear or water wheel? Does making it an end game item make sense? Clocks are complicated after all, but it would be much more useful to the player in the early game. Perhaps as a gift from talking to your first trader?

I don't think we're going to see 'improvements' to Temporal Storms as much as we're going to be seeing improvements to all the systems surrounding them. Things like enemy AI, the enemy sandbox, more Jonas tech constructs like the Rift Ward, etc. Unless AI pathing becomes more than 'seek player position', you'll be mobbed. Unless there's more enemy variety beyond 'melee damage focused unit', you'll be mobbed. Unless spawns become something other than instant apparitions, you won't be able to react to something spawning on top of you. Unless enemy strength is tuned, you'll be one-shot. Unless enemy health is tuned, a copper falx will not be able to handle a medium storm. We simply do not have the tools in game for players to engage with storms in a way that's satisfying and in spirit with developer intentions. And the start of storm changing should begin focusing on the new player experience. Tutorialization of the mechanics is fine during the first weak Temporal Storm, but realistically what ways does any player have to prepare for them? Beyond putting on your highest tier armor and weapons, or your broom closet, or your cheese strat? I'd like preparation to come in the form of constructed defenses; things to pull aggro, things to slow enemies, things to blind them, lower their health, etc. Straight up, why are we engaging with the rustbeasts on an even playing field with swords? We have technology, and maybe eventually we'll get simple traps and mid-game forged mechanisms and late-game Jonas constructs to help deal with storms, but the game is still unfinished.

Are you playing modded or vanilla? You don't need to crush quartz in order to make glass blocks in unmodded VS. You can put quartz chunks directly into the bloomery.

Right, but what do you need to pulverize in the early game? The only things that are pulverizable are the ingredients for refractory bricks and dyes. Refractory bricks are a late game item, and dyes are kind of a mid-game customization option.

Per your description, are you imagining a full goethite block that gets collected with a shovel? Would the regeneration of said block just be a spontaneous regeneration of the block in the same spot? I'd like to suggest an alternative for you, something similar to the pine tree resin blocks, or how flint is extracted from full rock blocks. A specialized soil block called "iron rich soil" or something, that when long clicked with empty hands, would provide however many iron/goethite bits (ideally using the same little animation extracting flint does). Full destruction of the block would behave just like destroying pine resin blocks - you wouldn't want to do that. It's a bit easier on the coding side to do, especially if one were to take this up as a mod.

I'd first ask what the point of a manual pulverizer is, from a game design perspective. Is there anything that it solves that the regular hammer or quern can't? I feel like the suggestion here could be reframed as adding a manual hand crank to add off an axle to power a single machine, albeit slowly. Like manually turning the quern.

>Pablo Escobar when he plays VS

This is what I resonate with. Vintage Story has a simplicity surrounding every single mechanic, that makes you feel the authenticity of the actions performing it, even if it's not 1-to-1 with real life. Obviously things are going to be much more complicated in real life compared to how we do it in game, but there is a line to draw on "how simplified should it be?" The 1.22 pre release just moved that line for smithing, and with the game still in development, I hope other systems get that too. I'm not sure if you're suggesting that an alcoholic blackout is too realistic for VS, but hallucinogenic mushrooms were just added, so it's feeling less out of the realm of possibility now. I do think drinking wines out of bowls is weird too, but it works as a solution for "how to transfer this liquid into my mouth without a 10L bucket". I hope goblets get added eventually specifically for alcohols.

Personally I'd like to see the drunk effects get worse. Someone mentioned it before, but drinking alcohols with a bucket makes a seraph consume it in 1L increments at a time. I say increase drunkenness effects, add tripping and falling, and a "blackout" state identical to sleep if you consume the whole bucket. Reinforce responsible consumption using bowls. Increase satiety from alcohols with this change, because otherwise the time/productivity loss is too great. Turning berries into wine for preservation doesn't need to be that inefficient if there's a significant downside to drinking it as alcohol. Even brining vegetables is what, 30% loss of satiety? Alcohols should make the tradeoff of 'preservation' vs 'ability to be productive' instead of 'preservation' vs 'satiety'. This makes them more likely to be invested in during the late game when players are self sufficient. Hell, I'd even go so far as to make Distilled alcohols have more satiety than their raw ingredients altogether considering the time and effort involved to make them, and that you're turning multiple barrels of berries into a single jug...

I wish that the bronze age lasted a fair bit longer. It feels like a half-step to Iron, despite having 3 different bronze alloys in the game. Though I don't actually have any ideas on how to fix that... unless you make the saw unable to be forged out of copper, moving the 'planks upgrade' part of the game locked behind bronze, which would delay players not rushing progression... but game design/balance is hard. I feel like this also plays into OP's nitpick about lower tier armors straight up being pointless investments, because you're at the copper/bronze age for such a comparatively short amount of time, and you're encountering enemies that invalidate those armor tiers pretty often (bears, temporal storms, and caving). I don't see the amount of metal needed to be bad, per se... but maybe lower tier armors, if they aren't going to be nearly as good, don't need an equivalent amount of ingots to making iron/steel armors. Making lamellar armor more accessible with less ingots needed might make it more worthwhile. The opportunity cost is way to great with current amounts, as lamellar chest armor takes 19 whole ingots at a point in the game where you're still blowing through tools every other outing, have a potentially limited amount of alloy material, and need to invest in a bronze anvil. The biggest bottleneck to progression at that stage is finding iron, not combat endurance... so perhaps making iron more easily found via caving? Encouraging locust hives to spawn near iron? Is this a fun change though? I'm not sure. We've also got what, 40+ varieties of mushrooms now, and after the agricultural revolution they kind of fall off. Less satiation than other vegetables, yet harder to find is a confusing combo, especially in the early game when foraging really matters. I also kind of wish that there were more variants of ruins and they were more lucrative for decor-type finds. Super rarely I'll find a decorative object in a ruin that I didn't even know was in the game, like a damaged locust or something neat that doesn't need glue to grab. I want more of that, more "Oh neat, nice find!" moments in ruins that aren't about like, cabbage seeds or a blackguard cuirass.