Allen

The handbook says that farmland within three blocks of water will help them 'maintain good moisture levels', but hydration from being near water water seems to start at 75% and is reduced by 25% per block, meaning at three blocks away, you get just 25% hydration, reducing growth rate to around 60% So like, is it ok to just have 1 block of water per 7x7 of farmland and have the outer ring grow at 25% hydration, countering the slower growth times with bigger harvests? Or does that just mean that being next to water makes hydration drain slower so you need to water less often or something? If I put all farmland next to water for 75% hydration, is it okay to not water them? Or maybe having water doesn't actually matter because all it does is raise the base hydration level to 25%/50%/75% better to just water your crops by hand every day to keep them at 100%? Trying to actually optimize my farm layout for once, and not quite sure where to place the water.

I like the idea in concept. A lot of items can be stored in-world, but for most things you don't really do that since a chest can store so much more. A reason to have more 'real world' storage would be cool. However, yeah I do agree that it'll be very easy for things like that to get tedious real fast. Maybe if instead of nerfing chests (or at least nerfing them too much) we could buff specific/world storage options to make them more viable against chests?

Personally, I don't mind the agressive wildlife since having some sort of risk during the day is reasonable for a game I would say. However, I do wish they'd announce their presence more frequently/loudly, because getting mauled by a ninja bear while making your way through the woods is just annoying more than anything.

Mostly depends on what trees I find, but my general setup is pine walls, birch floors, and oak furniture. Birch floors because I like the color, oak furniture because as said above, they're the closest in color to other generic wood items. Pine walls mostly because pine trees are common and I don't hate the color.

I would like it if grassed dirt/naturally generated dirt would be less prone to sliding or if the world gen puts the dirt instability into account when making slopes to make it somewhat less likely that every other cliff triggers a landslide within like 10min of you wandering into the area.

So uh, crazy thing. I was starting to run low, so I started digging a mineshaft near the very high copper reading near my base and... I found hematite. Well, to be exact, my prospecting pick's node search mode turned up a reading for hematite. I haven't actually found the vein yet, and considering the hematite reading for the area was really low, I don't expect there to be much ores anyways, but uh... that should help a lot when looking for that ultra-high iron chunk. But also, because it occurred to me while I was digging. Once I get a reading, do I just... dig down until I hit something? Because that's what I did, but as I'm currently expanding the mineshaft, I realize I very easily could have just missed various ore veins I found if I'd dug in a slightly different position. Like 3~4 blocks to the the side or up and I would have missed the giant copper vein I've currently stopped on. If I hadn't tried out my prospecting pick at the exact moment, or I dug like a few blocks to the other side, I would have missed the hematite reading. I mean, it does look like the ores I get will more than cover for all costs of me digging this stupid deep hole, but like, I can't be that lucky all the time, can I?

Well I did find a very high copper reading nearby, so worst comes to worst I guess I can tap into that for more tools. More prospecting it is then!

Finally trying to step into the iron age, poking around with the prospecting pick to find some iron. So apparently the poor/decent/etc next to the ore the prospecting pick shows is the chance for ore to be there, and not like, the actual ore. So the question is, does say 'decent' actually give a decent chance of finding ore, or should I just skip all but very/ultra high readings? Second, is digging around in quartz veins I find for possible gold/silver worth it or no?

Fucking bees. I spent days without finding a single one, and now that I've found one and am in the long process of waiting for a skep to fill, I immediately find like 4 other beehives.

Mostly a half a day to a day's walk/sprint away from spawn. Figured I'd use it to find nearby copper/etc to enter the metal age proper while I'm at it, so I was searching nearby forests one at a time. I did check the temperature/rain every now and then to make sure I'm not looking in the wrong place entirely, but otherwise, it was go to the forest, walk around all over until I'm fairly certain I've searched everywhere, move the the next forest, rinse and repeat. Though, now that I've found enough metal for an anvil, I'm considering moving further south by maybe a day or two to search, after some base renovations for proper storage and such. I might try the mod if I get too frustrated. Haven't been using any mods so far but I've only heard good things so. edit: I think I found my problem. Made a creative world and spawned in a beehive so I know what it sounds like. It took like 8 blocks for the sound to lower to a point where I could barely hear it and would probably just write it off as background noise if I heard it in my survival world amidst all the other sounds like water/footsteps/etc. Guess I'm getting that mod to find my bees.

Found a forest with like 50% maple trees so wandering there with music set to 0, weather sounds to 10%, and ambient and master volumes at 100%. Just walking all around the woods to check out every corner I can. No bees so far. But hey, I did find 2 ingots worth of copper nuggets, so can't complain I suppose. But at this point, I might end up getting my first candle from all this bony soil I'm picking up before I find a single bee.

Is there some latitude they spawn more frequently or something? Do I need to head more south so it becomes warmer? Because I've been searching for days and haven't found a single hive. Doesn't help that forests are extremely annoying to explore both due to heavily limited visibility and being home to wolves and bears.

Have to agree. I prefer literally anything else to the combat update because you know new stuff, but the unrefined combat frustrates me way more than say, the lack of fish or fruit trees.

Hmm, better save the chicken farming for 1.15 and go for the sheep then.

I was trying to heard a nearby group of chickens into my farm, but ran into some wolves on the way and well, long story short, I no longer have chickens near my base. Do farm animals respawn over time, or do I have to track down a chicken from further away and lead that into my base? Because if so, I might just get rid of the chicken coops I'm working on altogether and just raise some sheep instead. Chickens are way too annoying to chase around to try and farm for me to try getting them from that far away.

The horizontal only version works great, but I personally found 'vertical only' to be a lot less great as when I try to use that mode, I keep on placing the slab at right angles to the direction I want to place for some reason.

Speaking of food preservation, if you get a chest/vessel and want food to last even longer, just bury the vessel/chest of food in the ground. The hole will count as a 'cellar' once you cover it and slows down food rotting even more.

When I say 'casual' I mean people who don't have the drive or time to really sink their time into difficult games to really learn them. I think the biggest issue of the 'difficulty can turn away casual gamers' is defining what exactly a 'casual gamer' is. And there is a group of people who will get turned away at difficult games and high learning curves, what we refer to them as doesn't change the fact that they exist. You say dark souls and sekiro are popular among the casual player. Maybe it is. I enjoy both games a lot and I consider myself a pretty casual gamer. However, if you check steam achievements, you'll note nearly 20% of people who got dark souls on steam never made it past Iudex Gundyr, and almost 40% didn't make it past Vordt. It's the same for Sekiro. around 40% of people who got the game on steam didn't make it past the first boss. Difficulty makes for sweeter rewards, but that only gets people into the game if they can, you know, achieve those rewards. Grind by itself might not be bad, but even if the grind is fun, if someone just hates grinding, they're not gonna play the game. Similarly, high difficulty by itself might not be bad, but raising the skill floor will inadvertently keep out players who isn't willing to or simply can't invest the time/effort/etc needed to reach that skill floor. And if you make it look too difficult, people might not even try it out in the first place. There are plenty of stories of people who didn't buy dark souls because 'I'm a casual gamer and I heard it's really hard'. . Going back to PvP and toxicity, I think it's really just unlike most PvE/non competitive were if you loose, you don't have much to blame other than the game or yourself, in PvP, if you loose, you have lots of people to blame, and all those people, along with you, are part of the game's community. Kinda happens sometimes with cooperative PvE too. It's like telling two(or more) people to fight each other for multiple rounds with only a very distracted referee who's watching several hundred other games and (usually) loose rules to keep them in check, and hoping everyone comes out of it all nice and sportsmanship like.

The dark souls community itself is pretty nice, but the dark souls pvp community can be quite toxic, especially with their 'dual code' and their tendency to murder (technically) allies because they didn't like what they did. Generally, I think any game that throws people against each other in some way can't really avoid toxicity in some form since it's easy get annoyed/angry at someone you beats, you, especially if the method felt 'bullshit' to you. Games with big PvE dangers get generally nicer communities since everyone has a more or less shared experience and common enemy to bond over. That said, having things be too difficult can put a lot of casual players off or lead to somewhat gatekeeping-ish things, so.

PvP, especially competitive pvp, does lead to toxicity, but not all combat is about PvP. The current combat is basically 'back away and stab/throw spear at thing, usually in water if it's faster than you', which is pretty dull, and can get kind annoying considering how many wolves and drifters wander around the place. Improvements to overall combat makes pvp more of a content, but it also helps out PvE too(as long as you don't add purely PvP centric mechanics).

Some thoughts: On stagger: I think one catch-all type of stagger would be enough, as long as you balance the timing of the stagger to prevent being stunlocked. In my experience, stamina is usually punishment enough for spamming actions, especially if you add a little penalty for overexertion(trying to do an action you don't have enough stamina for), and being unable to do anything isn't too big a punishment if you keep the stagger duration low on most things and have things that result in big stagger either be hard to pull off(if you're staggering your opponent) or be attached to failing something that's really high reward if you pull it off. Sure, it would mean that having it after lowing a block is probably not a good idea, but I think having stamina not regen until a bit after you lower your block is a good enough deterrent for that. On stamina: Not much to say, but having a punishment for overexertion(trying to use more stamina than you have left) would be a nice additional way to stop spamming. Another option, but a bit more blatant, is having repeated actions consume more stamina each time it happens in a short amount of time. On attacking: Getting a bit more complex here but rather than 'overhead' 'thrust' 'swing' I think it'd be better if it was something like 'strong attack' 'fast attack' 'normal attack' and change depending on weapon. A strong attack would lean heavily into the weapon's strengths and weakness, while a normal attack would be more average, and a fast attack would be more of a 'get that guy off you' kind of attack For example, say we have an axe. The strong attack could be a big overhead chop that's short range and slow, but does a lot of damage. A normal attack would just be a quick chop, more damaging and slow than other weapons, but pretty average all things considered. The fast attack would be a handle bash that's short range but fast and has decent knockback. A sword on the other hand, could have a strong attack that's a very wide sweep, a well, normal, normal attack, and a short(compared to a spear) thrust as the quick attack Also on attack blocking and bonuses, one way would be to make attack blocking give a short lived attack bonus to both your and your opponent that stacks for every attack block done, but is removed either when you get hit, hit your opponent, or do something other than attack(like block or dodge). Another would be to make attack blocking have a certain timing, so if you both do it at the exact same time, nothing happens, but if you do it just slightly faster, your opponent gets staggered. Edit: I do realize this makes each attack even more different from each other and could make attack blocking not make sense, but I think it'll work visually as long as attack animations are made to move the weapon onto a certain point(like say, your crosshair) at the timing the attack blocking happens. On Blocking: I like it. Do think it'd be nice of parrying stuns your opponent briefly to let you counterattack, but that's about it. Alternatively, if the parry is done by raising your shield at the last moment, you can have a feint lead directly to a parry if your opponent was trying to attack block you, and lets you add a shield bash. Also also, since you need to have your shield lowered to parry, you're extra venerable to fast attacks making trying to parry slightly more risky. But I think your idea is fine as it is, I just really like shield bashing. On Dodging: Nothing much to say. Unifying stagger makes dodging slightly more risky but I think making the duration short would be enough, considering this is moving you away from your opponent anyways. That's about all I have to say. I'm a bit worried about this getting buried, especially since the game still in development meaning there's a lot of stuff to add, and combat doesn't really seem like a focus point for a exploration/building based sandbox, but fun combat goes a long way into making a game fun, and seeing the game already has combat, I think fleshing it out would be really good.

Maybe it's because I settled decently close to spawn, but I find food spoilages to be a minor concern when I die. Meat is a problem since it spoils fast, but even that's not too much of a problem since just turning it into a meal and putting it in a crock has it keep for around a week, more if you seal the crock. And if you make a vessel, grain and vegetables store for ages(around 30 days or so for most vegetables, up to two years for grain). And all this is possible very early on as they just require clay. Yeah, some raw meat and other stuff that had little time left sometimes rots, but most I find for most food, rotting isn't a problem unless you settle several days travel away from spawn. . All that said, I feel like 'drop all items, get booted to spawn' kind of sucks as a death penalty especially in open world games like this. It discourages traveling long distances as you can easily loose stuff if you're too far away from spawn when you die. It gets especially annoying in dangerous places like deep underground because 1: you're more likely to die, 2: it's usually very far away from home/spawn, and 3: due to item despawns, you're forced to run back to where you died, usually even more poorly prepared than you where when you first died, rather than preparing and returning to reclaim your things when better equipped. A grave/corpse to hold your items when you die like others said sounds like a nice way to punish death but still have long distance travel not be as iffy to do. Maybe it could have some demerits like food rotting faster or items slowly loosing durability if they're left in the grave/corpse, or maybe items in your inventory are saved but stuff in your hotbar/hands are dropped? Lure hostile mobs to it? Another death penalty I've seen and liked is having several far-off spawn points and having the player spawn on a random one on death. So every time you die, you're dropped off in a (usually) totally new location. It can be a bit annoying at first since you're essentially getting reset every time you die, but after a while, you end up with most spawns having some sort of base to get you geared and ready to get back to your main base, and it incentives branching out and exploring far so you can 'connect' each of the spawns together. Granted, this works best when the game has some sort of good transportation system inside to make linking the spawns together easier. Mostly, I think it's nice if death penalties had some way of being negated or reduced either with planning or if some sort of progression instead of being a 'you died you get unavoidable setbacks' or 'you died so now do Y right now or loose all your stuff'.

Eh, pottery and finding random items in dirt are both decently common survival game things, and also based off real life, so I'd say saying it's inspired by vintage story is probably a bit of a stretch. Plus, panning for ore is completely different with brushing dirt and such for 'archeological items' or whatever, though they both do result in 'use dirt/sand/etc, get items'.