Allen

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.

I think I would like this purely for the aesthetics, but if this was to be implemented, probably best to reduce some of the barrel soaking time so the overall time it takes to make leather stays mostly the same. I'm just making my first batch of leather and I'm already sick of how long it takes lol.

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.

Regarding lime, you can also grind up seashells for 2 lime each. Do note though, there's like 5~6 different kinds of seashells and 3~4 color verities of each kind, and none of them stack with each other, so it's highly unlikely you'd be able to bring back a lot of seashells, at once even if you do find a lot. They're not very common, but they're not that rare either, and can somewhat help you with your lime needs until you find some lime/chalk.

There was one multiblock ship mod, kinda simple, only worked with ships, but you could walk freely around on moving ships, operate furnaces, chests, crafting tables, etc on the ship while it was moving, and it wouldn't leave ship-shaped holes in the water either. Flan's mod's planes being faster and 'more fun to fly' is due to how the controls and speed was coded, not because one was multiblock and the other wasn't. A multiblock airship mod very well could have had the controls and speed of flan's mod plans if the mod maker wanted to make them that way. Also, it could be multiblock ships in the way of where you place blocks in a certain shape, then 'activate' them, which transforms them into a certain type of ship, rather than the modular 'make a shape you want and add a block which converts it into a 'ship' kind of multiblock ship, which would be more or less like your idea except instead of placing parts on a voxel blueprint, you place them in the world. I'd say it's hard to really tell how the ships would work just going by the words 'multiblock ships' I think but both ways have their own pros and cons.

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'.