LadyWYT

Have fun! This will also help you get used to the new berry bushes and other new mechanics that were added; berry bushes especially, since they've received brand new visuals and cultivation mechanics(which didn't exist before).

As far as I know that's how it works.

While the current iteration of 1.22 is still technically unstable, in my experience most of the major changes have been implemented and the major bugs fixed, so it's essentially on the final stages of polishing and not much is likely to change between now and a stable release. It should be stable enough to go ahead and start a new game in 1.22, without needing to create a new world when stable arrives and without encountering any particularly nasty bugs(although you never know).

First off, welcome to the forums and the game! For what it's worth, you can always customize settings and turn on certain features that are otherwise turned off by default for certain difficulties. Many settings, like chiseling and the minimap, can be toggled on/off after world creation via console commands. I've not played Wilderness Survival, but from what I know about it, the player needs to use the map item to check how close they are to the desired location, rather than use the map item once to mark the location on their minimap. It's basically just playing a version of "hot or cold". If you're new to the game though, I would personally recommend playing the Standard difficulty for a little while to get the hang of the game's basics before jumping into Wilderness Survival. Wilderness Survival is rather unforgiving and while it's certainly possible to learn to play on this difficulty, it may be a little more difficult than what many new players find fun given how steep Vintage Story's learning curve is.

Like @williams_482 said, it's a new feature in 1.22. In hindsight, I probably should have specified that.

1. I don't really bother with fixing up the place; I just loot what I want, repair the translocator, and break clutter that's in the way. I may also fortify the area to keep monsters from creeping in, if the area is particularly dangerous. 2. I don't bother with connecting translocators. The most I do is dig a shaft to the surface, if necessary, to make access easier, and otherwise mark translocator pairs with different colors and pin the destinations so that I can easily tell what goes where. 3. I voted "Yes, I have access to other resources", because generally that is technically true, but this question is where it really depends on what the player is hoping to get from the translocator. Sometimes they can save you some travel time for a story location, sometimes they can yield critical resources, and sometimes they really aren't that useful at all. For me, I like having a variety of stones to work with, so translocators help me acquire stone types and ores that are hard to find or otherwise don't exist near my base. They're also handy for acquiring fruit tree cuttings, since I like to leave the wild ones near my base alone.

I would also throw a few recently ruined watchtowers into the mix, especially around trade routes, should those be added, or perhaps as part of a new procedural dungeon like a mining camp. Imagine seeing one of those on the horizon, deciding to check it out, and finding an abandoned mine with some ore deposits still inside. Of course, there's a reason the outpost has long been abandoned, so the player will need to clear the nasties out of said mine before they can use it, but that would be a great way to give players not only something to do, but a way to retrieve some ores without necessarily prospecting. As for why you'd need watchtowers at outposts like this, there would have been at least a handful of people there at one time, and a tower is useful for spotting threats from a distance and providing shelter from threats that get close. Towers are also relatively cheap and easier to build than a full fortress.

The problem with it being an option is that someone still has to write the code, create the visual/audio assets, and then maintain those things. Given what Redram has said in the past on the matter, it's not so much a concern about squeamish players, as much as it is some of the devs having issues with depictions of gore and stuff.

Luckily there is at least one mod for this kind of thing: https://mods.vintagestory.at/vsvillage Overall though, I think it's a cool idea but not likely to be added to the vanilla game. The vanilla game is focused more heavily on the player's solitude, and what they can do themselves, rather than building an actual settlement and letting NPCs do all the work for them. The devs also seemed to indicate in a recent interview that they're not keen on having the player capture NPCs and create "trading halls", like what tends to happen in Minecraft.

Might try setting the polar-equator distance to around 50k, rather than the 100k default? That should result in a world that's big enough to feel relatively realistic, but small enough that you should be able to travel from temperate to tropics in a couple of days or so. You could try shortening the distance further, but that might make the world feel a little too small. There's also the patchwork world generation option, which will generate terrain in Minecraft-style biomes. Obviously, this won't be immersive at all, and might trivialize some challenges from seasonal changes, but it could make for an interesting playthrough if you want to find oddities like jungles next to polar glaciers.

This is the best way to discover new rock layers, in my experience. While it's not unusual for there to be a handful of rock types within a day's travel of spawn, it's also not unusual to sometimes have nothing but igneous rock for miles either. Translocators can be a little tricky to find, and a little expensive to repair, but will let the player travel miles and miles in a mere instant. That being said, if one is playing without lore content enabled, this isn't going to be an option, in which case the player is going to need to walk(or ride, if they're fortunate enough to have acquired a mount).

One mod I would love to see be vanilla though: Freedom Units. I do like using Celsius for most things in the game, but when it comes to outside temperature I prefer Fahrenheit, since I mean...that just gives me more detailed information about exactly how hot or how cold it is outside.

I know bowls will stack when empty, but I don't think they stack when filled with something that counts as a meal item. I'm not entirely sure why, other than it has something to do with how meals are coded to work in the game. Each "meal" is basically its own thing, and if they stacked then it would be difficult to account for partial servings.

Welcome to the forums! Well, for starters...pies are not foods that are stored in crocks in general. Crocks are for soups and stews, and while crocks can be filled from two different sources, the ingredients of the soup/stew will need to be in the exact same order for the meal to fill the crock. Most likely that's due to code limitations, and may or may not be further refined in the future. As for dumping bowls of food into crocks...to my knowledge this isn't currently a feature, though I could be wrong. Though I'm guessing the idea is that if the player went to the effort of filling the bowl(which is a deliberate action), then it can be safely assumed they're intending to eat the meal within. Cured meats and pickled vegetables...no idea. Probably the devs just haven't gotten around to balancing that area and writing the code to support it. As it stands now, salt curing is a great way to preserve food for a really long time, but meals require fresh ingredients in order to get their benefit. Ultimately, you're on the right track when it comes to preserving food. A properly built cellar will extend the shelf life of food items by quite a lot. Putting soups and stews into crocks can help extend the shelf life a little more, but you'll want to seal the crock with beeswax or fat in order to greatly extend it.

Welcome to the forums! This actually is a thing in the game, though there's currently no stretching frame for it. The player can lay out soaked hides on the ground and then scrape them with the knife, rather than use the crafting grid(which the grid recipe may or may not be removed in the future). As for a stretching frame, that may or may not get added. I wouldn't mind seeing one, since that makes more sense than laying hides on the ground, but in the meantime the Ancient Tools mod implements such a thing, along with other fun little toys.