LadyWYT

It does get a lot better--I have a steel axe and it only takes me a couple seconds to chop down a tree, unless it's a really big one. I would be inclined to agree that shortening the chop time wouldn't be an issue, but the idea is for players to acquire better tools. Stone axes get the job done for cheap; the slow chop rate and lack of durability provides progression incentive. It's not just a factor of it being easy and quick; it's how often you'd need to be doing that task. Chopping a log or two for a fire pit is one thing, but filling a charcoal pit is quite another. Smaller charcoal pits don't require as much wood, but you'll need to fire them more frequently since they don't produce as much charcoal. A big charcoal pit will produce tons of charcoal, but may end up requiring several dozen stacks of wood to fire, which is an awful lot of chopping to do in one sitting. Automation like a sawmill would help, but one drawback to automation is that production of some parts usually requires a lot of charcoal/coal. Turning a quern by hand is also rather immersive, but that does not make it fun. More immersive wood-chopping seems like it would be nice, but I also think it would end up with results similar to powering a quern manually. Throwing stacks of logs into a crafting grid with an axe to get firewood might not be the most immersive thing, but it allows a player to get several stacks of firewood in a few seconds, rather than needing to sink a few minutes into chopping those same logs into firewood.

Welcome to the forums! The good news is this concept already exists in the mod realm, although I'm not sure how well it's working on more recent versions of the game(it appears to be slated for a 1.20 update): https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/8567 The tedium is what I would be concerned about with a change like this, and I don't think decreasing the time it takes to chop down a tree really fixes the issue. Players need to chop a lot of firewood in Vintage Story--a LOT--and while it might not be too bad in the early game it's going to be a huge pain later on when you're trying to fill up a big charcoal pit. I could see it working if you added a way to automate the process with machinery, like a sawmill, but that's about it. I would rather something like this instead, I think, though maybe without the tree-felling chaos that Valheim's system can result in(if I chop a tree, I don't want every tree next to it to be getting knocked over too). However, I'm not sure how much work it would take to implement as a replacement for the system we have currently; it seems like it would require more effort than it's maybe worth.

I suppose if you didn't want to go to the effort of turning it back into thatch with a knife, you could always just set a torch to it instead. Probably not the best idea though if your house and nearby decorations are made from combustible material.

It does exist, but the spawn parameters have changed. It now only occurs naturally under black coal and anthracite deposits, and apparently has a chance to spawn in bauxite biomes as well(though in small, rare patches in this case). Crafting it from other clay and flint is probably going to be the most expedient way to acquire fire clay, in most cases.

I usually just make sure that every block sampled is at least three blocks away from the previous, five blocks away at the most. I'll also try to stay within 3-5 blocks of the first sampling, so my end result usually covers a triangle shape rather than a straight line. I've found it keeps my samples in a compact area that way, so I don't have to worry about sampling a block that's too far away and accidentally resetting my prospect attempt.

Hmmm...Valheim has a similar concept, which always gets a little strange if you built a base near the shore because it'll flood every time a storm rolls through. So I'm not entirely sure about adding in big waves to Vintage Story, instead of just adding some foam textures to saltwater shorelines. Now that being said...if we did have actual waves as a "weather pattern" for water, I could see surfboards being added for grins and giggles. I've never gone surfing, but it seems like it would be a fun little distraction in the game if one has downtime and the climate for it, similar to snowball fights in winter. Except surfing is something you could actually do alone.

Hmmmm, that sounds odd. Can't say that I've ever encountered that. Which version are you playing on? Sounds like it might be a bug.

/gm 3 will place you into spectator mode. That will allow you to just fly through the blocks to an open space. /gm 1 will place you back into survival mode. I'd also go report this over on the bug tracker: https://github.com/anegostudios/VintageStory-Issues/issues I've been suspicious that there's been a bug allowing enemies to knock players through walls, and this seems to confirm that suspicion.

I'd still opt for mixing strong tannin with some other dark color as an option; in the case of natural dyes, "black" isn't really black at all, but a really dark shade of a different color. But it also couldn't hurt to allow iron nuggets(either smelted iron or ore bits) to be soaked in a barrel until they produce gray/black dye. That makes the black/gray colors obtainable in Homo Sapiens, while still being relatively accurate to historical tradition.

Nope, I misread your initial post. The 1.20 change was that you can disable buckets from creating new water source blocks, essentially. But you can refill a bucket however much you want from pre-existing water blocks. So it's not quite the same thing, unfortunately. Fair enough. It would be a nice change in that sense, but given the player doesn't sleep very long at all it's not one I would really worry about. Maybe. The window in the bottom right corner I expect to someday disappear, given that it's the early access notification. I'm not particularly against a centered symmetrical layout, as those do look nice...but that layout also seems to be a bit overdone these days. The current layout of Vintage Story's main menu is something different and refreshing, at least in my opinion. I like this change; would very likely prevent a lot of accidents from players getting confused about whether or not the handbook has paused the game.

I'm guessing it's due to a swath of hills counting as a specific landform, so instead of a relatively small patch of very hilly terrain it decided to generate a much larger area of hills and cliffs. I'm not so sure it's a fault of the map, so much as it is a weak point in our modern sense of navigation. Thanks to how far technology has come, we're able to bore tunnels through mountains, bridge rivers, and pretty much carve a highway through almost any kind of terrain. As a result, we can travel in a fairly straight line from one place to another, though there are some exceptions. Back in medieval times though(setting of Vintage Story), things like mountains, dense forests, and large bodies of water would pose a significant travel hindrance, and in many cases be impassable. At that point, it's not so much the distance that one must travel, as it is the effort spent just getting from one point to another. Better to skirt obstacles and take advantage of easier terrain, even if it meant more miles overall, than to burn a lot of time and energy trying to pick your way through rough terrain.

Welcome to the forums! That does seem a bit odd, but I'm guessing it's set up that way to allow players a brief chance to grow a few crops(like flax) and progress, rather than needing to rely solely on cracked vessels or mob drops for certain things.

At least you can just buy lapis from an artisan trader! Though woad and cornflowers also work for blue dye, if I'm not mistaken. As for black dye, metal scraps are easy enough to find in underground ruins or pilfer from locust nests. One alternative I could see to using rusty metal though, that still retains historical realism, is possibly mixing strong tannin with blue or green dye(or even some other dark color), to achieve black dye. You couldn't make gray from it, but it would save you the metal cost.

Hmmmmm, have you tried this mod? https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/13620 Based on the description, it seems like it would be the one most likely to achieve the kind of terrain generation you're looking for. You'll probably still want to turn down the upheaval rate, and potentially tweak the landform scale to something larger. On the latter, it'll mean much bigger mountains, but the the idea behind a change like that is to have a lot more plains in between those mountains. Otherwise, I'm not sure that there's currently a way to generate huge plains with small strips of tall mountain to occasionally find. Big mountains might be an annoying obstacle, but if most all the land around them is flat they'll at least be easy enough to ride around, especially with the new mount system that 1.20 adds.

Black pigment for paint is fairly easy to get. Black dye for clothing is a lot more difficult. Historically, black cloth was very rare and essentially "rich people material". Usually it was made from iron, hence why it requires metal bits to make it in the game.

The handbook does already make note of this, but the information can be easily missed if one doesn't spend a few minutes reading through the progression guide and related chapters. One could learn most of the information, of course, just from trial-and-error in gameplay, but it's going to make for a much rougher experience.

I'm thinking the closest answer is probably "sort of". By that I mean that I think you're probably right in that the change was made to make the caves spookier. But they probably didn't mean to make light sources(the better ones, anyway) that obscured. So I'd wager it's a rough spot in the system that needs some refining.

This. When I build mine, I make sure I have access to both coal piles(ie, they'll end up sitting side-by-side when I'm down there inspecting them). I then place blocks in front of them, and chisel the blocks down far enough so I can easily see and interact with both piles. I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter how much of those blocks you chisel away either; so long as there is at least one pixel of each block between you and the coal piles, they shouldn't be spilling forward.

First off, welcome to the forums! Have to disagree here--the balance feels fine, and I enjoy having everything contained over on the left-hand side so I can enjoy the featured background screenshots. The only thing I would change is adding an option in the settings to disable the slow-motion camera zoom/wiggle. I don't mind the visual effect, but I've seen a few players mention that it makes them motion-sick. I don't think this is really needed given that making your character sleep is a deliberate choice, and there are already clues that coincide with making that decision. IE, your character lies down and the screen fades to black a second or two after, and you'll wake back up after enough time has passed with a similar fade-in from black. The only change I would make is having the player wake up almost instantly if they choose not to sleep for the full duration--currently, the delay on waking up means that it's very easy to oversleep. I believe this is being refined, but it's not really a priority compared to other things that need work. This feature actually got added in 1.20.

I'll preface with stating that I would like tame foxes in addition to dogs. But the reason I don't want foxes instead of dogs is that, aside from lack of choice, foxes make really irritating screaming noises, and in reality their pee smells horrendous...and the smell doesn't simply wash out of your carpet. Dogs are better for defense and other utility functions(like carrying stuff), since wolf-based dogs are bigger. A fox though could easily just be a cute little companion.

It sounds neat in theory, but the last thing I want to be doing is competing with an AI for space and resources in a singleplayer world. Besides, that kind of experience is already in the game, if one plays multiplayer. No need to train any AI!

Part of it is probably the algorithm reacting to your recent searches, but I think a large part of it too is Vintage Story slowly gaining traction as more people learn about it. New content certainly helps, since it gives YouTubers who make VS content fresh things to toy with and talk about.

Only if you mod it to be so. Fire clay just has the one color, no alternates. But if you like building with brick, red and blue clay do offer different colors, especially when fired in a beehive kiln.

Given the label I'd say it's one of the components of dungeon/ruin generation that bugged out.

Welcome to the forums! Prior to 1.20, clay can be found in two varieties scattered in large deposits through the cool to tropical climate zones, in areas where there is enough rainfall. Blue clay will have a brown/bluish-gray marbled texture, while fire clay will have a tan-brown marbling instead. Of the two, fire clay is the more valuable, as it's a required ingredient for refractories, bloomeries, and ovens(though it can be used for conventional pottery items as well). In 1.20, fire clay only spawns naturally under black coal and anthracite deposits. Red clay and blue clay are the most common clays and follow the same general spawn parameters as previous versions(large deposits in cool-tropical areas with enough rainfall). The only real difference between the two is that red clay has a reddish-brown marbled texture and spawn at higher elevations, while blue clay retains the same texture as before and spawns near sea level. You can craft fire clay from red or blue clay simply by mixing in some powder calcined flint(created by cooking flint and grinding up the resulting chunks). If you are playing with true map coloring enabled, it is possible to locate clay deposits by looking for discolored spots, but it does take practice and isn't always accurate. It's usually easier to keep an eye out for the marbled clay textures on patches of soil while you're exploring, and marking the deposits on your map as you find them. Once you've found a few, it gets easier to spot them from further away or on your map(when playing with true coloring enabled).