LadyWYT

It probably depends on the mod maker and where they prefer to post about their mods, if they post at all. Aside from checking specific mod pages on the modding database, you could try checking the modding section here on the forum or try the Vintage Story Discord.

I mean, it wasn't exactly a dig at Thorfinn. There's definitely a genre of players that enjoy speedrunning. I was referring to the player type that seems to expect to be able to complete the entire game in an afternoon or two, and brand the game as "bad" if they're unable to do that. Games that can be completed quickly are perfectly fine and can be fun, but that's not the kind of game that Vintage Story wants to be.

Welcome to the forums! It kind of depends on the crop and the climate. Some crops it makes sense to have multiple harvests per year. But I mostly agree that currently it feels like farms are a little too productive for the effort they require, and knocking the average harvest back to one per growing season would make them a bit more interesting to manage. I think this could work as well, provided it's something you do everything once in a while instead of something you have to check daily. Otherwise it's going to be too tedious. This might help, but I'm not sure that it would solve the "ugly farm" problem. Water holes everywhere in the farm might not be the prettiest thing, but they keep adjacent farmland at 75% moisture with no effort, which is still going to be more attractive than needing to water manually. Personally, I irrigate my farms, and use the watering can in my greenhouse; that way I can maximize the amount of greenhouse growing space available. I like this idea. This is one of those cases where realism doesn't equal fun. Sure, if you plant a crop in bad soil, then it can have a chance to die, but that's also a scenario that the player can easily avoid. If a player plants the crop in good ground though, and takes good care of it, and it still dies? That's just going to be frustrating. Similar to the above, it's realistic, but I'm not sure it's fun. It's one thing if players lose progress to something preventable/avoidable, because at least they have a chance to counter the issue. But springing a disaster that they can't prevent or otherwise avoid, that wipes out their progress, isn't fun to deal with. You can compost hides as well--it's not limited to just food. The reason you can't compost flowers and dried grass in the game, I'd wager, is due to dried grass being used for haybales and sheep food, and flowers being used for dye and decoration. It's also very easy to acquire lots of rot just by hunting and foraging berries, so I don't think adding dried grass and flowers to the compost list is really necessary either. I would say this concept is already implemented, somewhat. When you harvest a mature crop, you have a chance to get an extra seed. Though I wouldn't be against reworking the system to require players to let some crops go to seed in order to get more seeds, instead of just harvesting everything. Best left to the mod realm, in my opinion. It's a neat concept, but probably more complex than what most players will want to deal with. As for always growing the best stat foods...you can do that if you want to min-max. However, one of the core ideas of Vintage Story is working with what your environment has to offer, which will vary from game to game. Some things are only available in certain climates, and that's perfectly fine. It helps keep gameplay fresh and varied.

I'm not sure this is accurate. I started playing in 1.18, and as I recall bears were tier 2 then, and in 1.19 as well. I also don't recall any patch notes for 1.20 stating that the attack tier for bears had been changed. I agree that Hunters thrive where Blackguards do not, and vice versa. However, I disagree that Blackguards have trouble dealing with bears. I play Blackguard most of the time and my strategy is to kite them around with a sword and shield. Wearing armor is ideal, but also optional--it's possible to face them without armor and survive. Throwing a few spears at them before engaging in melee can soften them up, but I don't like using spears in melee as it seems to make the hitbox issue worse due to the weapon's reach. This is the main problem with bears in my experience, aside from a lack of readily noticeable sound cues. If you kite in a tight circle, the problem is somewhat alleviated, but it still makes for a frustrating fight if the bear manages to just sit on you(even if that is rather realistic for a bear's combat ability). "Highest nature threat" depends entirely on what part of the world you decided to live in. Hippos have been teased, and if I'm not mistaken hippos are absolutely one of the most dangerous animals known to man, if not the most dangerous, and kill several many people per year. I would certainly expect them to be a lot more dangerous than bears when implemented, though they'll be a threat unique to the tropical regions. There may be a lore reason for why natural predators are so aggressive, however, I would say it's mostly due to creature behaviors still being a work in progress. I'm also not sure that players should be encouraged to feed the local bear population, unless there's a way to acquire a bear as a pet. In reality, if you start feeding a wild bear, it's going to associate people with food and start causing a lot of problems, and I'm not sure that would make for very fun gameplay.

I agree that a climbing system like Verticality would be a fun and immersive addition to the game. However, I'm also not sure that adding such a system would be a good idea since the game hasn't been designed with that kind of movement in mind. It's fine and very fun as a mod, but breaks the challenges present at the major story locations. In order to implement a movement system like that, story locations would need a complete redesign in order to preserve their challenge, and I'm not sure it's worth the time and resources to do that. An alternative would be adding some sort of tool required for climbing; that way you could possibly prevent climbing in story locations since using the tool would require "activating" a block. However, then you're left with the unimmersive question of "why can't I use this tool to climb in this spot that should be obviously climbable?" Not that we don't have that question already. In any case, I'm still inclined to say that climbing systems are better left to the modded realm.

I'll also note that if you're playing cooperative multiplayer with a friend or two, you can split up tasks to accomplish more things in a shorter time. Plus if one or two of those friends plays a little more regularly, they can knock out some of the more grindy work while the others are offline, if they're willing that is. This is usually how it goes with my friends--it's not unusual for me to take care of a lot of the grind since I generally have more time, but it sometimes goes the other way around as well. For singleplayer, there are game settings and mods to help speed up(or slow down) parts of the game as one desires. Based on default settings and what the devs themselves have stated about the intended future of the game, an average Vintage Story world should take about 100-200 hours of time to complete, roughly. Granted, I believe that is the rough estimated time to complete the entire planned story, which isn't yet fully implemented. For what the game is now, you can probably complete a world in about 50 hours of playtime, assuming you know what you're doing and push for progress at a brisk pace. Overall though, the game is intended to be something you take your time completing, not something you just start and finish on a weekend afternoon. In my opinion, those who rush to complete the game are going to be missing out on a lot of what makes Vintage Story so special.

I will note that sleeping through the night is an option, provided you have a bed. It will cost some hunger points, and depending on the time of year and where you settled, you may or may not be able to sleep through the entire night. But it is an option if you have nothing else to do and don't want to go out in the dark. Fireflies already exist in Vintage Story, however in addition to the ambient lighting needing to be dark enough for them to spawn, the weather also needs to be warm enough. If it's too cold, they won't spawn. As others in the thread have already mentioned, the point of Homo Sapiens to have a realistic survival experience without the lore content. The main drawback to the HS gamemode is that once you achieve tier 2 armor, there's not really anything that can kill you aside from your own complacency. Honestly, I wouldn't expect Homo Sapiens to change much in that regard; it's there as an option for those that prefer it, but isn't the core of what Vintage Story is developed around. For standard gameplay, the monsters are one of the biggest reasons not to hang around outside at night. I'll also note that monsters need rift activity in order to spawn on the surface(barring a temporal storm), and rift activity isn't predictable. You can have several nights of calm in a row, several nights of high activity, or anything in-between, and that unpredictability is its own brand of unnerving. I have to disagree here. Realistically, nighttime is when people should be sleeping after a long day's work. Currently there's no penalty for going without sleep, but the drawback to working in the dark is that it's difficult to see what you're doing and spot potential hazards. If you choose not to sleep through the night, then you either need to deal with the hazards that night presents(if you choose to go out) or find something to do in the safety of your base. As for temporal storms...the general idea behind them is that they're a supernatural disaster and really not something you want to be going out in. The main reason the player has for venturing out in them(aside from being caught off-guard by one) is to collect gears and Jonas parts. Personally, I think that's incentive enough. You do need those items to achieve various things in the late game, but you won't really be punished if you choose to play it safe during a temporal storm either. It also keeps the storms feeling like a true disaster, and not some special looting event like an MMO. Ambient noise does add immersion to videogames, however, the spook factor wears off pretty quickly once the player figures out that there's nothing actually making the noise. I would also point out that adding more creep factors subtracts from the coziness rather than adding to it; same with needing to add traps absolutely everywhere. The game already pushes players to make their base safer by lighting it up and adding contraptions like rift wards to further cut down on the spawn potential. That's not to say there isn't room for more ambience of various types, but it does need to be implemented carefully in order to be effective. Honestly, I think that's just a byproduct of becoming better at the game. As your skills improve, old challenges and threats won't seem as impressive. But I don't think this is the way to counter what I mentioned above, outside of using mods that is. A big part of why achieving things in Vintage Story feels so satisfying is that it lets you tackle things that you couldn't before, or otherwise complete more mundane tasks more easily. However, if threats are just being upgraded to always match your equipment, then what's the point of constantly chasing new equipment if it never actually feels useful? Likewise, if the threats' evolution is tied to a specific passage of time, then the player is pressured into specific ways of playing every game or else they fall too far behind technologically. The system we have now allows players to play at their own speed, with a wide variety of options of what order they want to progress things in. I could see this being a thing at some point. I know there's already a mod for it. However, in some ways it also doesn't fit the lore and the overall theme that the developers seem to be angling for. It is a post-apocalyptic world, and roving bandit gangs certainly make sense in that kind of setting. Some NPCs even refer to certain unscrupulous elements being present. The reason there might not be any bandit gangs for the player to actually encounter though(aside from the developers intending for the player to have a cooperative existence with NPCs), is that almost all of humanity was wiped out. The remnants that are left stick together in settlements(which are few and far between) since it's dangerous to be out in the wilderness. The few criminal elements that do exist are going to be living somewhere close to one of those settlements, assuming the locals haven't brought them to a swift end.

I think being able to breed different varieties of flowers to create new varieties is a bit much and better suited as a mod. However, I do think that allowing players to propagate more flowers either from seed or from a crafting recipe would be a nice addition to the game. I've seen mods that handle it both ways. One allowed you to grow more flowers from seeds, provided that the growing conditions were right, while the other allowed you to create more flowers by crafting a piece of compost with the flower type of your choice. Is it very useful for gameplay? Not really, but if you want to plant fields of color without stripping the countryside bare for miles around or going into creative mode, having a way to propagate your own flowers would be handy.

I agree that Clockmaker would benefit from having a few unique gadgets they can craft to help make certain things easier. I will note though that they already have an inherent boost to their movement speed, so allowing them to move even faster isn't necessary. A gadget to help reduce stability loss, as well as increase stability recovery, is a decent idea. I would also add that a gadget that can locate translocators would be a nice improvement too, since it would pair well with the Clockmaker's ability to repair them more easily. It would also give them a more unique niche regarding travel, since seeking out translocators to jump across long distances would be much more viable than it is currently. Blackguards are fine as-is, and probably the strongest class currently in the game in most circumstances. They already have a unique sword and shield that is very strong; more unique weapons aren't really needed(though it would be nice if they could craft their armor set). Regarding raw/rotten food...just because they need to eat more doesn't mean they're going to stoop to eating things that are gross, and you shouldn't ever be in a position where you NEED to eat raw food/rot to survive. Bone broth is something that should be able to all classes if added, not just one. If it were unique to a class, it should be a recipe for a Chef, not a Blackguard. The clumsy trait I could see working, but you'd need to give them more of a health boost or something to compensate. Otherwise, it's a nerf that they don't really need. Hunter is very strong already, and the stealth archer gimmick should really stay in Skyrim(it's a fun character build but WAY TOO STRONG). Stealth mechanics should be available to all classes, and if any class has a specific boost to going unnoticed more easily, it should be the Malefactor. The only stealth bonus I would possibly give Hunter is perhaps make animals notice them a little less easily(though not to the same extent as the Malefactor), since a good hunter will know how to avoid alerting prey. Accuracy is already decreased by temporal storms, since the distortions make it harder to aim, and hunters rely on ranged combat since they're weaker in melee. It's also more difficult to hit a target if you're moving while firing, which you're likely to be doing during a temporal storm. If you just make it even harder for them to hit their targets in such situations, all you're really doing is punishing the player for picking Hunter as their class. As for losing stability faster while underground...they already have a penalty to mining drops and mining speed. The penalty to mining speed, when paired with the melee penalty, means that they'll spend more time underground on average than other classes when it comes to completing underground tasks. I think penalizing them further would just make the class more frustrating to play than fun. We already have basket traps, which acts as a sort of snare. Caltrops would be an interesting unique craftable for the Malefactor, though that might make them a little too strong. The sling is already a fairly strong unique item, as it's cheap and the ammunition it uses can be found en masse pretty much anywhere. The stake trap would be a decent addition to the game, but should be something available to all classes and not locked to just one. The climbing rope isn't really needed, since we have ladders. Regarding the Heavy Conscience change, I agree with @ifoz. A penalty just for being around monsters is just going to be frustrating to play around, especially when there are specific instances where you HAVE to fight through monsters in order to progress the story. I would also note that there's already a penalty for being around monsters, for all classes. If you're near a monster, you get attacked, and depending on how equipped you are to deal with the situation the consequence could be as simple as a bit of damaged equipment, or as severe as death and item loss. Cloaks are something that we already have. They do keep you warm, and are equipped in the Shoulder slot, I believe. More cloaks would nice, and having fancier ones limited as Tailor-exclusive craftables is consistent with all the other exclusive clothing that Tailors are able to craft. It is their niche, after all. I could see hammocks being a potential addition, but not as a Tailor exclusive unless it's a very fancy hammock. Fancy bedspreads would be a much better option in my opinion, especially since hammocks seem like they'd be a little too useful to traveling the wilds...something the Tailor very much struggles with. Padded inserts are already covered by the tailored gambesons. Gambeson is very good general-purpose armor, and tailored armor is just a classier version with slightly better stats. One quirk of Vintage Story is that you don't necessarily want to be wearing armor all the time, and not all armor is created equal either. Certain armors work better for certain situations than others. In any case, I understand the frustration with armor covering fashion too, though in that case I would say a setting to show/hide the armor would be much better than an item that turns clothing into armor.

I was going to mention XSkills--it covers this territory well, though one major issue I've found with that mod is that it's easy to "fall behind" in a multiplayer setting if everyone isn't playing at the same general pace. Likewise, it also homogenizes the classes a bit too much by the late game, unless you deliberately limit yourself in what perks you take. Also if I'm not mistaken, Tyron is already on the record for stating he doesn't intend to add that kind of character progression to the game(it was in an interview with Oscillascape, I believe). What he suggested instead was some kind of additional trait system, where you could earn extra traits(either good or bad, and not necessarily permanent) in addition to the ones your character already starts with. Personally, I think that kind of system is better for the kind of game that Vintage Story seems to want to be, as it allows the player to add a bit more to their character over time, without making the character progression the dominant focus of the gameplay itself. As it currently stands, character progression is tied to all available gameplay loops; that is, to become stronger, you need to figure out how to do things like acquire better equipment and more well-rounded nutrition.

Welcome to the forums! As for another dimension...that depends on what direction Tyron decides he wants to take the game. Based on what I've seen so far, there's technically another dimension that exists(the Rust world), but I don't expect it to ever be a place that be visited like Minecraft's Nether. I seem to recall a developer post sometime back stating as much, but I could be wrong. In any case, I think adding the Rust World as another dimension that you can actually go to would be a mistake, mainly because it would turn it into a combination of resource depot and tourist destination rather than a mysterious, highly dangerous place that none one really knows anything about. It's okay to have certain things remain as unexplained ominous parts of the background and lore--it helps keep the atmosphere interesting. The most I would expect to see from a "different dimension that can be visited" concept, is perhaps a one-time mission to a tiny piece of it as part of the main story. Hop through a rift, get a macguffin, hop back out--it's not a place you're able to stay or revisit.

I could be wrong, but based on everything I've pieced together so far, the Tower houses the Machine. When you put it and some of the stuff surrounding it together, it resembles what's depicted in the "Salvation" tapestry. And given what a certain old friend has said so far, I don't think what's contained in the Tower is something he could have orchestrated himself. The difference between the two is that the player character still has the ability to choose between good and evil. The shivers and similar monsters no longer have that choice--they're mindless monstrosities.

I moved recently and the new ISP had to install a line to the house. Unfortunately, since the area has also been hit hard by some of the recent storms, the line crews have been busy cleaning up the damage so there was a delay on installing the line.

I'm not an expert on the situation, but the general impression I get from everything I've seen about the matter is that it's Nintendo throwing a tantrum because they aren't the only game in town anymore, so to speak. Palworld and Pokemon have similar art styles and game concepts, but to my knowledge the gameplay is quite a bit different between the two. I could be wrong though. I don't think Mojang would file a lawsuit--Microsoft would probably be the one to do that, if it were going to happen, and I doubt it would hold up in court. Yes, there are corrupt officials that only answer to money, but money can only get you so far. There are similarities between the two, however, as others have already pointed out, the gameplay is very different. I would also say that the artstyles are very different as well, despite both being voxel-based games. Minecraft is more heavily stylized(often in a cutesy way), and relies primarily on 16x16 pixel textures. Vintage Story's textures are larger and more weathered and realistic rather than cutesy. As for why people keep assuming Vintage Story is just Minecraft 2.0, I'd wager it's mostly because they're only looking at the artstyles and not the actual gameplay. In its current form, Vintage Story does look very much like a heavily modded Minecraft client, though that may change in the future as the game receives more polish.

I'd actually disagree...or rather, I would more specifically say that the best sandbox choice depends on what kind of sandbox someone wants to play in. For players looking for a challenging survival experience, with some rather unique theming(I can't say that I've seen anything like the temporal business anywhere else), or perhaps just a chill creative building game, then I would say Vintage Story is the best thing out at the moment. I would say it's also one of the best games out there in terms of the development team(no controversies or shady business), as well as the built-in modding support. However, for players who don't really like medieval themes or prefer simpler or less challenging gameplay, I'm not sure that I would say that Vintage Story is the best choice. Yes, there are mods and game settings you can use to change the gameplay, but if you're having to change practically everything about the game before you can consider it fun to play then I would question whether it's really the best game choice in that specific circumstance. Of course, that's only my opinion, and I daresay it's rooted heavily in the number of complaint posts I've seen practically demanding that Vintage Story change some rather major parts of itself in order to qualify as a "good" game. And with my grumpy contrarian rant out of my system, yes, I do agree. The dev team has done a phenomenal job so far, and I've enjoyed many long hours dying to horrors both natural and not. Here's to many more successful updates!

Not really. The more I think about the idea, the more I like it. Even if it's a monster I would hate dealing with, lol.

Bleh, finally have internet back. I will note that I haven't had a chance to take a crack at any of the new stuff, but my initial reaction based on description is this is a good change. Predators still sound like they'll be hostile, but smarter about how and when they decide to pick a fight with you. I'm guessing if you intrude on their turf they'll obviously defend themselves, but if you put up a fight then they'll back off in order to avoid dying themselves. I think that's just part of being a cranky old VS veteran. I also think wildlife will still be plenty aggressive in the future, and very likely harder to deal with since creatures will have more unpredictable patterns than "if player is too close, make a beeline for them and don't stop attacking until dead". I vote diving bell. No, not the kind that actually helps you dive. I don't know about any new ruins, but I know the ones in 1.20 do have basements sometimes. There's usually not anything really exciting in them aside from an aged torch holder on occasion. I think the old default was 100%. If the new default is 500%, I'd wager terrain feels more traversable because it spreads everything out a lot more. That is, when the game generates flat/gentle terrain, it'll cover a much larger area, so you can travel much farther before you encounter mountains, swamps, or other difficult terrain. That being said, I'd also expect some parts of the world to be much harder to traverse as a result, since the difficult terrain will also cover larger areas. Even if it's not currently reparable, I'm still really excited to hear about this! Trophy armors are a great idea, and even better if some pieces can be equipped in clothing slots instead to serve as cosmetics(or maybe that's how it already functions, not sure). Plus I daresay someone will end up writing a mod to allow the armor to be repaired. It was worth using prior, but the auto-loot feature for the monsters sounds like it will a nice change for temporal storm fights. Harvesting with a knife wasn't too bad, but it could get frustrating when you were busy trying to loot and the storm insisted on dropping more nasties on top of you. At a glance, I think it's a much-needed change that will take some additional tweaks in order to perfect. One tweak I would make, assuming it's not already been implemented this way, is to make higher quality bandages restore health more quickly. That way story locations don't become a nightmare slog for players needing to rely more on bandages. It also helps push players to use the better bandages too, instead of just relying on the cheapest bandages possible because of their convenience.

I forgot those exist, to be honest. They make neat decoration, but outside of that they aren't very useful. Could possibly give them a bit of love by making them a six slot bag that can only store food/animal products. I mean, it is a hunter's backpack, after all. That would give it a specific niche that remains useful until you achieve sturdy leather, as it can help keep your inventory somewhat organized once you achieve leather backpacks. The treasure hunters will definitely buy them, and I think a couple of the other traders might as well. You can only sell one bag to a trader at a time, but it's a handy way to earn a few gears. How essential it is depends on how fast you want to achieve those things. If you're taking your time and playing at a slower pace so you can invest in things like livestock and fruit trees, then you don't need to scour the countryside for flax as you'll most likely be having multiple cycles of crops on your farms anyway.

They should appear on the map, but since they're a lot smaller than the other trees they're a lot harder to spot if you rely only on the map.

Pretty much what I was going to say. If you're very familiar with the game, linen sacks are rather underwhelming and your flax is better suited to other things, as a general rule. However, if for some reason you're missing a critical component of leatherworking, then linen sacks are your best option until you can acquire what you need for leather. Likewise, if you're doing some kind of challenge that prevents you from using leather at all(like a vegan run or arctic playthrough, where oak trees aren't an option at all), then linen sacks will come in handy. There's quite a few things in the game that are situational like this. We have several types of armor that vary in usefulness depending on the situation, for example. Something might be "the best" for overall gameplay, but it may not be the best thing to use in every situation.

Welcome to the forums! The first thing I will point out...paragraphs, my dude. They're very important for separating information into more readable chunks. A wall of text like this muddies your points, as well as turns away potential readers. Yeah this is one thing I actively don't want to see, outside of a possible one-time brief visit as a story bit. The reason for that is if it's a place that you can regularly visit and explore to your heart's content, it loses a lot of the mystery behind it. The Rust World is meant to be a dimension outside the scope of what constitutes normal logic--a completely alien place. If it's a place you can frequent, then it has to be explained at least partially in order to justify your existence there. Much like Minecraft's Nether(or other modded dimensions), it's no longer a strange place full of danger, but just a familiar place you need to visit to check off a box on your list of tasks. Now as a mod? Sure, fine--I'm sure someone will end up figuring out how to mod it. But it shouldn't be vanilla, in my opinion. Temporal storms. Outside of that, the fact that you can't predict when you'll encounter surface monsters is a decent threat itself. Assuming default settings, you can potentially go several nights without a single monster, which can lull you into a false sense of security or even make you more paranoid, especially for new players. Some nights it may be an almost nonstop horde. If you're hanging out around your base, it's not a big deal, but if you're venturing out into the wild for several days then it becomes a much bigger risk. You could don heavier armor to compensate, however, that will slow you down and eat through supplies faster. I'll also note that the game is still very much in the early stages of development, so I daresay more enemies(both natural and not) will be coming in the future to round out the experience a little more. I think this is one thing that's slated for a change in the future, in part because of how difficult it can be to start the storyline due to RNG. I will note that you don't NEED to talk to the treasure hunter at all in order to complete the story, however, if you're going that route you have to know exactly what you're looking for(which new players won't). How things are changed to smooth it out, I'm not sure, but it does come up in discussion somewhat often. The best proposal I've seen was adding some sort of "welcome mat" item that attracts traders to your base, instead of needing to scour the countryside to find them. Travel is going to be hit or miss; it heavily depends on whether or not you enjoy just meandering around the world and seeing different types of terrain generation. The mount system is still being worked on, and the gated system we have now is more of a placeholder than anything. Regarding ruins...they're mostly just part of the background, and not really meant to be something too incredibly useful outside of the early game or specific game challenges(like snowball earth). The loot they offer is useful, but nothing that will let you skip significant chunks of gameplay or otherwise progress too quickly--you'll still need to put in the legwork yourself. Now it is possible that more complex ruins with some sort of procedural dungeon and better loot might be added in the future, but that kind of thing I would expect to find underground rather than on the surface. Bear in mind too that larger and more complex structures tend to require more powerful computers to play on; the game still needs to run efficiently on a variety of machines, and not just the upper end of the spectrum. A teleporter. You can only build it once, and it links to a specific location in order to save you the trips later. Otherwise, there are translocators that you can find and repair, but they may or may not take you anywhere you want to go. That may or may not change later, but if players do get to set up their own teleport networks, I would expect that to be something unlocked at the end of the game. Teleporting is convenient, yes, but shrinks the world significantly and otherwise encourages the player to disengage from the world instead of appreciate/overcome their surroundings. As for navigating difficult terrain, yes it can be tedious, but that's part of what makes the world feel real. It's a challenge to overcome. Oftentimes there's an easier way of travel around the rough terrain, though it may be a longer route. If the terrain is something you'll be navigating frequently, then it's wise to invest in building some roads or other infrastructure to make your travels easier. I will note that needing to wait and investing a lot of time/effort into achieving a goal is part of a lot of Vintage Story's gameplay. It's not everyone's cup of tea, of course, hence why there are settings that you can adjust to make the game easier or harder as needed. If it's not covered in the settings, then there's usually a mod for it, and if there is no mod it's fairly easy to jump in and make your own. In the case of leatherworking, it's fine as it is; leather bags are a significant upgrade and leather also unlocks better armor. If it takes too long for your liking, I believe there's a mod or two out there that will speed up the process. Yeah...this isn't correct. Gambeson(or perhaps some kind of leather garment) needs to be worn under chainmail(or other metal armor) not just as an extra layer of protection from incoming attacks, but as protection from chafing. The "cloth" you're thinking of here to display colors/crests would be the surcoat. Now I do agree that it's a bit strange to have leather jerkin as a requirement to craft chain/scale(and requiring full chain as an ingredient for plate). However, I daresay this decision was made for gameplay balance, and not for realism. Leather is easier to obtain than the flax required for gambeson(and you'll need flax for other things), and there are things introduced in the leatherworking loop that you'll need later for things like steel. Regarding the chain requirement for plate...plate armor is extremely protective, so the cost needs to be fairly high to help balance it against other armor choices. I don't know about jumping when you hit the ground to avoid damage, but there is(or was) a bug that let you avoid fall damage entirely as long as you made no movements when falling. Can be a useful exploit while it exists, but I wouldn't recommend exploiting as it inevitably leads to nasty accidents. Without spoiling too much of the story, the current setting is the late Middle Ages, post-apocalypse. The kings and kingdoms of old no longer exist, and the remnants of humanity that survived(the villages) are very few and far between. That's why you hear traders mention settlements, and see a note or two about former nobility, but otherwise can't find proper civilization(for all intents and purposes, it no longer exists). The full story has yet to be implemented as well, so that's another reason that there's not much to find regarding specific locations. There is at least one though--play through the story, and you'll find it soon enough. They may or may not make specific mention of it in the future. I would assume the reason they don't talk about it, is that temporal storms are just a normal part of their world, and therefore something everyone knows about. Of course that isn't the case for the player character, but the trader isn't going to be aware of that, and traders don't necessarily need to share everything they know with a complete stranger. It's a dangerous world, after all, and the player character is obviously not human and rather addled... Wolf taming is on the road map. Until it's implemented, there are mods that fill that niche.

It's not yet been explained what the teal colored stuff is, and I'm not sure it ever will be fully explained. That might be a detail that's left up to the player's imagination. As for needing a rift ward to go dungeon delving...maybe if they implemented procedural generation for more complex ruins or something, like the other block game. For story locations and playing the game in general though, I see it being a bit frustrating. You're not really meant to spend a lot of time underground, save for certain instances for the story. In those cases, the locations seem tailored to allow the player to stay in them for a long time despite being deep underground and unstable. I suspect it's due to story locations having different rules for stability to ensure that players can complete them in one go, without a constant back-and-forth. Interestingly enough, the storms getting stronger is more of a gameplay mechanic than it is true to lore. As we learn from a certain NPC, temporal storms used to be a lot nastier than they are right now, to the point they were potentially strong enough to shift parts of the physical realm out of place. For actual gameplay though, it doesn't make sense to make the storms stronger at first and weaken as time goes on; it'd be frustrating to deal with early game, and make the late game more underwhelming since there's not as much value for the late game tech. Hence why the lore is broken here in favor of gameplay, so that the difficulty can ramp up in a manner more fair and fun to the player. Now of course, that lore could change as well. It could be that past temporal storms were a lot worse than what we have now, but maybe something has shifted again to make the storms start getting worse without certain characters catching on to it. I don't expect that kind of change to happen though, as the storm difficulty is mostly the way it is for gameplay reasons, and not the actual lore.

I figure it would be a variation of the bell intended to aid divers instead of miners, functioning as a sort of scuba-snorkel they could wear in order to stay underwater longer. True to bell form, it doesn't directly hurt you, but otherwise makes itself such an incredible nuisance that you really should deal with it before you get hurt.

...for some reason I've thought your name was Zippy Wanderlust this whole time. Whoops! Aside from that, I'm not sure that I've ever encountered this bug. There was one time that I managed to somehow skip a temporal storm by going to bed after getting the first notification(vanilla game, sleeping through storms was not enabled). Character woke up, storm started...and then immediately went away for some reason. Only time I've run into that kind of thing, not sure if it's similar to what you experienced, as I don't recall time passing super quickly at all. The temporal storm just started as normal but then stopped immediately after starting.

For now. Maybe they will never be either. Maybe it will just be a snorkel-like device that looks suspiciously bell-shaped, that swims over to latch on and prevent you from surfacing/breathing, instead of helping you breathe underwater.