LadyWYT

Strangely enough, I think the Tailor might be one of the stronger combat classes, after a fashion(no pun intended!) They have a lower health pool, sure, however they don't have any negatives when it comes to ranged or melee fighting, putting them on par with the Commoner at least in terms of attack power. They're actually better than the Commoner when it comes to fighting, in some ways, because they have more armor durability, which means fewer repairs. Currently their biggest strength, I'd wager, is the warm clothing advantage(which is very useful if you're traveling in the cold) and advantage to trade(they can craft more valuable things to sell). The reindeer herder set may be a life saver if you're doing chapter two in cold weather, when you reach a certain high point. What about Jack? Er, Jacque. If you're taking suggestions anyway. Probably what I would do, is improve the NPC system significantly and flesh it out with a proper reputation mechanic. IE, you'll have to actually interact with them and maybe run a few errands if you want them to help you or otherwise give you good deals/special items. Some could be more personable than others, but player class could also heavily affect overall NPC disposition, at least when it comes to the standard NPC that isn't already familiar with the player. Not only would it add more depth to the world, but it would be a really good spot for the Tailor to shine, as their refined demeanor and useful skillset would win them friends much more easily than any of the other classes.

It's supposed to, I think, however I'm not sure by how much it adjusts, or if the adjustment is working as intended. On a recent playthrough with a friend, the boss fights went a lot faster than they typically do in singleplayer, so I'm not sure that the health boost is that noticeable. HOWEVER, we were also playing with mods, and had access to skills and weapons that allowed us to do more damage per hit(though nothing insane--it still took two hits for my Blackguard to kill a surface drifter). Iron tier gear for chapters one and two. So the mods may have been a contributing factor as well. I'd also wager that the boss fights may be a little easier with two people purely because there is one person to keep the boss occupied, leaving the other free to deal out damage. That's essentially what happened when we faced off with the eidolon; my Blackguard soaked up most of the punishment, leaving the hunter free to chip away at the thing from relative safety. The second chapter worked much the same way, although in that case I was purely bait and the hunter did pretty much all of the damage. Steel plate makes you nearly invincible, not totally. It will soak up most incoming damage, even without using a shield, so unless you're getting swarmed by tier 4 enemies you should be able to stay in the fight for a long time, if necessary. However, the drawback is that you'll not only be slower and require more calories to function, but you'll also be unable to heal. Such is the price for that kind of protection, however, there are also few scenarios where that level of protection is really warranted. Temporal storms and diving into the deepest caves are probably the chief scenarios that you'd want steel plate. For surface work, gambeson is perfectly fine, and for most work underground iron is just fine as well. Iron is also quite serviceable for both of the story chapters so far, though when it comes to chapter two I'd say it's the armor style that matters most, and perhaps not as much what it's made out of. If it works(I'm not entirely convinced that it does), it should only apply to bosses specifically, not mini-bosses or other standard enemies. I would assume it simply makes a note of how many players are in the specified boss area when the fight begins, and applies an appropriate HP boost. As for why you might want to make that a feature of a boss fight--it's to make sure the boss doesn't die too fast when you have multiple players. I mean...both bosses so far have been giant metal constructs, which I would expect to be pretty durable. The timing of the fights also feels like it's in a good spot, in my opinion, at least for singleplayer. For multiplayer it might need a bit of tuning. I'd also note that it's technically not out of the question that we'll see a boss in the future that's able to be defeated much more quickly, provided one has the correct equipment and attacks at just the right times. However...it's also not something I expect to see either. Boss fights should take a few minutes, on average, because bosses are entities that are much stronger than the average enemy. If the fight is able to be ended quickly, then the boss either doesn't feel like a credible threat, or it's a glass cannon fight in which the boss WILL one-shot you if it hits you. Which is its own brand of unenjoyable. It is actually possible to forgo heavier armor and still win against enemies, without taking a lot of damage. If you're familiar enough with attack patterns, aren't too outnumbered, and time things correctly, you can go toe-to-toe with a brown bear with nothing but a falx, a shield, and a gambeson chestpiece. Is it the best of ideas? Not really, but you can do it relatively easily with enough practice. The healing penalty when wearing armor is one of the tradeoffs for opting for more protection. The more armor you have, the less damage you take and the longer you can remain in the fight. However, you also can't keep fighting indefinitely--you'll eventually need to seek respite, or else be bludgeoned to death. Regarding first-person view and situational awareness...that really shouldn't affect your situational awareness that much. Now, it would be nice if entities had proper footsteps, so you could hear them coming a lot easier, sure. However, it's a good idea anyway to keep an eye on your surroundings and take a look around every so often to make sure nothing sneaks up on you. In the case of working underground, you're not able to see very much, so it's good to either bring a bunch of torches for temporary lighting, block off passages, or otherwise keep an ear out for hostile noises. Regarding checkpoints--temporal gears can be used to reset your spawnpoint, and if you intend to travel far from home and expect trouble, it's a good idea to bring a couple with you. There's also a fair amount of clues to indicate that you're approaching a boss battle, however, a lot of those clues also rely on the player examining their surroundings carefully and paying attention to things like notes and NPC dialogue. Whether or not the player character is good at fighting or not will depend on equipment, class choice, fight context, and of course player skill. Stone age weapons and armor are better than nothing, but you'll need quality equipment if you expect to get anything done. More experienced players will have an easier time in combat than less experienced ones. As for class choice, some classes are much better at fighting than others, however, it also depends on the nature of the fight. A Blackguard will be the champion in any kind of melee, but will struggle at range. A Hunter excels at range but will really struggle when it comes to melee. Clockmakers are perhaps even worse when it comes to melee, as they both suffer a penalty to health in addition to melee damage. Wasn't aimed at me, but I'll make it clear anyway: I'm absolutely not claiming that you had fun with the boss fights/combat of Vintage Story. It's very clear you did not. Simply making some counterpoints to other things posted in the thread.

Plus find ALL the butterfly pins.

Don't need a mod, just need to go into creative and give yourself the admin sword. It was a bit buggy when I went through it the first time, HOWEVER, that was also on a release candidate and not a stable release. I've also played through it with a friend on the stable release(modded), and it was a lot smoother. There was, however, an issue with the lift and mode switching, in which I was suspended in the vacuum of space for a short time. I don't remember exactly how it happened, but switching again fixed it, I think. In regards to falling through solid objects--some props have goofy hitboxes and look bigger than they actually are. However, there is also a bug where you can get knocked back into blocks. Usually when that happens, you're only partially clipped into the block and can walk free, but sometimes you will actually be stuck in the block itself and need to switch gamemodes in order to free yourself.

I think it's mostly likely a weather effect. If the weather is really bad outside, the inside of your house can sometimes be foggy too, for whatever reason. If you built underground, it could be a side affect of the new underground fog mechanics as well. I'm not sure exactly how it works, but sometimes chunks underground will have a dark fog effect that keeps light from shining quite as brightly. I don't think it's a permanent effect, as it seems to come and go, but I wouldn't swear to it.

Yeah, some of the new locations have had some distinct growing pains. There have been some improvements, but I think overall, it will boil down to what kind of content one enjoys doing. Players who enjoy parkour will enjoy chapter 2 a lot more than players who hate parkour. Also no shame in this.

At a glance, I'd say you have some mods that are out-of-date. Older mods can work on newer versions, depending on what changed in updates, but it's never a guarantee that an older mod will continue to work on a newer version of the game. 1.20 changed quite a few things, so I'm guessing it probably broke something related to one of the older mods. I'd check your mod versions, making sure that everything is updated to the most recent stable version of the game(or at least a stable version of 1.20) and removing anything that's older and not confirmed to work on 1.20.

Very true. And if you could turn those scaly pelts into shoes, that means you can have a comfy pair of crocs to wear!

The hippo scares me. Something tells me the tropics might no longer be the safest climate zone to settle in! Loving the progress so far though!

This is actually already a thing: an optional challenge setting that prevents buckets from placing water source blocks. Firepits shouldn't be burning anything, save the fuel you put in them. Pit kilns, on the other hand, will happily set fire to whatever flammable thing happens to be near them. Which is also why you don't want to build them in your house(learned that the hard way!) Maybe, but I think it would make flax a little too easy to acquire, in addition to encouraging players to hunt the drifters and whatnot in the early game. Not that actively hunting them is bad, but in my opinion the monsters are more of a hazard to be avoided, unless you need to deal with them for some reason. I haven't tinkered too much with those crops, but cherries and peaches don't have the same shelf life as pears and apples, which is why they have a shorter time window for harvest/use. If I'm recalling correctly though, cherries don't have as good of nutrition value as other fruits, which is a shame. If I were to change anything, I'd increase their nutrition value so that it's more worth investing in them. Also already a feature: cave-ins and soil instability. If you have those turned on, not only will you need to be careful about your mining process, but you'll also be unable to build with just plain dirt as it will collapse. You'll need to pack/ram the dirt first, if you wish to build anything with it. Or a simple Jonas contraption. Or even a complicated one that functions like an airlock--it only opens for the player, and closes shortly after being opened.

If by "wall" you mean fences and stone walls...yes, yes they should be allowed to climb over those, in my opinion. Not that I dislike trapping them in my farms and killing them from safety, but it is rather sad when they can climb two block heights, but can't crawl over a simple fence. I don't think such a change would be too unbalanced either--you'd need to plan your defences a little more to account for the better climbing ability, but they otherwise are still weak in tight spaces.

Oh definitely! I just find it funny because I've digging around on a Decent reading for halite on a friend's server and found absolutely nothing. Yet here I'm not even looking for halite, and just happen to find it floating in the air for whatever reason.

Oh this is really cute! Do the more experienced players sometimes act as tour guides?

Could just pass it off as those darn temporal storms or a translocator gone awry. Depends...for the Archive, no that's not normal. As @Thorfinn already mentioned, the Resonance Archive tends to spawn somewhere between 4k and 6k blocks from the world spawn. As for other points of interest though...you might be traveling those kinds of distances in order to get to them.

Depends on which class you play. Blackguard is at the strongest advantage for the first boss fight, since that class has a bonus to melee damage and a health boost. Hunter is probably one of the weakest, since ranged weapons aren't as useful there and Hunter having the penalty to melee. The script flips entirely on the next boss battle, as Hunter becomes the strongest class with Blackguard perhaps being the weakest. In my opinion, the boss fights on default settings have felt fine. They're challenging, yes, but they haven't really felt unfair, and I say that having had my rear paddled by them a time or two. That being said, it probably wouldn't hurt to add a specific damage/health slider for the bosses, so that players who would rather just play the story(with some challenge posed by the regular monsters) without difficult bosses, can. Or, possibly, add a class that gets a bonus to damage vs. boss monsters instead. It'd be a very niche trait, but one useful for speedrunning/making those fights a little easier.

Welcome to the forums! It's a neat idea, but I'd be concerned about it both taking up processing power that's better used elsewhere, or becoming more tedious than fun to deal with. Immersion is nice, but having to constantly maintain your base to keep it from literally falling apart will get frustrating fairly quickly, especially if you have a large base. Likewise, the main plot has the player venturing away from home for extended periods, so having one's base fall apart while away could be a big turn-off from ever venturing too far from home. However, I could see it potentially being an interesting challenge feature for Homo Sapiens, since I don't think there's as many challenges/hazards in that gamemode. Now if it was structured so that the weathering only takes place on player-made structures if they are away from the chunks for a long time, then it might work as an immersive feature without being too frustrating. However, I'm not sure how you'd take chiseled blocks into account, and I'm also not sure how it would work in multiplayer, given that it's possible for a lot of time to pass if you haven't played on the server in a while. Could be a hassle there, but then again that might be a feature that a lot of servers end up turning off.

For those wondering, there did turn out to be a halite dome buried in the ground underneath the floating blocks. Ironically, a propick reading only gave it a miniscule chance of spawning, but there it is.

I don't think this is how you're supposed to find it!

There's a whole 'nother chapter, my friend. Though getting bad luck on the treasure hunters like that does make it harder to start on chapter two. I think the next update is rumored to be focused on improving the end-game tech options, but I wouldn't swear to it. In any case, more Jonas tech options would come with the need for more Jonas parts, which makes hunting the highest tier monsters a more attractive choice. I also figure the overall story pace might be designed with the intention that the player will be taking breaks between chapters to return to their base and replenish supplies/repair or otherwise improve gear. Depending on what conditions you set for your world generation, you may also be needing to wait for specific times of year before tackling some pieces of the story as well. I don't think it really needs fixed, as it's nice to have the option of quick progression, provided you're willing to push that hard for it. Generally, I think I'm usually getting to steel around the first of Year 1, on average, maybe a bit later. I like to take my time in many cases and build for aesthetics, not just pure function. One "fix" that would probably work though, to stretch out the progression time a bit...just add some more options of things to do when progressing. Some could be mandatory, some could just be optional gameplay loops, but more choices for the player means they'll need to make decisions on what they spend their time on, since not everything can be done all at once.

I believe that a space has to both fit the correct dimensions and be insulated in order to properly qualify as a room. Doors with holes in them(crude doors, sleek doors) don't count as insulating. Which is easily done by hammering out a sawblade on an anvil. You don't really need to ever build the crude door since it's easy enough to obtain a solid one. It is a low chance, yes, but I think it works. If it breaks on you at the wrong time, you're going to have a really bad day and may not survive. However, the break chance is also low enough that players may be okay with taking that risk and using the door, rather than use dirt or rush to get a sawblade. If it were a higher break chance, then it'd be an even less attractive option than it already is. I think if a drifter can break it, then realistically the other monsters and larger wildlife should be able to as well.

Or maybe they're like those little Buddha statues, but with drifters instead? Aesthetics are definitely worth it, especially if you like bragging rights/a really nice looking base.

1. I'm wondering if the cave fog isn't tied to some sort of "weather" for the underground. Some spots seem to be worse than others when it comes to that fog. So I'm not sure if it's only certain areas that have less visibility than others, or if it's a peculiar condition that comes and goes at random. 2. I'm pretty sure that one is a case of finding an incredibly unstable chunk; some are definitely worse than others when it comes to how fast you gain/lose stability. 3. Were there any rifts nearby to spawn anything? At high levels of activity there generally are, but sometimes the rifts spawn further away so any monsters they produce are too far to notice you. Or it could be a bug. In any case, I think I've had a night or two like that, but in general if there is rift activity, there are appropriate monster spawns to go with it. Prospect until you find a good spot to dig, then dig a VERY deep mineshaft. It tends to spawn near the mantle.

I kind of like the idea, but I have to agree with @Facethief. There's no point in having the door when you can block the way just as easily with something else. Though I'd also argue that the crude door already has the kind of function you're suggesting it have, just not quite how you've suggested it. Drifters and other monsters can't break it, nor can aggressive wildlife for that matter, but it has a chance to break every time a player uses it. Given that you need to open doors to get into your house, and close them to keep things out...that's two different chances for the crude door to snap off its hinges, assuming that the player closed it when they went outside the first time.

Scale armor offer more ranged accuracy than plate and more protection than chain(though less accurate). So if you prefer to do your fighting at range but also want a bit more protection than what chain offers, scale is the way to go. Keeping in mind that one's progression speed hinges heavily on their skill. An experienced player can have their hands on iron within a couple months of in-game time, or even have steel in that timeframe depending on seed layout and task priority. A new player isn't going to have the experience and skill needed to do that though, given that they're still learning the game. In regards to early armor types, most of them aren't very useful, especially to experienced players. Copper is pretty much a waste, as it's better to use copper for bronze. Bronze is decent, and can get you through the Archive, but won't hold up to the sturdier monsters(tier 3/4). Leather and improvised armors are...okay for the very early game, but aren't generally that useful for more experienced players, since those players are usually better at avoiding/dealing with danger. I would say those armors have situational usefulness--they might not offer much protection, but they're cheap, easy to acquire, and can sometimes be the difference between life and death as you establish yourself. In regards to gambeson, it's definitely a prime choice for adventuring armor. It does take a while to acquire though, and there are other things you might want to use that flax for too. Steel plate does turn you into a walking tank, however, the drawback is that you can't heal at all while wearing it. There might not be much damage that gets through the armor, but the bits that do will add up, and if you don't have a way to get to safety and patch yourself up you're probably done for. As for what you might have to fight? Aside from certain powerful story-related entities, the new monsters that were added pack quite a punch, especially in situations where you have a lot of stronger ones in the same general area. Steel is protective, yes, but it won't keep you safe from complacency. Storms actually do start out easy, and get harder as time goes on. Which ironically, seems to be backwards from how certain things pan out in the lore, but for gameplay...I mean it works. But even the "easy" storms are going to be nasty if you're lacking in equipment and don't want to use cheese strategy(things that shouldn't work but do because videogame logic). Which I also think is fine, provided there are ways for the player to survive(like being alerted to the storm's approach, and hiding). It's okay for some things to be incredibly dangerous, and temporal storms help drive home the point that something very bad happened to the world. As for the loot...the Jonas parts are probably the best thing you can get from the storms, and I'm not sure what else the monsters could drop that would both feel satisfying and not unbalance the gameplay. Temporal gears, rusty gears, and flax fibers can all be acquired elsewhere, in safer fashions, but they're still useful gains from a storm after a fashion. Also, this is just my opinion, but I think the monsters are supposed to be more obstacles that players need to face every so often, instead of things that players are actively encouraged to hunt. That's not to say they can't or shouldn't be hunted, but they seem more like supernatural abominations that lurk around and try to rip your face off every now and then. They aren't things you want to encounter, realistically, but will need to deal with in order to accomplish certain things(like the main story). I don't think it's too far-fetched, though I wouldn't expect it to be implemented in quite that fashion. I think there will likely be some "dungeon instances" that we'll enter and do stuff(technically there's already at least one!), and while I expect them to be dangerous, I don't expect them to be a way to acquire resources outside of plot-specific macguffins. Well...I mean...I have what I've dubbed the "Friendship Hole/Mines" on my friend's server. It's a mined-out quartz vein that I've been using as a stone quarry as well--near the surface, with a lot of dark open space. There's usually a couple of monsters down there to tangle with, though on days with higher rift activity there are more. So I'd say that yeah, someone could dig out a "kill floor" if they wanted. It'd be a lot of effort, of course, and unless you're hunting the exotic shivers and bowtorn deep at the mantle layer, I'm not sure why you would do this. But yeah, you probably could.

I do what @Never Jhonsen does: block the entrance to the translocator room, and tunnel my way to the surface with ladders. It's not only safer, but offers much more convenient access to the translocator, assuming you're going to be using it with any frequency. As for caving in general...the equipment you'll need somewhat depends on your skill level. I generally wouldn't recommend venturing too far into caves until you have iron armor. Iron armor is sturdy enough to hold up against most of what's in the caves, and if you happen to find yourself facing off against the nightmares haunting the deepest layer it can buy you enough time to either deal with the threat or escape. Gambeson and bronze are also solid choices, though they won't hold up as well against deeper level threats.