LadyWYT

I was thinking about this the other day after tinkering with Morrowind and Oblivion. I do like the class system, as it does give a nice, balanced variety and sometimes you just want to jump right in and play. On the other hand, it could be interesting to have a "custom class" option that lets you pick a handful of traits from a list before dumping you into the world. Would it be balanced? Absolutely not! You'd probably have to disable it when setting up a server. But I could see some players having fun by picking the worst trait combinations and trying to survive. Likewise, there are times when you want to set everything to easy mode and just unwind after a hard day at work, so making a custom class and picking all the best traits could also be a viable option. The main drawback I see though is that if you can choose your class traits at the start, it takes away some of the specialness of having specific classes. I think a better option might be to keep the classes as they are now(and possibly add a few more later on), and instead have some traits be unlocked by doing various things in the game. Perhaps you could pay NPCs to learn new skills, or complete some quests to pick up a new trait. You could probably also have some traits hinge upon which story choices you make or how you treat NPCs, which would help bring more replay value to the main story. Some of the traits(like those affected by story choices) might be permanent, while others(like paying trainers or acquiring a criminal bounty) might be more negotiable...for a price. Having just flat skill perks like XSkills would also be an option. That mod is probably the backbone of my modlist, as it gives a nice method of shaping a character further, but still makes you earn those skill points! I'd like to see a more robust system than what XSkills does in the main game, but I think some of that hinges on how far into RPG territory the devs want to take Vintage Story.

I'm with @ifoz--black bronze because it's cool Plus it only takes a couple of gold and silver nuggets(which I get fairly easily from panning) to cast a black bronze pick, and using those nuggets up not only gives me a cooler, more durable pick to use but also frees up some storage space. Now in regards to casting an anvil...I'm not about to use black bronze for that! That'll be either tin bronze or bismuth bronze, whichever is easier to get my hands on in that particular world. And realistically, most of the time my bronze pick will be whichever of those is most convenient as well. Now in regards to which one I'd rather have--I voted for bismuth bronze, purely for the bismuth part. I like making lanterns out of pure bismuth since they're the prettiest color.

I disagree about the surface drifters--I think they're fine as the basic enemies they are. I'd save the more interesting mechanics for new enemy types, such as the Rot-beast dog-thing that's coming in the next update. Like I said before, I think a mechanic like this is better suited to a different type of enemy, probably one that's a bit uncommon. The surface drifters already provide a decent threat; a new player will likely find just one to be enough of a challenge, while a pack of surface drifters can still pose a serious threat to a veteran player in the earlier portions of the game. For new players especially I think it's important that the surface world threats be fairly manageable. Bears you can spot and avoid; wolves howl to alert that they're nearby. Surface drifters are a little harder to avoid since rift activity is unpredictable, but can be either fought or avoided by staying in sort of shelter. Now granted, a new player could just set a grace period, but the main hazard there is that...there's nothing to really indicate that they shouldn't be building with dirt. Ideally, they should be able to acquire better building material and expand their base within 10 days(the longest grace period), but "expanding the base" for a new player can sometimes translate to "build a bigger dirt house". And in that case, I feel a new player is likely to be more frustrated after having spent that time acquiring stuff, only to find out their home doesn't actually keep bad things out and potentially meet their end because of it. The other this is, as @Streetwind mentioned, that the hole dug would need to be 2 x 1 in order for the typical drifter to get inside. A 1x1 hole will still let crawlers through, of course, and will let others throw rocks/reach through to smack players that stand too close, so it could still prove dangerous. However, if the drifter's dig speed is fairly slow, what's really stopping the player from plugging the hole as soon as it appears? Not to mention which block does the drifter dig through to begin with--if the player has a storage vessel in the way the path will still be blocked. So the drifter may actually need to dig more than one block in order to get to the player. All that being said...I think if drifters were to get a digging ability anyway, I'd say it may be best suited for the higher tier drifters(any drifter other than surface drifters) and make the dig speed comparable to the player's base dig speed. That way it's a threat in caves(you'll need stronger materials to properly block a passage off) and during temporal storms while leaving your typical surface conditions more easily manageable.

If you've not tried it already, I would remove whichever mod you installed for the farmland and see if that makes a difference. If the farmland was working prior to the mod's installation, and isn't now, a problem with the mod would be my first suspect. I'd also check the modpage's comment section to see if anyone else has reported similar issues.

I think it's brown bears and polar bears that you can't outrun, if I'm not mistaken. Any of the other bears I think you can outrun, provided you aren't weighed down too much by armor, but it's still a bit difficult. My general strategy is to try to spot the bear before it sees me, so that I can either avoid it or come up with a plan to deal with it. If one spots me I try to run and use the strategies that @Thorfinn pointed out to help get the bear off my tail(although if I have good armor I'm going to just fight the bear). If there's deep water nearby though, I'll try to lure the bear there as then it becomes rather easy to poke the bear to death with a spear. Currently, the player can swim faster than bears, and bears can't dive under the water to get you, so it's just a matter of staying just out of reach. If you've got some spears and good aim, you might also try turning the bear into a pincushion(especially if you're playing a Hunter!) You can build a makeshift pillar to stand on(I think it needs to be at least 3 blocks tall, maybe 4) to stay out of reach, or if you're the more brazen type you can bring a shield and healing items for a backup should you take damage. Granted, the early tiers of armor/shields won't stop a bear, but it might just buy you enough time to finish it off in case you can't kill it at range. There's also the Mortal Damage mod, if you're not opposed to modding your game: https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/3846 Basically what it does is make the damage a bleedout rather than instant, giving you time to either finish off a nearly-dead enemy, get to a safer spot and heal, or at least get to a safer spot to die. The main drawback though is that healing will no longer be instant either, as healing items now just prevent a portion of bleedout damage, and some types of death will still be instant(such as pancaking on the ground).

It really depends on the flavor of playthrough I want at the time. For the most part though, I tend to stick with most of the Default Balanced settings, so that while the gameplay is still challenging I'm not getting absolutely frustrated when trying to build either. Starting Climate: I've actually taken a liking to the Cool start zone here lately. It's quite a bit tougher than the Temperate zone, but completing the standard lineup of gameplay has felt a lot more rewarding. I might have to go for a proper Polar start one of these days, as I was hoping to hear the new arctic music in the winter but I don't seem to be far enough north for it. Month Lengths and Temporal Storms: I tend to leave these default, as the default gives a good cycle to each season(about the time I get bored of one, the next arrives) and the storms come often enough to be a concern, but not so often that they're frustrating. The storm interval setting hinges on what I sent the month length to--if I make the months longer I tend to make the storm interval longer as well. True Map Colors: I turn these on so I can better see what's actually on the map. While I like the hand-drawn styling of the new map, it's a lot harder to make out where the ruins and trader wagons are. Keep Inventory: I would only turn this on if I want an easier game and/or want to teleport back home without too much penalty(just eat the really bad mushrooms and there you go!) Cave-Ins: I keep these turned off. The mechanic is interesting, but I prefer to just dig a hole, get what I need, and then move on to something else. Auction House and Land Claiming: I turn both of these off--they aren't needed in singleplayer. Class-Exclusive Recipes: I usually end up turning this one off as well, especially since I figured out that for some reason, none of the traders sell sewing kits. ----------- In regards to mods, I do tinker around, but I try to keep my list pretty short and somewhat close to vanilla. Ancient Armory(Medvhe): It makes the unused weapons(those ruined ones you find) useful, craftable options. I'm not really a fan of the Falx sword design and like having multiple destructive things to pick from. Buzzwords(SpearAndFang): I generally end up enabling this one if I'm having a lot of trouble finding bees. Flower Farming(Craluminum2413): I like decorating with plants, but don't like absolutely stripping the countryside to do it or cheating them in with creative mode. Freedom Units(BillyGalbreath): Because Americans will do almost anything to avoid the metric system. From Golden Combs(Vinter_Nacht): Once I find bees, I like to put them in a proper bee box. The Langstroth hives also help produce a lot more honey in much less space. A Warrior's Drink!(Flint_N_Steel): Mongol warriors are cool, and it's another option to fill the Dairy nutritional need. XSkills(Xandu): Probably the backbone of my modlist. It gives a nice way to flesh out a character more and make them better at various tasks as time goes on by giving you points to put in various skills. It does a little while to earn the skill points, but it feels like a nice reward for just playing through the gameplay loops when they come. I've also played with Fauna of the Stone Age and the Wildcraft suite before. I tend to get a hit to performance with Wildcraft though, and while having more food options is nice the sheer amount that it adds kinda takes away some of the challenge of not starving. The Fauna mods didn't affect performance as much, but the rate of big cat spawns nearby could get a little annoying. The main issue I had with Fauna is that I ran out of storage space even faster from all the hunting trophies I acquired.

They don't? I have a bunch that spawn in the area around my base(seriously, there's at least three different moose spawns near the front door alone!) and they always try to come stomp my face when they notice me nearby. As for what they do in real life...I don't really know other than I've heard they will absolutely try to stomp you if they decide you need stomped. There aren't moose where I live and the only time I've actually seen a real live moose was on a trip to Yellowstone.

This is what I do as well. Find it in the folder and then dump it into whatever post I'm writing. Sometimes it's not even an actual screenshot--it's just a piece of the screen I clipped with the clipping tool and then copy-pasted. I'd also say it somewhat depends on what the purpose of the screenshot is. If it's to showcase a build and I really want it to look extra fancy, then I might set up the shot I want, pause, and go into the settings to crank the graphics up as high as they'll go without breaking something. You don't really need a framerate if you're just taking a picture, after all. You'll need to, yeah, both on your PC(no use in keeping around files you no longer need) and on the forums. If you don't clean out your Attachments on your forum profile every once in a while, it'll stop you from posting more pictures until you clear out some space.

If I understand correctly, you seem to be just chopping trees down with an axe or otherwise breaking leaves with your hands in the hopes of getting a seed. Both of these methods, as I understand it, greatly lower the number of sticks that you'll get and the chance that a seed will drop. I would try using shears on the leaves instead. Not only will it clear the leaves much faster and in a larger area, it'll increase the number of sticks that drop and increase the likelihood that a seed will drop as well. When I'm chopping trees with my axe I usually get very few seeds, but when I'm using shears on the leaves first I typically get enough seeds to properly replant the forest and then some.

I like this idea, especially since I build castles all the time. Very true, though I'm guessing that a portcullis in singleplayer would be mostly decorative and you'd just leave it open when going out and about. When you're at home you might close it, or you might use them to lock down an area during a temporal storm. Given some of the late-game tech that we have, it's also possible that you could make some sort of device to open and close the gate remotely within a certain range. You'd just have to make sure that you don't lose the remote, or else you're going to have a tough time accessing your base and acquiring another remote. Speaking of guards though...I could see a portcullis being implemented in future villages as a defense, with NPC guards to man them. During a temporal storm, the gates would slam shut(assuming that temporal storms affect entities other than seraphs, anyway) and anyone on the outside is out of luck. If there's a reputation system, the guards might also lock you out of the village for a while(several days to perhaps even months) if you're a known troublemaker.

Is it more evil to leave them trapped in a small hole for eternity, or to put them out of their misery ASAP? As a side note though, it turns out the adult rabbits will also survive the pit kilns, provided they're buried underneath all the stuff before you light it. It doesn't make sense, of course, and it's more hassle, but it is kinda funny. No need to hunt wabbits though with so many moose around!

I may need to amend my previous post, as I've just filled a pit kiln and ignited it with an adult rabbit inside. It's not dead(yet), and doesn't appear to be on fire, so perhaps I was wrong and the adults can survive it too, provided they were already in the pit kiln to begin with. The only reason I figured it out in the first place is that I got tired of killing the rabbits that fell into the holes in order to use my pit kilns. The adults at least provide a bit of meat and sometimes hide, but the baby ones just burn a point of weapon durability.

Doggone it, I was just fixing to go to bed when another Dave theory struck me after looking stuff up while writing a different thread. "I've begun to see things, even when I'm not gazing through the Lens. Walking down the halls, looking at the prints, suddenly my vision shifts and I'm in a world I cannot comprehend. I am in the other world, and it is leaking into this one."--Jonax Falx, "Breakdown" Now I'm not entirely sure what the Lens is, aside from a device that Falx invented and likely used to look around this other dimension to help find inspiration(and possibly materials) for his projects. Nor does Dave exactly look like a mobile telescope, assuming that the Lens is even capable of moving around. But now I'm wondering if Dave is perhaps some sort of sensory device associated with the Lens, monitoring whatever goes on in the Rust world. It would explain why we only see him through rifts and temporal storms, and why he doesn't really seem to do anything other than walk around. The only problem is that given Dave seems to be a rather large construction, it's a little strange that he's not really mentioned elsewhere. Granted, that lore could be getting added later, or Dave could have been a secret project, but it seems like it'd be rather difficult to keep a project that big a complete secret.

I have this sneaking hunch that one of our main goals will be to find and shut down the Salvation Engine somehow. We know from the Salvation tapestry and other lore pieces that Jonas Falx created some sort of machine that sent his followers(presumably) forward in time in an effort to save humanity(and turning said followers into seraphs in the process). Now as to how the machine accomplished that task or whether it's still operational remains to be seen; at minimum, it's capable of turning humans into other entities and spitting them out somewhere else in the timeline. You know what other entities pop up out of nowhere? Drifters. Now, we never see seraphs pop out of any rifts or anything; they just appear out of thin air so it's not quite the same. Likewise, it's somewhat ambiguous as to what created the drifters in the first place. The Rot Beast tapestry and other bits of lore suggest they're beasts and humans that were infected and mutated by the Rot plague. In the segment "Breakdown", we read Falx describing the "other world" leaking into ours as he works--the effects most notable in his inventions first. Now if the Salvation Engine could mutate humans into seraphs somehow(the positive outcome?), then it stands to reason that it could mutate the infected into the metal-riddled monstrosities that are drifters. And if Falx and his followers were all catapulted forward in time by this machine...presumably no one was there to turn it off. Assuming that the Engine kept running after this point, it stands to reason that perhaps it eventually fell prey to the Rust dimension's influence and started warping the Rot monsters into the drifters we encounter today. It would also explain how the rifts open and close in the first place, and perhaps why the temporal storms happen. If it's a machine that's being ever more corrupted or slowly breaking down, it would stand to reason that its effects will become much worse and more unpredictable over time. If that turns out to be the case, I can only assume that it's going to be critical to find the thing and shut it down, if not destroy it completely. As for what effect shutting it down might have on seraphs, I'm not sure. I suppose that depends on whether or not it's responsible for a seraph's ability to create "returning points" and otherwise stay anchored in the world, among other things. I'm guessing that at this point though, we're probably operating independently of the machine, although I could be wrong and our connection to the machine might be what pulls us(but no one else) into temporal storms. What's more of a curiosity to me though is the theory about the Engine potentially being responsible for creating both seraphs and drifters and dumping them into the world in similar manners. If that indeed turns out to be correct, the implications there are fairly major, as it would mean that the players themselves are technically eldritch monstrosities as well.

Did you know that you can fire pit kilns with baby bunnies inside and they won't die? I'm guessing it's due to pit kilns only counting the top layer as the fiery part, so adults will clip through that layer and burn to death but the juveniles won't.

Oh yeah, I'm not saying those scenarios can't happen. I was speaking more on a generality from what I've experienced. There's a reason I don't go delving underground until I have some good weapons and armor! Hearing anything that remotely sounds mechanical is enough to make me nope out of a cave and come back later, in many cases.

I'm just gonna imagine there's an awesome barnyard rave and that's why there's a critter pit.

Oh, well in that case I totally left him alone in the tree to mind his own business. *whistles innocently*

I was about to say, I'm not really sure the exact depth that they spawn. Typically, I tend to see them around y=50 or lower, but they may be found a bit higher than that. They're a rare spawn, so you shouldn't be encountering them too often--I would say bells are worse to deal with. My general rule of thumb when exploring caves is that if I don't have decent armor(at least bronze, preferably iron), I'm not inclined to venture deeper than y=60. At least in the caves, that is. If I'm digging a mine shaft through solid rock looking for an ore node, then I'll go all the way to bedrock if need be since there's nothing going to spawn in the shaft with me. Also, while sawblade locusts have the same jump attack as their brethren and are therefore harder to keep at a distance, they are a bit noisy and their eyes glow in the dark. So there's a good chance you'll be able to see or hear it and get to safety before it has a chance to notice and attack you.

I dunno how interesting it actually is, but I found a Curvy Bone Joe tomb hogging the entrance to a cave like a stone igloo. Most ruins I've seen typically have recessed entrances.

Your basic locusts(either normal or corrupted--they both resemble mobile light bulbs and will produce light when they've noticed a target) have cages that they spawn from when the player is within range. I'm not sure of the exact radius, but it feels like it's somewhere around 10-15 blocks. Breaking the cage will stop them from spawning, but that's easier said than done as they have a fairly fast spawn rate and there are often more than one cage in the area. So it can be easy to get overwhelmed when dealing with them, especially if there are drifters in the area. As to where you typically find the cage spawners--sometimes there's one in certain underground ruins, but they also tend to spawn 1-3 at a time in caves and will have nests and metal spikes nearby as set dressing. I don't think the nests actually do anything aside from give you some loot if you break them, but the spikes will both hurt you and slow you down if you step on them. The nastier locusts are the sawblade locusts. Unlike their brethren, these ones don't have spawners and resemble scorpions rather than lightbulbs. They also do not light up the area around them when they lock on to a target. Since they don't have spawners and are a tier 3 enemy type, they'll spawn fairly deep underground similar to corrupt drifters(but never during temporal storms as of the time of writing this post). Unlike drifters though, they are a much rarer spawn and may drop a Jonas part on death.

Speaking of bears...I found my first polar bear today! He seemed to be of a rare arboreal variety Who knew they lived in trees!

The first question I have is if the FPS is tanking specifically whenever you move your mouse. If it is, the next question I have is what kind of mouse do you have? That's my first suspect as I went through similar issues a while back when upgrading my dinosaur to more modern hardware. It turned out to be a combination of missing a chipset driver update for the motherboard, and the mouse polling being cranked up way too high. I use a Corsair Harpoon and setting the polling to the lowest number seemed to solve the problem. If not the mouse though, then I'd take a look at the mods. Some mods tend to be more resource-hungry than others, or it could be a conflict or bug somewhere in the particular mod version.

Oh yeah, for sure. If nothing else, it could just be a cosmetic menu that has alternate appearances that unlock for doing various things in the world(plus an option to hide the backpack entirely). There was a Minecraft mod that did similar--it added a backpack item, but it also had different appearances that you could unlock and apply for doing various things. Collecting enough honey would unlock the honeyjar appearance, while slaying the enderdragon would unlock an End crystal. Perhaps in the case of Vintage Story, you could have say, a librarian pack after reaching the library of the Resonance Archive. I mostly got the idea from some of the bag options that WoW had for storing items related to professions. Those bags were typically a bit bigger than the standard bags, but only held stuff related to that profession. So they were useful for keeping things sorted and gathering materials, at least in theory...I'm honestly not sure if anyone used them though at the time I played. It's tough to challenge the leather backpack as the default choice, given that it holds a lot and is relatively cheap and easy to acquire.

I think this mod might cover what you're after: Restore Old Animations https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/12339 If that doesn't work, this one might: No Hands https://mods.vintagestory.at/nohandsfp Hope it helps!