LadyWYT

Personally I make like a drifter and throw rocks at them, then run like heck before I get stomped into the dirt.

Welcome to the forums! Rift activity can last for a while, though the lower values tend to last longer than high activity periods. How often do you check the activity levels? It's possible the activity could have changed, and changed back to Very High without your noticing. Though from what you're reporting here, it also sounds likely that you've encountered a bug. If you've been checking it frequently, and not otherwise messed with any time-altering console commands, I would go report the issue over on the bug tracker.

Upon further thought, this might also provide a good opportunity to make enemies "smarter" by stopping them from running into uncovered pits. It makes things harder for the player in that you can't just dig a hole or jump over a ravine and lose whatever's chasing you. On the flip side, enemies could easily fall into covered pits, which gives players incentives to actually put in the effort to both build and disguise such a trap. It's also another use for rope...not that rope is hard to acquire, but the more stuff that needs it the more decisions you'll need to make on what takes priority at the time. I'm not entirely sold on this one. It would make a great mod, but I feel like it would be more satisfying to bring down large prey animals with a well-placed shot or two. The problem with only requiring a couple of shots though is that hunting might then be too easy, especially for Hunter and Blackguard. One strength of Hunter is the ease at which they're able to bring down prey, and the easier hunting is the less advantage they have in that regard. Likewise, one drawback to Blackguard is they struggle with hunting, so making it easy to bring down a target in a couple of shots lessens that penalty by quite a bit.

You should be able to pick up shed antlers like any other dropped item; that is, they should just pop into your inventory as soon as you walk near them. If that didn't happen, I'd say you either encountered a bug, or you didn't have a free slot available in order to pick them up. In any case, if you don't want to wait another year for another chance at them, I would just pop into creative for a moment and pick out a pair or two of antlers to replace these ones.

Welcome to Vintage Story! I would say your first and most important goal should be just surviving the winter, which primarily means making sure that you have enough food stockpiled and some pelts for warm clothing. Everything else will pretty much click into place while you're working towards that goal. Also don't be afraid to mark down whatever you think might be important on your map; even if it's not immediately useful to you at that time, it could be something you'll need/want later. Otherwise, the handbook is going to be your best friend when it comes to figuring things out. If you have downtime in the game and don't know what else to do, you can always unpause time while flipping through the handbook and read up on various information. It also comes with a chapter or two outlining the main progression tiers, which is handy if you're looking for more advanced goals to work towards(like steel or cheese-making).

Both nightmare and corrupt drifters have the long saw-hand, however, the corrupt drifters will have the "antler" spikes on their heads while the nightmare drifters will have a spiked spinal column. Nightmare drifters also tend to be almost black, while corrupt drifters are a brighter rust color. Double-headed drifters are the ones that hurt the most out of the drifter class, but they're also very easy to spot and only appear during temporal storms. They have two heads, as their name would imply, and rather than any kind of spines they have what seems to be yet another head sticking out back of their shoulders.

I don't think that's something anyone ever quite overcomes in Vintage Story. The threats are properly threatening, so the moment you let your guard down is generally the moment you manage to die, often horribly.

Welcome to the forums! To my knowledge, the axe has never matched its audio. However, I've also only been playing since 1.18, so there could have been a different sound for it in a previous version.

For the same reason that you can't do other basic things in videogames--it's not how the game was designed. And of course, to make climbing with your bare hands work in Vintage Story, you'd need to redesign the story areas already implemented to make sure they still offer the intended challenge...which is a lot of work in itself. Personally, I'd rather see the resources invested into other areas of the game, given that there's really not that much climbing I need to do that isn't already handled in the current iteration of the game. Rope ladders. Easily crafted, easily picked up once placed. For those really wanting to climb with their hands, I highly recommend this mod: https://mods.vintagestory.at/verticality

I think a better option is something @ifoz suggested a while back--climbing picks. I think with a designated climbing tool, the story locations wouldn't need reworks, since using a tool on a block would qualify as attempting to tamper with said block and thus render the tool impossible to use within a story location. Of course, adding something like that then renders rope ladders a lot less useful, so I'm fine with climbing being left to the mods. A better option is just adding the ability to crawl instead. That would be more useful for caves and other tight spaces, wouldn't break current story locations(that I'm aware of), and would open up more options for hiding goodies in ruins and story locations.

I think one thing that would help VS combat, aside from perhaps tuning some timers and hitboxes, is just adding a few more sound effects. They did as much with the shields, and now shields are very satisfying to use because they sound properly protective, even if they didn't actually get a buff to their stats. Now I certainly don't expect monsters to start shrieking in pain(I don't think they can really feel much to begin with), but having some more varied grunts and things would probably make your hits feel more productive.

That, and gold tends to be more difficult to acquire en masse. Silver/gold items are more just a flex than anything, and possibly a holdover from the other block game. I'd still keep those as-is, but up the decoration on some of the models perhaps. As for more mundane materials like lead? No one's going to be bragging about having a lead pickaxe, or going to be excited about getting a lead shovel as a prize. You are correct in that silver and gold can be used for black bronze alloy, but again, both precious metals are harder to get ahold of than other materials, so no one's really going to be opting for black bronze. Especially not when you need precious metal for Jonas tech and lantern linings, if you're going to min/max on your lighting.

I mean, we had how many players complaining combat was too easy prior to 1.20? Only for the complaints to flip entirely with 1.20's release and rail about how combat was now too hard. Personally, I do like combat, but that's not why I play Vintage Story and I do agree that if it were made dramatically harder a lot of current players would quit. I'd also wager that while we might see an uptick of combat-focused players, most of them aren't going to stick around because combat still isn't the focus of Vintage Story and there are plenty of other games that do combat better. Combat could be the focus, but that would be a major shift in the game's direction, and at that point it's not Vintage Story anymore. Minecraft combat is pretty much point-and-click. You don't need to worry about weapon or armor materials, you just get netherite and then enchant it to make it even more effective, and there's no downside to wearing your armor all the time unless you want to be invisible. The only thing that might be a "challenge" is figuring out how to shoot long distances/moving targets, or the mechanics behind the mace(which to my knowledge are simple anyway). In contrast, equipment material matters quite a lot in Vintage Story--it determines how long your equipment will last, what it can protect you from(armor), and how much damage you can dish out(weapons). Not all armor is equal either; the more protective it is the more drawbacks it has, and wearing your armor all the time may not even be ideal. When it comes to ranged combat, you not only need to account for shot trajectory, but you need to release your shot at the right time too in order to get the most power and accuracy. For shield blocking, the material of your shield in VS again makes a difference in how much protection it offers, and VS shields also allow you to passively block some projectiles as long as you have the shield equipped. I'd also note that VS enemies tend to be more intelligent, on average, since they may attempt to flee when low on health, or otherwise keep their distance/hit-and-run. They're also not limited to one kind of attack either; most will either have both a melee and ranged option, and a few may have more than one kind of melee attack. Last but not least, I write all of the above looking at it from a PvE standpoint, not PvP. Once you introduce human opponents, things go bonkers quickly, as human opponents are very good at developing strategy on the fly and won't hesitate to try some very unorthodox methods to achieve their goals. I think to truly balance PvP, you need to either develop the game for predominantly PvP to begin with, or otherwise leave it to the individual servers to do their own balancing via mods.

I think it's probably territory that's better suited to the modded realm than for the vanilla game, since the vanilla game tends to focus more on realism for the most part. There's a reason that tools and weapons generally aren't made from soft metal; the material used needs to be tough enough to both get the job done and retain its shape after repeated use. Plus even if you ignore the realism aspect and add it anyway...if the resulting products have terrible stats to reflect the material used...why would you bother making them to begin with? Copper isn't particularly rare, and you can smelt it with tin to get a bronze alloy, which is much better. Poison is better suited for an alchemy mechanic. Brew your poisons from certain mushrooms and other things.

How far you have to travel depends on your world settings, but once you've reached tropical climates you should be far enough south to find them. I think they may be a bit on the rare side though, so you may need to do quite a bit of searching before you find some. As for their exact spawn conditions...that I don't know. I've not dug into the game files, or found them in-game myself as I usually don't range into those climates. In real life though, they are a tropical plant, so the tropics are the best place to look for them.

I would chalk it up to being jank due to the game being early in the development still, and not anywhere close to a finished product. A lot of animations are a little janky, not just player movement, but I think the priority right now is to just have something that looks decent and works.

I would check the area you had it last prior to the server crash; sometimes the marker bugs out.

It's not just a matter of low light level. If a creature can still see the sky, they're fine. If they can't see the sky and the light level is too low, then there's a problem, but there's still a little bit of time before they just keel over. As for the bear you chased into the cave--caves don't generally offer access to the sky or other light sources, so it makes sense that it would have despawned, though it's a little odd for them to despawn that fast.

I think there likely is. Either that, or we're getting distracted by having so much fun(or frustration) with other tasks, that we forget to keep track of certain things(like livestock due dates). So it ends up feeling like your critters took forever to give birth, when they were right on time all along.

The more depth you give it, the harder it gets to manage since there's more variables to track. The ideal state to shoot for is something that's easy for someone with 0 experience or knowledge to pick up and start playing, but difficult to master. Which, I think Vintage Story strikes that balance in its gameplay pretty well so far, including the combat. It's simple enough that a newbie can jump right into the game and be fine(though they'll struggle a bit in some areas), while more experienced players can crunch the numbers to figure out the most optimal equipment for given tasks or the timing needed to do stuff like dodge attacks, if they so desire. Any combat in a nutshell, really. From a realistic standpoint, the best overall weapon choice is going to either be a pointy stick, or a club, in most cases. A long pointy stick keeps the enemy at a nicer distance, while being cheap to make and easy to use. As for a club...the armor might hold up under the bludgeoning, but the body underneath said armor probably won't be able to hold up from the shock of the beating. To win a fight, all you really have to do is keep hitting the target until it can no longer move. The process of how you achieve can be easy, hard, or somewhere in-between, but it really is as simple as that. This is where I have to agree with what a couple of others here have already said--your best bet is looking through the mod database for mods that modify the combat and creature behavior, and see if that spices things up. That's one of the strong points of robust modding support; players get to season their gameplay to their liking, however mundane or outrageous it may be. There's even mods to make the shivers sound like clowns or dress the drifters in dapper suits! A couple of mods you might start with are these: Combat Overhaul: https://mods.vintagestory.at/combatoverhaul Shiver Tweaks: https://mods.vintagestory.at/shivertweaks There's probably some others out there that you'd enjoy, but I'm not entirely sure what you're looking for. If nothing else, you could take a crack at making your own mod, if you're feeling particularly ambitious.

Nah, I could easily see this. More aggressive or otherwise dangerous wildlife(like hippos, which have been teased) would add more variety of interesting things to encounter in the world, as well as a hazard to avoid. Doesn't need to be groundbreaking to be interesting in this case, and you don't really have to explain what these creatures are capable of either. Most people have seen them, or something similar to them, and will have a rough idea of what to expect. Monsters are a different case. I think there's still room on the roster for a few more, and new additions don't need to be particularly groundbreaking here either. However, in the case of monsters, the style of anything new needs to be consistent with what we already have, so that it looks like part of the same world and not something just plopped in for grins and giggles. Vintage Story monsters currently fit into two basic categories: mechanicals, and esoteric. The mechanicals are pretty straight-forward; they're robots, and the designs generally derive from human appearance or some kind of animal. The esoteric category is things like drifters, bowtorn, and shivers; the main features these all seem to share is a lack of a face, grey "flesh", a rusty metal "skeleton", and an overall shape that suggests they may have been humans at one point(the bowtorn is currently the biggest deviation from this last point). As for monster behavior, while it doesn't need to be groundbreaking for each new addition to the roster, each new addition should at least be exhibiting some sort of behavior that lets it stand out from the ones we already have, otherwise you encounter the issue of "it's a drifter, but kicks and throws sticks instead". I'm also guessing the next "common" enemies added, if any are, will most likely be mechanical. Mechanicals fill the "trap" and "supporting unit" roles rather well, and there's a lot more wiggle room there when it comes to design possibilities. We could see another esoteric monster or two as well, but the drifter/bowtorn/shiver combination that we have currently covers most of the "aggressive enemy" roles.

Just for the record, it's not possible to turn off monster spawns without disabling the lore content entirely. The best one can do, without installing mods or otherwise tampering with the game files, is to just set creatures to "passive" so they'll never fight back, and disable rifts/temporal storms if you don't want to deal with those.

One thing I will point out, that doesn't seem to have been touched upon yet...prior to 1.20, drifters were the only monster you'd encounter on the surface(outside of some crazy locust nest spawn location). A lot of people complained that the combat was boring because the drifters were too easy to fight(if you had the skill, you could tackle the heaviest temporal storms nude with nothing but flint spears), and wanted something more challenging. Well...we got more challenge in 1.20, with the addition of bowtorn and shivers. Now there are three types of monster to encounter on the surface(and elsewhere), with very different styles of attack, meaning that now you'll need to be much more careful and properly prepare yourself for adventuring and combat. Of course, with the addition of the new monsters, the complaints have now swung the opposite direction, with some players complaining about how difficult the combat now is since you can't just charge in guns blazing and expect to live every time. I'm not saying that 1.20 didn't have issues with the spawn ratios for the new monsters and stuff, because it did, however @Thorfinn hit the nail on the head earlier: the more complex you make a system, the more work you have to do to make sure that it's balanced, especially if it's a system that intertwines with others. And Vintage Story is very much a game that enjoys system overlaps. I wouldn't say they're intended to be avoided entirely. There's a few rare goodies you can get from the really dangerous ones, specifically. However, from a lore standpoint, monsters aren't something you want to mess with unless you HAVE to, and from a gameplay standpoint it's just more economical to avoid fights that you don't really need to engage in. Fighting wears down your gear, depletes your resources, and taking damage leaves you more vulnerable to accidental death.

I'm pretty sure it's to keep the antlers rare. I think antlers were bugged in a previous version, in that they weren't dropping from hunted deer at all, however that's been fixed. Whether your elk will drop his magnificent antlers if you(or something else) kills him though...that I don't know. If he does drop them, I'm not sure why you would want to go that route, given the elk's utility and how expensive they are.

I'd give it a bit more time and see if she produces any bacon bits. If you start pushing into late December/January and there's still no piglets, then I'd start to suspect that something's bugged. The easiest fix is probably killing the sow and spawning a new pig...I'm fairly certain you can change a creature's generation with console commands as well, but I'm not sure what command it is.