LadyWYT

I dunno, there's already a "passive gameplay" mode in the form of Homo Sapiens, if you set animal aggression to neutral. The drawback is that you'll miss all of the lore content playing that mode. In regards to the game's story, having animals be neutral isn't much of a stretch, but the lore and NPCs make a point of warning how unnatural and dangerous the monsters are. It would be rather immersion-breaking to keep hearing accounts of all of these supernatural, bloodthirsty monstrosities that go bump in the dark...only to have those you encounter ignore you completely until you decide you want to engage in combat. Now I am aware that not everyone cares about story immersion, and not everyone likes combat either. However, I think a better option for a "passive mode", outside of mods that is, is perhaps heavily restricting monster spawns instead. Perhaps drifters would only spawn one or two at a time, and only during temporal storms or periods of high rift activity(minimum) if conditions allow. Likewise, the locust spawners could have their spawn rate slowed, to the point that the player is very unlikely to be overwhelmed. As for bells...they still make noise, but that's all they do in this case. I think with a system like this, it keeps immersion intact by keeping supernatural enemies aggressive, but it pushes combat into the background as story flavor, for the most part. You'll still need to deal with the occasional monster, but with the exception of a boss fight, it's not going to be challenging or something that you'll need to do very often.

Would it not be five sticks, four grass, and three flint? One flint and stick for a knife, one flint and stick for an axe. Two sticks and a grass for a firestarter and one stick and two grass for a torch. One grass for a firepit. Not that one needs a firepit, but if you have raw meat, nighttime is a decent time for cooking it.

I'm guessing they'll conflict, but I also think the mod that you posted will likely work better than the one I posted. Of course, you can always create a test world and try them both out to see what happens; worst case scenario is that you'll crash the game. Don't sweat it, we all start somewhere! When I first started playing, I set a grace period and rare temporal storms so I could focus more on learning the gameplay and be less worried about dealing with monsters. Once I was more confident in what I was doing, I started forgoing the grace period and shortening the interval between storms.

There's a mod that does this specific thing already, though without the cosmetic changes: https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/10343 It's been a while since I used it, and while it was interesting to toy with, I don't think it adds much to gameplay. While going several days without food before dying is certainly more realistic, I found that it significantly detracted from the overall challenge of the game. Under most circumstances, it's not particularly difficult to keep yourself fed(at least enough to avoid starving) in the game, so unless you're deliberately going without or otherwise decided to stack the deck against yourself, the mod provides less challenge. In contrast, while the vanilla system of starvation might not be the most realistic, it does provide a good motivation to keep your hunger bar full, as letting it run out will kill you rather quickly if you're not careful. A buff/debuff system is the route I would go, if adding functionality to the design and not making it purely cosmetic. More muscle mass could probably provide a small boost to block-breaking speed and melee attack damage, possibly even an extra point of health or two. Having a more lean build could boost movement speed instead, as well as perhaps slow down the rate of hunger a bit as well as provide a bit of a boost to stealthiness. Or perhaps a leaner character takes a bit less fall damage. Overweight characters could have a penalty to movement speed and stealth, and block-breaking speed as well if they don't have enough muscle. I think the only positive for an overweight character, outside of roleplaying potential and quickly filling up the nutrition bars, would be some way to significantly delay death by starvation, as you suggested. "Overcharging" the hunger meter could be a simple way to do it; perhaps a certain percentage of a food's satiation value could be added to a "fat reserve", provided that the food is eaten while the hunger bar is 100% full. The fat reserve that your character currently has could be indicated either by an outline around the hunger bar, or a smaller meter underneath the hunger bar. The maximum possible value of this reserve would be the same as your maximum hunger, although the reserve should probably be harder to fill/drain than the hunger bar. Adding on to the reasoning behind that last thought--it probably shouldn't be too easy to change character weight/muscle mass outside of whatever you set in character creation, because otherwise you risk a situation similar to the Sims. Your character shouldn't immediately become overweight because you decided to celebrate an achievement with a couple of pies and a lot of alcohol. Likewise, an overweight character shouldn't become in-shape overnight just because they went entirely without food and/or mined a couple hundred blocks. That applies to character muscle mass as well--you shouldn't go from lean to muscular just from a mining trip or two, or vice versa from a lack of mining. Another drawback to changing weight too easily--it enables the player to quickly fill all of their empty nutrition bars, without needing to actually deal with the consequences of that level of indulgence. The best example I can think of for how this type of system can work is a couple of mods from Skyrim--Pumping Iron(Gopher), and Stay in Shape - A Pumping Iron Addon(jayserpa). Pumping Iron enables your character to gain muscle mass over time(up to the maximum the slider will go) as they increase their skills in physical combat. The addon mod develops the idea a bit more by requiring the player to get enough physical exercise to maintain their muscle mass, or they will slim back down. The more I consider the idea, the more intriguing it gets, as well as more complicated. It'd be cool, but possibly difficult to implement efficiently as a fun, engaging mechanic.

I'm not a coder by any means, but I do like that Tyron and the devs made tools and guides so that players can easily jump into modding themselves. One of these days I'll probably give it a shot, I just have to find the time and motivation to actually do it. That used to be me regarding Skyrim. Then one day I tried a few mods, and decide that modding really wasn't that bad and freshened up the gameplay nicely. Now my favorite thing to do whenever possible(after playing through at least most of the game vanilla, of course), is mod the game until it suits my particular preferences. And then the gameplay can be as mind-numbingly easy or as bone-crushing hard as I want it to be at any given time!

I think the fruit/vegetable/grain/protein/dairy system we have now is fine, as it makes each food group easy to identify(hence why mushrooms count as plants) and therefor keep track of. The protein bar is low? Then you need to eat some sort of meat. The vegetable bar is low? Eat something containing plants. Not enough grains? Time to eat some porridge, bread, or drink some grain-based alcohol. For dairy, drink some milk or eat some cheese and you're good. If you start tracking by actual real-life nutritional content, it's going to become more time-consuming in the game trying to figure out which food you need to eat in order to get a specific nutrient. And the more time you spend figuring out the nutritional information, the less time you're going to be spending doing the other stuff the game has to offer. I think it's also safe to say that most people don't have fun figuring out the nutritional content of food. While this is true for real life, the main point of the nutritional system in the game is to encourage the player to vary their diet rather than only eat the most conveniently acquired food(such as what happens in the other block game). It still possible to play using just one type of food, though you'll be forgoing the boost to health if you choose to play that way. What I would rather see, though I doubt this will be implemented outside of a potential mod, are a couple of sliders for character weight and muscle mass(height too, though that's irrelevant here). You can set this to whatever you'd like on character creation, but the value can change over the course of the game depending on how you decide to play. Eating infrequently, or sticking to certain types of food as your primary food source(vegetables, fruits, grains), will eventually result in a thin physique. Eating plenty of protein and dairy and frequently engaging in hard manual labor(mining, smithing without helve hammers, manual milling, wearing heavy armor) will eventually result in more muscles. Eating when you're not hungry(continuing to eat after the hunger bar has been filled, which would now be possible) and/or eating a lot of nutritionally dense/dessert foods and beverages without appropriate levels of activity will eventually result in a chubby seraph. I'd also expect all of those qualities to be cosmetic for the most part and have no actual effect on gameplay, just for simplicity's sake. NPCs might comment on your appearance, if you fall within certain thresholds, similar to what happens in certain other games(Red Dead, Fable). Allowing smaller characters to fit into smaller spaces than larger characters might also be interesting in regards to exploration, but would also make designing locations much more difficult, especially since players aren't allowed to tamper with major story locations by default. Adding minor benefits/drawbacks depending on your character's physical condition could be interesting, but I could also see it being more of a chore to manage than it is fun, hence why I would expect it to mostly be a potentially humorous bit of immersion and customization.

https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/7966 As long as there's still the quick option to take the hide, trophy(if applicable), and the best cuts of meat/fat, I think it would work well. That way hunting for food while traveling/early game doesn't get tedious, and the player can be rewarded for sinking more time into the effort but not punished for picking the faster option if there's other things they'd rather do. Where I see a system like this backfiring is if it's mandatory that the player go through the complete butchering process. Even if the gameplay loop is fun, it will become a tedious chore if it's enough of a time sink that it makes it difficult for players to devote time to other activities, like exploring and building. For my own personal tastes, I don't mind the simplified system we have already. It's immersive enough to be interesting, while leaving me with plenty of time to devote to building, exploring, or other tasks instead of constantly working on my food supply.

This would make sense, since it's a major story location and the actions completed there will likely have significant impact later in the story, even if those points haven't yet been implemented. If the location could be regenerated fully, then it would probably result in players being able to pick different actions that result in consequences that conflict with the things already set in motion by the previous choices. The end result is that the door is opened for all kinds of ways for the game to break. Unfortunately, if that does end up being the case, I'm not sure that there's a good solution for all players to complete the story themselves in multiplayer then, outside of a gentlemen's agreement at the beginning of the game to tackle the main story when all(or at least most) players are present. My guess is that the optimal way to experience the full story and complete all of the puzzles will remain a singleplayer world, or in the case of multiplayer with a small handful of friends who are willing to play at the same pace.

A couple more things that may or may not help fix lag in a modded world: 1. If you play with a gaming mouse, you may want to check its software settings to make sure there's not something fouling up the works, if not close the software entirely(if possible). I use a Corsair mouse, and closing the iCUE software has seemed to help game performance in some cases. 2. Try running Vintage Story as administrator. This should help make sure that the game is getting priority when it comes to computing resources. 3. If you use Windows, check the Windows mouse settings and make sure that enhanced pointer precision is turned off. This seems to have had a fairly significant impact on performance for me, and I'm suspicious that a recent Windows update may have enabled that option by default. You can find the option under Advanced Mouse Settings, like so: Also worthy of note--if you tinker with your mouse software and settings, you may need to tweak your mouse sensitivity in-game and/or in Windows settings afterward. I had to do so with mine, as my mouse speed became very sluggish initially when disabling certain things(mostly iCUE).

Based on my own experience, I would assume that the endeavor is unlikely to produce the results that you're looking for, as I've not seen mushrooms grow outside of their original spawn points. I could be wrong though, and I expect that mushroom farming will be a mechanic that comes in a future update. If nothing else, you could always try to plant a forest and see if any mushrooms spawn. The worst case scenario is that no mushrooms spawn, and you have a new forest full of trees to cut down at your leisure.

At this time, no. The same type of mushroom will respawn nearby, if not on the exact same block, once it's harvested/destroyed. That's assuming that spawn conditions are met. So if it's a mushroom that grows on the sides of trees, you'll need a tree nearby for them to grow back. Likewise, ground mushrooms will need open ground area(dirt or grass) to grow back. I think mushrooms that grow on the ground can overwrite grass, but not anything else. Cattails, reeds, rocks, sticks, and the like will prevent them from spawning. Aside from being able to find the mushrooms more easily and being less likely to be caught by surprise by a predator...not really. My usual strategy, should I find a good spot to harvest mushrooms, is to clear out the bushes near the ground mushrooms so I can get to them more easily without being chomped by a wolf or bear. For mushrooms that grow on trees, I take note of the tree they grew on, and then avoid cutting that particular tree down(as well as a tree or two nearby, if there are trees growing right next to the mushroom tree).

I don't believe it will, unfortunately. I'm pretty sure that major locations important to the story(such as the Archive) are unique locations to the world. I'd say your best bet currently is finding a way to regenerate the structure, although I'm not sure if there's a way outside of generating a new map entirely. This currently seems to be a weakness of Vintage Story's multiplayer at the moment. Unless all the players are playing for roughly the same general amounts of time and keeping pace with one another regarding tech advancement, it's easy for the more ambitious players to pull ahead. For unique locations like the Archive, this will close off some opportunities to players slower to advance, unless there is some sort of server rule/agreement to only visit the location once everyone is ready. The other main drawback is that more ambitious players will advance the world time more quickly since they tend to play a little more, which can lead to food stores spoiling for players that don't play as often. I'm guessing a new singleplayer world would probably be the best way for them to experience the Archive from start to finish, assuming they want to solve all of the puzzles themselves. Now if they don't care that much about the puzzles and just want to see what it looks like, potentially fighting the boss and listening to the recordings on the resonator, you probably don't have to do anything. Any books that were in the library can be transcripted and shared by the player(s) who found them, and if you are a server admin, you could potentially pop into creative mode and manually sprinkle some appropriate loot around the Archive for the players to find while they're poking around. As for the boss, I'm fairly certain he will respawn on his own after enough time has passed, although you may also be also to make him respawn via a console command. In any case, it's not the exact same thing as being the first one(s) to explore it in a new world, but it's a decent workaround depending on your players. Another thing to consider too is that 1.20 is still slated for release sometime this year(although that could change!). New story locations are supposed to be included in the update, so if you're not too attached to your current multiplayer world, you might consider generating a new multiplayer world for 1.20, with perhaps an additional rule that major story locations should be visited for the first time as a server group(depending on your players).

Well now I'm curious how bad it actually was. Loving that dining hall though. I really ought to get back to building in my world, but I get distracted way too easily.

If there are more than one of a particular entity in the area, you might be able to change the description slightly. For example: "chicken clucks" versus "chickens cluck". Other descriptions, such as "ominous footsteps", can indicate either a single entity, or multiple entities. The loudest sounds should take priority, yes, given that those are going to be the most noticeable. There might be some details that don't translate well to subtitles, so the experience for the hearing impaired will differ a bit from the average player. However, while the main goal is to provide equivalent experiences for both sets of players, I think more priority should be placed on making sure the core gameplay is solid in spite of potential player handicaps. A handicapped player might miss some immersive detail here and there, but they won't miss out on the gameplay itself.

I typically chop a few trees with a flint axe, use the logs to build a small house frame, and fill the gaps with dirt. I replace the dirt with cobblestone later, once I've acquired a pickaxe and get around to it. For roofing material, I tend to use thatch, as it's somewhat less tedious to cut a lot of grass than it is to make shingles. One good early base option is to find one of the more intact surface ruins and patch them up. It might not be the prettiest thing, but it'll save you a bit of time and resources that you can put towards collecting stuff for a more permanent home. In regards to cattails, they should grow back in a few days, provided it's not too cold outside. I think they tend to grow back faster if it's rained recently as well. Edit: One important thing to note in regard to cattails--they only grow back if the roots are intact. If you've dug up the roots, either for food or just harvesting without a knife, they won't grow back at all.

Alternately: keep the hay bed as the default, and the only bed-and-mattress-in-one item. The wooden bed and aged wooden beds are replaced instead by bed frames; you could have a few options to pick from here: basic, fancy, double/bunk(only available from furniture traders), and antique(only found in ruins). To be able to sleep on them, you'll need to equip them with some sort of bedding. Bedding: The hay bed is the easiest bedding to acquire, but is also the least comfortable to sleep on. Adding linen sheets and pillows makes it more comfortable to sleep in, letting you sleep for an hour longer. Feather bedding is the most comfortable, allowing the player to sleep an additional two hours, but requires more linen and many feathers to craft. For an alternate basic bedding option, you could throw a couple of larger pelts together to make a fur bedroll, giving the same sleep option as the hay bed. You can change the color of linen bedding at any time using a bolt of colored linen. Likewise, you can throw a large or huge pelt over the bedding to change the bed type to fur instead. I do like this idea as well. I'd expect linen or other light fabric to add an extra hour of rest in hot weather, while potentially losing an hour of rest in cold weather. Likewise, covering your bedding with furs would probably add an additional hour or two of sleep time in cold weather, but lose an hour or so of sleep in hot weather. In regards to fur bedrolls, these would be optimal choices for camping in cold environments. Hay beds have a slight advantage in that they're easy to make as long as there is grass to harvest, and a better advantage for camping in hot environments as they don't hold as much heat in.

Hmm, fair point. My initial thought was that the high passive block chance on the buckler would reflect the need for more precise movement for effectiveness, without the player actually needing to mimic such movements as there's no way to actually move like that in the game. The high active block + movement speed penalty on the tower shield was meant to give the player a high level of protection at the expense of mobility and needing to correctly time when they hunker down with the shield and in what direction. However, I like your suggestion much better! A high passive block on the tower shield leaves you the freedom to roam around and counter attack while soaking up a lot of damage, at the expense of being slower and sacrificing a good portion of your field of vision. The buckler could be just as durable and soak almost the same amount of damage without the penalty to movement speed, but the damage mitigation being tied to high active block chance means that you'll need to block at just the right time(ie, hitting the "crouch" key) in order for it to be effective. I think directional attacks would still be interesting in a PvE setting. For solo play, it means that you'll need to be more careful when confronting multiple enemies, as being flanked is much more dangerous. For multiplayer PvE, facing multiple enemies at once is a little less dangerous, as you have more manpower to handle the situation and can watch each other's backs, but flanking is still something to be mindful of. For boss encounters utilizing multiple minions, it's probably a good idea to make an exception to directional attacks for that fight, as it might be unnecessarily punishing for solo players otherwise. It's probably also a good idea to have a toggle for directional attacks in the world settings, so that players who don't enjoy that level of challenge can turn it off. Sounds pretty solid to me. Any thoughts on prioritizing shield damage over damage to other armor pieces? Perhaps not by a significant margin, but I feel that if something is most likely to be beat to smithereens in a battle(aside from a weapon), it's probably the shield that's going to break first. For mounts, I think the devs are intended to add a "mortally wounded" state for mounts that have been downed in combat. The idea is that the player will have roughly an in-game day to heal their mount before it actually dies, but I think even with that system many players would still rather take the hit themselves instead of having their mount take the damage. I'd say instead of giving mounts two separate hit locations though, keep it as one general hit-box separate from the player and instead include a small chance of the player being dismounted should either the player or the mount receive a big enough hit. Of course, forcible dismounting could also be something adjustable in the world settings, if it's added to the game.

I'm with @Thorfinn on this one; I think picking up the cracked vessels is best left as something unique to the Malefactor. Selling the vessels for a larger profit is just part of the bonus, although there's nothing stopping a Malefactor from gifting vessels to friends to sell, or simply sharing their profit of gears. The salvage bonus is also one of the primary reasons to pick Malefactor over the other classes. Removing that unique bonus leaves the Malefactor good at foraging(which Hunters have a similar bonus, but for animal loot, and are much better at range), and better at stealth(which isn't very useful if you're already good at spotting and avoiding danger to being with). I could also see repairing vessels with glue being an option, as that does introduce a cost to salvaging through other means, but glue is fairly easy to get early in the game. In which case, the Malefactor's ability to salvage cracked vessels should be replaced with something else. What would make a good replacement, I'm not really sure; it should probably be something that's more useful in the early-mid game though, as the Malefactor tends to be very strong early and weaken significantly in the late game.

That's the fix I would figure, if there were too many sounds to effectively fit in a scrolling text box. I think you could probably still include minor ambient noises like "birds chirping" or "grass rustles softly", but give them low priority flags so they're omitted when higher priority effects are present(like drifters, bears, or beehives--things more critical to the player's attention). Footsteps could fit into "light", "medium", "heavy", or "humanoid" categories, with a "menacing" prefix to indicate something potentially dangerous and/or "metallic" to indicate a robot of some sort. Or if it's too much hassle, just leave out the most insignificant sounds and only subtitle the effects critical to gameplay.

Very true, hence why I mentioned it depends on how familiar the player is with various sounds of nature. Or even sounds of the unnatural, as it applies to certain game modes. It's why if the ambient noises are just for flavor and have no actual source to produce them, I think they're more effective if they're the friendly, immersive kind of ambience. Some might be a little unnerving at first, to players unfamiliar with them(like a fox scream), but overall they should be a pleasing, immersive part of the world. In contrast, sounds that indicate danger are much more effective if there's actually something dangerous responsible for making the noise. A monster growl in the distance in the dead of night would certainly be scary the first several times you heard it...until you get enough experience to figure out that it's just an ambient sound effect and there's no actual monster to go with it. From that point, it becomes a sound that's either ignored entirely, or a nuisance because it grabs your attention despite there being no threat. On the other hand, if the sound if produced by an actual entity, then you're alerted to a threat that's nearby and can have a better chance to either avoid it or develop an effective plan to confront it. It also means that you can never fully ignore those sounds, as doing so will likely be to your detriment. Meh, I don't think that's a criticism, as much as it is an accurate assessment of what they are. Drifters are out of place in the world, because they're from a different dimension/part of time and are displaced by the temporal shenanigans. Whether there's a way to fix time, at least partially, and put a stop to at least some of the instability remains to be seen.

The thought crossed my mind last night and I figured I'd post before I forgot. Having some shield variations would add some more interesting choices to combat, as well as some different appearances. The main archetypes could be as follows: Light Shields: These would be small, lightweight, and easy to wield, having a high passive block chance and slowing the player almost not at all, at the expense of having lower durability, fewer damage points blocked, and lower active blocking and coverage area than other shield types. Ideal for roguish hit-and-run types or archers, or those who really don't like to manage a shield. What it won't do is hold up well in close-quarters combat or provide much protection against higher tier foes, although it might be able to be equipped without much penalty to firing a ranged weapon. The general shield design that would fit here is the buckler design, or other small shield types. Medium Shields: These are basically what we have now. A solid, all-purpose design that offers good protection for most combat scenarios, although isn't ideal for using in conjunction with ranged weapons. Has a greater area of coverage(when actively blocking) than the light shields, and is likely the best choice to use while mounted. Alternate designs could include kite and heater shields. Heavy Shields: These shields provide the highest active blocking benefits, covering the most area and mitigating most incoming damage while being tough enough to last several battles before breaking. The drawback is that they are very heavy, so they will slow the player when equipped. Their bulkiness also makes them awkward to wield quickly, meaning they have the lowest passive block chance of all shield options. Ideal for the tanky warrior types that need to soak up a lot of damage while keeping enemy forces busy, though you will need to make sure that you're actively blocking with it for it to do much good. These shields would encompass your tower shields and other large shield designs. ---------------- Just a couple of side notes--the high passive block for the light shields is meant to reflect the idea that they can be easily maneuvered to deflect projectiles/light hits as a reflex action. They aren't something you can hunker down behind like other shields, hence the low durability and active block chance. Likewise, the heavy shields can soak up an incredible amount of punishment, but you need to have the shield in position first(active blocking) for it to be effective. You'll also be sacrificing mobility and ranged damage for the protection. In regards to mounted combat, I'm assuming that you won't be able to actively block with a shield, so the passive block stat will likely be the most important(if using a shield). I'm also not sure if shields block a specific area percentage when actively blocking, or if it's just calculated via numbers and the area coverage/incoming attack direction doesn't actually matter. Area coverage and attack direction definitely seems like it should be important though, so I tried to consider it in this case.

I feel like the tornado would be interesting...until it goes through your base, that is. Although stronger storms in the tropics would make those zones more interesting and hazardous.

Thinking about it a little more, I would say it's coded that way for balancing purposes. If having the spear was the only requirement, then in a multiplayer scenario with default settings, a clockmaker could simply craft a spear for each of their friends and thus allow everyone to have a locust. I'm not sure how badly it would destroy the balance of the game when it comes to combat(it would at least weight things even more significantly in favor of players), but it would remove one of the major things that make clockmakers stand out from the other classes. A decent workaround option would probably be to add some sort of craftable locust pet for the late game. Perhaps you'd need to forge a couple pieces from special alloy, add a Jonas part or two, and then animate the thing via a special part that can only be acquired via traders(expensive!), very rare dungeon loot, or crafted by clockmakers. The clockmaker would still retain their uniqueness, as they can access locusts much earlier than anyone else, can easily craft a locust without needing to trade/loot ruins, and are still the only ones able to tame the stronger corrupted locusts.

If you set a grace period, supernatural mobs won't spawn at all from rifts, temporal stability, or darkness. However, the grace period only lasts for so long(ten days maximum), and once it's over the mobs will start to spawn. So it's the ideal option if you just want a few days to equip yourself well before dealing with monsters, but if you don't want to deal with monsters at all, it's not going to do the job.

Copy/paste from my comment in a different thread: Using Minecraft as an example(although it's been a while since I played with the subtitles on), the subtitles indicate the sound type, the sound's intensity, and sometimes include a small arrow to roughly indicate where the sound is coming from(at least, right or left). They're also confined to a small scrolling list in the corner of the screen and fade after a few seconds, so they're not particularly intrusive. That's pretty much what I would expect. A small text box opposite the chat window(or wherever the player chose to put it) that contains very brief descriptions of various sounds nearby, as well as maybe an arrow with the text to indicate which direction, if important, the sound is coming from(like footsteps, entity noise). The text only needs to be displayed for a few seconds, and unlike the chat box text, doesn't need to be saved.