LadyWYT

I can't think of anything that you need leather for in order to survive the winter. Larger bags will help you carry more stuff, of course, and better armor will help you fight off stronger enemies. But for just basic survival you don't absolutely need either. I'd say the most important winter supplies are warm fur clothes, plenty of food, and plenty of firewood or peat so you don't need to go gather it should you need to warm up. For food preservation, I'd cook whatever ingredients are starting to turn stale, and seal the meals into crocks. You'll need fat to seal the crocks if you don't have access to beeswax, which you'll need to go hunting anyway to acquire fat and hides to turn into pelts for fur clothing. Any meat acquired along the way can simply be added to the winter stores.

Oh wow, two citations for one's personal lore library, I'm flattered! I've got a write-up coming on the events of Chapter Two...I just need to finish hammering out my thoughts and stop procrastinating on writing it.

Welcome to Vintage Story! I'm hundreds of hours into the game by now, and it still catches me by surprise quite frequently. There's always something to do too, even if that something is just sitting on a hilltop, watching the sun set.

Heh...heh heh heh...it's not exactly a library. I know where the screenshot was taken(the general location, anyway)...I won't spoil anything, but you should play through Chapter Two to learn more about what it means.

As much as I'd like to see lots of new content, I think 1.20 gave us quite a lot to chew on already. Likewise, as others have already noted, 1.20 had a lot of growing pains, so I think the best option is to finish polishing those features(and whichever others need a bit more love) and swat bugs, with a few new minor additions similar to things already implemented(like more ambience, critters, etc...things easy to add). That way, the game's foundation is a lot more stable for when more big features(like story chapters or new systems) get added; less jank in the old should mean fewer places for things to go wrong in the new...probably. Plus with polishing what we already have, and fixing lingering bugs, the overall game performance ought to increase as well.

Plus a certain talent from XSkills. There's probably other mods that allow the acquisition of steel bits as well. Under normal, unaltered gameplay, I don't believe it's possible to obtain steel bits.

Tool breakage is more for game balancing, than it is realism. Realistically, tools shouldn't break or wear out that fast(save for stone tools), however, if tools lasted as long in-game as they do in real life then players would really only need to make tools once, and never again. The idea is for players to acquire better materials to create tools from, so that they last longer, as well as still require players to replenish their raw materials every so often. What I would do instead, is just add a sharpening mechanic with a grindstone, and let players sacrifice a tiny bit of tool/weapon durability for more damage/faster workspeed while the item is still sharp. That way you can get a little more out of the tool/weapon, as long as you're willing to put in the time to properly maintain it. However, it will still wear out, so you'll still need to replace them and make sure you have the materials to do so.

https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/28 https://mods.vintagestory.at/aculinaryartillery Now I do like a more in-depth cooking system, however...for the base game, I think it's better to have a simpler system in place to avoid confusing players or adding "clutter gameplay" that may be fun but pull too much attention from other gameplay areas. That being said... A roasting spit to cook several items at once would be awesome, and a good fit for the game too. Could double the total portions you can cook at once with it. Useful in singleplayer for cooking large batches of jam/preserved food at once, and useful in multiplayer for feeding a lot of friends at once. The main drawback I would give it, is that it can't be equipped in the cookpot slots on the mounts--you'd need to devote one of your inventory slots in order to bring it with you on a trip. Or rather than cooking a meal, let the frying pan cook meat faster, by simply having the ingredient stack you place in it maintain its temperature(as long as the pan stays heated), instead of starting over from 0 C every time a new item starts cooking.

If you leave the area for a little while and come back later, the bowtorn should despawn. The wolves will not, but it'll be much easier to kill them with the bowtorn gone, as others have noted, and it's less effort to let it despawn than to try to kill it.

Hence why I'm fine with the current drop rates that we have. It's a nice little bonus every once in a while, but it's not so much that players are encouraged to hunt them down for the loot. There's better ways of acquiring most everything the monsters drop, outside of perhaps the Jonas parts and temporal gears. Those are best acquired from hunting monsters, however, only the rarest, most dangerous types drop them, which means players that seek those will need to be making a significant resource investment into that task.

IS THAT HOW HE DID IT?! I've been wracking my brain about it for a while, but that makes a lot of sense!

They have, which I'll probably end up posting when I do my write-up on chapter two. May go for that this weekend. I know there's a few clues about it in chapter two. And a few of my theories seem to have proven to be correct, though not all(and not necessarily the ones regarding the Salvation Engine either). It is in the Noble Quarters, yeah. My theory on why that occurred has since changed, given where else you find those rusty tendrils...though I will not be saying where you find them here. Oh it absolutely did, without a doubt. Again, I'm not going to go into detail here, as that's best suited for a different thread. What I will say though, is that while I do believe quite a bit is left up to the player to draw their own conclusions, the environmental design is very important when it comes to figuring certain things out. When you see overlapping designs, they're usually related in some fashion.

I've been chewing on chapter two and really need to stop being lazy and do a proper write-up on it all. I've had similar thoughts myself. With creative mode it'd be easy, and by easy I mean it would be quite time-consuming, and you still wouldn't be able to actually move in and live there...but it'd look nicer, at least. The Resonance Archive is the location itself, which is essentially the last great collection of all of mankind's knowledge...or what's left of it, anyway. A lot was confiscated by selfish nobles, and I presume that a certain old friend may have scavenged quite a lot when he was able to visit the location. The large device central to the location is the Echo Chamber, which I presume acts as a sort of "audio library". The scribes that used to inhabit portions of the Archive probably filtered out any new information that the device collected, and transcribed it into physical literature. As for who built the structure...I'm not sure. Probably some wealthy benefactors of the Old World, who later ended up siding with Jonas Falx when it came down to trying to save the world. I don't know that Jonas was involved directly, but the technology that he pioneered is present throughout the Archive. Jonas himself was brilliant by nature, though a lot of his ideas seem to have been retrieved from a different realm entirely, accessed via his "Lens" invention. Apparently, he took notes on what he saw there, and reverse-engineered things to create his own tech. I also think it may go a little deeper than that, and I wouldn't be surprised if he made some sort of Faustian bargain unintentionally to acquire his knowledge, or if someone else took advantage of his inventions and pushed the science a little too far. Of course, the simplest explanation is that Falx was simply brilliant, but had too great of task set before him, ultimately saving the world at the cost of severe destruction and loss of his own sanity. I think a lot of it is just structural collapse after centuries of disrepair and getting shuffled around as the world itself twists and shifts in the wake of the cataclysm. There's definitely something supernaturally wrong with the place as well, as there are spaces that have been...er...copied, and aren't necessarily oriented in an kind of logical fashion. Case in point: one of the rooms in the Commons is mirrored on the ceiling, complete with upside-down furniture. There's also an area in the Bell Workshop that is copied diagonally, leading absolutely nowhere and making no logical structural sense. Yep, it's Tobias. Chapter Two clears that up. I also believe Jonas is still alive, somewhere, though that's a subject for another thread.

You should be fine just toughing it out; carrying metal around won't increase your chances of being struck. To my knowledge, the lightning strikes happen randomly, and while it's possible you could get struck by lightning, the chance is very low.

Leather armor is really more of a fantasy thing; Vintage Story goes for a more realistic approach. You can harden leather, yes, but it's never going to offer the same level of protection as metal armor. In many cases, weapons will go right through it, whereas metal is very effective at stopping or heavily mitigating most weapon strikes. What I would do, is make the ingredients MUCH cheaper, like on par with the mid-tier bronze kind of cheap, and keep the high leather cost(basic leather, not sturdy). The idea is that the armor set can function as a mid-tier armor set roughly on par with gambeson, so not amazing protection, but decent enough to use if one doesn't want to sink the resources into metal armor and wants to save flax for other projects. Or, just keep the leather sets we already have, but let players dye them different colors. Then leather stays relevant as a fashion choice that also happens to offer some basic protection without much penalty. Edit: To clarify, a leather steampunk armor set would be really cool, but I think that's best left to modding territory, as it doesn't really fit the base game. For a steampunk armor that fits the base game, I would utilize cupronickel alloy and a lot of Jonas tech to make a sort of power suit, if anything.

Is that not what that is? A non-magical water bucket? Did I misunderstand and you meant make the water than you pick up disappear, and reappear wherever you place it? If that's the case, you'd need to figure out a way to have water replenished, in a way that doesn't require a ton of system resources to calculate. The drops are already randomized from a loot table. I can't say that getting two fibers would be particularly exciting either, or particularly memorable. The little bits that you sometimes get are certainly nice, but the majority of flax should be coming from crops, not monsters. If monsters dropped more, I'd still be concerned about it being too easy to acquire a fair amount of flax in the early game without putting in the farm work. Ah. Yeah, that would be a multiplayer-specific setting, if it were added, as it's not something that's needed for singleplayer. Which, that's also one of the drawbacks to multiplayer, especially on large servers where someone is online most of the time, or servers where one player isn't playing at the same rate as everyone else. Time will continue to pass as long as someone is online, which can cause other problems than a missed cherry crop if one doesn't play as often as others.

The sawblades, locusts, higher tier drifters, and the bell can all easily mess a player up if they don't have particularly good reflexes or gear, especially if there's more than one or two after the player at the same time. Generally speaking though, the Resonance Archive isn't a place that the player is going to get swarmed. That's a different location. This is true, it's an uncompromising survival game with elements of eldritch horror. In my opinion, the difficulty matches the rest of the game. Bears, wolves, and some large herbivores will easily rip a new player to shreds, as will the monsters. It's easy to die, even for veteran players. The Resonance Archive isn't much different in what it expects from the player. In fact I'd argue it's actually the easiest part of the story so far. I disagree--the Wither is actually a pretty bad example of what a boss fight should be. As an entity, the design is fine--it has a cool appearance, and the overall mechanics work. For those who don't know, the Wither triggers an explosion near itself when you spawn it, dealing a lot of damage and destroying blocks. It then flies into the air and attacks the player at range until it's knocked to half health, in which case it grounds itself and you'll need to finish it off with melee as ranged attacks will no longer damage it. The Wither's attacks do quite a bit of damage, complete with extra damage over a few seconds. That's for Java edition; the Bedrock version is a lot harder, but I've never played Bedrock and don't care to: I always go by Java. In any case, it's an easy fight if you have good enchanted armor, enchanted weapons, and some sort of healing items...which is also fine because it's more of a kids' game. However, the real problem with the fight is that the previously mentioned stuff...doesn't actually matter, because you can just abuse the game mechanics to the point that you can avoid the Wither's attacks entirely. Just shove it into a bedrock ceiling in the Nether via redstone sorcery and it'll suffocate itself, or do like the OP said and just spawn it in a tiny room deep underground so it can never really do much of anything. Other bosses and puzzles in Minecraft suffer from similar issues--there's no need to actually deal with the mechanics, since you can just place/break blocks at your leisure and otherwise abuse game mechanics to circumvent the intended way to do things. Is that bad? For Minecraft, not really...it's part of the charm, I would argue. But it's not a design that works for a game like Vintage Story, hence why all the story locations have protections in place to prevent players from tampering with most things. Which is why you keep an ear out for sounds that are suspicious, or otherwise out of place. Also why you should take a look around you every so often, to make sure that nothing is sneaking up on you. Couldn't have said it better myself. You actually can, if you go into the settings and switch on the immersive first person mode. It's still experimental. I'll also point out that you can use F5 to cycle through a couple of third person views as well, though I'll also point out that most of what you'll be seeing at any given time...is still right in front of you. You'll still need to actually stop and look around to get the full scope of your surroundings. Yes and no. My general strategy is to keep close enough to it that it'll focus more on melee swings, but far enough away to be just out of reach--darting in after it swings in order to deal my own damage. It also helps to keep more to the eidolon's sides, towards the back, as those aren't prime areas for boulder-throwing. Last but not least, I always try to make sure I stay on the move; a moving target is harder to hit, and when it slams the ground(you WILL go flying whenever it does this) it makes it easier to get back into position. If I need to heal, I run circles around the boss while burning through a stack of poultices, or otherwise try to keep to its backside/behind a pillar while I heal. If armor is too much of a setback for healing, you can try just removing one piece of armor, so you get more healing while still having a fair amount of protection. Last but not least, once the eidolon hits about 1/4 health, locusts will start spawning, so you'll need to focus on burning through the rest of the boss's health rather than dealing with them, as they respawn quickly. It's also one of the reasons that staying on the move is so important, since locusts have a hard time keeping up with a running target. The first is a pretty big clue, really, if you pay attention to the layout of the Archive. At a glance it might only look like set dressing, but the room happens to be situated right underneath the passage to the Library...exactly where the hole leads. As for the note, the note is what clues the player in on the rusty old robot perhaps having some malicious life left in it still. Well, that, and videogame logic dictates that there's usually a boss battle before you get the treasure. As for what the treasure hunter tells you about the place, it's worth noting that when an NPC tells you something is dangerous, it's a good idea to heed the warning. Better to overprepare, than brush it off and find yourself in trouble later. Vintage Story is not a game that will pull its punches. It's also a very good idea to take an extra temporal gear or two with you if you're going far from home. Alternately, you can just turn the "keep inventory on death" rule on, and not need to worry about losing your stuff either. Sure, but it would also mean that those who come after such a change...don't get the satisfaction that comes with finishing a tough challenge either, and the content wouldn't really hold as much replay value. Vintage Story constantly challenges players and encourages them to improve their skills--it's one of the main appeals of the game. It's rough on new players, yes, because the learning curve is steep and like I said before it doesn't pull punches, but it will also happily punish veteran players who get complacent. And if something isn't to one's liking, Vintage Story is also very customizable, so if there isn't a setting for a thing, there's probably a mod that will handle it, and if there's no mod it's relatively easy to make one(when compared to making a mod for other games). This is what I would recommend too, at least when you feel ready to tackle the Archive again OP. The eidolon does eventually respawn, so you can take a crack at it again on your hunter in the same world if you wish. However, I would recommend starting a new world and trying one of the other classes instead for a change of pace...preferably one that does not have a penalty to melee damage. It's worth a look, as there's a lot of cool stuff and lore to discover. Without spoiling too much, there is another boss fight in chapter two, and in some ways it's easier than the first boss, as it's a lot easier to avoid incoming damage entirely. However, with that being said...I would also say that the second boss fight is MUCH more unforgiving than the first; if you make a mistake on the second boss, it likely means your death. You will be wanting to bring a temporal gear or two to reset your spawn, if you don't have access to a terminus teleporter.

I tend to have iron by the end of the first summer, steel by the end of the first year(year 0). Fully developed homestead complete with livestock and fruit trees as well. It's a fast pace, sure, but I prefer to reach the higher-end equipment quickly as it's easier to focus on building and stuff with better tools and weapons. Now the main story content is a completely different pace. I can certainly beat both chapters by the end of year 0, but it's not unusual for me to wait until midway into year 1 or so before even starting on the main story content.

That's...kind of the point though. They move fast, with a hit-and-run tactic. Their main weaknesses are that they can't fit into smaller spaces(they need 2x2 to navigate), and that they randomly spaz out leaving the player with a short window of attack opportunity. Pretty much. I think they might do slightly less damage, in return for having a bit more health. Not entirely true. They're more lethal because they're fairly fast and able to chase you down more easily. However, the player can still outrun them, provided the player isn't weighed down too much by armor. As for backpedaling to dodge, it's definitely possible, especially if you time your counterattacks well, but it takes practice and requires good reflexes. If you know what sounds the shivers make, you can easily tell if one is nearby, and whether or not it has noticed you. If you hear a raspy growl, it's time to have your sword and shield at the ready, because it's in the process of charging. Agreed. Or at least, let them climb over one-block walls/fences, but maybe not walls that are higher than that. I believe the bellhead shivers, stilt shivers, and deepslit shivers can all drop the same loot as a double-headed drifter. The deepslits appear during temporal storms, and I think the other two spawn deep underground near the mantle.

I just want to note that one doesn't need alcohol-soaked bandages for the first boss. The basic horsetail poultices will do just fine, and if you pack the raw materials and only craft the poultices as you need them(after taking damage, prior to entering the boss area) you use your inventory slots more efficiently. Overall, I would say the honey-linen bandages are the best choice for first aid when adventuring. Like the alcohol bandages, they heal 7 hp per bandage, but don't dry out, meaning that you can use them at-will instead of needing to stop and prepare them. The drawback is that they're a bit more of a resource investment.

Multiple people should be able to hurt the same target, but I think it heavily depends on the timing of the attacks. There's a very short window of time after hitting a target, where it's "immune" to being hit again. So if you have multiple players after one target, you'll want to stagger your attacks a bit to make sure that multiple attacks aren't landing at the exact same time. Definitely a bit wonky, but I'm not sure how one would go about fixing it. It kinda depends. I'd say plate armor is a stronger choice if you have a friend or two to bring with you, and a weaker choice if you're by yourself. Typically I go for brigandine, myself, as it's easy to make and provides decent protection. Plate armor generally comes much later, and I generally use it to deal with late-game temporal storms.

I play Blackguard as well, and occasionally fail to harvest resin. Most of the time it drops, but sometimes it doesn't. I believe resin counts as a foraged material, similar to mushrooms, so Blackguard suffers a similar penalty to the drop chance with it.

Oof, yeah, didn't even think about that one. I recall reading a post the other day where someone had trouble with their chickens escaping...turned out that it was a mod that allowed drifters to open doors and gates, which somehow also gave that ability to chickens. While it was a funny read, it would certainly not be funny to have a bunch of high level livestock vanish because a rusty miscreant tore apart the fencing.

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.