LadyWYT

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.

I can usually pick out the bee buzzing, but sometimes I get really unlucky with the spawns or have issues picking it out from high wind/leaves rustling. In those cases, I just throw on the Buzzwords mod and go back to looking, then remove the mod once I'm done. I'd say if bee finding really becomes an issue with additional background noise, the bee noises could either be increased a bit, or perhaps there could be an occasional bee spawn within a certain radius of a hive that you could follow back to its home, provided you have sharp eyes. Similar to the Buzzwords mod and suggested in a different topic, game subtitles could also be turned on to assist as well. 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.

I love it, especially the kiln and mount stuff. Thanks Tyron! Though seeing the ship pics, I'm wondering if I'm correct in this hunch--do I sense a woodworking system in the works? I've noticed this a time or two when playing(although it looked like the sun moving over the moon instead) and wondered if we'd see eclipses factored into the game at some point. Though I also figured it wasn't likely as it's a small detail. Nice to see I was wrong though!

Forest noises are creepy? A few of them can be, if you're not familiar enough with nature to know(or at least, have a good guess) as to what's making it. Now more ambient nature noises would definitely be appreciated, and add more layers of atmosphere to the game, but I think the more important factor to consider for triggering a player's terror is to make their own imagination do the work. The darkness level of the game's nighttime/underground already does a hefty amount of the work, as you're not able to see much, leaving your mind free to imagine whatever beasties there may or may not be out there. To hone in on that further with sound, I'd go for more indistinct noises, like a branch occasionally snapping, or dead leaves rustling, that sort of thing. Could have easily been the wind, or a rabbit or fox, but it could easily have been a bear lumbering around in the brush as well. Or even something worse, assuming the new rift monster is more of a stalking type creature. The drifters don't strike me as particularly stealthy creatures, and I'd imagine they'd make plenty of noise crashing through bushes in addition to their groaning. In regards to friendlier nighttime sounds--we're getting ambient frogs and insects added next update, although I don't know if they will have specific times/weather conditions to be making noises(aside from seasonal variation). Bird sounds would be awesome, even if we don't actually have any birds yet aside from chickens. The other benefit to friendlier background noise is that not does it give the player a cozier environment to immerse themselves in while playing...it also gets them to let their guard down more easily! Which makes the drifters and other monsters that much creepier when you do encounter them. Though I'd also say too that if you had a monster like that out in the woods, the creepier thing wouldn't be so much the noise that it might be making, but rather all the other noises that fall silent when it's around. Nature doesn't typically go absolutely silent unless there's something major about to go down, like a really bad storm.

Most likely, it will enable ruins and trader generation as well as the story-relevant items(Jonas tech, lore books), while also enabling the supernatural enemies and temporal mechanics. So it probably won't be any different than one of the other standard game modes in that regard. It never hurts to try though! I could also see an option added in a later update that gives the player more control on the density and frequency of supernatural mob spawns. I doubt they'll ever be toggled off entirely due to story reasons, but the player might be able to adjust the settings to only allow 1-5 to spawn rarely, or have hoards of them running amuck most days if they so desire.

Hello, and welcome to the forums! This mod may achieve what you're looking for: https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/5603 It's a bit old, but judging from the comments it should still work in 1.19. And it should stop all the monsters from spawning, not just the drifters, while leaving wildlife and ruins alone. Otherwise, if you're going completely unmodded, the only way to disable monster spawns completely is to pick the Homo Sapiens game mode. However, picking this game mode will remove all lore content, which includes ruins, traders, and anything else that's not part of a real world survival experience.

The only differences between seraphs and humans that I'm aware of, other than the seraph's ability to respawn at a set location, is that seraphs are about a head taller than humans on average, and have oddly colored skin and eyes. The clothing styles remain the same, as fashion likely hasn't been a priority for humans, and seraphs are changed humans from a bygone era that have only now reappeared in the world. So the seraphs are arriving with the clothes they wore previously, and likely stick with the human styles both for convenience and familiarity. It's also worth noting that depending on the dialogue options you pick with the traders, they remain polite but make a point of the fact that the player characters are "others"--not human. As I recall, when they mention the survivor villages, they don't explicitly state that the villages are populated by humans, but I believe it's implied given the traders' reaction to the player characters. If the villages were populated by seraphs, the player wouldn't at all be a strange entity to the traders, and the traders would probably make a point of directing the player to one of the villages(that haven't yet been implemented) for help, instead of giving a polite "Sorry, wish I could do more to help ya!" @ifoz The more I think about it, the more sense it makes to add villages as specific story locations and not randomly generated points of interest like the trader wagons or ruins. While it does ultimately mean fewer things to find in the world, I highly doubt anyone is going to try to explore the entire world map on standard settings. Plus the advantage of having a few specific locations instead means that the buildings and NPCs can be fleshed out much more thoroughly, to the extent that they can have actual personalities and not be identified purely by their occupation.

The more I think about it, the more I feel this is the route to go for more interesting inventory management(in addition to adding other types of specialized bags, similar to the mining bag). A minecart would require the player to build some infrastructure to support it, and might only be able to hold mining-related goods or humanoids, but would give players the incentive to spend more time in the mines digging for stone/ore since they can now haul more out in one trip. A handcart(which I think already exists in the game) incentivizes players to spend more time chopping trees or collecting other materials, as it allows them to transport large quantities of goods more easily. An animal cart could operate like the handcart, with the added advantage of being a bit faster and carrying even more. More specialized bags give the player more options for how to handle their personal inventory. A hunter's pack might keep raw animal products fresh for longer, which would make it ideal to bring on long hunting trips. Equipping all four slots with the same specialized bag would give you a huge advantage in completing the related task, but would put you at a major disadvantage trying to complete unrelated tasks should you keep them equipped. General-purpose bags(like the leather backpacks) work the best for multi-tasking, but aren't necessarily the most efficient option a player could pick due to having fewer slots than a specialized bag.

Thorfinn covered most of it, although I think the "best" approach depends somewhat on your chosen class and preferred playstyle. I play Blackguard mostly, which is strong in close quarters combat but weak at range. A Hunter, however, will want to stay out of melee and pick targets off at range, and wearing heavy armor will interfere with that kind of combat. Personally, I don't really worry about going out during the storms until I have iron weapons and armor(bronze at minimum). Flax fiber is more easily farmed from flax plants, rusty gears are easy enough to acquire via ruin loot or selling things to traders. Temporal gears I really only need a handful of, and these will occasionally drop from lower tier drifters, which don't pose as great of risk. The main prize of temporal storms, in my opinion, is the Jonas parts that can(but don't always) drop from the double-headed drifters. Jonas parts can't be crafted, but are necessary for crafting the late game steampunk gizmos. If you're really intent on tackling temporal storms with early game equipment, I would build a small watchtower that drifters cannot climb into or spawn in, and then use that as a vantage point to pick off the drifters at range. Spears will do more damage than arrows at this stage of the game, but will have a shorter range and do not stack, so if you're going this route make sure that you have plenty of spears to throw. On the other hand, if you don't mind some really cheesy strategy--build a small covered box(maybe like 5x5 and 2 blocks tall), and chisel out some holes that are big enough for you to poke a spear through, but not big enough to allow a drifter to crawl through. Make sure you have plenty of spears, knives, and healing items, then hide in the box during the storm and poke away when the drifters come after you! There are better ways to build killboxes than this, but you get the idea. If you're fighting them melee, you can hit them and then step back out of range right before they swing to dodge the hit. You are correct though, that it is very tough--if you get the timing of your movement even a little bit wrong, the consequences can be dire with good gear, or fatal with early game equipment. Of course, I really don't recommend tackling them melee in the early game, lol, at least without a killbox or other major advantage. They take around 4-5 hits to kill with a good weapon; with a flint/copper spear it's going to take even longer.

Isn't it only in certain types of weather though, not just strong wind? I've had it happen in blizzards and sandstorms, but not in thunderstorms or clears days with strong wind.

Hello to you as well! I love it, and you could probably achieve it without the need for adding a special item either. Just add the nails to a chiseled piece to fuse it into one item, with the drawback that it can't be further altered with chiseling and has a maximum size limit(perhaps 3 tall by 5 wide). That should cover most types of furniture, without paving the way for too many exploits, although I could be wrong. Like this mod? https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/2002 Maybe for a hardcore mode, but I think the current inventory system is fine for standard gameplay. Early game, you're limited in what you can carry with you, because you don't have many slots. The leather backpacks are the current best option overall, as they have the most slots for a general bag and will allow you to carry quite a lot. Mining bags have more slots than a leather backpack, but can only hold items related to mining. The glider only has two slots of inventory available, but allows you to potentially mitigate deadly falls while offering an interesting travel option. So while the leather backpacks are a good choice, they're not always the best choice depending on what you want to do, and Vintage Story's more limited stack size in some cases will also affect how you accomplish certain tasks(such as potentially needing to make a separate trip to loot a ruin, should you find one while mining). Weight Limit: The main issue I see here is that it sounds fun in theory, until you try to go on a mining expedition, logging trip, ruin looting, or do any kind of serious building. You could use a handcart to haul more at once, but you're still going to need to make multiple trips to load the cart, and each trip you have to make is time that could have been spent doing other things. That could get very tedious very quickly. Smaller Stack Size: Poses a similar issue to the weight limit. The less you can carry at once, the more time you'll have to spend running back and forth to accomplish certain things. Tetris Style Inventory: Still poses the same issue as the prior two options, except in this case it's harder to balance how many slots an item/stack uses, and how believable it is compared to other items/stacks. In short, I don't think it's a bad idea for an ultra-hardcore mode/option, as players who select that mode will know what they're signing up for. I don't think it's a good change for the default game mode, as requiring more time for a task doesn't always equate to the task being more fun to do or rewarding when finished. There's a reason many videogames don't have super realistic limits when it comes to character inventory, after all.

This is probably why most will opt for a pre-existing landmark instead of building their own. If it's already there, it's less work on your end of things typically, although it depends on your building style. Outside of using creative mode to make some adjustments, it's also not as easy to mob-proof the insides of hollow builds. Although with the way Vintage Story's lighting currently works, a hollow build is going to end up with a weird glow around pieces of it if you leave it hollow and light the inside to keep drifters from spawning. Lots of villages don't really fit the post-apocalyptic theme, and while there might be a proper city or two that comes into play later, I don't get the impression that survivors have progressed much further than the odd village or two. As for where the traders are acquiring their goods, they do mention the existence of villages, although they also make it very clear that those are few and far between, and difficult to find if you choose to go looking. How they refer to the player(and others like the player) indicates that seraphs have only recently begun to appear in the world, and haven't been around long enough or in enough numbers to know much about them. If, however, the traders were acquiring their wares from seraph settlements, they shouldn't find the player a strange entity at all. It's also worth noting this short story: https://www.vintagestory.at/stories/storyexcerpt-ghosts.html/ It's set post-calamity, and the majority of characters are human, with the main reference character being a human hunter named Bardo. The driving factor of the story is the appearance of a seraph in the settlement--perhaps the first one they've ever seen--and while they aren't unfriendly to the stranger they find him quite odd. Of course, the story and lore could change as the game progresses, but I think we can reasonably expect to see a village or two later on, at least for the main game modes. For the Homo Sapiens survival mode I don't expect to see them, as it would defeat the whole purpose of that game mode, lol.

I think there's a trader or two that sells them, isn't there? I think they can be found sometimes as ruin loot. I know that they can also drop from panning, although it's a very low chance. The best method of getting them is still via drifters, and the higher tier the better, with the best being the double-headers that only come via temporal storm(at least at this time).

Hence why I think villages would be best implemented as very rare points of interests, to the extent that you need to travel a few thousand blocks to find the first one, and then several thousand more to find another. The current protection system for major points of interest(traders, the Archive) would probably be enough to prevent players from acquiring certain resources too easily, like what happens in the other block game. A reputation system would be an alternate method of protection, allowing the player to still influence the world directly but making it undesirable to raze villages, murder villagers, or otherwise engage in theft via looting their possessions/crops/livestock. Making them a rare spawn would also make them much more exciting to find, and more valuable as a trading hub or safe place to rest when traveling. Even moreso if there are items that can only be acquired via bartering in a village. Most importantly though, it would preserve the lonely survival aspect of the game, as moving to a village(or more likely, somewhere close to the village) isn't going to be an option until later in the game when you have a good means of travel. Never underestimate the determination of a gamer with an epic build plan. I'd also argue that when it's a point of interest that easy to find, you stop feeling bad about razing it to build there, even if it was occupied by NPCs. Although in all fairness, the NPCs in the other block game tend to be rather good at removing themselves from the world, which is one major reason why most players tend to end up locking them in tiny cells for trading.

I would try to generate a new world with the new settings and see if it changes anything, rather than tampering with the old world's config and trying to regenerate chunks. Poke around a bit(popping into creative if necessary to speed things up)--if there's plenty of surface tin with the higher spawn settings, then something was probably going wrong when you were trying to change configs and regenerate chunks in the old world. If there's still no surface tin, then I would suspect that a mod might be causing an issue somehow. In which case, I would disable all the mods and test a new world with your preferred settings. If that solves it, then add your mods back in one at a time and keep testing on new worlds to make sure things are spawning as they should.

That's a dastardly level of humorous challenge, although I agree with @ifoz in that there shouldn't be too harsh of penalty for "firing" a worker. I would lean more towards giving NPCs random personality traits rather than class, and give the player control over which job they perform. So a worker with the Industrious trait would be more productive in most jobs, whereas a worker that's Lazy would be worse in most everything except fishing. A Green Thumb would be good at farming, and a Bloodthirsty NPC might be really good at fighting but prone to relentlessly pursuing enemies or less likely to get along with certain other NPCs. A Pacifist might also be good at farming or special "luxury roles(like acting as a bard or bartender) to boost NPC happiness, but probably won't get along with warmongering types. I'd also say that you can fire a worker at any time, but you won't get any of your resources back if you do(cost of hiring + whatever you didn't take from them before firing them). There's still a place for a reputation system though, and I think this probably works best if you decide to kill an NPC to collect their drops(perhaps a partial refund of hiring cost) instead of just firing them, or if you fire multiple NPCs in a row after hiring due to not getting the traits you wanted. Word would eventually spread about your shenanigans, and perhaps the consequence is that hiring new workers becomes more expensive to compensate for the risk, at least until your reputation improves. Likewise, you still need to make sure your workers have their basic needs met; workers that constantly go hungry and don't have adequate shelter will spread the word about your treatment, and may leave if conditions are bad enough. Likewise, if you don't properly equip combat NPCs, or protect civilian NPCs, the excess death rate will tank your reputation as well. On the flipside though, taking good care of your NPCs and providing good equipment and luxuries would increase your reputation, resulting in cheaper hire prices and happier workers. In short, it would be a lot to manage, but it could offer an interesting option for the end-game progression and world interaction. It would also fit nicely into the medieval feudalism niche. One drawback I can think of though, is that given what I've seen of the current lore, Falx's faction(which the player character seems to be or have been a part of) appears to operate more on principles of individual freedom instead of feudalism. The aristocracy of the Old World seem to be the ones inclined to stick to feudalism, if they're even still around as a faction. So it could offer some interesting alternate story options, but it could also conflict with how the developers want to tell the game's story. I think it depends somewhat how far Vintage Story intends to lean into RPG elements.

I know that villages/more NPCs are on the roadmap, but what their function is outside of storytelling/trade potential I'm not sure. There may be more clarity on intended NPC functions after the next update, as it's supposed to be adding at least four different locations important to the main story. I'm guessing that those may be villages, but it remains to be seen. Personally, I get the impression that the game intends for the player to be doing most work themselves, and partially automating certain tasks(like forging and milling) through medieval machinery. For some resources that you don't have ready access to, the intention seems to be bartering for them via traders. As I noted earlier, I would assume that villager NPCs that may be added in the future will function in similar fashion, as I'm not sure that having NPCs work for you fits the direction the game seems to be headed in currently. That being said, I wouldn't mind NPC workers for the player being added in, though I think it should be a late game goal to work towards. I'd also say that they should require a bit more effort to acquire and maintain than livestock. Perhaps you could pay a hefty amount of rusty gears at a village to hire a worker(for simplicity sake, perhaps a token that spawns an NPC). You'll need to equip them with tools to work with and weapons to hunt/defend themselves, as well as a place to live(which will also keep them safe from drifters, provided you light it). Similar to livestock, they'll need food in order to be productive(but perhaps not quite as much as a player needs), but unlike livestock they can retrieve food from designated areas and will abandon your service(despawn) if they can't get enough to eat. However, while they may require more effort to acquire and maintain, they could fully automate certain specific tasks such as tending farmland, tending livestock, or keeping the fires going in a refractory until it's finished refining. It would also be something interesting to manage in the late game, after you've established a solid foundation. The main drawback I see is that it might be difficult to code and require more system resources for the game to run smoothly. Mob AI is already a little derpy, so it would need some improvements in order for NPCs to pathfind efficiently and not get stuck somewhere and die. You'd also need a way to mark specific work areas, storage areas, homes, and resources for the NPCs to use, otherwise you're going to have an unorganized mess and resources used that you didn't intend.

I'm not sure what the mod allows and what it doesn't, as I've never used it. However, it's the one mod I'm aware of that adds friendly NPCs for players to interact with. From the description, I'm guessing that it allows the player to build their own village and designate tasks for the villagers, which I assume acts as a way to automate the production of certain resources. I know there's been a mod or two that did similar in the other block game, and task automation seems like it would be one of the primary reasons to build a village anyway.