LadyWYT

The main offender here, I think, is the arms and torso of the player model. The average person's arms(hands included) tend to end around the groin; the player character's/NPCs' arms though seem to extend to about the middle of the thigh, thus making the arms look too long and the torso too short. It's not the worst, and you do end up getting used to the look after a time, but it's also rather difficult to unsee once you notice it. While I wouldn't mind bulkier armor/clothing options, I think this would be better covered by a "body type" option in character creation. The current default could be "average", with slim, fat, and muscular types as variants that players and NPCs alike could use. That is a lot of work though, since it means eight different variants to account for(four for male models, four for female models). Still, I think players would have a lot of fun with it, and it would help provide more visual interest amongst NPCs, as well as help better flesh out their personalities.

In my experience, this method tends to be pretty reliable for checking quartz veins. I'd recommend checking a couple different spots in the vein, preferably away from the very outer edges, since the gold/silver tends to appear more towards the middle of the disk rather than the edges. This is a way to find silver and gold, but in my experience it's not particularly reliable. Silver and gold deposits are a very small part of the quartz vein, so the chances of one generating a bit of surface ore is very small indeed. It can also be easy to mistake them for quartz bits when they do generate.

Honestly, I'd figure that would be a realistic hazard for sleeping in what is essentially a large time-space anomaly, but I can also see why this would be a priority to fix.

There is, and while said lore might be better explained in the future, I tend to lean more towards the explanation of...it's a videogame. While it does lean heavily into realism regarding overall design, the fact that it's a videogame means that the player will automatically treat it as such by default, and thus do things that would not be advisable in real life. For example, wolves might be inclined to avoid humans whenever possible in real life, but if they always try to avoid the player in the game or can otherwise be scared off with ease, what the player ends up learning is that they don't actually need to pay attention to the videogame wolves. Likewise, wildlife is the only real enemy that exists in the Homo Sapiens game mode; while that gamemode isn't what Vintage Story is developed around, it should at least have some enemies that will pose a threat to the player, or else it becomes rather boring. That doesn't mean that the wildlife can't have more nuanced behavior, just that I don't think it's a good idea to try to achieve "100% realistic behavior", if such a thing were even possible.

Back protection is also very important, because not only is it preferable to have live soldiers than dead ones, but it's preferable to keep your living troops as uninjured as possible. Injured soldiers won't be able to fight as effectively, if they can even fight at all, and cost more resources to take care of, and lots of injuries can still damage the army's morale even if there weren't that many deaths. From a pure strategic standpoint, sometimes it's more ideal to inflict massive injuries on an enemy army without necessarily killing them, forcing them to spend more supplies, inhibiting their army's mobility, and damaging their morale.

I don't think it should require bones for repair, since I mean...the armor itself is made primarily of hide, and the bones seem to be mainly decorative. Any pelt should work just fine instead, perhaps with the amount repaired accounting for the size of the pelt used for the repairs. I suppose that does potentially lead to the awkward scenario of bear armor technically not being bear armor anymore after a time if other creature pelts are always used for repairs, but eh...that detail could probably be ignored in this particular circumstance.

Welcome to the forums! I think this option would be a good way to satisfy the majority of players, and it's requested fairly often. That's not to say it'll ever get added to the game, but it's an option I could see getting added over some of the other suggestions I've seen float through the forums. This part I actually disagree with though. Options for "natural" creature hostility and "unnatural" creature hostility; having an option for each specific creature type(bears, wolves, drifters, etc) is too much and will bloat the menu. That's not to say that creature behavior couldn't be a little more varied though. Some animals could be more aggressive than others as well as display that aggression differently, and the occasional individual could even be unusually aggressive/calm for that particular species. However, there should always be some uncertainty to dealing with wild animals, unless the player has set them to neutral or completely passive; otherwise you end up with players just ignoring the animals and not regarding them as a serious potential threat. As for the monsters...no, those should absolutely be aggressively intent on killing players. They are, after all, monsters, and don't really need much of a reason to be murder machines. That doesn't mean they can't employ different tactics depending on the circumstances or monster type(such as monsters sometimes retreating when injured or shivers favoring hit-and-run tactics), but they shouldn't be creatures that the player can safely ignore unless the player changed their game settings to make such creatures passive. Additionally, letting monsters behave like monsters also means that if/when the player does happen to run across a "friendly monster", it's a much more interesting experience.

It might not be used to hang corpses, but it could easily be used to hang cuts of meat for aging, like what Expanded Foods and Ancient Tools allow, in addition to hanging bundles of herbs and other things. A Culinary Artillery just adds the tools--it does nothing on its own. The player will need to install a mod like Expanded Foods in order to actually have a use for those tools. The hooks would be a great option for hanging more stuff on the wall though. We do already have tool racks for that purpose, but tool racks don't necessarily fit the aesthetic of every room.

Hooks could easily be added to the base game, but they really ought to have a purpose before they're added, otherwise they're just a cosmetic item. Not that there's anything wrong with cosmetic items, but there are definitely more interesting decorations that could be added. As for the uses, you've listed several good ones, however, it's important to note that the hooks used to create something like a grappling hook or spice/meat hanger are going to be quite different than the hooks one would create for fishing. Videogame logic could be applied to simplify things, but I think a lot of players would be questioning why the same hook used to craft a fishing pole can also be used to craft a grappling hook, despite the hooks obviously being very different sizes. The best solution, I think, would be to just add two varieties of hooks--one large and one small. Large hooks can be used to create furniture like spice/meat racks, coat racks, lantern hangers, etc. Small hooks could be used for fishing and jewelry. Large hooks could be a forge recipe, while small hooks could be casting only or perhaps require jewelry-making techniques to craft. I don't really see why they wouldn't, unless they specifically want to override the vanilla recipes for some reason.

Welcome to the game and forums! One thing to check is go into your game settings, click the Interface tab, and make sure that "Block info overlay" and "Block interaction help" are both turned on. The former helps you figure out what kind of block you're looking at and whether it needs a particular quality of tool to break, while the latter is a handy "cheat sheet" on some of the various interaction shortcuts. A couple of things to check here, some of which @Rainbow Fresh already mentioned--make sure that the knife is actually a knife, and not a knife blade. It's an easy mistake to make. To make a knife, just combine the blade with a stick or bone(not small bones) in the crafting grid. Also make sure that the grass is actually grass. This probably sounds a bit silly, however, there is at least one plant type in the game--the redtop grass stuff--that is technically grass but counts as a type of flower and not grass when it comes to actual gameplay. Likewise, trying to harvest grass marked as "eaten" will destroy the grass and yield nothing. However, "eaten" grass currently only appears if the player has harvested it. If you're trying to harvest normal grass with a knife/scythe and are getting nothing, it sounds like you may have found a bug, which you should report on the Github bug tracker( https://github.com/anegostudios/VintageStory-Issues/issues ), or an issue with mods if you are playing with mods installed(I'm assuming this isn't the case, but some new players jump right into modding). A couple other things I recommend checking if you still wish to give the game a try--make sure you're on Standard or Exploration difficulty as your general difficulty choice, and NOT Wilderness Survival or Homo Sapiens. It's not that new players can't start playing with one of the latter two, just that Vintage Story is a rather difficult, challenging game up front even on the Standard difficulty(the general intended difficulty). Wilderness Survival and Homo Sapiens are the hardest preset difficulties available and have MUCH less margin for error as well as disable some useful tools(like the minimap). One mistake that many new players make is looking at the blocky aesthetics and assuming that Vintage Story is just like Minecraft, when that is very much not the case. However, if you don't like the game, that's okay too. It should still be possible to get a refund, and it seems like you've already taken steps to do so.

Mushrooms, I'm guessing. There are some in the game that induce psychedelic effects when eaten.

Kind of. I think the chunk stability also matters, since unstable chunks tend to have more monsters than stable ones. Most underground chunks are unstable, but the ones that aren't drastically so should have fewer monsters as well. The key to remember though is that less instability and lower rift activity only means fewer monsters, not that you'll see no monsters at all. Equipping armor, bringing a weapon and healing supplies, and keeping an eye on the surroundings and rift activity are still very much advised. In any case though, I'd recommend keeping an eye on the rift activity when you're going underground and see if that doesn't clear up some of the trouble. If you've got the resources for lanterns, you could light up the mines you're currently using and then just move the lanterns whenever you're done with the mine. That can get expensive though. Personally, I like to use oil lamps for lighting things up underground. They may not stop monster spawns, but they're cheap and don't burn out, and seeing where the monsters are makes them much easier to deal with than having them sneak around undetected in the darkness.

Welcome to the forums! Monsters should clear out of a mine after a time, at least as long as you travel far enough away from it. However, mines also tend to be prime places for monsters to spawn since they're dark, deep underground, and usually have enough space for several monsters to spawn. While I'm not sure there's a way to really stop them from spawning or adjust their aggression without affecting everything else in the game, there is one thing you can do to cut down somewhat on the number of monsters you'll need to deal with underground. Rift activity affects underground spawns, so it's better to save mining and underground exploration for days with low rift activity and only deal with the occasional monster. On days with higher activity, it's generally better to remain on the surface since the underground will generally be a lot busier on these days. To my knowledge, no, at least not currently. I'd be surprised if the feature wasn't added some day though.

Nope, that's the one.

Are you playing with any mods and did you make sure that they were updated appropriately for 1.22? Older mods sometimes work on newer game version, but 1.22 introduced changes that broke a lot of older mods. If you updated to 1.22 around the same time the issues began to happen, that could be why. Aside from that, I think there were a few issues with blockIDs in some of the earlier iterations of 1.22. If the world was generated on an earlier game version, that could be what's happening here. Remapping or regenerating the chunks should fix the issue in that case, at least I think, but you'll want to backup your world before doing this, as well as make sure that things like mounts are not currently in the chunks you're trying to remap/regen, since it's very easy for something to go wrong in these scenarios.

Subnautica: Below Zero added a creature that could steal stuff from the player's inventory, and that creature is easily one of the most hated in the franchise, to my knowledge.

Eh...it really depends on the individual's personality. It's also difficult for a sound effect or motion to actually be creepy when there's clearly nothing actually causing said sound or motion. That is, a random knock on the door might be creepy the first couple times a player hears it...until they figure out it's just a random sound and there's no actual creature producing it. Same goes for random animations on armor stands or other objects--if there's not a clear cause to the effect, it just becomes a part of the background that's easily ignored. @Rainbow Fresh also makes a good point--Vintage Story does have certain horror elements in its design, but it's not a horror game. Horror games also tend to appeal to a specific demographic rather than a more general audience, so applying horror elements too liberally can end up driving away many players that were part of the original target audience.

Honestly, the most I expect to see with 1.23 is more detailed information later this year, with the initial drop arriving sometime early next year. My reasoning for that is that 1.22 took quite a while to be developed(and technically is still missing a couple of things), and the devs enjoy pushing their limits, so having another full update before the end of the year just doesn't seem likely. 1.24 I have no idea. Maybe by the end of 2027, but that depends on how much is packed into 1.23. 1.24 is supposed to introduce the next story chapter, and story updates are probably the most demanding ones to develop since they often introduce a lot of new lore content and locations in addition to new gameplay mechanics.

In fairness, I'm not entirely against allowing monsters to break down doors. Just that if it's a mechanic that's going to exist, it shouldn't be easily bypassed by the player exploiting other game mechanics, like placing trapdoors or haybales in front of the door to block monster pathing.

It probably looks as described on the home page: Vintage Story is an uncompromising wilderness survival sandbox game inspired by eldritch horror themes. That is, the main focus of the game is a realistic survival sandbox that doesn't necessarily weight challenges in favor of the player, that also has some gritty realistic and horror elements in the lore. The game covers technology appropriate to the general medieval era, since constraining things to earlier time periods limits what the player can do, and going beyond the medieval period easily makes it stop feeling like a survival game and more like a space age/industrial game with extra steps. But as to exactly what features make it into the finished game, or what the lore/setting is like beyond that brief overview is impossible to say for certain. Ideas can get added, cut, or reworked entirely as needed, and parts of the lore may only exist as vague concepts rather than fleshed out ideas. Many games have the player on a distinct set of rails, shuttling them along from point to point at a specific pace, with the player's actions influencing the story very little. While it's not bad storytelling in itself, it does end up teaching players that their actions don't really have any consequences outside of predetermined outcomes, and that the player doesn't really need to pay attention to what's going on in the world itself since the game will make it impossible for the player to miss anything that's actually important. Skyrim is a good example of this kind of design--quest markers are everywhere, rarely any need to ask for directions/more information, most quests are automatically added to the journal and can't be failed, etc. Vintage Story doesn't operate on those principles though. The player will need to pay attention to events and information provided by the world around them if they want to figure out what's going on and know how to deal with various situations, and they ignore things like lore books and NPC dialogue at their own risk. The story itself is mostly linear, however, it's also possible for the player to do things outside of the "correct order" or otherwise skip steps entirely and still have everything make sense. It's not very likely given how the story locations are set up, but it is possible. This kind of game design tends to be more prevalent in older games, Morrowind being a good example(to continue using Bethesda as comparison). Morrowind had a short intro about a cryptic prophecy, but otherwise told the player nothing about the main plot before dropping them off in a small town to create their character and be about their business. What happened from there was entirely up to the player, and most quests in the game required the player to ask a lot of questions and think carefully in order to figure things out. Maybe. Maybe not. Some of it remains to be seen as to what direction the devs decide to take the game, but if you pay attention to the worldbuilding and read through the various lore articles, it's heavily suggested that such tech is not, in fact, understood and may be why the present is such a mess. This is just my opinion, but I would also say that it's not a good idea to make the rifts and storms get worse as the player improves their tech level, at least not beyond how the temporal storms operate already. It makes sense to have the storms start off weaker, since the player is woefully unequipped to handle them at the beginning of the game, and have them slowly get stronger over time. However, just making the world get worse as a result of the player's progress really only punishes the player for trying to improve their standing in the world. I think the only way this idea really works is if the "worsening" is tied directly to completing specific chapters of the story, and has some way for the player to fix the problem in later chapters. Mild spoilers, but it's also worth noting that the temporal storms of the past were much stronger than the ones the player faces in the present. That's not to say that the current storms couldn't suddenly be made worse by some event or certain actions, but so far there's been no evidence to suggest such a thing happening. If you're having issues finding a treasure hunter, you should be able to ask any other trader type for a map to the nearest treasure hunter. They won't give such information away for free though; you'll need to pay them a couple of rusty gears if you want such a map. The treasure hunter specifically will require different payment in order to give you a map to the first story location--a tin bronze pickaxe. The pickaxe itself isn't particularly important; it's just a check to make sure that the player can meet the minimum equipment requirement(tier 2) for that location. I tend to hate games that use this kind of design. Valheim uses it, and while I do enjoy that game, it's one of the main reasons I only play it once in a great while. The first time I played it I spent hours fumbling around with the bare basic tools and materials because I didn't know you had to actually beat the first boss to unlock other areas and items. My general opinion on the storms is that they're there mainly as a supernatural disaster to remind the player that everything is decidedly NOT fine in the world, no matter how much it might seem otherwise, and that there will be a few things outside of the player's direct control that they'll need to plan around. Rifts and temporal stability in general are similar, but the former can actually be controlled via the rift ward and both are otherwise easily mitigated. Temporal storms, on the other hand, will come rolling through whether the player wants them to or not. Not everyone likes that kind of gameplay though, hence the option to disable storms.

You'll probably find this helpful: https://wiki.vintagestory.at/Modding:Content_Tutorial_Entity_Creation_Part_1 As for ideas to try out, a giant tortoise might be a good place to start. They're big enough that you can get some detail into the creature, and you don't need to worry about it being hard to notice in the world. Tortoises also have somewhat simple silhouettes, and have a limited range of movement, so that might make modeling and animating them a little easier.

Only the devs know all the details, and there are several reasons they're not going to put all the cards on the table at once. Things can easily change before release, spoiling story plots can upset players and quell excitement, etc. However, that doesn't mean there aren't clues to what's coming in the future. Tyron posts updates from time to time, both here on the forums and on the Discord. There's also the roadmap, which lists several features that are planned for the future, but there's also no guarantees those things won't change either. https://www.vintagestory.at/roadmap.html/ There is a main story, but it's not shoved into the player's face. Much of the game's lore is left up to the player to discover and piece together for themselves. Some things are also left up to the player's imagination. To start the main story, talk to a treasure hunter trader and complete a small quest--you'll get a map to an interesting location. After you finish exploring that location, talk to the treasure hunter again to begin chapter two. Currently, there are only two chapters of a planned eight implemented for the main story. The third chapter is supposed to be released in 1.24, but plans may or may not change. The two chapters that currently exist can give you a decent idea of what to potentially expect, at least regarding the basic challenges. However, the devs are also rather good at surprises, so there will likely be plot twists and new mechanics and challenges introduced. Overall, the story is quite gritty, with underlying themes of hope and perseverance in the face of adversity, and I would expect those themes to continue. It's difficult to say much more than that. As for the progression, it's basically what you see now. The main focus is on medieval technology, with the highest tech tier being steel and very early steam power/Jonas tech contraptions. To my knowledge, there aren't any plans to add firearms or go beyond steel and early steam power. Temporal storms are still very much a work in progress. When they'll receive more updates though is unknown.

If we're going for realism though, we don't want to be encouraging players to just put dirt or other cheap blocks in front of the door. Trapdoors require metalworking to craft. They also pose a similar issue as the above--while they could technically be passed off as a "trap" for unwanted intruders, it's really just exploiting game code/creature behavior to get around needing to actually fortify doors. Players probably won't want to put trapdoors right under every single door either. Maybe, but this kind of mechanic also means that the player will need to either constantly maintain their door, or replace it periodically since it will inevitably break. I don't think most players would be particularly thrilled with either prospect. As for the early game, the best the player could hope for in this scenario is the crude door, which may not require metalworking to craft but is already ignored by many players simply due to the fact it has a chance to fall off its hinges when used. It's a fun novelty item for playing with your friends, but it's certainly not going to be at all useful for keeping monsters out with the proposed mechanic. Not in my experience. I know it's technically a mechanic in Minecraft, but it's not one that ever actually matters since it's easily mitigated by just...putting the door on backwards. Or putting something in front of the door. Or not even using a door. Or creating a trench that the player can cross but mobs cannot...you get the idea.

Welcome to the forums! If you were generating new chunks when you went off on that journey, it's possible that their connection and/or hardware is struggling to keep up with whatever new data the server is generating. 150-200 ms is technically playable in terms of online gaming, but definitely not ideal at all for any kind of play that requires time-sensitive actions. If this is the case, the Discord call and any downloads going on in the background probably isn't going to help the situation, since that's more things that will be competing for already limited resources. You might also check to see whether your friend is playing on a wired connection or a wireless connection. Sometimes that can make a difference. If friend lives with other people, it could also be that someone else in the residence decided to do something online around that time, which could potentially cause issues depending on what kind of service is available. In fairness, I'm not sure that that's much of a concern these days, but it used to be a thing, I think.

Pies are definitely one of the strongest food items in the game, mainly because they are very satisfying for hunger and stack very well. However, they don't have the shelf life that sealed crocks of food have. Soups and stews can also cover up to 3 nutrients, I think, and their main advantage is that they're easier to prepare than pies(don't require an oven or quern) and can be sealed into crocks for long-term storage. The main drawback is that crocks and cookpots don't stack, and you need a bowl to eat soup/stew, so they're not very efficient in terms of inventory space. If you're wanting to stock an outpost with supplies that will keep for a very long time though, neither of the above options will work particularly well. Raw grain and flour will keep for years when stored properly in a cellar, as will wine, sealed crocks of jam, pickled vegetables, and salted meats. Honey and distilled alcohol will never go bad, no matter how it's stored.