LadyWYT

Isn't moss supposed to grow on the north side of trees though? As I recall, that's supposed to be a way to determine direction in certain areas. Bedding. It probably depends on the type of moss used, but moss doesn't have pokey bits like grass does, and is quite springy. Incidentally, if alternatives for bedding and firestarters/pit kilns are being added, I think it's worth considering altering grass drops. Currently, the player can get grass tufts from any grass that hasn't been harvested, however, grass that is very short probably shouldn't yield a good handful like it currently does. I think if the grass drops were restricted to taller grass(or otherwise reduced for short grass), it could shift the balance slightly and make alternatives feel more valuable in some cases, without necessarily making things much harder.

Oh, I like this too! Though I would say maybe use nails/strips rather than chisels in this case to offset the cost a bit. The inspiration for the main idea though was the pueblo ruins of the American Southwest. Not that I expect players to be building pueblos, but the idea of taking the time to create a dedicated climbing path seemed pretty cool, and would be a little less obvious than ladders. Probably good for designing cool parkour courses in a build too. Realistically, no, but players can already sprint around and climb ladders without any limits, so realism wasn't really a concern. I don't think the speed needs to be slower than climbing a ladder either since the concept itself is basically creating and climbing a stone ladder. Of course, the player will want to be careful as faster movements make it easier to fall, especially if they aren't paying attention to what they're doing. For sure, but I don't think that's possible with this suggestion, unless the walls there are cracked or something. In the event the walls have cracked rocked though, it'd be a case of minor edits potentially getting made to stop unintended actions. As for the chiseled climbing, it would only be the "stone ladders" that are climbable; the player isn't going to be able to use a hammer and chisel in a story location to climb wherever they want as altering blocks like that isn't allowed. They'd need to looked for pre-existing climbing paths, whether that's ladders, swaths of cracked rock, or hand/toeholds, but even then there's no guarantee that those climbing routes have to go anywhere useful. A grappling hook could work as well, but it's also a common suggestion when climbing gets brought up, hence why I didn't mention it here. I was trying to come up with something different, that didn't involve using a completely new item.

Realistically yes, however, the game doesn't really take the laws of physics into account too much when the player is chiseling. Or placing rope ladders, for that matter. A stable surface is definitely more ideal for fine chiselwork, but sometimes you have to pull off some "mountain-goating", so to speak, to get certain details in. By and large I don't think this is really an issue. Trying to fix it would require changing how ladders work and probably make general chiseling and other actions more clunky than fun. I also don't really expect the player will want to carry a hammer and chisel with them everywhere they go, especially not when rope ladders can accomplish the same thing with less inventory space in addition to being reusable and useful for climbing down into holes. I think this is a fair risk for the player if they decide they want to scale a cliff, no matter how they choose to climb. Trying to place ladders, cling to cracked rock, or otherwise trying to chisel out a climbing path just happens to be a bit more risky than traditional parkour. Scaffolding I see being more useful for larger, more detailed build projects in general. Climbable like a ladder, but stable on top like a regular block, giving the player a nice little platform to work on. Dirt pillars are clunky and ladders are easy to use but can easily cause accidents since they're a little awkward to scoot around on when building.

You know, I forgot that's a thing. Just goes to show that the devs already had a contingency plan for when players respawn in the dark!

Incidentally, this is also why I don't really view the knife requirement as a big deal. It's a vital survival tool, and players that don't have one aren't going to last very long. Other tools have more specific uses and aren't really things that the player will want/need to have on them at all times, aside from maybe the weapons in order to effectively deal with threats.

Climbing up very specific blocks is a bit different than being able to jump up just any block. Allowing the player to climb any two-three block heights breaks at least two major story locations, and reworking entire location designs is a lot of work. By limiting the player to climbing specific blocks like ladders, or in this case cracked rock/chiseled handholds, more minor edits can be made to those locations to allow the player limited climbing or block unintended player movements.

I didn't miss it. But I don't think "it's super slow" is a very good argument for going to the effort of adding it considering the player is going to have a knife, and on the off-chance they don't(or their knife is about to break), it's easy to make a new one. Not really. If a player is going to the effort of building a firepit, that probably means they intend to actually use the firepit for something. In which case, they're going to want something that actually serves as fuel--ie, burns a while. Makes more sense to me from a gameplay standpoint to lock firepits behind proper fuel, and not just anything burnable.

Not just that, but you'd also have to account for wind speed and direction, the physical attributes of the thrower and target, angle of impact, movement of target versus attacker, etc... Ultimately, it's just a game. It doesn't need to be an exact replica of reality. What it does need to be, is a realistic enough simulation that the player can get immersed in the world and have fun escaping from reality for a while. Honestly, have you considered getting into modding? Good, bad, or otherwise, it's worth throwing ideas out into Suggestions box, as there's usually something useful to be learned. But creating a mod is a great way to not only get exactly what you want and let others play that way too, but also serves as a great way to see how well the idea holds up in practice. It's also not unusual at all for concepts from popular mods to find their way into the vanilla game, provided that the concept fits the devs' vision. In any case, if you want to give it a try, you'll want to start here: https://wiki.vintagestory.at/Modding:Getting_Started

Welcome to the forums! I'd like this too. I don't really care if they're functional though, as I just want them for aesthetics. I think drastically lowering the drops from creatures killed in this fashion would probably be deterrent enough. I dunno that I'd want them to be expensive to craft though, given that one of the main advantages to palisade is that it's fairly cheap and quick to construct. As for a durability value...I can see why that might be necessary if it's the type of fortified stake meant to impale creatures that run into it, but otherwise I'm not really a fan of durability as I tend to want to use stuff like this for decoration rather than actual function. Valheim used that mechanic and I always found it rather annoying to deal with.

Do keep in mind that the thrown spear damage only matters if the player actually hits the target. If the player misses, not only do they do no damage, but they're down a valuable weapon as well in most cases. I think if it's really a dealbreaker though, it should be easy enough to figure out which .json file governs spear damage values, and then modify them to your liking. Mods that edit values like that tend to be some of the easier ones to make.

It's a definite oversight, but in case you didn't know, you can use a knife to turn excess roofing back into thatch, which you can then burn. In an effort to keep it simple, I think it's fair to say that the opposite applies as well when suggesting a change--sure, things could be done that way, but if the reasoning for the suggestion isn't a very compelling one then why say "sure, okay, let's do it that way instead"? Changing the way the firepit works requires changing to the code, which likely isn't as simple as just swapping textures/models or adjusting a numerical value. Since it requires a change in controls, essentially(at least that's how I see it), it seems likely that such changes could cause unforseen issues elsewhere. Does it really hurt to let the player make firepits before they have tools(and thus can do anything with the firepit)? No, but it doesn't seem very useful either, especially given that stone tools and firestarters are incredibly easy to craft in most cases, and the player should have a knife on them at all times anyway. The more compelling argument I see is to relax the firewood requirement for firepit creation so that the player can craft one from scratch from other reasonable fuel sources, like peat. Peat is readily available, and has a decent burn time making it a practical fuel choice; I don't always want to go raid my woodpile to create a new firepit, nor do I necessarily want to go make an axe and chop down a tree for firewood. I think the better question is why would the player ever bother with picking grass by hand when it's much faster to use a knife? Knives are perhaps the most useful/important tools in the entire game, and easy to make. There's really no reason not to carry a knife, thus I don't see a point to adding a mechanic like this one. To be frank, if the player dies in the middle of the night and respawns out in the dark somewhere, they're pretty much straight out of luck until daylight arrives or unless they had "keep inventory" enabled. However, I would also point out that if they can manage to find sticks and grass without dying to a creature or falling in a hole, then they should be able to find rocks as well. In which case, they can make a knife(nighttime doesn't hide the wire frame for knapping, last I checked), collect a bit of grass, and then use the firestarter to either light a torch or set the local plant life on fire while they collect more stuff. At the very best, it seems a very marginal beneficial option for a very specific scenario. I still don't think it's worth the effort to code.

Games aren't reality though, and real life "balance" doesn't necessarily translate well to fun, balanced gameplay. The stakes between the two are also drastically different. Reach is a pretty big advantage, since that extra reach can allow the player to poke at things from a safe vantage point(like from a ledge in a cave), or more easily kite enemies who have a short attack range(like drifters and some aggressive wildlife). Fast enemies like shivers though make reach a little less useful, since fast enemies are difficult to kite. Shivers specifically can also climb up to two block heights, so they aren't easily trapped in holes. To go into more detail on my earlier point: if spears are given the same melee attack value as their ranged value, they're going to easily outclass the falx, since they have more reach and the ranged damage value tends to be at least a point or two higher than the falx. Spears can't be sharpened, sure, but critical hits are a bit hit-or-miss, and why take the risk of getting punched in the gut by a rust monster if you can just keep them at arm's length with a spear and safely poke them to death? As for lowering the ranged damage of the spear to match the melee damage, that's a bad idea since then the spear is going to feel too weak and clunky to be of real use as a ranged weapon. Spears already don't stack, and they don't have the range that arrows do, nor can they be fired as fast. As it currently stands, unquenched steel spears do slightly more damage than the recurve bow with steel arrows, but can be quenched to output more damage at the risk of breaking the spearpoint and wasting the material in the process. Many players probably won't be keen on needing to quench a spear a handful of times to bring it to the same damage level of the bow, and it's also worth noting that the initial spear rebalance had lower values for spear ranged damage and received a lot of criticism as a result since many players felt they were too weak. Nah, if spears are hitting for the same damage as throwing them, I'm not using a falx at that point, I'm gonna use a spear so the bad guys don't get close enough to hit me. Of course, if the throwing damage is nerfed to match their melee damage, I'm just not going to bother with spears at all unless I have no other option.

Beats me. Some of the reasoning behind removing the tool requirement for firepits seemed to be so that the player could do some sort of special challenge or otherwise play without needing tools, hence why I pointed out that if that's the case, the firepit is still going to be pretty useless because the player needs tools to do most everything in the game. It might be a fun challenge for a player to attempt just to see how long they can survive, but it's also a very niche challenge better covered by mods, as like you and others have said...it doesn't add value for most players.

I've been mulling this over the past couple days and finally got something decently workable in my head. Most suggestions I've seen for climbing tend to fall into two categories: free climbing, or special climbing gear. I think there's perhaps a different method it could be implemented though, that reuses stuff we already have in the game. 1. Cracked rock should be climbable As far as I know, cracked rock is mainly just cosmetic, or more at risk of cave-ins if one plays with that mechanic turned on. When it comes to climbing though, a rough rock surface offers more handholds, so allowing cracked rocks to be climbable would allow the player some interesting ways to interact with the natural world, as well as some interesting options for building ruins and story locations. Exploring and need to cross a chasm? Cracked rocks usually generate in bands, so if there's some nearby the player could carefully cling to the surface and inch their way along to the other side. In story locations, there could be damaged walls to scale to reach secrets, or from a world gen standpoint cracked rocks could generate sometimes in vertical patterns on cliffs/mountainsides to allow special climbing routes. 2. Hammer and chisel could have a mode to chisel out hand/toe-holds in appropriate surfaces This could either be a decal applied to the surface, or a preset chisel pattern that gets applied, but either way the idea is these allow the player to climb around on those areas as if there were a ladder there. This would also be useful for making interesting challenges and secrets in ruins and story locations, as well as serve as an interesting way for players to add decorations or hidden pathways on their buildings.

From a game balance standpoint, yes. The advantage of a spear in melee is the longer reach, while the advantage of using it as a ranged weapon is that it does more damage than a bow in return for having a shorter range, slower fire rate, and less efficient use of inventory space. By making the damage the same for melee and ranged use, the spear either ends up outclassing falxs/swords with ease, or being too underwhelming as a ranged weapon to be worth using.

Yes. If you can't make a firepit, you're not cooking food, smelting basic ores, or otherwise staying warm. It's very basic progression, but it is progress. I don't dispute that a lot of players have a background in Minecraft, but as far as I'm aware, punching the grass isn't the first thing players do in Minecraft. Most players, I'm pretty sure, go punch trees. Which they'll quickly figure out does not work in Vintage Story. Which is also introducing yet more controls, which some players have noted in other threads that the current controls already feel too complicated in some cases. Personally, I prefer just letting the grass breakage be left-click, and using a knife or scythe if I actually want that grass to be anything usable. And yes, grass will eventually grow back if the player breaks it(outside of the special scythe mode), but it also takes a little while. Yes, grass can be burned as fuel, but it's not really the most useful thing as fuel and I don't think players want to be dumping it in firepits every time their inventory fills up with it. Especially not when there's a simple solution that stops that kind of clutter from happening in the first place(current game mechanics). As a side note on a "no tools" survival challenge, it's also not enough to just add a way to make firepits without tools. Firestarters technically being tools aside, the player needs a knife to harvest animals, most crafting requires tools, and weapons are a tool for combat. With a strict "no tools" rule, the only option the player really has is living off whatever they can scrounge up for berries, mushrooms, and perhaps the occasional bug or beehive raid.

I'd like a few extra ways to build firepits without needing firewood, but I'm not sure what the point of removing the tool requirement entirely is. The player needs tools to do pretty much anything in the game, and I think also too many players get caught up on the "realistic survival" aspect and assume Vintage Story is a caveman simulator when it's not. Yes, realistic survival is part of the game, and a player can pretend to be a caveman if they want, but the survival aspect is really only the start of the game, as once the player acquires copper tools they have what they need to focus on homesteading and things other than just eeking out a bare minimum existence in the wilderness. For gameplay purposes, no. Realistically, yes, you can go outside and start ripping up grass with your bare hands, but from a gameplay standpoint players might want to clear the grass for whatever reason, but don't necessarily want to fill their inventory with it. Tossing it just creates clutter in the world that takes a while to despawn and can be easily picked back up by accident.

I wouldn't mind seeing some sort of reputation system, as that can lead to some more interesting NPCs, though I would still expect the default personality to be mostly friendly. If the player decides to complete certain side quests, and chooses appropriate dialogue options, then the NPC in question could have better deals, or perhaps special quests or dialogue. If the player decides to be a jerk and pick rude dialogue options, NPCs could develop colder attitudes, even going so far as to refuse to interact with the player if the player has a proven record of assaulting/killing NPCs, meaning the player will need to bribe NPCs for business or find some way to restore their reputation. I think in that case, there's enough of a safety net for players to hit/kill an NPC once to see what happens without ruining their game, while still providing serious consequences if the player decides they want to be an absolute menace. Would people game it? Probably, though I'm not sure that there's really a way to stop players from min-maxing or otherwise gaming systems. I think for storytelling purposes, most players would probably enjoy a system that allows the denizens of the world to respond somewhat to their choices, even if it's only for roleplaying and cosmetic rewards. Players could also choose to ignore roleplaying and always pick the options that yield the best rewards, but this kind of play tends to be balanced by the fact that picking the same options all the time gets pretty boring after a while.

First off, welcome to the forums! If the loot window isn't showing up at all when harvesting the carcass, I would try reloading the world and seeing if that fixes it. However... When mods are involved and strange behavior happens, it's usually a mod that is causing it. Are there any mods that you've added recently? If the modded game was working fine before, and isn't now, and you've added mods recently, most likely it's an issue with one of the recent additions. If you have mods that alter inventory/loot windows, or certain player actions, those could be the culprits too. Otherwise, it's difficult to say for certain. Even if no mods alter animal drops/behavior, it's possible that they could have weird bugs lurking within or conflict with other mods and cause issues that way. The easiest way to figure out which mod is causing the issue, if there are no obvious culprits, is to disable them all and verify that the vanilla game works correctly, then re-enable mods one by one and test them as you do so. It's tedious, but it will be very obvious which one caused the issue when the problem reappears.

I agree that we shouldn't be able to just use the traders' beds, though I would also say that barring the player from using the firepit and cookpot is probably a good idea as well. It's a little goofy, yes, but at the same time...I don't think I would be very happy if a stranger walked into my house and started using my stuff without permission. If they do, I wouldn't mind seeing a basic hay bed or something inside some of the trader compounds as a rough guest bed. The traders probably don't get that many guests, but I could see them having a place for one to sleep, just in case.

The antler sheds tend to happen while there is still snow on the ground, and will despawn after a time since they're a dropped item. They're somewhat rare to find at the moment and the player basically has to deliberately checking the areas that male deer inhabit around the end of winter in order to have the best chance of even finding the sheds. If the player wants antlers, the most reliable way to get them is hunting. As for starting the game earlier, I do think it would be nice to have an option of changing the start date, but the default start date itself shouldn't be set earlier since that will probably cause even more issues, at least in the current state of the game. Consider that the earlier the start date, the more the player will need to worry about freezing and starving to death, since the weather is cold and wild foods are still dormant, and given recent balancing animals may not be spawning in the winter either.

Not necessarily. It depends on the context of how the term is being used. Like @Teh Pizza Lady says, the Blackguards favor shortswords mainly because they're having to fight in incredibly cramped spaces. Weapons that have longer reach give a definite advantage, but that advantage is completely flipped in such spaces. As for why such a thing is class-locked...it's not exactly difficult to make a weapon, but it does take more knowledge and experience to craft a quality one. Given that Blackguards were basically the police(maybe even secret police and disappearing suspected rebels) in a situation that is quite desperate, the last thing they're going to want is competition when it comes to arms and armor, since competition means a greater likelihood of rebellion. Thus I would say it makes perfect sense to have that be a class-locked weapon; it takes special knowledge and skill that the other classes just wouldn't have had access to acquiring. As for a classic arming sword/longsword option, I do think it would be nice to have an option that all classes could craft, as well as a few other usable options like the ruined versions of weapons we can find. However, such weapons should have difficulties when fighting supernatural monsters, since the game makes it clear that the falx became the weapon of choice for fighting such since the more conventional weapons just weren't that effective. I don't know that any NPC has really described the Blackguards as "noble", not even the one that has a favorable view of them. I would say it's more a case of, at best, certain individuals appreciate that they did a difficult, nasty job that no one else wanted/could do, and turn a blind eye to how the job was done.

I think the idea is to cook the whole fish if you just need the satiety points, but otherwise flay and cook into a proper meal if you have the means to do so. By cooking the fillets into a proper meal, you're getting a pause on the hunger meter in addition to a lot of satiety. Probably, though it seems especially valuable for bigger fish that yield several fillets. In those cases, a single fish can feed the player for several meals.

Personally, I think in some cases the land features aren't nearly big enough, mainly for areas like plains and plateaus. Once in a while, I want to feel like I'm in Kansas, or certain parts of Texas, and a plateau feels pretty underwhelming when it only covers a couple hundred blocks or so. Mountains feel okay to me(though they could stand to have a peakier variant), since a videogame mountain is pretty underwhelming if you can't climb to the top and actually survey the land surrounding. Have you tried lowering the Landform Scale setting, or perhaps changing Climate Distribution to Patchy rather than the default Realistic? Lowering the landform scale should mean that land features are smaller, with more being able to fit within an area, while changing the climate distribution to patchy will yield a biome style more similar to Minecraft.

I second this. If there are multiple versions of the same mod within the server mods folder, it can sometimes cause issues. When a mod updates on the server, the server will prompt download of the updated version, but old versions of mods will need to be deleted manually.