LadyWYT

So much this too. Just my general observations here, but I think in terms of the forums this factor can be especially harsh to newer members. First impressions really are everything and positive first impressions often get overlooked, I think, because most newcomers tend to be pretty chill and fun to interact with, but unless they become a regular face they fade into the crowd quite easily. In contrast, some of them come in swinging at practically everything and everyone, in which case everyone else(whether new, veteran, or lurker, doesn't matter) absolutely will make a note of that and take such memories into account for future interactions, both with those particular individuals and other new arrivals that may not have the same personality but may display some similar behaviors.

It still feels a bit harsh to me, really. I'd settle for just making the player swim slower when wearing armor, as well as be able to sink faster but surface slower. That way the player still has a fighting chance of survival if they happen to fall in, but can also drown more easily if they decide to go swimming around in a full suit of plate. As far as penalizing the player for carrying more than one bag, I think the limited inventory of VS is already enough to manage.

I would appreciate this. Not that panning is ever going to be an exciting activity(nor does it really need to be), but I do think it would be more interesting to go out into the world looking for prime panning spots rather than cart everything back to base to pan in a puddle. Plus to my knowledge panning in rivers was oftentimes how prospectors found gold back in the olden days.

It's not as bad as it sounds. It just means you might want to only equip it in situations that feel threatening, or you're otherwise expecting to get into a fight. That way you don't burn through as much food, or otherwise have your offhand slot free for holding a lantern. For cave exploration, I prefer a lantern myself, but it's not a bad idea to bring a stack of torches(or oil lamps, if you want to craft them) and place them as you explore. That way you'll have some light while still being able to have your shield equipped.

Ancient Tools is what I usually use as an alternative, as I really like some of the things that mod adds. However, I also think that the way Ancient Tools handles things makes leatherworking a little too easy. The player will still need barrels in order to soak scraped hides, so leatherworking is still locked behind the saw(which I do think is fine!). However, it's possible to skip lime/borax entirely by simply soaking hides in water for a day, which isn't really ideal in my opinion. Bloom and Lather(aka the soap mod) adds a better option, I think, in that the player can wood ash as a solution to get scraped hides instead, rather than having to rely on borax or lime. It takes quite a bit of wood ash though, and to get the wood ash the player needs to "cook" full logs in a firepit. Thus it makes for a good alternative that is inefficient, but useful if lime and borax are being a bit hard to come by.

Could be. My perspective is probably rooted somewhere between the American South and the Midwest.

I don't know that it will stop 100% of incoming damage, but it should mitigate enough to make dealing with them easier. It's not something the player will want to have equipped all the time due to the 20% hunger penalty that holding items in the offhand incurs, but it's not a bad option for early defense.

I voted "Yes" on each question, but wanted to explain my reasoning as to the "why". Every so often the forums go through their own equivalent of a temporal storm, in a sense, and get a little dramatic for a while before chilling back out. It tends to happen most often when an update drops, since updates bring with them many changes and players are, understandably, going to have varying opinions on those reactions. It's also likely to happen when more divisive areas of the game come up in discussion, like combat or temporal storms. That's not to say those discussions shouldn't happen--indeed they should because that's how the good ideas get brainstormed, oftentimes. However, that doesn't mean such discussions are always going to be the most fun, so to speak. Also keep in mind that as the game continues to grow, there's going to be new arrivals to the community, both good and bad. I think maybe the best litmus test for the overall health of the forums is to look at what happens when a new player arrives, or a player is otherwise asking for help. Generally, the community, both veterans and newer arrivals, will show up with warm welcomes and a friendly variety of advice and jokes/stories about various game experiences. Same. I've had similar concerns, however, it's not just the devs I'm concerned about; it's also newer players, or those otherwise considering whether or not to give Vintage Story a try. Not everything needs to be sunshine and roses 24/7, but if I saw a game's community constantly trashing the game then I'd be more inclined to give the game a hard pass. It's also why I try to be very careful when giving advice to new players, and recommend trying the game on Standard difficulty first, while also making a note of Exploration difficulty and other settings they can change if they find Standard to be a little too difficult for fun learning. That is, I try to make sure they're aware they have options to make the experience easier if they wish, rather than try to push them to play the game in a very specific fashion(for example, making them aware that there's an option to disable temporal storms and temporal mechanics if they decide they don't like those mechanics, rather than telling them to immediately disable those things). I think part of it is also we sometimes forget to explain the reasoning behind some opinions and ideas. To try to use sticks as an example: stick-crafting is not an uncommon request in the Suggestions part of the forums. Oftentimes it gets brushed off with "We don't need stick crafting because sticks are easy enough to gather with shears"(which is the stance I take, by the way). However, on a large multiplayer server, sticks can be a real issue due to spawn getting picked clean, which may also include all the bushes getting sheared and trees getting cut down without getting replanted. In that context, adding some way to craft sticks makes a lot more sense, but it's not necessarily the kind of problem most players will be aware of since most probably don't play on large multiplayer servers. This too. My own strategies will absolutely be changing in 1.22, and I don't think that's a bad thing. It's also something I'm going to consider when offering advice as well, as while there are strategies that are better than others, the game is quite flexible and the most optimal strategy by the numbers isn't necessarily the most fun.

Welcome to the forums and game! Which version are you playing on? It's a known bug for 1.22.0-rc1. https://github.com/anegostudios/VintageStory-Issues/issues/8571

I want to say that the main difference between jelly, jam, and preserves is that jelly is just the preserved juice--no fruit bits. Jam will have bits of mushed fruit and seeds in it, depending on what it was made from, so it's somewhat of an in-between of jelly and preserves. Preserves is very chunky and not really meant to be quite as spreadable as jelly or jam. At least, that's my understanding of it. To put it another way, if peach is the flavoring then: 1. Peach jelly will taste like peaches but won't have any bits of the fruit in it. 2. Peach jam will taste like peaches and have a thicker texture than peach jelly due to having actual bits of fruit in it, but won't be all that chunky. 3. Peach preserves will taste like peaches and be very chunky due to containing chunks/whole slices of the fruit in question.

Sometimes the fish are pretty hard to see, but in any case if it's a decent-size pond it's usually worth fishing in even if you see no fish. Generally it doesn't take fish very long to bite a baited hook, if the area hasn't been overfished. I say "generally" because I've had it take a while to get a bite sometimes despite the area not being overfished. In that case I usually just reel in and re-cast, sometimes in a different spot, and have better luck. Sometimes the slow bite times can be due to the bait attracting a fish that is elsewhere in the lake/pond and is having trouble reaching the bait. If there's no fish in the lake/pond you won't see anything swim toward the line. You'll just see the bobber bob when there's a bite.

Don't forget that Commodities and Survival Goods traders often have lime for sale. It's a good workaround if you have lore content enabled and a few rusty gears lying around.

Welcome to the forums! If you're talking about the cave-in mechanic, it's enabled by default for Wilderness Survival only. It may become the default for Standard and Homo Sapiens someday as well, but I'd wager the reason it's not the default right now is that the Standard game difficulty isn't intended to be that hard, and it's not a mechanic that average player will necessarily enjoy.

Welcome to the forums! I highly recommend just using the world edit tool to copy/paste the structure to a new location. That's one of the reason that such a tool exists and moving structures manually block-by-block is a logistical nightmare. If it feels too "cheaty" though you can always use world edit to delete the original structure once you've got everything moved.

As far as the early game goes, berries are, for the most part, the same. The bushes aren't so obvious so players might need to look a little more carefully, however, it's easy enough to learn what the new bushes look like. Fishing, I would say, is probably a better balance to the hunting changes, since animals will now try to move away from players that get too close. I think it's less about diet variety and more about just fleshing out agriculture and food-related mechanics a bit more. The natural berry patches feel more valuable now since the player can't just uproot everything and take it with them, and it otherwise takes a little upfront investment to get a berry patch going at home. So far I've found it to be a rather straightforward process and relatively easy to acclimate to, but then again I also played with Wildcraft quite a lot, which had some similar mechanics. Oh I figured. One other thought I forgot to mention: I daresay at least some of the reactions might be due to the fact that the mechanic was way too easy before, so having something that's definitely more complex is going to feel even more like a stark contrast. For a game that likely intends the average world to last a few in-game years before the player manages to complete the main story though, I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to have the balance shift to support a reliance on hunting/foraging for the first year while the player gets their agriculture and livestock established.

I don't disagree, however, it's the kind of thing that I think is balanced okay for what the game is right now. It gives the player a chance to notice and correct the problem before they just die outright. A status effect system would be better for more weather-related penalties, but in the meantime I've found that making the player more vulnerable to cold in the survival options to be a suitable solution. As for the water bit, I also like being able to swim around underwater for a few minutes before actually needing to surface, as I do like to go poking around underwater occasionally. I think if the drowning penalty were very harsh, I'd be looking for a way to turn it back down.

For sure. I'd expect maybe just reducing natural health regen, or perhaps slowing movement speed/work speed a bit. Difficult to really work efficiently when exhausted, after all. That being said, I'd also expect the player to need to go a few consecutive days without sleeping in order to incur such a penalty. That way players can still work through some nights if they wish, just not every night.

Welcome to the forums and the game! Baskets should burn. I recall having some next to a pit kiln once and having them catch fire. If they aren't burning for some reason then it sounds like a bug that needs reporting on Github. Sound is one of those things that's still being worked on. Footsteps have been added for bears and wolves in 1.22, so it's a start. One mistake that many players make is looking at the voxel graphics and assuming that Vintage Story is Minecraft but with more realistic graphics. And it's very much not. Vintage Story is its own game, and a very difficult one at that; the challenge is why many players prefer it to the other block game, so I don't think it's a good idea to make the default experience easier. I will note that there are already several options at the player's disposal to make the game easier or harder, as well as good presets for just jumping in and playing. New players who struggle with Standard may find Exploration difficulty more enjoyable to play, since it tones down many challenges and is more forgiving. Wilderness Survival is a good preset for those who don't find Standard challenging enough, but it's a game mode that is more recommended for advanced players due to its unforgiving nature. Homo Sapiens is similar to Wilderness Survival in that regard, but without any lore content. Bowtorn are easily countered by a bit of armor, a shield, or even just running at angles or ducking behind trees. They aren't terribly good at shooting moving targets unless the target is running straight at them. Likewise, they also aren't very good at making sure they have a clear shot at a target, so they will happily sit there and fire into a wall/fence/branchy leaf block just so long as they can "see" the target. They won't move to have a clear line of fire. As for dodging, do keep in mind that they emit a loud screech right before they fire a shot, so that gives you some time to hide behind an obstacle or otherwise get out of the way of the incoming shot. They also don't like to fight in melee, so while they will try to smack you if you get right up next to them, most of their efforts will be devoted to running away.

I would expect as much from a status effect system, and it's partly why I'm starting to dread its addition. Not because I would find such a thing a problem--I already sleep through most nights because I prefer daylight to work in, and it makes sense that there would eventually be some drawback to going without any sleep at all. It's more that, given recent reactions to 1.22 content and other cases of more nuance/challenge being added to certain areas of the game, I'm not looking forward to the reactions such changes will likely stir up.

It's for grain crops. Yields have been cut in half from what they previously were, so players will want to make their fields a little bigger. That's all. To balance it out, wild grains now spawn in larger patches, so it's easier to gather more seeds quickly. In my experience it really doesn't affect much at all, though that depends on how the player approaches farming. My strategy was to simply till a large field exclusively for grain--about 75-100 tiles if I had to guess--which yielded enough flax for a full smaller windmill plus a little left over for bandaids and stuff. The backyard vegetable patch of previous game versions is still fine for growing vegetables, but players who try to rely on the backyard vegetable patch for growing grain crops are likely to find themselves getting frustrated.

I mean bears gotta eat and have fun too!

My hunter friend enjoys making the hunter backpacks. They aren't something I bother with myself in singleplayer, but they're a nice option to have for players who want to take things slow, or are otherwise still figuring out how to make progress in the game. The linen sacks can be useful for an early edge on inventory, if one scrounges up enough flax fibers. They're also rather useful on maps where leatherworking ingredients aren't so easily found(like colder climates).

To be fair, I prefer oil lamps for lighting up caves/mines because they are cheap and allow me to spot threats easily, without me being concerned about picking them up after I leave or otherwise needing to replace them. So I wouldn't call them entirely useless, as much as I would call them a bad choice if you want to actually minimize spawns.

Welcome to the forums! I do want to note that turning fruit into jam is already possible. You'll need honey in order to do so.

What did you light the area up with? Oil lamps will provide enough light for the player to see what's going on and are cheap to make, but won't provide enough light to curb many spawns. Torches are better in that regard, but not as effective as lanterns and will need replacing if not placed in torch holders. I'm guessing what happened is you ventured into a more unstable area underground, where monsters are more likely to spawn. Or perhaps ventured far enough away from an area that they could spawn in, that let them start spawning as a result. While rift activity does influence underground spawns to some extent, it's also safe to assume that the deeper you delve the more likely you are to encounter monsters, especially in more open areas rather than narrow mine tunnels. When mining that deep and traveling light regarding equipment, it's a good idea to pause every now and then to have a look around so nothing sneaks up on you, as well as check the rift weather to see if it's increased at all. When rift activity kicks up or stuff otherwise starts to spawn you might consider leaving and coming back with better equipment or on a quieter day.