LadyWYT

I don't think this would be a good idea, though I can understand the logic behind such a thing...at least I think. It seems more likely to get the mod booted off the database due to being considered defective or potentially malicious. Otherwise, I think at best users will get confused when it crashes and just not bother with the mod, or otherwise assume it's a problem with the game and submit the crash report on Github.

I think night vision goggles are best suited to exploring underground areas, so that the player can be holding a shield but still be able to see where they're going. That being said...I don't think the night vision device actually counts as a proper helmet, so...yeah...

Not to mention @Teh Pizza Lady's suggestion about letting traders warn the player about what temporal storms even are. I mean, it's pretty clear that the player just popped into existence and has no real clue what's going on or what the monsters even are aside from horrible things that crawl out of holes in the air. The traders are friendly, for the most part, so it would make sense they would drop an "Oh, it's not bad...not bad at all. Mind the monsters though. And the storms. You don't want to be a poor soul that gets caught out in the middle of one." About said story location... I don't think it's a good idea to add unique flora and fauna to stable/unstable areas, as that creates the problem of locking players out of that content if they disable temporal stability and whatnot. At best it would have to be something rather superficial, in which case...it's going to end up feeling rather disappointing. Personally, I prefer the more random distribution of flora and fauna as well, rather than having it be something influenced by temporal stability. That being said, one thing I wouldn't mind seeing in this regard is giving unstable surface areas a higher chance of having a procedural dungeon. That way such things are a little easier to find, as well as giving the player more reason to go poking around in unstable areas. Depending on what's in the dungeon, it could also help provide some reasoning as to why certain areas are the way they are(ie, somebody was sciencing too hard in that location before the world got scrambled).

My general point was that I think it's a good thing that Temporality Plus exists as a mod since it gives players more options, but since the changes it implements don't sound very fun I'm not at all inclined to say that what that mod implements would be good changes to make for the vanilla game. That's all. I'm skeptical about this, but it seems like it could maybe work given the lore that we have. That being said, I would keep the storms as a global condition, and let the local stability affect what kind of monsters can spawn in the area and how many can be present at once during the storm. In that case, stable areas could have relatively fewer monsters, and those that do spawn could be weaker. Unstable areas could have higher concentrations of monsters during storms, in addition to those monsters being more likely to be stronger as well. Basically, the player is still going to want to build their base in a stable location, but they might consider building an outpost in/traveling to an unstable area when a storm occurs in order to have better chances of encountering the special monsters. From an NPC standpoint, it also tracks with why they all live in fortified structures. Basic defenses might be fine for dealing with whatever crawls out of the typical rift, when rift activity occurs, but when a temporal storm rolls through everyone who's not capable of fighting needs a safe place to hide.

Oh, what a cute little find!

Oh okay. Yeah that makes a lot more sense. Even if the events are just cosmetic, like "ghosts" playing out certain past actions over and over, it would still make for something different than just "monster that wants to kill you".

No, that wasn't the mod I was thinking of. I think it was Temporal Tempest: https://mods.vintagestory.at/temporaltempest There's also "Temporal Storms Require a Fight" which does similar: https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/36080 I can appreciate that a mod like Temporality Plus exists, but it changes too many things about temporal storms(and things unrelated to temporal mechanics) to be of much interest to me. The earlier half of the mod's comment section is also a good example of why adding monsters that go through walls and force players into combat isn't really the best of ideas. I think it would be interesting as a mod, but from a lore standpoint, the player should really be trying to figure out a way to fix whatever is causing the temporal storms to occur, not figuring out ways to make them worse.

Given that temporal storms are, essentially, the result of two separate realities trying to occupy the same space, I don't really think it makes sense to make them localized events. Or at the very least, it feels like a disservice to the mechanic. One thing I've been chewing on regarding the loot drops feeling underwhelming for combat: loot could potentially be turned up specifically for monsters killed during temporal storms. That way monsters in general remain the environmental hazards they are, but the player could get a nice haul of rusty gears and flax fibers at the least, and perhaps more Jonas parts as well, provided of course that they're willing to risk themselves by going out and fighting. In that case, players who play with storms turned on can get a bit more benefit in a balanced way, without players who prefer to play with storms turned off feeling like they're sabotaging themselves. I think Temporal Symphony could be taken a bit further, really. Instead of just one warning for an approaching storm, and another warning for an imminent storm, there really ought to be more periodic cues. It doesn't need to be too drastic, since too much salt ruins the dish so to speak, but the ground could stand to rumble and shake at least a couple more times before the storm actually hits. In that case it's also something that will disrupt whatever the player is doing and get their attention, without being too disruptive, if you get my meaning. There was a mod, I think, that tried to tie rift activity more to temporal storms, in that rift activity would be calmer post-storm and start to get worse as a storm approached. I want to say it also tried to tweak the spawns and storms so that monsters would only spawn from the rifts during temporal storms, and the player could shorten the storms to some extent by killing monsters. I don't know that I'm quite sold on either feature being the best solution, but they don't really strike me as bad ideas either.

Are you using any mods, and if so, have you tried disabling the mods to ensure that vanilla works properly?

I mean, this is why comments occasionally get made about Homo Sapiens mode feeling lackluster. It's a purely realistic survival experience, with absolutely no lore content, that makes it very clear in the description that the player is the only individual that has ever existed in this world. Thus, there won't be any trace of civilization to find, and the toughest enemy the player will ever have to face is whatever the biggest local wildlife is. Right now, that is bears, which are tier 2 enemies. Creatures like hippos and elephants could offer more threat, however, those creatures are also limited to specific climates. Likewise, the local wildlife isn't really going to have much interest in hunting down the player specifically, unless the player disturbs their personal space(which currently, wildlife is more aggressive than is really realistic, but if it were 100% realistic there'd be no wildlife posing much threat to the player in most circumstances).

I'm also not sure that simply loading someone else's world would give you access to all their stuff either. Stuff stored in player inventory likely wouldn't carry over, nor would map markings and whatnot.

From my standpoint I also look at it the opposite way--I don't want the devs to get so pressured by sections of the playerbase that they end up ditching their creative visions and start turning Vintage Story into something generic by just copying what works in other games. And that goes for more mechanics than just temporal storms. That's also not to say that successful mechanics from other games can't be looked at for inspiration. It's more that, to use Valheim and 7DTD as examples since they've already been cited in this thread, Vintage Story shouldn't necessarily use the same strategies as those games just because they work for those games. They're very different types of games, and what works fine there isn't necessarily going to be a very good fit when it comes to Vintage Story. Which is a fair point. Though I think this is where it's also fair to point out that, despite Vintage Story being rather polished, it's still quite early in development and a lot of systems are still quite unfinished. In the case of temporal storms and certain other content, I think some of it is hard to improve at the moment given that the systems required for the best improvements...haven't been coded yet. I'll use hunting as an example here. Many players have commented that being able to down an animal in a single shot or two, or at least having a blood trail to follow or a weakened animal to deal with after wounding it would make hunting feel a lot better. However, there's not really a way to do that in the current iteration of the game without breaking balance in other areas. The better solution for that kind of thing would be a status effect system, which could see more practical uses than just making hunting a better experience, but it takes time to get such things coded, let alone polishing that code to make sure it's not breaking anything else. Or in other words, there's a lot of things that are fine for what they are right now, and will be better in the future once there's more time to polish them and other systems in place to support needed changes.

I mean, overall, it's a balancing act. The creators of the game should be able to balance it how they see fit in order to achieve their intended vision, since having no interest in your own product leads to inferior results. However, for a game to be successful enough to make some money, it needs to be appealing enough that players will buy it and play it, though that doesn't mean that everyone has to be able to enjoy the game. For Vintage Story, I think the best option is for the devs to implement the storms how they'd like, and then give the players as many options as is feasible in order to customize the experience, as well as make sure that it's a mechanic that's relatively easy to mod so that players can take the customization even further if the vanilla settings aren't enough. That way, the devs get to make the game they want, and players can season the result to their individual tastes. The mods just add even more ways to play the game outside of that, possibly resulting in some cool new game modes that aren't really feasible to develop for the vanilla game. As for thematic flavor of storms...given that the Temporal tab of the world settings has plenty of space to work with, an option to keep the storms but disable the monster spawns entirely would probably be a good option to have. That way players can still have the flavor of the storms present in the world, but don't need to worry about having to drop what they're doing to run for cover, or things spawning in their house, etc. Additional options to filter what monsters can spawn in the storms might be good as well, so players who really don't want to deal with specific mob types during storms, don't have to.

I do want to note that I don't think bushes are supposed to spawn as dormant, unless it's maybe a colder climate. I found some dormant bushes where it didn't make sense when toying with pre5 and reported it on the Github though, so it's something I would expect to be fixed by stable.

It's less a mood board and more a proverbial dragon's hoard of various interesting things. I've several books with interesting photos and artwork, as well as several sketchbooks full of my own stuff. Several pictures and digital art that I've done over the years, and the internet lets me look up reference images with ease(although I really wish there was a filter to block all the AI stuff--that stuff really isn't very useful most of the time). As for what inspires me at any given time...I dunno, it just depends. I have favorite styles and whatnot I'll lean towards. I like to build castles and medieval-fantasy style architecture a lot, but sometimes other influences slip in. Sometimes I can just look at a glass marble, enjoy the color and visuals, and make something based exclusively off that. At this point I just approach it as "organized chaos". It doesn't have to make sense to anyone else most of the time, it just needs to make sense to me so that I can find what I need to, when I need to.

I mean, we do know what the Rot does to people. There are tapestries/other accounts the player can find that describe it. That being said, I'm not sure that "rotbeast" is an actual in-game lore term, as much as it is a term coined by players to distinguish between the fleshy monsters and the rogue Jonas automatons. "Monster" could refer to any of the unnatural hostiles in the game, while "rotbeast" or "machine/robot/automaton" is a more clear classification of a general type of monster. I think this is mostly the case. It's not directly stated anywhere, to my knowledge, but it is implied rather heavily in certain portions of dialogue and lore. The Rot's exact origins are still unknown though, so most of it is still speculation.

Oh they do. Typos and other grammatical errors can be reported on the Github, although they do seem to be a more rare report. I went ahead and reported this one though. Please see later comment: I don't disagree with making gen 3 animals a little easier to milk. However, I also don't think it's unrealistic or entirely unacceptable that animals that are still on the wilder side of domestication will be rather temperamental when it comes to milking time. Even tame livestock can decide to be a little unruly at milking time. Speaking from some experience. Hence why I suggested that the player could feed their dairy stock to make the animals a little more cooperative for a short time. Even the unruly livestock will be more inclined to remain calm and otherwise cooperate with the process if they have something tasty to munch on while being milked. Additionally, since some crops seem to be getting traits, I think it'd be interesting to see livestock have some potential traits as well. Then players could selectively breed their stock to increase meat yields or milk yields, or perhaps be more or less unruly, etc.

I dunno. I'd like to see them have limited flight, in some ways. There was an old game I played on N64 that let you chase chickens around. They'd remain mostly on the ground, but they would fly up briefly in a panic if you disturbed them too much, though they did attempt to remain in the same general spot.

Took me a moment to figure out what on earth this was referring to. I wouldn't worry too much about it. Charlemagne is tougher than he looks. Give him several days to recover and check back in. He should be fine. If he's not, you might want to submit a bug report on Github, since I doubt that Charlemagne is intended to stay dead if killed.

Echoing what @Lugh Crow-Slave said, the spear balance in 1.22 feels mostly fine to me. The base damage could possibly be increased a tiny bit, however, the quenching process shouldn't be underestimated. So far it doesn't seem terribly hard to quench an iron(or better) spear a couple of times for a 25% power boost, though I daresay it could be pushed farther, albeit at more risk. That should bring the iron+ spears up to what old bronze spears were with ease, if not grant them even more power. The most important balance factor, in my opinion, and the biggest change to get used to, is that rapidly firing spears is no longer possible and throwing a spear is a much more deliberate action. That makes the spear a solid general-purpose weapon, in that it has good melee damage with a longer poking distance and good ranged damage for softening up a target before it can engage in melee(if the target doesn't otherwise die). Basically, it's a jack-of-all-trades but master of none. For hunting, the health of smaller creatures has been adjusted to account for the new spear damage, so players shouldn't be going hungry in the early game. Larger animals will still take a few shots to kill, and hunting bears is a bit of a riskier prospect now, if one relies purely on spear throws. For combat in general, the spear isn't going to do as much damage as a falx in melee, but the reach means that you can poke at things from safety a little better(think poking at things in caves, or otherwise kiting certain creatures). In ranged combat it will still hit pretty hard, but the player is only going to get a couple of shots off, most likely, before a target can close the distance and engage in melee, so it's best to plan accordingly. Great for softening up tough enemies at a distance, but not necessarily the only weapon the player should be relying on. I do want to note that in pre5, the quenching is currently working for spear melee damage, but doesn't seem to be getting applied to ranged damage. So it's a little difficult to fully compare. There is a report up on the bug tracker so hopefully it's fixed in another pre or two. I think it also depends on who one asks, and what the player in question expects. Aside from what I said above, I think it's the kind of change that prompts an initial negative reaction since the player does need to adjust to the changes and reconsider a few strategies. The change to fire clay had similar reactions when it was introduced. Rather startling when first encountered, but a change that makes sense once one plays around with it a bit.

The biggest hurdle to get over, I think, is on the technical side. Birds do fly, yes, but they don't spend all their time in the air either. Likewise, even some birds that are predominantly ground birds(like turkeys and chickens) are capable of limited flight. Then you've got birds like penguins, who can't fly but can swim, and ducks, which can fly but can also swim, both above and below water. Some corners could be cut, of course, but the general behavior changes depending on the bird in question. For a game like Vintage Story, in where realism features more prominently when possible, it would be strange to have birds like ducks and geese restricted to only land and water, or birds like chickens, peafowl, and other ground-dwelling game birds be restricted to just the ground without the ability to fly short distances when startled. Though to be fair, flight would be pretty hard to balance for tameable livestock like chickens, since it's not ideal to force the player to seal them into a building but it's not really ideal to allow them to fly out of a pen easily either.

I wouldn't put it past them! Dastardly gnomes...

The only lore I'm really aware of in that regard: In any case, to state without spoilers, basically translocators are finicky things, and it seems very difficult to link them over long distances. Given how scrambled the world is, the broken translocators we're able to find and repair have perhaps lost their original links and thus need to search for whatever the most convenient link is. Thus it makes sense after a fashion that they might be more prone to connecting to other nearby translocators, rather than ones that are far away. This would be nice, but it's the kind of thing I'd rather see as a feature for a player-built translocator. That way it's a cool late game piece of tech that the player can set up however they want to make travel between specific points easier. The repairable translocators would still be useful in the early game, just more of a gamble in order to keep it balanced. It seems like a job that would be covered by Commoner, but on the other hand...having a proper Sailor option would be pretty cool, especially for more nautical playthroughs. That being said I'm not really sure what strengths/weaknesses the class could have that wouldn't overlap with the other existing classes, or that would keep Sailor a workable option for more land-based maps as well.

It's probably a factor of Wilderness Survival difficulty. On Standard, temporal storms occur every 10-20 days, increasing in strength/frequency by +10% each time up to a limit of 100%. In contrast, Wilderness Survial has temporal storms every 5-10 days, increasing in strength/frequency by +15% each time up to a limit of 150%. My experience on Standard is that the heavier storms don't really start to arrive until around the end of the first year(year 0) to around the beginning of the second year(year 1). Wilderness Survival, for the most part, seems to shorten the time the player has to prepare. Incidentally, if the player adjusts the storm frequency themselves to something other than what the defaults are, they'll get different results. Generally, increasing the interval means not only fewer storms to encounter, but that the storms will be much milder when they do occur. Shortening the interval means not only more storms, but much stronger ones as well. What's currently missing in those options, that would be a great addition, is an option for relatively few storms per year, but very strong when they do happen. Or the opposite: more storms per year, but quite mild rather than strong.

I forgot to mention this, but this is a strategy that really only works for attracting and befriending Blackguards. Gnomes are completely different, being mischievous little goobers that are difficult to predict.