LadyWYT

Gambeson and bear armor will soak up the damage while providing minimal penalty. As @marmarmar34 also noted, leather will work fine as well. Aside from that, you may want to light up your base more and clear out brush so you can spot threats more easily, and fence off cave entrances to stop things from crawling out. That should cut down on unwanted visitors.

Strange. To my knowledge, temporal stability is a separate mechanic from temporal storms, despite the two being somewhat related. Turning off temporal stability as a whole should still leave rifts and storms in place, I think, but they shouldn't drain temporal stability as there is no longer any stability to drain.

Equipping a shield stops most incoming rock damage. Otherwise, equipping a full set of decent armor should stop most of the damage as well. And by decent, I mean pretty much anything better than improvised armor. Believe it or not though, the rock attack is actually very useful when fighting high tier drifters. High tier drifters hit hard, but the rock attack still counts as a basic tier 0 attack no matter what tier the drifter is. Getting smacked by a rock is preferable to getting smacked by a nightmare's sawblade arm.

That I don't know, as I've never run a server. One thing I forgot to mention though when it comes to hosting a server; hosting on a separate machine usually gets better performance, but it is possible to start a singleplayer game and let others join. Takes a bit of fiddling to get it to work, but it's also an option. One thing I do recommend though is that if you go the dedicated server route, make sure you have a whitelist. Otherwise you may get unwanted visitors. Happened to my friend and I in our early VS days--the server wasn't whitelisted and some random player joined. They were, at least, nice enough to leave politely when asked.

Welcome to the forums(and the game)! What I would recommend is just making sure that time is set to pass only if a player is online. That way you don't have to mess with constantly starting and stopping the server.

I like it. I think in this case, standard dirt tiers could be what's typical, and "new" soil types be somewhere between low-medium fertility but offer much better growth bonuses to specific crops(growth speeds similar to high fertility/terra preta). Terra preta would still be the best overall option for crops in general, but that gives players some specific early advantages in farming while adding more diversity to the landscape. Plus I would wager clay-based soils could have more clay deposits. Not that clay is terribly hard to find, but the current deposits could shrink a little and the larger deposits be found in the clay-based soil areas instead.

Oh for sure! There's a world of difference between watching a few videos, and then trying to actually do the thing.

I would actually say the opposite. Hytale's combat looks fun from what I've seen in videos, but it's too flashy for a game like Vintage Story. I think it works for a game that's more action-oriented/fast-paced and focused on dungeon crawling adventures(which Hytale seems to be that kind of game), but not so much for a game that has a slower pace and more focus on the process of things(like forging, pottery, etc.) and planning ahead for the future(stocking food for the winter, blazing trails, etc). The flashy moves are also quite unrealistic; not that Vintage Story doesn't have some unrealistic things itself, but most things in the game are grounded in realism and combat is no exception. Regarding the animation, I think refinement will come for the VS animations, but it's not the highest priority right now. I also think that when the animations are polished, they do need to remain grounded in realism when possible. Flashy combat animations are fun to watch, but very often those flashy moves are actions that would realistically leave the player open to injury. Many of the Skyrim killcams are prime examples of that--the crosscut killcam when dual-wielding looks very cool, but in reality is very easy to block/deflect and leaves the attacker too open to counterattack. Same with some of the killcams for two-handed weapons--they look cool, but take much too long and leave the player wide open to attack.

I think it depends more on the player's preference. It's possible to jump right in to Vintage Story blind and figure things out using nothing but the handbook and experimenting, but it will be tougher than looking up a guide, asking for advice, or watching some videos beforehand. In my case, I watched a few videos beforehand to figure out whether or not it was a game I would actually enjoy, and then figured out the rest of it for myself once I purchased the game.

I think it boils down to a difference of opinion. I like the current implementation because it provides a sense of the unnatural and some uncertainty to the world, while still having consistent rules that are easy to understand and play by. I don't like most changes I see suggested, because they change the rules to something more inconsistent, lose the creepiness, become annoying in some fashion, or other turn the mechanic into just another mechanism to benefit the player instead of posing a challenge. I think it would be interesting for a challenge playthrough, but I don't think it would make surface instability better. I think it would make it quite aggravating to deal with, especially for newer players. One common complaint about temporal storms is that they interrupt whatever the player is doing and force them to do something else. While fluctuating stability that can never drain a player's stability fully might mean that the player can build in an unstable area without much issue, I don't think the player is going to be thrilled if they have to stop what they're doing in order to deal with a spike of higher instability. New players especially, I think, will get aggravated, as now there really isn't a solution other than "oh well, you just have to deal with it or turn it off, because it can happen anywhere at anytime". Personally, I prefer having a constantly stable area to work with. It gives me a nice little place to chill out while I plan my next adventure. Temporal storms and rift activity aren't really an issue because I can lock the monsters out of my house easily enough, and the storms themselves are fairly predictable. If a change like the above were to happen, I'd most likely want the option to turn the fluctuation off and return stability back to static zones, as I really don't want to be pushed toward anxiety all the time. It's probably achievable with static zones, but fluctuating zones is probably a lot tougher to program in regards to animal behavior/plant qualities. Likewise, I think most players would prefer clear, consistent rules for animal behavior so that they can reliably deal with the creatures, rather than play a constant guessing game with erratic behavior. As for the increased creature aggression, it is mentioned in lore and has yet to be fully explained, but I think the primary reason they're coded that way is to present more of a survival challenge to the player, at least for now. As for that one story location: To me, temporal stability should still remain something that primarily only affects seraphs. The subtle rust coloration, I think, would be much better served as another clue that one's stability is getting too low--perhaps around the 50% mark. I think this is another case of, it depends on one's personal preference. Personally, I prefer to have critical information readily available, and then hide various indicators to achieve whatever level of immersion I want. Most of the time, I tend to prefer having the information displayed, so I can make better choices about whatever I'm doing and get better outcomes on average. For a tougher, more unforgiving game like Vintage Story, that information is a lot more critical to have since mistakes tend to be punished a lot more harshly. In Skyrim I can just reload from my last quicksave; in Minecraft I can just make more gear with ease. If I goof in Vintage Story, it's generally not so easy to fix. Not always. It depends heavily on the game and what the desired outcome is. If the desired goal is to make the player constantly second-guess themselves, then hiding crucial information is a good way to achieve that. For a game like Vintage Story, I think an "immersive mode" that hides the UI would be fine as an option, but not as a default.

I completely forgot to mention comb jellyfish! Those would be really cool to have as well. A nice little light show for the deep sea.

This is partly why I enjoy playing with the Flora mods and Wildcraft. There's so much more stuff to find and take advantage of.

Not to mention the inverse of this equation: if unstable areas can change to stable, then you can't deliberately build your friend's bedroom in the unstable area of the base.

I don't think it's exclusively a sandbox game issue, as much as it is just a facet of current culture. Every time a new life sim comes out, it's immediately touted as a Sims killer. Every time a new MMO launches, it's lauded as a WoW killer. I suspect at least some of this sentiment is driven by the fact that many videogames just aren't what they used to be, and many games are designed to maximize profits and playtime rather than offer players actual value for their money. Players shouldn't need to buy several different packages just to get a complete game to play, and more hours required to complete a game doesn't always make said game more fun.

I betcha the firebrick door is the problem. Try putting a wooden door on it and see if that fixes things.

For monsters, you may want to set a grace timer to stop them from spawning for the first few days. You can find the setting under the "Player spawn and death" tab in the customization options when creating a world. Do note that rifts will still spawn with a grace timer enabled, but will not actually produce monsters. Under the "Temporal stability" tab you can find options to make the interval between temporal storms longer, as well as the option to turn off temporal rifts entirely(and thus prevent most surface monster spawns) if you wish. Creature aggression in general can be adjusted with the "Creature hostility" option in the "Survival challenges" tab. Aggressive is the general default and means that hostile creatures like bears and monsters will attack when they notice you. Passive means that creatures won't attack you unless you attack them first. Never hostile, of course, means that creatures just won't fight back. You might also consider turning up the number of hit points you start with, and/or turning down the overall creature strength. While neither option affects creature aggression, more health and less creature damage will make fights much more forgiving. As far as not spawning on top of a mountain or in a pit...generally, the game won't place you in either position, though it does happen occasionally. If it happens, I would chalk it up to bad luck and either work with it if the world looks interesting enough, or just mulligan until you get something that looks more interesting. Biomes in Vintage Story do not work like biomes in Valheim or Minecraft. Vintage Story takes a more realistic approach and the biomes will depend heavily on latitude and yearly rainfall. The further north you go, the colder it gets, and traveling south will take you to more tropical regions. More rainfall will produce more fertile soil, while less will result in deserts. Mountains, hills, and forests can be found pretty much anywhere in the world. To be fair, Vintage Story has a very steep learning curve and it catches many new players off guard. As I said before, most information the player needs is present in the guide, but the player needs to dig through the handbook themselves and figure things out. Once you start getting used to what the game generally requires of players and what settings you like the play on, it starts to feel a lot more approachable. Don't be shy about asking for help on the forums either if something is unclear or you aren't sure how to tackle certain parts of the game. Most of us have been through the same set of struggles while learning to play and are more than happy to share advice on how to beat the challenges.

Honestly I think that could make for a great, if niche, RPG. Evil actions don't usually have proper punishments since it makes the game unplayable for evil characters, but I think an RPG that had stiff punishments could be very interesting. I think it would mean evil characters would need to start off with petty crimes and build their skills up before they can expect to be true villains, making an evil playthrough a proper challenge.

You should try Expanded Foods, if you haven't yet. One of the things it adds is actual wine bottles, wine racks, wine barrels, and wine aging. Use with Wildcraft for even more beverage-making fun! Does it come with those legendary cheese curds?

I'm mainly against it because I'm skeptical/resistant to change to begin with, but also because I think the current system is just fine. As @Zane Mordien noted, it's simple to understand and deal with once one learns what the gear is indicating. I also suspect that outside of major happenings like temporal storms, temporal stability as a whole is something that really only affects seraphs and other unnatural entities, and not so much plants, wildlife, or humans. It's a quality I quite like when it comes to the worldbuilding, as to me it makes the unnatural stuff actually feel unnatural and a bit more interesting when encountered. If the rifts were just popping out corruption everywhere and ghosts were appearing in ruins and the like(that is, the unnatural becomes a common experience rather than something mostly in the background), it'd stop feeling like a natural world that has a definite underlying problem, and just feel like a standard fantasy setting.

Honestly, I figure players themselves are probably the best way to catch translation errors. Professionals are expensive, and there are many languages to account for. It's also quite easy to make mistakes with languages that aren't one's native tongue...although it's also easy to make mistakes even as a native speaker, depending on the language. Not that players should have to do all the translation work, but I do think that players will also have the best context for what's actually going on in the game.

Vintage Story is not Minecraft. The two often get compared to each other since both have blocky graphics, but they're nowhere near the same game. Trying to play Vintage Story by Minecraft rules is a recipe for disaster. Did you play the tutorial to learn the basic controls and read through the handbook guides? Vintage Story doesn't really hold the player's hand and lets the player figure out for themselves the best way to progress. The handbook holds most information the player needs to know about various gameplay concepts, and while it is possible to progress without consulting the handbook it's probably not going to be a good time. I will also note that most gameplay settings can be tweaked--creature aggression, world climate, starting climate, health, hunger rate, tool durability, etc. The default gamemode is Standard and balanced for a variety of playstyles, and while it's the one I would recommend for first time players, it may be tougher than what some want to play. Exploration mode is the better pick, in that case. Wilderness Survival and Homo Sapiens are the hardest preset difficulties and not recommended for new players at all. Music can be adjusted in the settings menu at any time, both for volume and track intervals. Overall, it sounds like Vintage Story isn't your cup of tea, which is totally fine! The good news is that the developers have a generous refund policy, and you can request a refund here: https://www.vintagestory.at/support/

I'll add lion's mane jellies and siphonophores to the mix, as well as tripod fish and telescope fish.

I always seem to forget that distinction. It probably doesn't help when I'm writing posts while tired. Honestly not a fan of changes like this. Temporal storms and instability in general are specifically bad things that the player is supposed to avoid. If the player gets distinct benefits from them, like tools getting repaired or crops growing faster, then players are going to be actively settling in those areas instead of avoiding them. Likewise, it also removes fixing instability/fixing the world as an option for the main story's potential conclusion; why would the player want to fix something that they actively benefit from? The most I can really say otherwise is that if a change like this happens, then the opposite effects absolutely need to be just as possible. That is, if tools can be repaired, then they can also be damaged. Crops could grow faster, but also grow slower, etc. This one is still a "maybe" for me. Overall, I think I still prefer the gear rather than actually changing the environment too much. Another "maybe". I'd be more in favor of this than directly changing the environment to indicate instability, though I'm still not sure that this will fix more problems than it creates. Static zones can be more punishing to new players who aren't aware of the mechanic and settle in an unstable area, but constantly changing zones seems like it would be just as confusing. New players will probably be asking how to stop the instability, and in that case there isn't a solution outside of maybe some late game Jonas tech they have to build and power. Personally, I prefer static zones, as it's nice to have a guaranteed stable area to just chill out in when I don't want to do anything particularly dangerous. Static zones also make it very easy for me to learn which areas I need to spend limited time in, and which areas I can safely camp in. Changing zones...depending on how often it changes, it seems like there's the distinct possibility of players getting very unlucky and moving with the instability, and thus never having a chance to recover outside of sacrificing gears. I would actually suggest reducing the stability recovery rate, and perhaps adding small pockets of heavy instability at the surface. Currently, loss of stability doesn't mean a lot, since it's quite easy to stand in a stable area for a few seconds and be back at 100%. I think it's fine if the player can hang around for a day or two in light unstable areas before needing to leave, but it seems like the player should need to spend a few in-game hours in a stable area to recover from significant stability loss. It would also lend more weight to the gear method of restoring stability. Honestly don't think this one is needed. Some maps can already have wide swaths of instability, while others can be mostly stable. I think this one is actually more interesting as an option in the settings; turning down the likelihood of finding unstable areas would be great for an easier game, while cranking up the coverage of unstable areas would be a great survival challenge. There could also be the option to make the whole surface neutral, so that the player must either sacrifice gears or kill monsters to keep themselves grounded in reality. I mostly agree with this one, though I would cut the instability spikes and keep the storms as a distinct mechanic. I think this would be great for the special procedural dungeons that have been on the roadmap for a while. The surface ruins are interesting, but not really interesting enough to bother with outside of the early game, in most cases. A tougher ruin/dungeon that has better loot though...that would definitely be a prime goody for an unstable area, and make such areas a point of interest while retaining their dangerous nature. In that case, I would probably make them a rare "new" ruin; that is, rather than ruins of the Old World, it's clearly the ruins of a trader camp or survivor settlement that got overrun years ago. There could probably be a better item or two to find, but the instability would definitely prevent players from just turning such a ruin into a convenient base. Really not a fan of direct changes to the world like this; drastic changes like these are best left to the story locations, where it has a lot more impact. Part of the reason a certain location in chapter 2 is so shocking, is that there's just nothing like it at all prior to the player finding it. If it's just a procedural dungeon that's a mini-version of the Resonance Archive or something milder like that, I think it's fine, but such things really shouldn't be common lest they lose their impact. Not really a fan of this one either. I think the special loot is better suited for procedural dungeons. Not so much stuff that would cause instability, as much as it is just interesting/useful stuff that's difficult to acquire. Interesting idea, but one better reserved for procedural dungeons and specific story locations to ensure it has a significant impact. The ghosts specifically shouldn't be able to be interacted with, outside of special circumstances in a story location. I've not played the Witcher 3, but what comes to mind for me is the Avanchenzel quest from Skyrim--the one where the Argonian lady gives you the cube to return to a Dwemer ruin and you witness echoes of what happened along the way. That is, the entities aren't actually ghosts, as much as they are just echoes in time. Since I'm not a fan of altering the world like this, I would propose just adding invisible rifts to unstable areas instead. The visible rifts still function as normal and are tied to the rift weather. The invisible ones, however, do not drain stability, are constantly present, and will spawn monsters even on the calmest of days. It makes the unstable areas a little more dangerous and a little more obvious as well, since the infestation of monsters would suggest that something about the area allows them to leak through into reality. Pretty much. It can also bite if you're at low stability and a temporal storm hits, however, that's also a rare occurrence. The simplicity is one major reason I like the mechanic as-is though. It's easy to track once the player learns what the gear indicates, and rather forgiving so the world still feels quite approachable. That being said, if the player gets complacent, it's a mechanic that will happily come bite them if given the chance.

I mean, if a weight system is implemented in the name of more realism...realistically the player is only going to be carrying four ashlar stone bricks at a time, if that. Even if the rules are bent somewhat, I would still expect it to be a very tedious reduction in the amount of blocks like dirt, stone, and wood the player can carry in their inventory at a time. Yes, the player could use carts to move around large quantities of those materials, but that doesn't alleviate the issues such a change is going to present for building. The current stack size limits might not be the most realistic, but they make it a lot less of a pain to build stuff. I really don't want to be having to run up and down ladders a million different times just because the game only allows me to carry a few stone blocks at a time. A stack size reduction is fine, since the current stack size is 64, so even if the stack size were drastically cut(like to 16) I can still carry enough stacks of blocks to build with for a while before I need to restock. Right, and I do agree that's an issue. I just don't think weight limits are a good solution here given the problems such a system introduces. I think in this case, something akin to Minecraft's bundle would probably be better. Lump clothing with clothing, jewelry with jewelry, to get a generic "collection" item that fits in one inventory slot and can hold X number of items. The player can activate this collection by holding it and right-clicking to add/retrieve items at will. Items must be removed from the collection before being displayed, used, or otherwise altered. This would also be a prime opportunity to add wardrobes and jewelry boxes specifically for storing these kinds of items. Perhaps they have more storage slots than chests, but can only hold clothing or jewelry, so the furniture is a great way to decorate and store those specific things, but can't be abused for storage in general.

In fairness, the eidolon is a really tough fight, and the occasional goofiness of hitboxs and entity movements doesn't really help things. If you have iron equipment, you should be equipped well enough to handle what comes after the Archive. Chapter Two has had some pretty significant changes since its inception and feels much better to play now than it did at launch. While I would say it's perhaps easier than Chapter One in some ways, there's not really such as thing as too much preparation when it comes to Vintage Story.