LadyWYT

Steel plate armor is very protective, but also bad for mobility, especially for non-Blackguards. Steel chain is a better option here, in more ways than one. The jumps, though tough, can still be done with armor equipped, but plate will likely slow most players down too much. In the event that one is wearing plate armor, it doesn't hurt to remove a piece or two briefly to get some mobility back, and then put the armor back on once done.

I suspect maybe a brief venture into a "pocket dimension", perhaps--a very small sliver of the Rust World. Or perhaps travel to a different settlement to find some allies, perhaps. The most likely option though, I think, is probably another sort of location similar to the Resonance Archive. Some monsters to fight, some puzzles to solve, and some lore to find, but otherwise fairly straightforward. It's hard to say for sure though. What I do expect though, is a focus on whatever new mechanics are being added for that update. Chapter 2 had some story-specific additions, yes, but it also served to showcase one of the main features of the update: travel options like the elk and sailboat. The sailboat, of course, being a bit underwhelming since coral reefs and ocean life were delayed, and aquatic features still being something relatively underdeveloped as a whole.

For those who hate parkour, this is likely the best option.

I actually suggested something similar a while back. The general idea was to have some sort of receiver device, or expanded use for the resonator as a receiver. For transmitting messages, one would need a bell; bells could also serve as alarms for intruders. In any case, it would be a great immersive communication method for multiplayer and certain NPCs. In multiplayer, such a system could be used to leave offline players messages.

So that's why the world is still messed up. Someone's been microwaving metal to create tiny drifters and creating temporal storms in the process!

As in you couldn't get to that floor, or couldn't get past that floor? To get to the first floor from the ground floor, you need to go up the flight of steps in the past, timeswitch to the present as soon as you reach the top, and then carefully make your way across the floating debris to get through the hole in the wall where the door used to be. Once on the other side, you should remain in the present and should see a ruined chest before you. Jump on top of the chest, and then jump from it to the ruined table on your left and make your way up the stone blocks to the second floor. Like I said before, the parkour in this area is very tricky. Mistiming a jump can sometimes mean death, making it a good idea to bring a glider with you in the event of a miscalculation, though it will still be very brutal to complete on permadeath just due to the nature of permadeath rules. The wiki has a complete walkthrough of the puzzles, complete with some video clips for the Tower portion itself should you need a visual reference. https://wiki.vintagestory.at/Guide:Devastation_area#The_first_floor:_boiler

I was able to complete it just fine in a test world before making my earlier post. If you're not standing right next to the fence when timeswitching, the timeswitch will fail due to debris blocking the path. It's a tight space to work with but it is manageable. If you still believe it's a bug, you should report it on the bug tracker, where it's guaranteed to be seen by the devs. You can scroll over the timeswitch icon on your hotbar and right-click to activate the ability. There is no need to use two hands. As for the parkour puzzle, some of the jumps are tricky, but they are doable. If you fall, you should be able to call the elevator and use it to return to whichever floor you were on. It's worth noting that Vintage Story is a very easy game to die in. Permadeath is especially brutal, especially on Wilderness Survival. If it's not enjoyable, I would recommend either playing with unlimited lives, or otherwise adjusting the settings to something that is less frustrating.

It's not bugged. Once you reach the fence in the past, you need to switch to the present to pass it, then switch back to the past right after you've passed the fence in order to proceed through the door ahead. You won't be able to switch to the past if you go further than that, as the way is blocked by rubble.

I mean for what it's worth, Steam isn't the ultimate solution/protection for everything either. It's a popular service because of its convenience and decent quality at the moment, but that's also subject to change depending on who's running the business. The rules could easily change later, or the company fold entirely and that's the end of it. I'm not saying that Steam will do that, of course, just that it isn't immune to the standard hazards of business and digital products.

Welcome to the forums! The latitude looks just south enough to start getting into warmer climates, hence why you're seeing cacti and other warmer climate flora. A yearly average temperature of 25 C is more than warm enough to support those plants. I will also note that if you shrank the polar-equator distance, that will make it much easier to get to the warmer climates from the default temperate start. If you didn't change the polar-equator distance, the unusual behavior may also be an unintended side effect of one of these mods.

Outside of bugged notifications/notifications turned off somehow, temporal storms shouldn't be appearing out of nowhere. There's always a warning eight hours in advance, which is plenty of time to prep your battle gear or otherwise find some sort of cover. Where it gets tricky is making long expeditions, or forgetting when the last storm was. In the case of the latter, there is a command you can run to check the time until the next storm, at least, but in the case of the former that's just part of the challenge of planning a long trip. There's nothing wrong with making a game more accessible, but that's best handled by the multiple options in the settings and mods so that players can tailor the experience to their liking, without changing the standard experience for everyone else. The more you water down the standard experience to appeal to a wider audience, the more it loses what made it special to begin with.

I think the main reason that so many changes got applied after the initial launch, is that 1.20 had been cooking for a while and players were antsy, so it maybe launched a little sooner than it should have. That was also around the time that there were more new players than expected, to the extent the web services were struggling to keep up with them all. I'm guessing that might be why 1.22 is taking a while as well. It's usually better to take some extra time and get it right at launch, than it is to try to play catch-up afterwards.

What I want to know is what happens if you stick metal in it before turning it on.

It's not a vanilla mechanic, so my guess would be the Butchery mod, perhaps. It's definitely a mod of some sort though.

If it makes you feel any better, I was messing around with a fresh world in the tropics earlier today and nearly died at spawn thanks to a hailstorm. Game really has a way of surprising its players, no matter their skill level.

You might be interested in this mod: https://mods.vintagestory.at/stickydirt I don't know that it does exactly what you're asking, but it might make the ground instability mechanic a little more to your liking. I do recommend trying it out on a test world first though, both to make sure you like it and that it works properly, before adding it to a world you actually intend to play(you might make a backup anyway before modding just in case).

It was quite different. I'm not sure which changes happened when, but:

If it's a mod problem the easiest way to figure it out if there's no obvious culprit, is to disable all mods and verify that the vanilla game is working as intended(make sure you're testing on a world specifically for testing, and not your cherished world!). Once you've done that, then it's just a matter of turning mods back on one by one and testing as you do so until the problem reoccurs. At that point, you know which mod to disable, and which mod author to report the problem to so it can be fixed. As for removing mods from a world already being played, it's usually safe, but it depends heavily on what the mod does as well. Best to make a backup of the world before you load it, just in case something goes wrong.

Judging by the HUD, the wind seems to be strong enough to power the hammer, and if it was hammering then your windmill should be big enough to power it. The ingot still looks like it's hot enough, judging by the color, but you might check it anyway just to be sure. Otherwise, I might try disconnecting and reconnecting the hammer to the windmill. Sometimes the game derps out a bit and doing that will start things going again. Since you are using mods though, it could be a mod issue, depending on which mods you are using.

I think it's fine if they fill the same general role; the bigger attraction I think is just the variety(mods like Wildcraft are popular for a reason). Oats could differ as to where they spawn, in that perhaps it's the only available grain aside from flax for that region.

Honestly, I wouldn't worry too much about it. Writing down login information and storing it somewhere safe is a good way to keep track of things like that, and it's also the reason that pretty much every website has a "Forgot password?" option. Forgetting login information is a fairly common occurrence. As far servers dying or games falling to the wayside, it happens to most everything eventually. For games still in development there's always a risk that they could fail for one reason or another, but that risk is just...part of life in general. Vintage Story is still growing quite well and receiving regular updates that are stuffed to the gills with goodies; I really don't see that changing anytime soon. The game design itself is quite replayable, so even after the game isn't popular, it will likely maintain a base of dedicated players that keep it alive for quite some time after. There are certainly more obscure game titles that have been preserved and are still played. If you're concerned that they may decide to change the rules and just pull game licenses arbitrarily after purchase...sure, there is a risk of that, but that kind of behavior is a good way to get sued and destroy customers' good will completely. Given what I've seen from Anego Studios so far though, they don't seem inclined to behave like that at all.

How are the story chapters going to be balanced? By whatever metrics the devs deem appropriate for the story they want to tell and the game they wish to make. I highly doubt this. Tier 2 equipment(bronze) is required for Chapter 1, and Tier 3 equipment(iron) is the minimum for Chapter 2, although I would wager it's manageable with bronze/gambeson thanks to the changes that have been implemented. Chapter 3 would likely require steel equipment, which is Tier 4, if it requires tougher equipment at all. Titanium would likely be a requirement beyond steel, and I would more expect to see some sort of Jonas tech power armor, potentially, than pure titanium. I don't think it's a good idea to downgrade the current difficulty to Tier 1. Tier 1 equipment is fine for early game and basic surface survival, but it's not going to hold up at all to the nasties lurking within story locations. You can already change the story location distances at world creation. The option can be found under the World Generation tab. I'll also note that some Chapter 2 locations have already had their distances shortened since their introduction. The distances are also there to help keep the player from discovering things too early and missing pieces of the story, since it's very possible to skip locations and chapters entirely. At least two locations are easily discovered without the map markers as well, and one of those is visible from a couple thousand blocks away, minimum. As for where new locations are placed, the only real answer is wherever the devs wish them to be placed in order to tell the story. I definitely expect more traveling, but perhaps not to the same extent as Chapter 2. Given that Chapter 2 was focused on traveling, it makes sense to include a lot of running around, but I daresay Chapter 3, at least, will tone it down a little as a break. Given that the overall tech level is the late Middle Ages, I don't think we need another tier past steel, unless it's Jonas tech. Steel is a rather solid end game material, and I think it's fine to have fewer but more defined tech levels, than several different ones that just feel like a copy/paste of one another.

Rust monsters really ought to stay hostile, and not become friendly at all. They aren't exactly mindless beasts, but the mind that is present is not one that can be reasoned with. Regarding mechanical creatures, I think this would be a good late game bit of tech, though I'm not sure how one would acquire it. However...(major spoilers ahead) I can't imagine they wouldn't add horses sooner or later. Horses are a standard farm and transport animal, as well as a favorite animal of many people. And like you said, there's lots of variety. I'd hope to at least see a classic horse as well as a draft horse option, as well as an Akhal Teke coat coloring as a very rare option.

Welcome to the forums(and the game)! The typical method I use for locating most ores is using the density search mode on the propick to take samples across a wide range of territory. When I find a spot that looks promising for whatever ore I'm looking for, I'll do a few more density searches in that specific area to get an idea of the best digging spot, then sink a shaft straight down with ladders and sample every 12 blocks or so with the propick's node search to see what's actually there. If I don't find any leads in the shaft itself, I'll sometimes dig a few branches outwards and take more node search samples to see if there is any ore that I missed by a hair; if no luck I return to the surface and dig somewhere else. When it comes to picking a spot to dig, you generally want a reading that is Decent or better, but if it's a rare mineral like chromite or otherwise the only lead you have on that mineral, it doesn't hurt to check Poor or Very Poor readings as well, especially for common minerals like tin. Do note that when it comes to tin, you really only need tin bronze to make the pickaxe for the treasure hunter's quest, and even then tin bronze picks can be purchased from other traders so making one isn't a hard requirement. Bismuth bronze and black bronze are options as well, though black bronze isn't very feasible since it's an alloy of gold, silver, and copper. Bismuth bronze is an alloy of bismuth, zinc, and copper, so if you're having trouble locating tin it's a good idea to keep an eye out for those minerals instead. Iron can be a bit harder to track down due to the sheer size of the deposits. I want to say there's some bit in the code that's meant to keep too many iron veins from spawning near each other since each one is so massive, but I'm not 100% sure. In any case, if there's one at your dig site, it will be easy to find, as they are pretty hard to miss. I would say the more important thing to consider here is what kind of iron ore you're looking for. Hematite tends to be the easiest one to find, while magnetite is very hit or miss. I'd recommend checking hematite readings before magnetite readings, unless the rock layers are predominantly andesite, as magnetite is the only iron ore that andesite can host. Limonite I've only found once, and that was purely by accident, so I don't recommend searching for this one specifically unless you have an actual reading on it.

If you have multiple installations and switch between them, you will need to log in each time you switch even if on the same device. For offline mode, you will still be prompted for a login, and entering the appropriate information will allow you to continue playing as normal despite being offline--no further logins required unless you switch installations or something. The way it works, I think, is that the game stores a copy of your last login and uses that as the check instead if there is no internet connection. As long as you've logged in with an internet connection once on that device, you should be able to play.