LadyWYT

First off, welcome to the forums! As others have already mentioned, if you've not yet done the story, I'd recommend doing so, although you will need to play with lore content enabled in order to do so(lore content is disabled by default in Homo Sapiens, but can be enabled via console command). In addition to the main story, there are other lore snippets to collect in the form of books and tapestries that you can find by panning loot, talking to certain traders, or otherwise delving into ruins. Do keep in mind though that the game is still very much in early development, and of a planned eight story chapters there are only two currently implemented. Likewise, there's quite a lot planned for other areas of the game that just hasn't been implemented yet, because there's only so much that the devs can fit into an update, and sometimes other things have to be added first to lay the foundation for things to come. Regarding crop blights though, I'm pretty sure that the devs have confirmed those won't be added to the game, with the reasoning that it's not fun gameplay for the player to just lose crops to something that's outside of their control. That's not to say that players can't play with those mechanics, just that it's the kind of thing that will need to be handled by mods. This doesn't really fit the overall design direction that the devs seem to want to take VS, and personally I don't find that kind of gameplay very fun. I'd like to see more defense options, yes, however, I didn't pick up VS because I want to play tower defense, and automation goes against the spirit of the game. The player can semi-automate some of the more tedious tasks, as seen by the helve hammer and quern, but they can't really go full "AFK mode" like what the other block game offers. I will also note that games that insist on always scaling enemies to the player's current power level end up having progression that feels mostly pointless, because getting new stuff doesn't have a noticeable impact on the gameplay. It doesn't matter if the player manages to upgrade from stone tools to metal ones if it's still taking the same number of hits to deal with the enemies the game throws at them. Vintage Story's progress feels meaningful in part because getting upgrades means that enemies you had trouble dealing with before become a lot easier to fight. Yeah, no. Part of the reason the "other world" is interesting is that the player can't go there, and not much is known about it otherwise. If it was a place that was fully explained, or that the player could otherwise just visit whenever they liked, then it would quickly lose its luster. That's basically what happened to Minecraft's Nether and Deep Dark--those places are interesting the first few times you explore them, but easily become just a spot you visit occasionally to strip for resources and otherwise ignore because the place is a hassle. Also worth noting that rifts have nothing to do with sanity, but rather temporal stability. Without spoiling too much of the story, what's basically going on is that some really bad stuff happened in the past that shattered time, and the player's foothold in the present day is tenuous at best.

I like the idea of having a specific workbench to craft specific parts or items by simply selecting the desired option from a menu and then supplying the materials, similar to how sailboat/watermill crafting already work. However, I don't particularly like the "Valheim method" of requiring a crafting station and multiple upgrades nearby just to craft things. It works for Valheim, because Valheim was designed around that concept and makes it work, but overall it tends to be a rather clunky, frustrating system to play with. Also worth noting that while the crafting grid might not be the most realistic thing ever, it does get the idea of crafting across fairly well in terms of gameplay, without becoming too tedious. Like firewood, arrows, or stone knives, for example--all of those you need to craft fairly often, in quantity. The player could be required to do those tasks at a specific workstation, however, that means that they're tied to those workstations and can't just do what should be a simple task out in the wilderness without setting up a workstation. Some of it could be handled by a simple animation and keybind to start the process, which is perhaps a more immersive way to handle it. However, those animations are also going to add up rather quickly, and while it might be fun to watch the first few times, the player is probably going to get a little frustrated having to sit through multiple animations and take most of an in-game day or two just to get what should be a relatively simple task done. In fairness, the devs have expressed a desire to get rid of the crafting grid when possible. However, it's not a system I really expect to disappear entirely for the above reasons.

I think the main thing that's tripping me up is the "realistic" bit. Sure, those charts are accurate for earth as we know it, and technically the earth in VS is supposed to be the same planet as ours. However, all the geography got scrambled as a result of "stuff happened"(spoilers), which would logically include the air and ocean currents as well, not just the land. So I don't really see how, aside from general regional temperatures and the associated flora and fauna those temperatures support, everything is supposed to generate exactly how it does like the earth we're familiar with? Then it we get into the aspect of what's actually practical to implement for a game like Vintage Story, and while I could be wrong...I don't really see a way to feasibly simulate air and ocean currents and things on a global scale, at least not to the extent that it's not going to feel like goofy videogame logic. I think the better option, like what this comment seems to suggest at least in part, is figure out how to get proper continents to generate, and then make rules for how portions of the continent's interior and border regions can generate. It's not necessarily going to be globally realistic, as much as it'll feel more realistic for that specific region. Pair it with more flora and fauna to find for the specific climates, and I think that would be enough to keep most players immersed while still being relatively "easy" to account for in the programming.

Welcome to the forums! Yeah, to echo Moose's thoughts, aesthetics are somewhat subjective and whether the textures and colors are pretty or not is going to depend entirely on who you ask. In my case, I think the wood and rock textures are fine, and don't need to be changed. I'm pretty sure that they don't. https://www.vintagestory.at/forums/forum/18-builds/ This is already possible to do by making a texture pack for the game. Doing so allows you to change the textures and colors to whatever your personal preference is, without changing the game for everyone else in the process. I would like to see this though. Plaster and stucco was rather common in the medieval period, and regarding game mechanics specifically, it would be a great way for players to customize interior spaces or otherwise do some basic decorating without necessarily having to chisel everything.

Could also be installs on different drives. I go through this every time there's an rc release, since I keep the rc clients installed on a different drive than my normal game.

There's also the Gobi desert, Patagonian desert, Taklamakan desert, etc. in addition to the arctic and antarctic regions. That's not to say that those areas don't have areas that look like the deserts commonly portrayed in pop culture, but anyway... My general point was that we already have plenty of desert regions in Vintage Story, just that those regions don't always look like the stereotype that some players may be expecting when they think of a desert. A location's latitude doesn't really have any impact on whether it qualifies as a desert(outside of perhaps the arctic regions), as much as the surrounding geography and wind/water currents do. So in the context of Vintage Story, I don't think it makes much sense to slap a "desert band" into the climate bands and call it more realistic than the current system. As for having a world option to make the biomes cover potentially huge areas that take days to cross...I wouldn't mind seeing this option, but I don't think it should be the default given how many various player complaints I've seen about bad spawns or boring world generation. @MKMoose already said as much earlier, but the main hazard of huge biomes is that the terrain can get rather stale rather fast, and that's probably one of the reasons that the devs have focused more on the world generation we have in the game currently. The player can spend a few days running around and see several different types of terrain, thus keeping exploration interesting, while the "latitude" distribution helps ensure that the colder climate flora/fauna stays primarily in the north and south with the tropical fauna staying around the equator regions where one would actually expect to find it. Minecraft tries to handle its generation in a similar manner, in that it tries to keep hot biomes near other warmer biomes and cold biomes near other cool biomes. However, the realism ends there--the player isn't going to be able to just go south and be guaranteed to find tropics, or go north and find arctic regions, as they can with VS world generation.

The difference, as I see it, is that wolves and bears are both dangerous land animals, while sharks are a dangerous aquatic animal but by no means the only thing in the water that's dangerous. The average player is going to spend most of their time on land, so I think it makes sense to have wolves and bears be a commonly encountered threat to help keep the game interesting, especially since those animals are so widespread. Sharks though... they still make sense as an aquatic threat, just I don't think it should be the "JAWS" stereotype that's common in media, especially not when there are other options that are just as dangerous(if not moreso) that are underused in media, and not when the player already has several things to hunt them on land. The water should be a generally more peaceful experience, with different hazards to encounter. Doesn't need to be a huge squid--a gaggle of smaller squids is just as good, if not more threatening. The "huge squid" job is better suited to the colossal squid. Leopard seals are another option for large, dangerous aquatic animals that could potentially be more actively aggressive. Whales are also a good option--not necessarily as active aggressors, but huge creatures that can accidentally hurt the player or perhaps intentionally hurt the player if the player is hunting them. If I'm recalling correctly, triggerfish can get rather large and be quite territorial, and I'm sure there are other large reef fish that could serve as hazards to players. Swordfish and sailfish don't tend to be aggressive, to my knowledge, but they are very fast and can be very dangerous when flopping around in a boat because those noses are sharp. Perhaps deep sea fishing could be added, and the player could have fun trying to catch them for food or trophies, at the risk of getting speared by the fish if they aren't careful. Stingrays could cruise around the seabed in shallower water, being difficult to spot but moving away if the player gets too close. If the player is careless and moving around quickly, however, they might find themselves stabbed with a barb and may need to seek medical attention.

IRL month or in-game month? I'm assuming IRL. And does the glow block persist after October has ended? Didn't know it was even a thing, but if the glow is persistent I can think of several uses for it.

What exactly do you consider a "desert latitude"? Because those large swaths of dry land filled with sand and gravel are deserts, and to my knowledge it's not the latitude that qualifies a region as a desert, but rather the annual rainfall. If you're referring to the stereotypical desert that's presented in pop culture--ie, lots of sand with a few cacti and cow skulls/bones lying around--you'll need to travel much further south to the warmer tropical zones in order to encounter those. You'd need to change world generation entirely for this to happen, since the current settings don't allow any land feature to be so massive that it takes days to cross. At least to my knowledge. Also keep in mind that a land feature/biome that big sounds interesting...until you get spawned in the middle of such a biome, or otherwise have to actually deal with them on the regular. For particular kinds of games, that kind of challenge could be rather fun, but I don't think that kind of game is what the average player prefers to play, and likely why the devs have balanced the current world generation as they have.

Lightning is the only thing that I'm aware of, however, you need to have that setting enabled first in order for lightning to be able to start fires. Even with the lightning fires enabled though, a well-placed lightning rod(s) should prevent that kind of fire from occurring. The only way your house would burn down is if you intentionally burned it down yourself, you accidentally started a fire nearby, or a wildfire was otherwise already burning out of control elsewhere and swept through your area.

Welcome to the forums! Unfortunately this is most likely one of those odd OS-specific bugs. Other Mac users have reported the same issue. https://github.com/anegostudios/VintageStory-Issues/issues/5966 You could try fiddling with your settings as the user "frogboots" did in the report, as it seems he had some success in fixing the issue, and see if that makes the moon show up in your world.

The house icon simply means the space you're currently in counts as an insulated room. That's why it appears when you close off the stairwell but disappears if you leave the stairwell open(ie, no doors/trapdoors at all). The benefit of having an insulated room is that you won't get cold while in that space, and will in fact slowly warm up. The spoilage rates will also be a bit better, though not as good as a cellar. Do keep in mind though that there are certain requirements that must be met for a space to count as a proper room: https://wiki.vintagestory.at/Room

I would say that what you have so far fits pretty well. I'd recommend playing through the story to figure out the rest. Without spoiling too much though, there's really not a whole more to really add, since we're only on chapter two of a planned eight chapters. So there's a whole lot that we just don't know yet.

Worth noting that the bush doesn't need to be fully mature in order for clippings to be taken from it. What should it be adjusted to, in your opinion? Limiting clippings to one bush per year isn't particularly realistic(for some species, at least), however, when it comes to game balance it's not ideal to let the player find a single bush/couple of bushes and then propagate several clippings within a year strictly from those bushes. When it comes to current gameplay, it's not particularly tough to run around and get a good bunch of clippings from bushes with decent traits, and then have a whole berry patch ready for next year's harvest season, and that seems like a good balance to me. Especially if the general idea is that the player needs to invest some time and effort into cultivating a high quality berry patch.

In addition to what @MKMoose said, in my experience halite is one of those goofy ores that's a little tough to find in the conventional prospecting method. I'm not sure I've ever actually found it via prospecting--the times I have found it have been by accident. I think the better way is to use prospecting to figure out the area it's likely to have spawned, and then explore the caves in that area to see if there's any exposed domes. The domes are pretty big, so it's not unusual for part of them to be exposed in a cave, and it saves you the trouble of digging holes. Don't forget though that commodities and survival goods traders both regularly have halite for sale, so trading for it is also an option, provided you are playing with lore content enabled.

Not true. Gambeson is the best armor for traveling around on the surface, while bronze lamellar is a very good early game armor. Neither one is the best for dealing with tier 3/4 creatures, however, both are still tough enough to allow you to actually do something about those creatures without dying in the process. It's a similar case for copper, leather, and other low tier armors--they aren't very durable or protective, but they are cheap and easy to make. They'll help you survive things that you otherwise wouldn't in the early stages of the game. With the current state of the game though, there's not much reason to go cavern crawling in the early game, and more experienced players can easily forgo armor when dealing with surface threats. Temporal storms are the main thing that armor is required for, and while the early drops of rusty gears can be quite valuable, not every player plays with these enabled. I'm not sure I would call this a viable strategy in any game, really. Armor is generally heavy compared to other items, and there's only so much space in the player inventory. The idea is to pick the armor that best suits your playstyle or otherwise pick armor that is appropriate for the kind of situation you expect to be facing. For just general travels, gambeson is best, however, if you're traveling to a dangerous area or otherwise traveling with the intention of picking a fight with very dangerous things, then you'll probably want to wear something more protective. Chain armor is very protective while also being lightweight, making it a good choice as an "all-purpose" armor, though it's also just as viable to have something sturdier and only equip it when you need to.

There's no limit to how many times you can attach a picture to a post, however, each time you do so the image is saved in the "My Attachments" section of your forum profile, and there is a limit to how much data can be stored. Hence why you're getting the warning message about reaching your attachment limit. You'll need to go to your attachments and delete old content to free up space for posting new stuff. Do be advised that deleting content will also remove it from the threads it was originally posted in, resulting in broken image links where the pictures once were.

It can lead to animals being everywhere, or some animals feeling too common/too rare/out of place due to how many different options there are. However, there is a fix for this via the Biomes mod; it will limit creatures(or natural ones, at least, not fantasy) to specific world regions, so that only the animals that match the particular region you're in will spawn(North America in North American regions, Asia in Asia, etc.) The other main drawback here though is that adding a lot of creatures can impact your performance. Depending on what kind of hardware you have, you may or may not need to trim the list. Generally speaking, your personal modlist is separate from server modlists, and you won't need to disable your singleplayer mods in order to play on servers, and vice versa. That being said, sometimes issues do rear their ugly heads and you may find yourself needing to disable a mod or two in order to play multiplayer(such as disabling all clientside mods before playing on TOPS). The worst issue I've run into lately regarding multiplayer is that if you have a newer version of a mod than the server has, the server won't let you join until you remove your copy of the mod from your Mods folder.

To my knowledge, unharvested crops only die if the weather gets too hot/cold for too long. But even then, you should still be able to get at least a partial harvest despite the crops being dead. Fruit and berry bushes are different though--if you miss the harvest window on those, you just don't get a harvest. Berry bushes can't die from exposure(at least not currently), but fruit trees can die if it gets too cold. I don't think this would really be that much of an issue with seasonal crops, at least not more than it is already. Properly seasonal crops should have enough variety that there's crops all year round, with some perhaps being a little more flexible on when you can expect to plant/harvest. In this case, the player is going to be pushed to vary which crops they grow, rather than just stick to the "best" crop in every category, and those goes for singleplayer and smaller servers as well as large ones. If the player misses a crop's season, it's not going to sink them, as much as it will mean they just don't get that crop for that growing season(ie, if you miss the window for blackberries because you were busy with other things, you still have a chance at other fruits but just don't have blackberries for that year). Sure, if the server is still using default settings. But I question why they would do such, if the playerbase is very big or playing at all hours. Don't many servers extend the month length and slow down hunger/spoilage rates in order to better balance the gameplay specifically for a larger playerbase? The time thing could be alleviated by allowing such information to be displayed in the server's information in the Multiplayer tab. That way players don't have to log in to the server to check the time, as much as they just need to boot the game real quick and check. Regarding the second point, I'm pretty sure this is why a lot of bigger servers tend to slow down hunger and spoilage rates. Additionally, this is also why players really ought to vary their crops more, especially if more seasonal mechanics are implemented, in addition to investing in livestock and bees. Honey doesn't expire, and livestock don't need to be fed save to breed or fatten them; goats and sheep can eat hay, which is easily stockpiled and has no expiration date. Aside from that, having a wide variety of crops helps ensure that there's almost always something to be harvested as long as the weather is nice, and if someone gets really unlucky there's probably other players with extra crops willing to share as long as the player needing assistance is in good standing with the server community. There's also the option of settling in the warmer climates, where the growing season is year-round and it's safe to leave crops in the fields.

I think it would only be a problem for large servers where time is always passing due to there being players active at all hours, and even then I think it's still more of an issue for the players on those servers that don't play all that often and want to do everything themselves rather than work with a group. While it's unfortunate, it's one of the drawbacks to trying to run that kind of server for a game like Vintage Story, and I don't think there's really any fixing that particular problem outside of installing mods to account for unique server conditions. One thing that would help is enabling a server option to stop food from rotting in player inventories while they're offline, and prevent rot from occurring in a player claim while all claim owners are offline. It doesn't solve the food issue entirely, since the player still needs to play regularly enough to prepare supplies and whatnot, but it does do a decent job of tackling the issue while still letting VS be VS. My general thoughts as well, though I would say that incompatibility with certain multiplayer styles doesn't necessarily suggest poorly designed mechanics. For Vintage Story itself, the game is balanced mainly around singleplayer and small multiplayer groups(usually friends); big servers are certainly possible, but they take more work to maintain and are more of a time investment to play on than large servers for other types of games.

Way too stereotypical, and an unfair one to sharks. Can they be dangerous? Yes, but generally if they're attacking a person it's because the person looks like familiar prey(a seal), they're curious(sharks don't have hands to check things out), or the person is actively bleeding in the water. So the game could go with the standard trope of making sharks attack on sight, however, I think it would be a lot more interesting if they were more passive and only really inclined to attack if attacked/attack if the player is already injured(so don't go jump in the water trying to escape something else). More interesting opponents could be jellyfish, snakes, and other extremely venomous sea creatures, since a sting/bite from one of these could easily be a death sentence if you're far from land and aren't carrying antidote. Humboldt squid are particularly notorious for being aggressive, and like to travel in groups, and of course there's also the classic "kraken" that is the giant squid. You've also got oddities from the extremely deep parts of the ocean--things like the magnapinna squid, barreleye, oarfish, and other oddities, that might not be aggressive themselves but would certainly be enough to spook the player. I actually disagree. The player should be alert for danger when they leave the relative safety of their base, however, I don't think they need an adrenaline spike every single time. The ocean and other large bodies of water already have their own drawbacks, so they don't really need to be chock full of rotbeasts as well. They can be a safe haven from monsters, yes, however, consider that the player will need to first build a vessel big enough to properly live on(sailboat, and not just a common raft) in order to really take advantage of that safety. There's also not much to really see or do out on the water, because I mean...at the end of the day, it's a LOT of water and not much else, and going to get boring unless you just really love sailing. You also aren't going to be able to farm, raise livestock, or work metal while out on the water, and will need to eventually make landfall to resupply...which also means you're going to need to face the dangers lurking on land. In short, the player might be overall safer out on the ocean, but it's going to be a pretty boring overall experience if that's all they do, and they're going to be locking themselves out of some critical supplies in the process. I could see it being a fun challenge once in a while, but I don't think most players will be running to the ocean to escapes the horrors on land.

I'm thinking of iron processing in general, not adding a new type of iron. To me the general goal of casting iron/steel is that the materials become much easier to work in large quantities; ie, instead of working individual iron blooms or turning individual ingots into various things, the player can sink the resources into a large refinery structure and thus make refining and forging those materials faster and easier. Hence why I say that such a setup can potentially be gated behind steel, if necessary--it's to push the player through the more rudimentary processes first before they get the convenience, rather than the player sticking to bronze/only bothering with the most basic of iron and rushing the setup. Regarding this specifically, cast iron as an intermediate material isn't particularly useful, since meteoric iron already fills that niche with much less effort involved.

Pretty sure that blast furnaces are on the devs' to-do list. To answer the question otherwise, I do think it makes sense to allow iron/steel casting as part of the late game tech tree. It could be locked behind tier 3 refractory bricks if it really needs a gate, so that the player has to have made steel first and can't just set everything up with basic bronze and iron.

There's always the option of just spawning in some rapids via creative. It's not quite the same thing as finding one, of course, but it does mean you don't have to move camp. It's also easily passed off as diverting part of the waterfall to power your machinery, so it's not quite as cheaty as say, plunking down rapids in the middle of a flat desert, where there couldn't plausibly be any.

This looks more like a product of the Watersheds mod, which adds noisy little waterfalls and rivulets of its own. I'm not sure if they're powerful enough to qualify as a source of water power though. In the vanilla game, rapids will generate in the same general fashion as surface streams/waterfalls. They are, however, shorter and much, MUCH louder, in addition to having a sort of "rushing water" overlay and generating a lot more particles.