LadyWYT

As I recall, the grace period will prevent monster spawns, but won't prevent rifts from appearing and affecting the player if the player stands too close to one.

It's...complicated. A funny joke about some old forum drama, basically.

Okay, so going by the screenshot, you're definitely out of temporal stability, and you said you weren't using mods so we can rule that out as a potential cause. Since you noted the gear started spinning quickly, what's almost certainly happened is that a rift spawned nearby and you were either standing directly in it, or otherwise close enough to it for it to drain your stability. Only rifts will drain it that fast. Pressing C will bring up your character information panel, where you can check the current rift activity.

Changing the month length will adjust the growth time of crops accordingly, but the yield will remain the same. Thus if the player increases month length, they'll want to be planting bigger farms.

Yeah, I mean, if Vintage Story was requiring 1000+ hours of play just to finish one game...no thanks. There is some grind in the game, yes, but nothing that feels unreasonable. For reference, I racked up over 1000 hours in the OG Skyrim, but that was over the course of a few years. If I like a game I'll happily sink a lot of time into it, but I also like to feel like I'm accomplishing something and not being baited into just pumping up the gametime numbers. Being able to beat a game in a few hours doesn't make it bad, same as needing a few hundred hours minimum to beat a game does not make it good. If it takes me a few hundred hours to beat the game, I want it to be by my own choice, not because the game itself forced me to grind that long. Many MMOs use that sort of tactic to keep players hooked.

https://mods.vintagestory.at/shiverpet

Welcome to the forums! My first question is, what color is your temporal stability meter? If the gear is grey, that means your stability is at 0%, hence the temporal storm effects and health drain. What likely happened in that case is the area you built in was unstable, or mostly so. It's not really a hard stat to track, but it's not unusual for temporal stability to slip a player's mind either. If the gear is still a bright teal color though, then yeah, that's not supposed to happen. In that case, the question is whether or not you are using mods, as those tend to be the culprit when it comes to strange behavior. Not to say it couldn't be a bug in vanilla, but I'm not aware of such issues in 1.21.6.

Regarding forests with steep hills, those are not unrealistic at all. Same with mountains with flatter tops instead of the classic pointy top. The mountains of the eastern US tend to be like this--very long with flatter tops and their steep slopes are covered in forest. In contrast, the Rockies in the western US tend to have pointed tops, but it depends on which part of the Rockies one looks at as well. Forests don't really need a change, in my opinion, as forests can grow on pretty much any type of terrain as long as there's enough rainfall and it's not too cold. Mountains, I think, just need some more variety; some ranges could be the classic peaks and others could be the long ridges. That may be partly why it's taking so long. Rivers, when they are added, are going to majorly overhaul the world generation, so it's incredibly important to get them right the first time.

I wouldn't have guessed it either if I hadn't booted up my game and fiddled around to figure it out. Here's to hoping you can find some suitable gravel!

You can use any kind of sand, but the gravel type needs to match the rock type that you're trying to craft it with. For example, you're using peridotite here, which is an igneous rock, so you will need an igneous gravel type to craft this cobbelstone. Granite, andesite, or peridotite gravel should work. Fanned cobblestone using sedimentary rocks will need sedimentary gravel, and metamorphic fanned cobblestone will likewise need metamorphic gravel.

Well, yes, the key here is for the player to pay attention to their surroundings. A lot of mistakes can be avoided by developing good situational awareness. Last I checked, monsters will quite happily rip a player to shreds, provided that creature hostility is set to "aggressive". The only monster that can't directly harm the player is the bell, but that is a special case. Overall, I would say that players tend to have an easier time dealing with monsters since surface monsters are relatively weak opponents, and monsters in general make a lot more noise to announce their presence. Drifters moan and groan, bowtorn shriek and hiss, and shivers click and growl. Bears don't have any particularly loud noises save for the roar they make while attacking. You might be interested in a mod like this one: https://mods.vintagestory.at/unbearables I'm not sure how well it works, but there are several options on the database that modify bears in various ways. One of them will likely accomplish the results you're looking for.

Not a southpaw and I don't think it's a priority, but I do agree that it would be a nice option to have.

Welcome to the forums! Have you submitted a support ticket? The forums are great for getting help, but when it comes to issues with your game account it's going to be the Anego support team that has access to the tools and information needed to resolve the problem.

Nice try , but I think it's much better to keep things simple for demonstration videos. A mod that overhauls celestial bodies entirely is going to be way too complicated for most people to follow along, plus it doesn't really cover areas like modeling and animating said models.

Welcome to the forums(and the game)! The only place that players should be encountering polar bears is the arctic or maybe a mountaintop glacier. Whether they kill in one hit or not depends highly on the settings a player chose for their game. On Standard settings, the player will have 15 base HP(20 if they pick Blackguard), which is easily further enhanced by filling the nutrition bars. If creature hostility is set to passive then bears will never attack the player unless the player attacks them first(Exploration difficulty sets creature hostility to "passive" by default). Additionally, enemy damage can be turned down and player health can be increased in the settings. Not really. Bears are very strong creatures, and Vintage Story is a game that does not pull its punches. They're also quite easy to avoid in general, provided the player is paying attention to their surroundings and taking certain precautions when navigating terrain like forest or shrubland. It's also relatively easy to trap them in a pit, or kill them at range with spears. A better adjustment would be to simply decrease the spawn rates a bit(though I think current rates are just fine) or make their behavior a bit more complex so that some species can be scared away(like black bears) while others will be more aggressive(like polar bears). Some louder growls would also help alert the player to their presence and thus help the player avoid the bears, much like the player is able to use wolf howls to avoid areas inhabited by wolves.

In my experience, it's the players who'd prefer a purely realistic survival experience, as well as the players who'd prefer to have an experience more similar to what the other block game offers. Nothing against those players either, but in the case of the former, Homo Sapiens isn't the game mode that Vintage Story is developed and balanced around, so it's going to end up feeling lacking compared to the game modes that enable lore content. In the case of the latter...Vintage Story is not the other block game, nor does it need to be. Sometimes, the players need protecting from themselves. As I was trying to explain earlier, one could, in theory, separate the traders into a toggle separate from all the other lore. However, the problem that arises from only the traders being enabled, is that some players are going to get confused and start suggesting changes to the traders so that they better fit into the world. Changes that aren't needed, mind you, because the traders already have a reason to exist; those reasons just aren't apparent due to the player's own decision to play that way. To shift the discussion back on topic--the reason that temporal storms and temporal stability have their own separate toggles despite being significant lore features and part of the intended experience, is that those particular features are also quite polarizing when it comes to whether or not players enjoy them. In a similar instance(and this was before my time), enough players wanted just a pure realistic survival experience that the devs put in the extra work required to add the Homo Sapiens game mode and lore toggle as additional features.

It also occurs to me that it would probably make things easier too for those who aren't fluent in English. A well-made visual tutorial is quite easy to follow, even if you don't understand anything the speakers themselves are saying.

Those are specific settings. A game mode is a preset of various settings to accomplish a specific type of overall gameplay, which is a very different thing than just an individual setting. Adding a game mode is much harder than adding an individual setting, since a game mode requires all its settings to play together nicely in order to accomplish the intended experience. An individual setting, in contrast, is easier to implement, but will still require quite a lot of work to implement well in most cases. It's one thing to add simple options like changing health values or hunger rates--that kind of setting is just changing a number. Where it gets complicated is when you start trying to break down all of the lore stuff and other world generation into separate toggles, as changing those things will often result in unintended consequences elsewhere. A prime example of strange behavior is the inability to craft books in Homo Sapiens; currently black dye can only be crafted via rusty gears or scrap metal, neither of which exists without lore content being turned on. To use disabling lore content but keeping ruins and traders as an example: let's say that exists as a game mode. The most likely scenario to happen here, I'd wager, is players will pick that game mode, and then proceed to generate a stream of complaints about it feeling a little too barebones/not making sense and suggestions about what could be added to the game mode to flesh it out more. The reality though, is that it's a self-inflicted problem; their game is lacking features and continuity, because they chose to actually cut out parts of the game. Ironically, I've seen similar complaints about Homo Sapiens mode--players will opt for HS because they don't like the lore, and then proceed to complain about the game feeling incomplete as a result.

You wouldn't. What one would, however, create a mod for: That specifically is what I was referring to. If it was really that easy to create specific game modes, then it shouldn't be an issue for players in general to just make a mod for it, or otherwise commission someone to make it for them. No need to wait on the devs to make a decision if the tools are already there. But I'm thinking that's a task that's not actually easy to do.

I think such a thing would be extremely useful, since people have different learning styles. Written instructions are great and all, but sometimes one just needs to actually see an example in order for the described process to actually click.

https://mods.vintagestory.at/firearms Honestly I'd rather see a Jonas tech contraption rather than something like this. The tech level for the game is the late Middle Ages, and while guns did exist at this time they were more simple "boomsticks" in the most literal sense than what we tend to think of as a firearm. That is, you're more likely to get a matchlock firearm at best, rather than a flintlock, and matchlocks are a lot more susceptible to moisture problems. I will also note that balancing firearms is a challenge. The average player is going to see a firearm, and expect it to be this incredibly powerful weapon that almost one-shots enemies and doesn't take much skill to aim. Early firearms, however, were laughably underpowered, wildly inaccurate, and slow to reload in addition to being expensive to make. The main advantage that early firearms offered was that it was much easier and cheaper to train a soldier to use a firearm, than it was to train up an experienced archer. Fun novelty weapon? Certainly, but it's also why I'd rather see some fanciful Jonas thing. Realistic? No, but in that case you can have a late game weapon that is as powerful as expected, with the crafting/maintenance cost being rather expensive in order to balance that kind of power.

Which mod? A mod made for an older version of the game will sometimes still work just fine on a newer version, although there is no guarantee. It depends on what changed between game versions. In many cases a quick look at the mod's comment section should give you an idea of whether or not it still works, but it's still best to test it out on a fresh world first before trying to add it to a cherished world.

This is really one of the best cases for why certain changes really ought to be mods. Continuity issues are a pretty big deal, and it also varies from player to player on exactly which parts of the lore they like to keep and which they want to cut. Some of the preferences can be generalized, but attempting to account for every possible playstyle and preference is going to result in an overwhelming list of settings and little progress in developing new things for the game. It's much better in the long run to have a few presets to cover basic difficulty(easy, medium, hard, and "realistic" via Homo Sapiens mode), with a selection of more specific options that the player can use to fine-tune general things about their gameplay. Likewise, the developers also need to remain interested in developing their own game, or otherwise the end product ends up lackluster. If it's that easy to create then why not just make a mod for it right now? All the tools are there; you don't even have to do the work yourself either. Just submit a request in the mod section of the forum, or commission a mod author directly. The point I was trying to make earlier, but laid out much better.

There actually was a mod that tried to do something like this, however, it's long been defunct(and never played nicely with any mods remotely touching food/hunger): https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/10343 It was an interesting concept, but the main problems I found were that not only did it make most of the game absolutely trivial, but there was no penalty for just stuffing yourself silly. If I'm not mistaken, there were debuffs that would eventually occur and persist after death if the player went long enough without food...but the issue there is that if the player somehow managed to starve that much, then they're likely going to get stuck in a cruel death loop and need to start over from scratch. Essentially, the debuffs prevent the player from hunting enough food to recover, however, if the debuffs are reset on death then the player doesn't really have much incentive to bother with food since they can go so long before death occurs. The current system might not be the most realistic, but that simple challenge gives the player something to account for throughout the game. Winter is coming? You'll need to store food. Doing chores around the base? You need to make sure you have enough to eat, or else you'll have to drop what you're doing to go find some groceries. Traveling far from home? There's only so much you can efficiently carry and use, so you'll probably need to stop and replenish your supplies from time to time. Macronutrients are already covered by the nutrition bars. An extra bit of health doesn't sound like much, until you wind up dead from a fight you would have survived otherwise if you had that extra health. The extra health is also more critical on difficulties like Wilderness Survival, as the starting health pool is smaller than normal. I don't really think it's a good idea to add debuffs for missing nutrients either, as while it may be realistic there are some that just cannot be obtained until later in the game(dairy). Maybe, but the problem here is that the world ends up feeling empty, and the player has less to do. Realistically a single deer can feed one person for a couple of weeks, but keep in mind that a couple of weeks in-game equates to about two months. All the player has to do is go on a couple of hunting trips per year and they're set. As for the world feeling empty, a lack of wildlife is bad enough, but a lack of berry bushes, mushrooms, and other edibles just makes it worse. I will note that while food is an "easy challenge" in the game, it's also a challenge that many players, particularly newer ones, struggle with, and it's not really unusual for a few of those players to starve to death. Don't ask me how, I don't know, but that suggests to me that the system balance is working as intended. I don't think the early game should be made easier, but I also don't think it should be made that much harder either, as that tends to be the portion that makes or breaks the game for brand new players. Overall, more difficult hunger mechanics are really best left to the modded realm.

As far as I know, traders are supposed to be getting reworked a bit next game, and will have more unique abodes than the wagons we're so used to seeing. Traders that have already spawned in wagons though, I'd wager, will still continue to exist as-is in older worlds. I wouldn't include a village-building mechanic, as that defeats the "lonely survive in the wilderness" vibe the game has, but I wouldn't mind seeing traders occur in small groups as a rarer find. I wouldn't be surprised if we get more depth to NPC interactions later on in development. However, I think the hard limits on behavior exist for a couple different reasons: 1. The claim system that protects trader land is the same system that protects story locations and, to my knowledge, player claims as well. While I do like @Bruno Willis's idea of making dungeon claims a bit different to provide more interactivity, you don't want the player to be tampering with things too much or they will break it or potentially confuse themselves on what they're actually supposed to interact with. Or they will strip it bare of decor/resources(like what happens in Minecraft), which isn't really ideal either. 2. NPCs respawning after death isn't realistic or particularly immersive either, but the mechanic serves a very important function in the game. A common thing players will do in videogames is kill NPCs to see what loot they drop, and what effect such an action otherwise has. While it would be nice to have a reputation system, realistically, committing a murder like that should absolutely get the player banned from any kind of civilization and shot on sight should they ever show their face in public, with a more expensive fix than just paying a bit of money or spending a few days in jail as a penalty. However, given how much time and effort it takes the player to actually find civilization, such a system makes it very easy for the player to "ruin" their game simply by indulging typical player curiosity. Honestly, I'm not really a fan of the limitations myself sometimes, but I can understand why they're there. I wouldn't necessarily mind more wiggle room regarding block placement, however, it's the kind of change I'm quite wary of making, given what I wrote above. The mechanic might not be the most immersive, but it does help tremendously in protecting players from themselves.