LadyWYT

To be fair, I don't play like this, but: From a vanilla standpoint, making sure the fields are located in an area with high rainfall should be enough, no irrigation required. The crop growth might be a little slower than if it was irrigated, but the player should still be able to get yearly harvests with ease. Many players, I think, opt to just build their farms out into lakes. If mods are involved, Hydrate or Diedrate allows the player to dig wells and collect rainwater in barrels. Would definitely be a tougher way to play, but a useful option if the player doesn't necessarily want to settle down next to water or build their farms out into a lake.

Funny you say all that...because last night I had a really weird dream about eidolons and cathedrals. I don't remember exactly what happened, only that I was exploring these ruined cathedrals and it was really spooky. Everything was oversized, as sometimes happens in a dream, but the eidolons man...I don't think the game does them justice at the moment. Picture entering a ruined cathedral at night, with ripped tapestries and bits of rope and chain hanging from the ceiling. Then picture an eidolon walking out of said gloom to confront you...an eidolon that's roughly the size of the Iron Giant, mind you. Don't ask me how the fight went, because I really don't know in the dream I was making a hasty retreat and that was about the time I woke up.

Welcome to the forums! Unfortunately, no, or at least, not at this time. Not all wildlife is able to breed, and bears in particular have no baby models. If you just want a pet bear, then you might try this mod, though I don't know how well it works on the most recent stable version. https://mods.vintagestory.at/apanserbjornstory

Could either be a piece of charcoal, or the ink/quill.

Welcome to the forums! Make sure the server is actually running 1.21 and not 1.22, as well as make sure that the world is freshly generated. Given this is a bug that was in an earlier version of 1.22, it's likely that either the server is still running 1.22 somehow, or using the same world as before(in which case, the bugged bushes will still be present but have the missing item textures).

I doubt it will, unless they're just intent on playing TOPS and only TOPS for some reason.

The most I've noticed is that the fuel consumption will speed up when the bellows are in use, which is to be expected. The fuel will also glitch out both on the visuals and the numerical readout. By that I mean it seems to only count one hour at a time.

I think it might be. I have AMD hardware and encountered some weird shuddering in 1.21 with Vsync enabled, especially in forested regions. I've also seen other AMD users reporting similar issues. That being said, those issues don't seem to be present for me in 1.22. I've been able to play the vanilla game at the default High settings with Vsync enabled without problems.

Some of the traits, like ripeness times, are more subjective than the others. Sure, it's nice to have berries that will last longer on the bush, in case you wanted to wait a day or two before harvesting in order to go do something else. But I wouldn't say it's a dealbreaker to get the "bad" ripeness trait either, especially not if the bush in question has other good traits like better yields/less nutrient use. Nice find on the bush though. It might be absolutely terrible for actually growing anything, but it's still cool to find rare stuff like this. In a multiplayer instance, it could probably be marketed as some special variety of blueberry that's very finicky about how it grows.

I mean, if you go to the home page and scroll down to the "Buy Now" button, the text right above that will say approximately how many players are online at that moment. At the time of writing this post, it's 1256. To be fair, not all of them are going to be playing on TOPS, but even just 6% of that number is going to fill 75 slots. Could easily be less if a few of those 75 slots are reserved for admin/dev use.

I don't think "not being on Steam" is why VS is somewhat niche. Minecraft isn't on Steam either and runs via its own launcher for PC instead, and it's done just fine. Pretty much this as well, though trends can always change. It's true that "fast and easy" tends to appeal to a wide audience, however, when absolutely everything under the sun seems to be pushing for "fast and easy" then something that invites players to slow down and be more deliberate in their actions and planning will stand out. The value of building a solid community/fanbase really can't be understated. Casting a net wide might catch a lot of fish, however, when the thing stops being popular then all those fish are going to move on to whatever the next big thing is. In contrast, a more niche thing with a highly devoted fanbase might not rake as much cash up front, but will provide much more stable income over the course of time since it's catering to a specific audience.

This was a change implemented in 1.22. The stack temperature no longer resets when a new item starts cooking, but it now takes longer to bring the stack of items to temperature, depending on how many items are in the stack.

Welcome to the forums! Generally, I'll keep things very simple at the start of the game, and use the prefab roof pieces and windows to make a basic shelter that still looks rather nice. Once I'm more established with bronze/iron, then I'll start working on a fancier house. When I start the bigger projects like that, I also like to work on small bits at a time, so that I'm not getting overwhelmed by trying to make everything look super nice at once. It's a lot easier to build a basic shell, and then go back over various areas, applying a bit more polish as the mood strikes me. In the event something doesn't quite turn out as well as I wanted, sometimes I'll just start over in a new world, since a new update is usually about to drop around that time anyway. However, I'll often try to fix whatever didn't turn out with the design, as that's rather good design practice in general. Once in a while I'll also use creative to expedite the fixes, as sometimes a proper fix means redoing a LOT of work and that kind of rework is just easier to do in creative than survival.

Sure, right up until the time I don't want to put a pelt rug in that room as decoration, or I want the unique spice rack buff but don't want to go putting a rack full of dried herbs in my bedroom/library/room that I'm actually going to be spending time in. This too. Though for me, it's more just that I want decor items to be exactly that--decor. That means they should be optional. If there's a distinct benefit tied to the items, then they aren't really optional decor anymore; they're something you basically have to use unless you want to miss out on the buff.

I absolutely expect sleep, or lack thereof, to impact players when the status effect system arrives. I also expect a lot of salt to come with sleep requirements as well. There already is a reason: variety. I think most players enjoy having a variety of things to grow, as well as cook with. They might all offer the same nutrition, yes, but eating nothing but turnips for vegetable nutrition does get old after a while. And of course, the new fennel and licorice crops can be used to make stinkbait for fishing, which is necessary for catching certain types of fish. I also don't think it's a bad thing if players decide they want to min-max and grow nothing but turnips and flax. Pretty much. There's not necessarily anything wrong with giving direct benefits/drawbacks to doing specific things in the game, but the stricter certain requirements are the less freedom the player has when it comes to choosing how to play the game. To nitpick Valheim's implementation of the concept a bit more--the main flaw there is it encourages players to shove a bunch of things into an arbitrary space(which tends to be quite small) in order to get a buff. The idea, of course, is to decorate the base nicely, but the game doesn't really account for how the items are placed; it just cares that they're placed in the appropriate space. Thus it's possible to just pile a bunch of stuff around in a very ugly fashion, that shouldn't at all qualify as a comfortable environment, but still get the comfort boost. Likewise, it's possible to build something rather cozy and aesthetically pleasing, but get a suboptimal bonus due to having the "wrong" stuff or having things too spread out. Basically, I want to put a bear pelt on my floor because it looks nice. I don't want to be putting bear pelts on the floor just because it will give my character +2 cold resistance for 10 minutes after being in that room for a little while.

There's also the factor of...the Vintage Story world is legitimately dangerous, whereas Minecraft...really isn't. Not even the Deep Dark is that dangerous, since the player has three strikes before they summon a warden, and in the event a warden does appear...the player can just fly away via elytra or enderpearl. And things that qualify as somewhat dangerous, like the warden and wither, are things that the player has to deliberately go looking for; there's pretty much nothing to jeopardize the player on a regular basis outside of maybe a creeper accident...and that's a pretty big maybe. In contrast, Vintage Story is pretty good at killing players, since right from the start food is going to be a big concern, and danger will absolutely come knocking on the player's door sooner or later, whether they want it to or not. That danger might be in the form of a temporal storm, or nocturnal rift activity, or even a bear wandering out of the nearby forest. I agree, though I don't think cloth blocks are necessary. I'd rather see colored plaster, since that makes much more sense as a building material and gives more use to dyes aside from being a niche Tailor resource. And if I'm recalling my art history correctly, plaster was a key component in many classic mural masterpieces; the technique in question is "fresco", where pigments are mixed with plaster before getting painted onto the surface. A difficult medium to work with, but tends to be a little sturdier than normal paint.

Actually, I disagree. As long as one plays on Java, Minecraft can compete, to a degree, thanks to mods. I've seen at least one or two different chisel mods appear, though I don't know if they're still maintained, and there are many mods that add various decorative clutter. But if we're talking strictly vanilla? Yeah, Minecraft isn't competing with that, but then again it doesn't have to. Echoing @EnbyKaiju's sentiments, Minecraft is a different game than Vintage Story, with a different voxel artstyle and different goals. Vintage Story is heavily grounded in realistic natural process, with some gritty eldritch horror sprinkled in for seasoning. Minecraft, in contrast, doesn't really take realism into account(save for really odd cases) and is a lot more whimsical rather than dark and gritty. Vintage Story will scare the absolute bejeebers out of players or otherwise creep them out; Minecraft very much will not. Vintage Story demands a higher level of engagement from players if they want to succeed, while Minecraft is much easier and offers a more relaxed experience. As a result, the playerbases for each game are very different, with Minecraft appealing to a younger audience because it's fun, colorful, and simpler to manage, while Vintage Story appeals to an older audience who is more likely to appreciate the tougher challenges and grittier storytelling. Even strictly among the adult audience though, Minecraft is probably still likely to win more players because it's built to have mass appeal. That's not saying that Vintage Story couldn't have mass appeal either, but it's tailored to a more specific audience and some of its core design features, like gritty lore, tough challenges, and realistic processes, just aren't likely to appeal to players who want a game they can pick up and have fun breezing through on a weekend. I dunno, the Rusty Gears SMP series on YouTube seems somewhat similar to what Hermitcraft does, though a lot more relaxed. That being said, I've not watched much of it either. As for mass appeal being a high risk for predatory behavior...oh absolutely. Not everything with mass appeal necessarily is, mind you--Hermitcraft stands out as something fairly wholesome--but things with wide appeal/popular ideas are often exploited by those chasing clicks and easy money. To be fair though, most of those who are trying to exploit stuff like that tend not to understand what made it successful to begin with. I'm not saying adults don't watch YouTube, but I mean...I tended to watch more "let's plays" and stuff when I was in college, whereas now I don't really watch that kind of thing anymore. Could just be me, but most of the time I have other stuff to do or would rather be enjoying the game myself. I feel like children/teens/college-age adults are probably more likely to watch creators on YouTube since they grew up with that stuff and have a lot more time to watch. It may also be because Vintage Story has some definite "slow moments" whereas Minecraft is pretty adept at shuttling the player from one shiny thing to the next. Most people probably aren't going to be interested in someone flipping through the handbook, or hiding in a hole, or dying to monsters/wildlife for the umpteenth time in a row. That's not to say good VS content can't be made, just that I think VS content in general will have a slower pace and take much more editing to produce a polished product.

XSkills is generally the go-to when it comes to a skill system of progression. That being said, you might also try one of these two if XSkills is missing the mark: Seraph Leveling: https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/38354 Level UP: https://mods.vintagestory.at/levelup I don't know how well they work so I'd recommend testing them before committing them to a world you care about. They aren't exactly point-buy systems, but the idea is that you'll get benefits for the specific skills you practice in the game. The closest thing to a point-buy system is probably this mod, but I don't know if it's still working on recent game versions: https://mods.vintagestory.at/sonitodynamictraits

I've seen it too and it took me a hot minute to figure out why on earth my forge was glitching out, lol. Difficult to ignore since movement like that in my peripheral vision catches my attention very easily.

It's also less wear and tear on your clothing if you don't wade around in the water. I tend to go wading quite a lot in the game and my boots are usually the first article of clothing to wear out.

They don't. Maybe some day they will. As @Broccoli Clock already noted, farmland that isn't planted can spawn grass and horsetail as weeds, but won't spawn new flowers or other plants, at least not without mods. The only plant that actually spreads naturally by itself is grass, but even then it's limited to growing atop exposed dirt and clay.

Amazing how long you can play this game and still learn something new about it!

I don't play on TOPS, so take what I say with a grain of salt. I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea to have an official public server, and if there wasn't one, I'm sure at least some players would probably ask for one. That being said...official public servers are typically going to be popular experiences that more players want to play on than maybe there is room on the server. It's not really any different than a concert for a popular band or a popular restaurant at mealtime, or even a popular attraction at an amusement park. There's a limit to how many people can enjoy it at once and somebody's going to end up having to wait their turn if they're intent on playing. Opening up a server for each different region can help alleviate some of the problems, since then players can play on the server appropriate for their region and thus have a smoother experience. However, if players are flocking to TOPS because the devs play on that server specifically...there's probably not much that can be done to lighten the player load. A couple of alternatives that should be considered, I think, are finding a different server to play on than TOPS, or otherwise hosting one's own server. In that case, the player won't have to deal with the wait times, and in the case of purchasing their own server, will have a lot more control over what happens to their world and when. I also want to note that a lot of the issues I've seen aren't specific to TOPS, as much as they are just issues with large multiplayer servers in general. It's been a while since my WoW days, but there were similar issues there as well, despite Activision/Blizzard being a much larger company with many more resources to work with. On expansion launches it wasn't unusual to need to wait a few minutes/several minutes to log in to the larger servers, and even after launch there could still sometimes be player queues at peak times(or during DDoS attacks, which did sometimes happen). Whenever that happened, the solution was to either wait patiently to log in, or go find something else to do for a while and try again later. Does it suck when it happens? Yes, but that's just one of the primary drawbacks of opting for the most popular options.

Hmm, so it is. Whups.

I like the idea, however, I don't think it works very well in practice when it comes to actual gameplay. Most players aren't going to want to learn a new language just to play the game, and even if the player character learns the language automatically over time, most players are probably going to get frustrated if they have to spend X amount of time just doing basic interactions with NPCs in order to learn enough of the language to progress the story. I think this kind of concept is better suited for TTRPGs, where characters can choose to specialize in certain languages and then just make a skill check to see whether or not they understand the NPC in question. In that case, the language feels real enough to immerse the player in the world, but isn't going to bog down the story. Given what the lore is, I'm not sure there's a good way to pull this off. Incidentally, I think the language issue applies to storytelling in general, and not just gameplay in videogames. Sometimes different languages, or even just different grammatical choices, can enhance the story and make the world feel more authentic. However, it's also important for the reader to be able to easily tell what's happening when it comes to the main plot; if they can't understand critical dialogue then they're likely going to be confused/frustrated and give up on the story.