LadyWYT

Maybe, considering that fish don't fight back, but it's not really that difficult to hunt other animals for meat, or forage for berries and mushrooms either. I also wouldn't necessarily say that having more options makes early game(or other stages) any easier. It could, in that if one option doesn't exist, then you have an alternate method to achieve the same goal...but the catch is that you have to be aware of your options and take advantage of them in the first place. It's also important that the player pick the correct option from the choices they have, as Vintage Story will very much punish poor choices.

I'll also mention that when it comes to axes, I prefer to save my good metal axes for the tree-chopping, and use flint axes to chop the logs into firewood or otherwise move wood blocks around. That way the trees will be cut down quickly, but the durability on the good tools will last longer for the tasks where speed is really useful.

I think the more labor-intensive gameplay loops probably feel a bit lacking right now, because the story isn't anywhere near fully fleshed out. Right now all we have is the Resonance Archive, and with 1.20 I think we're supposed to get four smaller locations to visit, but I'm pretty sure that's only scratching the surface of what's to come. I could be wrong, but I get the impression that completing the entire story of Vintage Story is probably supposed to take several in-game years, at least. In short, the more there is for the player to do regarding story, the more incentive there is to really dig into the more labor intensive stuff when building a base, since you'll need to survive(preferably in comfort) for quite a long time. Of course, I would also argue that if it's fun gameplay, then it's "worth it" to do, even if the numbers don't exactly crunch in the most optimal manner.

Isn't that one of the tradeoffs though of spear vs bow/arrows? Given the numbers that @idiomcritter supplied, a spear would be better value for single target damage, assuming that you can land your shots. A bow and arrows would be better value when you need more projectiles to shoot, or are shooting over longer ranges. The other advantage spears hold, that I forgot to mention earlier--they're a lot easier to find after you throw them, especially in snow. If the target is kiteable, you don't need that many spears to take it down; you just need to pick up the ones already thrown without taking too much damage in the process. This is what I picture in my head, when using spears as a ranged weapon for something other than basic hunting. Is also an advantage I see of picking arrows over spears; spears are easier to see to retrieve and do a bit more damage per hit, but you can carry more arrows and thus use them a little more liberally before you have to worry about retrieving any of them.

I like steel more for its durability; the speed is just a nice bonus. While acquiring it is a rather demanding endeavor, I don't find the labor hours all that outrageous. Refining blister steel to usable is easy, and refining iron into blister steel is just a matter of firing up more than one refractory at a time. Now of course, that does mean more charcoal, but a bigger charcoal kiln produces more charcoal per firing. I've also found wintertime to be optimal for refining charcoal and steel, as there's not a lot of daylight to do much else, and the weather is too cold to really do much for exploring. Beds help speed up the process even further if you make sure everything is fully fueled before sleeping; all you have to do post-sleep is just check to make sure it has enough fuel to keep refining while you go take care of other things.

Not true anymore. Though I also wonder if it was ever really true to begin with, given how many I've seen take issue with drifters and their rocks. Don't forget the sling; it's available to malefactors, or if you remove the class restriction from recipes. It's not as good as a bow, of course, but the upside is it's really easy to find rocks for ammunition. Heavily disagree here. Realistically, you're not going to fit a huge number of arrows into a quiver to begin with; spears will be much harder to fit into the same space. Using videogame logic, I suppose it works, but even with a change like this...why would you even bother with spears at all when arrows are still better? Even if you nerf how many arrows can stack in a slot without a quiver, it will still be more than one spear, and thus a more attractive option. The other issue with nerfing arrow stacking to make spears a more attractive choice, is that it would probably nerf to the point that either no one is going to bother with arrows at all, or they're just going to rush to acquire a quiver and ignore spears anyway. I will also note that nerfing arrows like this also nerfs one of the hunter's special niches in the early game--the crude bow and arrows. I still maintain that a spear is best suited for melee combat to control space and keep enemies at a more comfortable distance. You don't really want to be throwing it if you don't have to. And as someone else mentioned earlier--throwing spears are technically a different weapon, known as the javelin. The main advantage to using spears in Vintage Story, in my opinion, is the fact that they're cheap, can serve double-duty as both melee and ranged weapons, and can yield many more shots per spear than the arrows. In the later stages of the game spears lose a lot of that advantage, since the player will have access to higher quality arrows for ranged combat, and higher quality blades and shields for melee.

I present to you, the Wildcraft suite: https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/10655 https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/9909 https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/8515 As for the vanilla game, I can't see them not adding more tree and plant species later on. It's just not a big priority right now, as there are other things that need to be fleshed out more first.

I feel like we need a Top-Gear or Mythbusters style intro for this.

Deep Rock Galactic, I assume. Space dwarves.

I don't like that kind of decor myself, but sure, why not. More options are always nice, plus it fits in with the world and general story themes.

How about an atlatl instead? That way instead of carrying more spears, you just do a bit more damage with the ones you already have, thus not requiring as many(assuming you're a decent shot). It'd also help extend the usefulness of spears as a weapon, with what we currently have. In reality though, I'd prefer iron and steel spears, or even full-fledged pikes, rather than an atlatl or spear sling. It's nice to have the option to keep the enemies at a longer poking distance, even if the damage is lower than what a falx sword might provide. Bow and arrows still makes more sense for ranged damage, as arrows stack much more efficiently, with greater range and accuracy than spears. For forging/casting metal spearheads(really should be a thing if it's not already), I'd probably also increase the yield to two per ingot. After all, the general point(no pun intended) of a spear is to keep enemies further away from you, while being very cheap to make.

I think it would be of most use in a melee fight. The wobbling around(assuming that settings haven't been tinkered with to remove drunk visuals) will make aiming any sort of ranged weapon more difficult. The other main drawback that I see is that the damage mitigation effect should be fairly short, and the drunken status longer in order to balance things out. Then the risk becomes blacking out in the middle of a fight should you keep drinking to keep the damage resistance up. Now of course, if one wanted to a be real stinker regarding alcohol and realism...give the player an addiction to the stuff if they drink too much, too often. Then there can be a debuff that lasts until they either indulge in more alcohol, or wait long enough(several in-game days) to break the craving.

This actually reminds me of one thing that crossed my mind the other day when reading the Quartermaster's Letter. Personally, I think Jonas's discoveries lead to the creation of both seraphs, though I'm of the opinion that the drifters were probably an unfortunate side effect. The seraph turning might have been as well. In any case, after reading the letter again, I'm beginning to wonder if those turned to seraphs and sent forward in time were willing participants, or forced into it. The letter mentions three different people that were taken by force, though it does not indicate where or for what purpose. It could just be that those individuals were infected and removed from the shelter, or it could be that more workers were needed in the mines and they were the unlucky ones chosen. Part of me wonders though, that if these letters were written wherever Jonas was working on his project, if those individuals weren't hauled away to serve as test subjects. If that was going on, it could be one of the reasons Jonas wound up having a mental breakdown. Speaking of lore though, one thing I do find fascinating is just how much there is to unpack. Just when you think you've got it all figured out, you can go back and read the same old thing again and stumble across a fresh new perspective!

Tis why I ended up making my own textures for several things That way I can keep the vanilla textures and small texture packs that I like, and tweak everything else I don't like so much. But I do agree, Minecraft does look a bit more arcade-like than Vintage Story.

Kind of, though I would argue that time travel was a thing, if only an unintentional side effect of whatever that crafty Jonas was up to. The seraphs seem to be the humans who got "lost" to time, changed as a result of whatever shenanigans ensued in the pursuit of saving the world. There do still seem to be other humans remaining in the world, that have just kinda been adjusting to the new reality over however many years the seraphs have been lost in time. I do believe you are correct here, in that drifters and their like are the corrupted remains of people and animals that succumbed to the Rot. As for how many there are, I would assume there's a finite number of them, but that number is almost certainly too big for the plan of "kill them all, save world" to be of much use. I'd also wager you're probably correct about them having some sort of respawning ability, similar to the seraphs. If seraphs can respawn, after all, and are the "good" byproduct of tampering with time, then it stands to reason that drifters are the opposite result of that tampering. Pretty much the core of it, though I would argue there was a sort of AI invented as a result of Jonas and his tinkering. Given it's a late medieval setting, "AI" isn't the term that's going to be used in the setting, but given that the mechanical creations of Jonas could operate autonomously in many cases, AI is basically what was driving it. In regards to the temporal alchemy stuff...yeah, that's an apt description of it as well, heh heh. Essentially, somebody scienced too hard, before asking if they should be in the first place.

That might be an interesting change, in terms of survival challenge, if berry bushes played by the same general rules as fruit trees and only had fruit in-season. Though it's probably not a change I would expect to see without more forage options available.

I want to say that the rate of wear depends on what you're doing, not just the passage of time or getting hit by enemies. I've noticed that clothes tends to wear out faster in cold weather or if you go swimming frequently. I've also noticed that boots and gloves will wear out faster than other clothing articles, which I assume is due to all the running, wading, and digging around with no shovel. I'm also pretty sure that if you die, it takes a hefty chunk off the clothing durability as well. Eh...not really. On standard game settings, the player spawns in temperate climate during late spring, so the weather won't be cold enough for clothing to be an issue until much, much later. The only start zone that warmth would be a real issue is a Polar start, in which case the player probably already knows they signed up for a rough time. In regards to repairing clothing, flax crops produce a lot of flax fiber per yield. Drifters and their like will also sometimes drop flax fiber on death, and some traders offer linen for sale. If I'm not mistaken, flax twine and linen can also be found occasionally as ruins loot. Instead of repairing though, it may be more optimal to make rawhide and fur clothing. The early game tends to demand a lot of hunting, and you'll probably have more hides than you know what to do with, so it's easy enough to just turn some of the excess into new clothes. It might not be the prettiest thing in the world, but it will keep you warm until you can acquire and maintain fancier items.

This all sums it up nicely; also, welcome to the forums! The only thing that I would add here, as to why players might want to invest in fruit trees from a practical standpoint, when berry bushes technically have a higher production rate--aside from having a longer shelf life, fruit trees produce very large crops in a relatively small space once established, and to my knowledge aren't the target of hungry wildlife(as of writing this, anyway).

I would think a lumberjack or stonemason would make for better building-oriented classes, instead of lumping everything into one defacto builder class. Both of those classes could probably have other benefits outside of building advantages too. For instance, lumberjacks would probably have a bonus to seedling drop rates, tree chopping, and charcoal yield. Stonemason is a bit trickier, but I'd wager they could have a chance of getting an extra block of stone when quarrying blocks. I'd also wager that you could remove the mining bonus from the Blackguard and replace it with something else, and give the mining speed bonus to the Stonemason instead. As for what to give Blackguards in place of the mining speed bonus...I've been tinkering with custom classes of late, and if I had to rework them, I think I might increase the bonuses they have to health, melee damage, and movement speed when armored. Give them a total movement speed penalty of -10%(so their base speed is 90% of normal), and a bigger range that animals/enemies can detect them. The forage penalty...eh...keep it for the challenge and flavor, but that could also be removed as I've not really found it to be much of a concern. In this scenario though, it's the stealth penalty and movement speed that are bigger hazards, in my opinion. The greater range of enemy detection means that wildlife and monsters will have an easier time spotting you before you spot them, giving them a chance to either flee or attack. In regards to the movement speed penalty, -10% doesn't sound like much, until you consider that faster mobs like bears and moose can already outrun the 100% player in many cases. 90% movement speed, in my experience so far, means that you're probably going to have to fight whatever is chasing you and hope for the best instead of running, unless you have very fast reflexes and terrain that you could possibly use to your advantage. Factor in the new faster monsters, and improvements to creature pathfinding, and that small penalty to movement speed suddenly starts to have a bigger impact that what might be expected.

Sounds cool to me. You could probably even have a choice of brewing a beverage using a temporal gear in order to greatly lessen the more serious side effects, or just use normal alcohol to slow down the loss of stability temporarily at the cost of some coordination(and the blackout risk if you overdo it). The more potent the beverage, the greater the effect. Or speaking of sleep--drinking until you pass out would certainly be an immersive way to pass the temporal storms, if you've no interest in dealing with the monsters. You'd just need to make sure that you're in a safe spot before drinking that much.

True. Have you checked the Discord? I get the impression that it tends to be the most active hotspot for news, in that things get posted there shortly before they get posted here on the forums. Of course, I'm guessing that the devs are probably going to stay very tight-lipped about the story stuff, then drop an epic trailer for it right before the patch releases for maximum hype effectiveness.

I mean...when it comes to cellars and doors I just use a solid wooden door. Never had issues. In regards to "progression", a cellar is a cellar, and there's not really a way to make one more efficient other than being particular where you put and how you arrange things inside. If one cellar isn't enough, then you simply build more. For progression in regards to food storage, you might look into finding a mod that adds an icebox, or something similar. I think there's a couple around, though I don't recall the names.

I'm just hazarding a guess here, but I think the main thing that remains to be finished for 1.20 is the story content, excluding any major/minor bugs that crop up during the trial phases. When it comes to story content, I don't really expect a detailed list, as the devs are pretty particular about keeping that stuff under wraps so it remains fresh and exciting for all players on launch. In regards to the other non-spoiler content in the patches, from what I've seen the devs are pretty good about keeping the community posted about the progress of things and stuff they've added/cut/postponed on the project. I don't really expect to see any specific dates for release until the patch is actually polished and ready for release.

One thing I really like about this suggestion, aside from the fact it increases the threat level of being too hot/too cold without feeling unfair; you could easily reuse that same mechanic for drinking too much alcohol in one sitting. Of course, for blackouts to even matter for alcohol, you'd also need to give players a reason to drink it, since as it currently stands there's really no reason to indulge outside of roleplaying. One idea I had on that was allowing a stiff drink or two to enable a player to shrug off some damage. Doing that would allow a more interesting option to pursue in the early game for defense, before one has good armor and weapons, while still being relevant into the late game.

If I'm recalling correctly, I don't think it has to do with time, as much as it is a style choice. Hands are hard to draw, and getting them to look right in basic poses, let alone more complex ones, is a real challenge. For heavily stylized artstyles though, 3 fingers + 1 thumb usually looks correct enough to create pleasing artwork, that won't break audience immersion due to them being too weirded out by uncanny hands. As for whether it actually saves time though...eh, not really, as @Deaderpan explained very well. Could put the rings on a chain and wear them Frodo-style. Now that I think about it, while having rings to wear would be cool, the models for such would be so small that there's practically no room to add detail. So the rings themselves would probably look fairly plain, without a lot of options to pick from. Better to have bracelets, pendants, or other pieces that offer wider design variety.