LadyWYT

Mushrooms, I'm guessing. There are some in the game that induce psychedelic effects when eaten.

Kind of. I think the chunk stability also matters, since unstable chunks tend to have more monsters than stable ones. Most underground chunks are unstable, but the ones that aren't drastically so should have fewer monsters as well. The key to remember though is that less instability and lower rift activity only means fewer monsters, not that you'll see no monsters at all. Equipping armor, bringing a weapon and healing supplies, and keeping an eye on the surroundings and rift activity are still very much advised. In any case though, I'd recommend keeping an eye on the rift activity when you're going underground and see if that doesn't clear up some of the trouble. If you've got the resources for lanterns, you could light up the mines you're currently using and then just move the lanterns whenever you're done with the mine. That can get expensive though. Personally, I like to use oil lamps for lighting things up underground. They may not stop monster spawns, but they're cheap and don't burn out, and seeing where the monsters are makes them much easier to deal with than having them sneak around undetected in the darkness.

Welcome to the forums! Monsters should clear out of a mine after a time, at least as long as you travel far enough away from it. However, mines also tend to be prime places for monsters to spawn since they're dark, deep underground, and usually have enough space for several monsters to spawn. While I'm not sure there's a way to really stop them from spawning or adjust their aggression without affecting everything else in the game, there is one thing you can do to cut down somewhat on the number of monsters you'll need to deal with underground. Rift activity affects underground spawns, so it's better to save mining and underground exploration for days with low rift activity and only deal with the occasional monster. On days with higher activity, it's generally better to remain on the surface since the underground will generally be a lot busier on these days. To my knowledge, no, at least not currently. I'd be surprised if the feature wasn't added some day though.

Nope, that's the one.

Are you playing with any mods and did you make sure that they were updated appropriately for 1.22? Older mods sometimes work on newer game version, but 1.22 introduced changes that broke a lot of older mods. If you updated to 1.22 around the same time the issues began to happen, that could be why. Aside from that, I think there were a few issues with blockIDs in some of the earlier iterations of 1.22. If the world was generated on an earlier game version, that could be what's happening here. Remapping or regenerating the chunks should fix the issue in that case, at least I think, but you'll want to backup your world before doing this, as well as make sure that things like mounts are not currently in the chunks you're trying to remap/regen, since it's very easy for something to go wrong in these scenarios.

Subnautica: Below Zero added a creature that could steal stuff from the player's inventory, and that creature is easily one of the most hated in the franchise, to my knowledge.

Eh...it really depends on the individual's personality. It's also difficult for a sound effect or motion to actually be creepy when there's clearly nothing actually causing said sound or motion. That is, a random knock on the door might be creepy the first couple times a player hears it...until they figure out it's just a random sound and there's no actual creature producing it. Same goes for random animations on armor stands or other objects--if there's not a clear cause to the effect, it just becomes a part of the background that's easily ignored. @Rainbow Fresh also makes a good point--Vintage Story does have certain horror elements in its design, but it's not a horror game. Horror games also tend to appeal to a specific demographic rather than a more general audience, so applying horror elements too liberally can end up driving away many players that were part of the original target audience.

Honestly, the most I expect to see with 1.23 is more detailed information later this year, with the initial drop arriving sometime early next year. My reasoning for that is that 1.22 took quite a while to be developed(and technically is still missing a couple of things), and the devs enjoy pushing their limits, so having another full update before the end of the year just doesn't seem likely. 1.24 I have no idea. Maybe by the end of 2027, but that depends on how much is packed into 1.23. 1.24 is supposed to introduce the next story chapter, and story updates are probably the most demanding ones to develop since they often introduce a lot of new lore content and locations in addition to new gameplay mechanics.

In fairness, I'm not entirely against allowing monsters to break down doors. Just that if it's a mechanic that's going to exist, it shouldn't be easily bypassed by the player exploiting other game mechanics, like placing trapdoors or haybales in front of the door to block monster pathing.

It probably looks as described on the home page: Vintage Story is an uncompromising wilderness survival sandbox game inspired by eldritch horror themes. That is, the main focus of the game is a realistic survival sandbox that doesn't necessarily weight challenges in favor of the player, that also has some gritty realistic and horror elements in the lore. The game covers technology appropriate to the general medieval era, since constraining things to earlier time periods limits what the player can do, and going beyond the medieval period easily makes it stop feeling like a survival game and more like a space age/industrial game with extra steps. But as to exactly what features make it into the finished game, or what the lore/setting is like beyond that brief overview is impossible to say for certain. Ideas can get added, cut, or reworked entirely as needed, and parts of the lore may only exist as vague concepts rather than fleshed out ideas. Many games have the player on a distinct set of rails, shuttling them along from point to point at a specific pace, with the player's actions influencing the story very little. While it's not bad storytelling in itself, it does end up teaching players that their actions don't really have any consequences outside of predetermined outcomes, and that the player doesn't really need to pay attention to what's going on in the world itself since the game will make it impossible for the player to miss anything that's actually important. Skyrim is a good example of this kind of design--quest markers are everywhere, rarely any need to ask for directions/more information, most quests are automatically added to the journal and can't be failed, etc. Vintage Story doesn't operate on those principles though. The player will need to pay attention to events and information provided by the world around them if they want to figure out what's going on and know how to deal with various situations, and they ignore things like lore books and NPC dialogue at their own risk. The story itself is mostly linear, however, it's also possible for the player to do things outside of the "correct order" or otherwise skip steps entirely and still have everything make sense. It's not very likely given how the story locations are set up, but it is possible. This kind of game design tends to be more prevalent in older games, Morrowind being a good example(to continue using Bethesda as comparison). Morrowind had a short intro about a cryptic prophecy, but otherwise told the player nothing about the main plot before dropping them off in a small town to create their character and be about their business. What happened from there was entirely up to the player, and most quests in the game required the player to ask a lot of questions and think carefully in order to figure things out. Maybe. Maybe not. Some of it remains to be seen as to what direction the devs decide to take the game, but if you pay attention to the worldbuilding and read through the various lore articles, it's heavily suggested that such tech is not, in fact, understood and may be why the present is such a mess. This is just my opinion, but I would also say that it's not a good idea to make the rifts and storms get worse as the player improves their tech level, at least not beyond how the temporal storms operate already. It makes sense to have the storms start off weaker, since the player is woefully unequipped to handle them at the beginning of the game, and have them slowly get stronger over time. However, just making the world get worse as a result of the player's progress really only punishes the player for trying to improve their standing in the world. I think the only way this idea really works is if the "worsening" is tied directly to completing specific chapters of the story, and has some way for the player to fix the problem in later chapters. Mild spoilers, but it's also worth noting that the temporal storms of the past were much stronger than the ones the player faces in the present. That's not to say that the current storms couldn't suddenly be made worse by some event or certain actions, but so far there's been no evidence to suggest such a thing happening. If you're having issues finding a treasure hunter, you should be able to ask any other trader type for a map to the nearest treasure hunter. They won't give such information away for free though; you'll need to pay them a couple of rusty gears if you want such a map. The treasure hunter specifically will require different payment in order to give you a map to the first story location--a tin bronze pickaxe. The pickaxe itself isn't particularly important; it's just a check to make sure that the player can meet the minimum equipment requirement(tier 2) for that location. I tend to hate games that use this kind of design. Valheim uses it, and while I do enjoy that game, it's one of the main reasons I only play it once in a great while. The first time I played it I spent hours fumbling around with the bare basic tools and materials because I didn't know you had to actually beat the first boss to unlock other areas and items. My general opinion on the storms is that they're there mainly as a supernatural disaster to remind the player that everything is decidedly NOT fine in the world, no matter how much it might seem otherwise, and that there will be a few things outside of the player's direct control that they'll need to plan around. Rifts and temporal stability in general are similar, but the former can actually be controlled via the rift ward and both are otherwise easily mitigated. Temporal storms, on the other hand, will come rolling through whether the player wants them to or not. Not everyone likes that kind of gameplay though, hence the option to disable storms.

You'll probably find this helpful: https://wiki.vintagestory.at/Modding:Content_Tutorial_Entity_Creation_Part_1 As for ideas to try out, a giant tortoise might be a good place to start. They're big enough that you can get some detail into the creature, and you don't need to worry about it being hard to notice in the world. Tortoises also have somewhat simple silhouettes, and have a limited range of movement, so that might make modeling and animating them a little easier.

Only the devs know all the details, and there are several reasons they're not going to put all the cards on the table at once. Things can easily change before release, spoiling story plots can upset players and quell excitement, etc. However, that doesn't mean there aren't clues to what's coming in the future. Tyron posts updates from time to time, both here on the forums and on the Discord. There's also the roadmap, which lists several features that are planned for the future, but there's also no guarantees those things won't change either. https://www.vintagestory.at/roadmap.html/ There is a main story, but it's not shoved into the player's face. Much of the game's lore is left up to the player to discover and piece together for themselves. Some things are also left up to the player's imagination. To start the main story, talk to a treasure hunter trader and complete a small quest--you'll get a map to an interesting location. After you finish exploring that location, talk to the treasure hunter again to begin chapter two. Currently, there are only two chapters of a planned eight implemented for the main story. The third chapter is supposed to be released in 1.24, but plans may or may not change. The two chapters that currently exist can give you a decent idea of what to potentially expect, at least regarding the basic challenges. However, the devs are also rather good at surprises, so there will likely be plot twists and new mechanics and challenges introduced. Overall, the story is quite gritty, with underlying themes of hope and perseverance in the face of adversity, and I would expect those themes to continue. It's difficult to say much more than that. As for the progression, it's basically what you see now. The main focus is on medieval technology, with the highest tech tier being steel and very early steam power/Jonas tech contraptions. To my knowledge, there aren't any plans to add firearms or go beyond steel and early steam power. Temporal storms are still very much a work in progress. When they'll receive more updates though is unknown.

If we're going for realism though, we don't want to be encouraging players to just put dirt or other cheap blocks in front of the door. Trapdoors require metalworking to craft. They also pose a similar issue as the above--while they could technically be passed off as a "trap" for unwanted intruders, it's really just exploiting game code/creature behavior to get around needing to actually fortify doors. Players probably won't want to put trapdoors right under every single door either. Maybe, but this kind of mechanic also means that the player will need to either constantly maintain their door, or replace it periodically since it will inevitably break. I don't think most players would be particularly thrilled with either prospect. As for the early game, the best the player could hope for in this scenario is the crude door, which may not require metalworking to craft but is already ignored by many players simply due to the fact it has a chance to fall off its hinges when used. It's a fun novelty item for playing with your friends, but it's certainly not going to be at all useful for keeping monsters out with the proposed mechanic. Not in my experience. I know it's technically a mechanic in Minecraft, but it's not one that ever actually matters since it's easily mitigated by just...putting the door on backwards. Or putting something in front of the door. Or not even using a door. Or creating a trench that the player can cross but mobs cannot...you get the idea.

Welcome to the forums! If you were generating new chunks when you went off on that journey, it's possible that their connection and/or hardware is struggling to keep up with whatever new data the server is generating. 150-200 ms is technically playable in terms of online gaming, but definitely not ideal at all for any kind of play that requires time-sensitive actions. If this is the case, the Discord call and any downloads going on in the background probably isn't going to help the situation, since that's more things that will be competing for already limited resources. You might also check to see whether your friend is playing on a wired connection or a wireless connection. Sometimes that can make a difference. If friend lives with other people, it could also be that someone else in the residence decided to do something online around that time, which could potentially cause issues depending on what kind of service is available. In fairness, I'm not sure that that's much of a concern these days, but it used to be a thing, I think.

Pies are definitely one of the strongest food items in the game, mainly because they are very satisfying for hunger and stack very well. However, they don't have the shelf life that sealed crocks of food have. Soups and stews can also cover up to 3 nutrients, I think, and their main advantage is that they're easier to prepare than pies(don't require an oven or quern) and can be sealed into crocks for long-term storage. The main drawback is that crocks and cookpots don't stack, and you need a bowl to eat soup/stew, so they're not very efficient in terms of inventory space. If you're wanting to stock an outpost with supplies that will keep for a very long time though, neither of the above options will work particularly well. Raw grain and flour will keep for years when stored properly in a cellar, as will wine, sealed crocks of jam, pickled vegetables, and salted meats. Honey and distilled alcohol will never go bad, no matter how it's stored.

Right, but it's important to consider that the player will need to be able to construct those kinds of doors in order to use them, which will require metalworking at bare minimum. A skilled player can begin metalworking after a couple of days have passed in game, but less experienced players can't necessarily meet those same time requirements, and not every player enjoys pushing that hard either. The early game is also when the hiding strategy is the most valuable, and while players could just dig a hole to hide in, that's not as realistic or as nice as hiding in some sort of shelter. This can definitely be a problem, but I'm not sure that allowing monsters to break down doors is the solution. Several players have suggested just banning monsters from spawning in spaces that qualify as rooms, however, this leads to the issue of the player building a compound of rooms to live in and thus never facing any risk from the storms. The better option is probably to add(or adjust, if it already exists) a limit of how close to the player new monsters can spawn. Enough of a "safe zone" that the player could hide in a room without worrying about something spawning in there with them, or otherwise not need to worry about something spawning on top of them if they choose to fight through the storm.

"FDA" stands for Food and Drug Administration, and it regulates both medicine and food. Fertilizer not so much, but it is indirectly involved in how fertilizer can be used. What you're thinking of might be the USDA(United States Department of Agriculture), which is involved with foodstuffs and agriculture specifically. That being said, I'm also pretty sure that @Facethief was just making a funny.

I think it's also fair to say that sometimes when a game community says they want something, they don't necessarily stop to think of what adding that thing actually means for the game, especially for the long-term. And sometimes the requested feature would be a good addition to the game, but the community's idea(s) on how to implement said feature aren't that great. And of course, sometimes the community feedback just isn't useful; saying "I hate this" or "I want to see X in the game" is feedback, but without any explanation to go with the statements it just becomes an expression of individual preference rather than information the devs can potentially use to improve the game.

Not necessarily. The hitboxes and hit detection absolutely need work, as that's one of the main reasons combat feels so clunky right now. Damage itself doesn't need to be increased if hits can be landed more reliably; increasing player damage also makes enemies much less threatening, while increasing enemy damage can frustrate players more easily since there's not as much room for error. As for adding more "weight" to attacks, that tends to be where sound design factors in. Currently, there's only one basic hit sound, and it doesn't really feel impactful. Shields used to have a similar problem, but were recently changed so that the blocking sound was more noticeable and affected by the shield's material(so metal shields produce a very satisfying metallic THUD when they block a hit). Adding a bit of extra detail to the sound of swinging a weapon or perhaps some metallic ring on impact(when appropriate) would help successful hits feel a lot more satisfying. This might help with some enemies, but I don't think every enemy needs to be that way. Not every enemy needs to hit hard or telegraph their attacks to the extent they can be easily dodged. Some enemies are going to hurt to fight, and the player will need to plan for that. An active hit/block system can be very satisfying to play in many ways, but it can also prove to be frustrating if your reaction time isn't so good. If "character skill" is a factor it can also prove to be an unsatisfying system since it generally can't express a character becoming better at that skill over time. Compare Skyrim to Morrowind as an example. Skyrim's combat can be satisfying because the hit/block system is rather responsive and relies on the player's own skill rather than the character's stats, but as a result characters don't really feel like they're learning anything over time. In contrast, Morrowind can be frustrating at first since low character stats lead to a lot of misses and lower damage, but the system itself can be more satisfying in the long-term since you can actually feel the character becoming better at their job over time. It's good to have non-combat solutions for some encounters, but one drawback of the videogame medium is that solutions often have to be simplified since there's a limit to how many factors can be accounted for. The solutions also need to be at least somewhat engaging, and combat is typically the easiest way to accomplish that. Non-combat solutions, I think, are better left to the realm of NPC interactions, as some sort of player reputation mechanic. The player's class and choice of dialogue/actions can influence how friendly NPCs will be, how easily they could be intimidated, and how cooperative they're inclined to be in general.

Three hundred blocks in Vintage Story is practically nothing, at least in terms of general distances. You don't necessarily need to go thousands of blocks for absolutely everything, but it's not unusual at all to need to trek a couple thousand blocks to find some critical resource, or find a specific thing for decorative purposes. As others have already noted, roads are useful, but they aren't absolutely required for travel. I tend to just build them around my base, both for aesthetics and utility, and will sometimes build roads to nearby traders or other places I visit regularly to make travel easier. For general travel purposes, having a mount is optimal; currently the only mount available in vanilla is the elk, which you can get via trading after completing the first story location or acquire via catching and raising a baby elk. Trading will be much easier, although if you have lore content disabled trading won't be an option.

The devs have already said they're not keen on adding gore to the game, since some members of the team have reservations about depicting that kind of thing. As for myself, I don't like the idea, because not everything has to a gorefest that's thrown in your face. I don't like blatant horror games, and I don't like a lot of gore, and I know I'm not the only player that has these preferences either. Vintage Story itself also is not a horror game; it's a realistic survival game with some elements of eldritch horror in the background. The game, although niche, also tries to appeal to a somewhat general audience, and gore/horror tends to be a very specific demographic. Likewise, splattering blood and gore everything is only good for an immediate shock factor and doesn't tend to stay "scary" because it desensitizes the player rather quickly. However, if the horror elements stay in the background and the details are left up to the player's imagination, then the scenarios are often much more frightening, and remain frightening for a longer period of time, since the imagination is quite often a more terrifying place than reality.

Some sort of alchemist or herbalist would make a lot of sense as a new class, as well as potentially fill the role of support/healer since none of the other classes quite offer that. But a new class like this probably shouldn't be able to make medicines that other classes can't, unless perhaps it's a slightly better version of some healing item that already exists. The reason I say that, is that medicine can be a rather important detail depending on what you're trying to treat, and players still need to be able to complete the main challenges in singleplayer. If certain injuries end up essentially requiring a class-exclusive item to heal in any reasonable time, that's not going to be very fun to deal with. Class items tend to be more of a style choice or a "nice to have, but not critical to gameplay" flavor, and most can also be found/traded for in the world.

How far have you explored? There should be a trader somewhere near the world spawn, though sometimes the little outposts can be difficult to spot, especially in forested or hilly areas. Still, if you explored roughly a 1000 block radius from the world spawn, you should have found at least one or two. However, if you're playing Homo Sapiens mode, or otherwise turned the lore content off, there won't be any traders or other lore content in your world at all. In which case, your only option, outside of turning lore content on, is going to be chiseling patterns into the floor, using dyed leather(you can turn it into decorative sheets), or finding a mod that fulfills what you're looking for. Sediment rock isn't uncommon at all, but depending on the world seed, you may need to travel a few thousand blocks before you see something other than igneous rock. For mortar, you don't necessarily need chalk. Limestone will work just fine, as will marble, though marble is quite rare so if you find it you may want to save it for building. Seashells can be ground into lime(each shell yields two), but this is a rather tedious way to acquire lime if you need a lot of it. If you have lore content enabled, you can also purchase lime from commodities and survival goods traders. Higher fertility soils tend to be in areas with more rainfall. Forests might have it, but you'd need to dig underneath the top layer in order to find out, and forest floor always turns into low fertility soil when dug up. Assuming you're playing on default settings, you probably just need to explore a little more. High fertility soil seems to be a bit random as to when it appears. You won't find it in deserts, but I've seen it in both medium and low fertility areas. It only occurs in small patches though, not whole biomes. Terra preta doesn't exactly occur in the wild, so you'll need to craft it yourself. It is, however, the best soil in the game for farming. I will differ from @Professor Dragon's advice here though: low fertility soil is fine for a first farm if you've got nothing else to work with. The key to remember though is that you'll need to get your crops in the ground earlier so they'll have time to mature before winter arrives, and you'll probably only be able to get one harvest instead of two. As long as you're not past July, a low fertility farm should still be able to produce a yield, as long as you work quickly to set it up. To help make up for its shortcomings, you'll want to make sure it's irrigated, and you'll want to till a larger area since you won't be able to rely on getting more than one harvest out of it before winter. I agree with Professor Dragon's general thoughts here though--the world seed is probably fine, you likely just need to do a lot more traveling. The general rule of thumb I use is to try to explore a couple thousand blocks in each direction from spawn to see what I have to work with. In most cases, most of what I need is within a thousand blocks of spawn, with one or two important resources I may need to travel a little further in order to acquire.

No, that's definitely not supposed to happen. When was the world created? I seem to remember there was a bug very similar to this in one of the 1.22 pre-releases, so if the world was created on one of those unstable versions it's possible that the trader outpost in question doesn't have the area protections that it should. If you are using mods though, it's very possible that one of the mods could by messing up the area protections somehow. The best way to test that is probably to create a world backup in case something goes wrong, then create a copy of the world, disable your mods, and try to test it on vanilla. Make sure you check out known trader posts as well as freshly generated ones. If you can get the behavior to repeat in vanilla, then you know it's not a mod issue. If you can produce the issue with known trader outposts but not with freshly generated ones, and the world was created on an older game version, then it may just be that the protections weren't generated correctly on the older outposts. Regenerating those chunks might solve it, but it might also mess up the outpost as well, not sure. The only other thing I can think to check is make sure that you are in survival mode, and not creative mode. Creative mode will bypass area protections. If you are in survival mode though, and aren't able to reproduce the issue in vanilla, then there's likely mod interfering somehow.

Only if said snowballs include rocks. The whole point of the throwing ability is to damage the player a bit at a distance and potentially knock them off of a vantage point, thus preventing the player from just avoiding the enemies by nerdpoling or otherwise sitting somewhere safe.