LadyWYT

Well said. I'd also note that just because someone's machine could handle it, doesn't mean it's a good idea to leave bloatware in. Way too many modern games don't bother optimizing their software, so even if a high-end machine can handle it, it doesn't run that well in addition to shutting out those who may not have the fanciest hardware(but still better than absolute potato).

Given that the eclipse we have in-game only lasts a couple of seconds, I think what we have is fine. I'm happy just having eclipses, even if they aren't 100% realistic. Technically, that's a partial eclipse, not a full one. There's still a lot of sun showing there, even if the sky is otherwise darkened.

I'd be more inclined to have a guaranteed cutting and leave the original bush intact as well, but make the original bush need to grow back before it can produce fruit again. That way you still have the original bush in case the cutting fails to grow, but you'll also have to make the choice of whether to take cuttings for a garden or leave the bushes alone for a harvest of berries. As for the higher chance of growing opposed to fruit trees: berries spoil much faster than fruit trees, while producing crops faster. They also feel like something that's easier to propagate than a tree cutting. In any case, the comparative ease of getting the cuttings to grow doesn't mean you can just harvest all the nearby bushes without a care; you'll definitely want those berries for your first winter, and if you take cuttings from everything at the wrong time the original bushes may not grow back in time to produce much for crops. Either method you choose, the other main benefit is that it makes the early game more challenging since players now need to go forage for their food. The same food is still there to be found, of course, but if you have to go forage you could find some furry friends along the way if you aren't careful. I was. I do that a lot, and it's easy to do given my brain tends to operate much faster than my body. It might just be a quirk for me. I think I stared at most recipes that did that long enough to watch the full cycle, and it just stuck in my head from that point on. I've also found it fairly easy to pick up on the general pattern if there's a specific category of resource that it requires, like only iron-tier materials. This explanation of the issue makes a lot more sense to me, and yeah I can get on board with shuffling materials into categories like that. It would streamline a lot. I don't know about that. I've done similar, though it was when I was a newer player too. But one of the great things about Vintage Story, in my opinion, is that it's very good about catching the veterans off-guard as well as the newbies.

That would be nice to have, though I would hope the fuel would last a lot longer than the one that lights up the Archive library. If it's too much of a hassle with resources, I see a lot of players skipping that and sticking to lanterns, saving the coal/charcoal for steel production and other industry.

The message at the end of the Archive changed slightly, but otherwise that's the only real change I am aware of to the location itself. That happened to me as well, and I'm pretty sure it's a bug and not intended behavior. I've not noticed it being an issue with the wild animals, but monsters are able to swat the player and send them flying now regardless if you are actively blocking with a shield or not. It's not every hit, but it happens more often than not. Or I should say...it may technically be an intended mechanic, just a very overtuned one regarding how often it happens and in what circumstances. Getting smacked around by a giant clockwork construct in a specific location makes sense, getting flung around like a ragdoll by something half your size that is found most everywhere doesn't really.

I'm not aware of any, and the leather block used in trader wagons is currently only obtainable through creative mode, I believe. The furniture I've seen people make in this game usually just uses whatever material has the best texture for the look they're trying to achieve; what the material itself actually is doesn't really matter. I've seen several people use wallpaper to achieve the look of textiles though, and placing a square of linen as a seat is also an option(though white is currently the only color, I'm pretty sure).

I think so, but I've also only seen that happen once, and it was a modded world. So it could have easily been a mod that caused an issue with ore generation, and not just incredibly bad luck. The likely culprit is you haven't dug deep enough. I've seen the big copper deposits spawn near the mantle, so you may need to dig another 50 blocks or so before you find it. Make sure you're using the node search on your prospecting pick every so often--that will tell you for sure if there is any ore nearby or not.

It doesn't? I've been able to craft one just fine. Playing on the latest snapshot, if that makes a difference.

/worldconfigcreate bool colorAccurateWorldmap true I think that's the command you're looking for. And it is a lot easier to spot the trader wagons on the colored maps, though you'll still need to go talk to them to figure out what they're selling. The only exception I can think of is the luxury trader--they're the only ones I've seen spawn in acacia wagons, so red wagon usually means luxury items.

Packed dirt over the top should fix the problem for now, I'd wager, plus a ladder to get out more easily. No water currents then, plus you have a nice pocket of air to breathe in while mining.

I think adding more realism here would replace a lot of fun with tedium and frustration. Whacking a tool head onto a stick in the crafting grid might not be realistic, but it's convenient. Since the player will need to make several many tools over the course of the game, especially in the early game, having to take extra time and resources just to make said tools is going to get very old, very fast. Better to have it done in a second, so you can move on to other, more fun things. Now this part I do agree with, mostly. Most tools I think the basic stick handle works fine enough. I'm also fine with bone handles being limited in which tools they can be applied to(short handles only), but the falx would be a good candidate for a bone handle. Likewise, it would be nice to be able to craft really fancy handles for late-game tools, such as purpleheart or ebony, that would add extra durability as well as style. At the same time, I can also think of a good reason to NOT add that as an option. An extra 20 points of durability on a tool is strong in the stone age, but negligible otherwise. Most players don't spend a lot of time admiring their tools either, so looks aren't really that important. Fancy weapons already exist in the form of gold/silver plated items. All that would really be accomplished here, probably is recipe/item bloat. So in the end, I think I'd axe this option, in favor of putting the system resources into some other part of the game.

To my knowledge this is still how it works. Bearing in mind, the last version of Minecraft I played was 1.19 beta, but I don't believe they've significantly altered water physics for a very long time. Vintage Story's water mechanics I think could use some improvement, but at the same time...it's rather refreshing to not rely on waterfalls as a convenient elevator. It does make poking around in underwater ruins a challenge though.

Agreed. I get frustrated enough just misclicking with a chisel and chiseling something that was never meant to be a chiseled block to begin with. This is already a feature though. Surface ruins are broken down and crumbling, and use aged variants of stone blocks. Underground ruins use the same aged stone blocks, plus aged wood and mossy, corroded overlays to show they've been there unoccupied for a very, very long time. Most furnishings you'll find there are falling apart, if not outright in pieces. The most detailed points of interests though are always going to be the story locations, which is fitting since players are expected to both spend a lot of time in these places, as well as find a lot of rare items.

As @Thorfinn already noted, there's already a solution for this problem: turning down the hunger rate. You can also pair that with turning down the food spoilage rate, so the food that you do have lasts a lot longer. Finding and securing good food sources is one of the first challenges a new player faces, but one that's also fairly easy to overcome with a little experience and planning. It's also a reason that classes such as hunter and malefactor are recommended for beginners, and classes like Blackguard are typically recommended for more experienced players. This is also already part of the game. Raw ingredients aren't very filling, but keep you alive. Meat is better than vegetables and fruit, generally. Combining ingredients into proper meals provides a hefty amount of both nutrition and satiation. It's also not terribly difficult to accomplish once you figure out pottery. No. I might hold an unpopular opinion here, but there should actually be fewer bushes. Or rather, I think bushes should be turned into sticks when broken, instead of dropping a bush that you can just move elsewhere. Bush cultivation should instead rely on the pruning function with shears, which provides a cutting that can then be planted wherever you'd like, with a 75% chance of growing into a bush. That way the player can still get the full advantage of the berries the first year, but will need to be a bit more deliberate about putting in the effort to both gather the fruit and start their own berry patch close to home. Animals are a lot easier to hunt pre-1.20, really too easy once you acquired a decent aim with spears/bows. Now they behave more realistically and run away or attack when you hurt them, although rabbits and chickens are easy enough to kill with one shot. In the case of rabbits, it's also fairly easy to build a "bunny trench" around your farm and just kill whatever gets traps there. In any case, the idea is for the player to shift their focus from hunting to livestock, which are a much better, safer sort of meat and fat. Not that hunting ever loses its purpose, but if it's too easy then there is both no survival challenge and no incentive to sink resources into acquiring livestock. Disagree here. The only recipes that works for is shapeless recipes. If every recipe is shapeless, then you need some way to figure out how to allow the player to select which item they want to craft. Some items use the same ingredients, so the only real solution I see there is forcing players to scroll through a list and pick out exactly what they mean to craft each time, every time, which is incredibly tedious. Putting ingredients into a crafting grid in a specific order and quantity to get exactly what you want is a lot faster and less frustrating than needing to scroll through a whole list of things every time you want to craft. I will also note that simple recipes that the player will likely craft a lot of and often, are also often shapeless(like refractory bricks). Vintage Story already provides this, in the form of the handbook. The handbook is also a huge improvement over what Minecraft offers, since it not only provides the recipes for items(assuming they are craftable), but also provides detailed information on how to acquire certain items, what those items can do, and whether or not they have any functional overlap with other items and processes in the game. A simple recipe list just will not do here. Beautifully said. This game kicked my butt mercilessly when I first started playing, even if I did have a vague idea of what I was doing from watching a couple of YouTube videos. And it still kicks my butt if I'm not careful, even after a few hundred hours of experience. Did I get frustrated? Absolutely, but that's also been a refreshing change of pace and a valuable quality that Vintage Story has going for it, in that it really challenges its players and pushes them to improve. At the same time, it also provides a large selection of various options, so those who are looking for an easier, more relaxed game can find what they're looking for; same goes for those who want the absolute nightmare levels of difficulty. And if the vanilla options aren't enough, Vintage Story is very mod-friendly, so there's likely to be a mod that does whatever you're looking for. If not, it's relatively easy to make your own mod, provided you're willing to put in the time and effort. For cooking I would agree. For other stuff in the game, as I noted earlier, I would assume it's the simplest way to allow players to craft whatever they want without needing to select an option from a list every single time. I'd much rather memorize recipes/write them down, than have to go through a list every single time I want to craft something. That's an accurate summary, really. The two share blocky visuals and similar ideas about crafting items with a grid. The similarities end there though. Vintage Story has proper lore and story for a player to experience if they wish, and challenges players in several many ways. Most of Vintage Story's gameplay loops are also intertwined in some form or another, so you'll often need to utilize multiple things to accomplish goals. And I can't think of any gameplay loops that you really do once and then never do again. Minecraft does none of that; you can easily get to end-game equipment within about an hour of playing, and there's really not much risk of player death unless they're deliberately playing as recklessly as possible. As far as its gameplay loops...there's really not a lot of overlap, and many of them you can outright ignore as the only function the "gameplay" serves is netting the player some kind of decoration and nothing more. Replacing tools and armor isn't even a necessity, as you can simply slap an enchantment on them so they can be essentially repaired for free. Getting that enchantment isn't difficult at all either, so unless you somehow manage to die and lose all your items you'll never need to make new stuff. Disagree here, for the reasons I stated earlier. Minecraft just gives you the recipes, and even then only when you pick up certain things that unlock the recipes. It doesn't provide information on what you can do with the stuff, where you can acquire stuff, or where areas of gameplay overlap(if any). In contrast, the Vintage Story handbook gives you a complete list of items right out of the box, along with detailed information on how to acquire most of it and where it overlaps with other items and game concepts. Having all of that information at the beginning of the game allows players to flip through the handbook at will and make a plan for what they want to pursue. Additionally, if a player is a bit lost on how to proceed, the handbook also includes several specific guides to help push players in the right directions. I've found it easy enough to get a sense for whether a recipe will accept any material of a certain type, or whether it requires a more limited range of options based on how fast it can cycle through the variants. If it seems to be cycling through every variant, then it will probably take any variant, so I'll just throw whatever into the crafting grid. Now if it requires a more specific quality of ingredients, then it doesn't take long to cycle through whatever variants it will take. For example, the kiln doors accept variants on the metal parts, but the metal must be some form of iron or steel in order to work. Therefore it doesn't take long to cycle through the variant materials. In contrast, crates will accept any variant of boards or saws in their recipes, so it will take quite a while to cycle through every variant. In regards to the bowstaves, I think the reasoning behind requiring certain wood instead of just any wood, is that only certain woods have the strength and flexibility required to make a good quality bow. It's a bit similar to why you need oak wood to make tannin, instead of just tossing any logs into a barrel and calling it a day.

You can disable the temporal mechanics, I do believe. If you do that, monsters will still spawn underground and in certain story locations since those are fixed spawns, but otherwise you don't have to deal with the hassle of stable and unstable chunks. The problem though is that I think it might also disable temporal storms as well, though I'm not sure. I just roll with the temporal mechanics as-is, though some sort of stability generator fueled by temporal gears is a great idea for a Jonas device. If you're not opposed to tinkering a bit in creative mode every now and then, I think there may be some sort of special "command block" that overrides whether or not temporal stability affects players in certain regions. I have noticed that despite some story locations being very unstable, I never actually lose my stability while exploring them, so I assume that however those locations are built includes some sort of flag markers to both set their stability and allow the player to explore unaffected. How to actually use such a thing though, I'm not sure, but I'm fairly sure it's possible. I'm still against adding disease to the game, overall, but these implementations would probably work. Getting sick because you decided to be a nudist in cold weather, or couldn't be bothered to make fresh food to eat is a fair penalty for situations that are rather easy to avoid in the first place, however since they're easy to avoid I also don't see them posing much of a challenge to the average player. Combat injuries though are a bit of a game changer. I'd still make them rare, otherwise they're going to offer more frustration than fun. But suffering something like a broken limb that penalizes your movement speed/attack power would give more reason to done appropriate armor, even for experienced players. Likewise, it would also provide incentive to avoid fall damage. However, I think maybe the simpler, safer method is to just rework how health is lost and recovered. Perhaps it could be lost two different ways: a chunk at once, or a bleed effect that may drain more health over a longer duration unless treated. Bandages no longer restore health instantly, but do stop bleeding when applied(may take a few bandages depending on bandage quality and severity of wound) as well as restoring health over time. For instant health, this is where alchemy and proper medicine comes into play: medicine is more time/resource intensive to make, but can instantly restore some health rather than needing to wait.

The only change I've really noticed is that the land generation feels smoother compared to previous versions. Not to say there aren't still rough bits, because there are, but I feel like I'm seeing more gentle slopes leading from flat lowlands to mountainous highlands. As far as resources though, that still feels like luck of the draw. I'd also wager you've gotten better at picking out the really good/rare stuff from the stuff you don't really need.

Oh. That's good to know. I've noticed that sometimes the dust doesn't make it into the hopper from the pulverizer, and sometimes a rock or two slips through without getting crushed. The quern I've never had issue with, as I don't put more than one stack in at a time. But then again, maybe there has been issues and I've just not noticed. That's always possible too. Either way, I hope it gets fixed in the future. Right now I look at a bit of lost product here and there as just the cost of unsupervised automation, but it would be better not to have to babysit.

Oh certainly, but it also depends on the player having enough skill to navigate the terrain while running, which does take some practice. Not to mention the chances of a sheep ramming you off a cliff or into a sinkhole. So it would be a faster, easier method of catching wild animals, but not without its own set of risks. That, plus you actually have to catch the chicken in the first place. Pet chickens are usually pretty tame and will at least tolerate being handled--the hens moreso than roosters. But if they're not used to any kind of handling, good luck catching them! It's easier to do at night, if you can get them all to roost in a coop or other enclosed space instead of the trees.

It's just firewood with a different appearance. Burns the same as regular firewood. Not especially useful, unless you just really need firewood right at that moment for some odd reason, or want it for decoration.

Welcome to the forums! If you haven't yet, I would submit a support ticket here: https://www.vintagestory.at/support/

Well first and foremost, I don't expect to see any new lore pieces added, unless there's a new Jonas contraption or new tapestries/lore books to find. Lore stuff is generally saved for story updates. I would expect to see coral reefs though. They were supposed to be in the 1.20 update, but weren't working correctly and got pushed back. So finishing them up and releasing them with 1.21 seems obvious. Going along with that might be some new types of fish or other aquatic animals, and perhaps a proper way to fish as well. It's a logical next step since the water has been made more interesting. Another creature update is also very possible. We got updated wolves in 1.20, and I believe all the older creatures will eventually get updates as well in order to match the new style. Bears are likely, in my opinion, since they need some extra polish with sound design in order to let players have some prior warning of their presence before getting chomped. Bighorn sheep are also likely, as their models are quite chunky and stand out the worst as far as dated looks go. Boars are fine, as are foxes, raccoons, and chickens, so I wouldn't expect to see any updates to these until later. Traders I also think might get a visual and audio update to match other human NPCs. For game mechanics, I'll take a page out of your natural disaster suggestion, and suggest that changes could be made to the current weather patterns to allow hailstorms to damage crops and blizzards to reduce visibility even further. I think a change like this would pose a greater challenge for the hardcore players, while not being so punishing that more casual players never give it a shot. Likewise, both seem like they would be a bit easier to handle, and the penalties a lot more fair than losing an entire base. More plant species or other natural decor like tree stumps and fallen logs could be a possibility. Now that we have better ways to travel, it only makes sense to add a few more things to see on your adventures. Some of these plants could be new crops, to give a bit more food variety. It's possible that surface ruins could receive a bit of an update as well, but I think what we have now is fine, and would rather see more natural stuff instead. It's a longshot, but I could see a loom item or other method of fiber processing added. No more just slapping things into the crafting grid and getting cloth as a result. The main issue I see here though is how exactly it would work without the player needing to stand in one spot holding down a mouse button/key for long periods of time to craft, like what the manual quern requires. If there's a way to realistically automate a loom though using medieval tech, then it's not much of an issue. Birds. I'm guessing that the systems used to create the bugs and frogs could probably be tweaked to accommodate a more detailed model(no one wants bird blocks), and used to spawn small songbirds and whatnot as ambience. To more ambitiously expand an already ambitious idea--add larger birds like crows to potentially eat grain crops. Placing a straw dummy in a crop field will protect crops within a certain radius from birds, and straw dummies could also be equipped with clothing items(not armor) for decoration. A different angle on the birds idea: add more large birds similar to chickens. Ducks and geese would make good additions to the water, and could only spawn during certain times of year in certain climates to simulate migration patterns(birds already spawned would not despawn though). Turkeys, pheasants, grouse, quail, and ptarmigans could provide additional hunting opportunities. Turkeys, ducks, and geese could also be domesticated, which adds another livestock option that farming enthusiasts will probably enjoy. Warm/tropical climates could spawn ostrich, emus, and peafowl as well as potentially dodo birds since these didn't go extinct until the 1600s. Peafowl would also be a fun exotic to add to your livestock collection, albeit a very noisey one. Some more cave clutter would be a great addition as well. More rock formations, cave pools with creatures, bats(which would obviously produce guano as a resource), and moss/mold would make the underground more interesting to explore.

That's a great idea for a Jonas tech contraption. I'm not entirely sure what one would use it for, as most reasons I can think of to keep a chunk loaded usually require the player to be around supervising certain processes.

Hmmmm...not especially, other than I don't expect any major lore content release. Most of my attention on the update front has been thinking over the revelations of story chapter two, and what could be coming next on that front.

I'll also clarify that I don't necessarily mind if some sort of natural disasters make it into the vanilla game, provided that it's an optional challenge, similar to the cave-in mechanics or fires started by lightning. I do think though, that there are other ideas that would be much more popular and add much more value to the gameplay overall. That would help, but the drawback I see here is that if the events strike without warning, you've then got the pressure that you have to make disaster-proofing a priority, as you don't know when one will strike. If you're focusing your attention on that, that's time and resources that you aren't devoting to other tasks you need/want to do, which can end up very frustrating especially when no disaster hits for a very long time. Likewise, it would suck to sink a lot of work into say, preparing defenses against an earthquake, only to get hit by a tornado instead and have a lot of damage done because you didn't prepare correctly. You could also have the worst luck, and have a natural disaster hit early on and wipe your progress before you've had a chance to prepare as well. Alternately, you could treat natural disasters like temporal storms, and give some sort of advance warning so the player isn't blindsided. However, it seems like that would be a different kind of frustration, since it takes time to fortify things and while you could hide in a hole and be fine, your stuff can't. Now that I think about it though...the biggest issue with an advance warning is probably natural disasters only affecting certain regions. In that case, you could just take a trip to a different region for a few days so your base chunks aren't loaded, and then return. No loaded chunks means nothing exciting happens, which defeats the purpose of disasters.

Precisely my point. Keeping in mind that the setting is the late Middle Ages. Not saying they didn't have their own disaster-proofing back then, but it's not the same level as it is today. You could go the Jonas tech route, I suppose, and make a device that counters extreme weather events. However, Jonas tech is very rare, and very late game. The player still has to survive long enough to reach that level, without getting so frustrated with things they can't really prevent at all that they quit playing. In regards to building things out of stone to resist damage from earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes and the like...I'd highly recommend taking a look at before and after pictures of areas hit by disasters like this. We build stuff out of steel and concrete today and it still gets torn apart by natural disasters. I'd also argue that we already do have natural disasters in the game(or perhaps unnatural), in the form of temporal storms. I'll also point out that while there is plenty of advance warning for them, and they are fairly easy to deal with, I've seen more than a few complaints about how much some players hate them. I'd be surprised if a more realistic natural disaster that actually wrecks your base was more popular.