LadyWYT

The gear icon is your stability meter, and what you should pay attention to in order to determine an area's stability and how long you can remain in an area before you need to consider leaving. If it's turning clockwise(to the right) then the area is stable and you can remain there as long as you'd like. If it's turning counterclockwise(to the left), the area is unstable and the gear will start turning from teal to grey as your stability drops. If the gear isn't moving, the area is either neutral and won't replenish or drain your stability, or the area is stable but you're already at full stability(in which case, the gear will be teal and display 100% when you mouse over it). The really bad effects don't really start to occur until you have around 25% stability remaining, so the meter can fall quite low before you need to head back to a stable area, sacrifice a temporal gear to restore stability, or otherwise do some monster hunting. Rift activity is still important to pay attention to, since underground monster spawns are influenced by the current rift activity. If you intend to go exploring underground, it's best to wait for periods of calm or lower activity in order to have fewer monsters to deal with. However, if you want to hunt monsters underground, then you may want to wait for a period of higher activity instead. If you're already underground and not keen on fighting, you may want to keep an eye on the rift activity levels and leave when the activity increases.

I mean if it works, it works, right?

@Diff is correct in that resin only spawns on world-generated trees, and not trees planted by the player. However, some mods allow players to tap trees for resin.

Oof, I'd hate mining then if it turned into that sort of mechanic. Splitting slag off blooms isn't an issue for me, and I'm practiced enough that I can do it rather fast, but I don't like holding down the mouse button for that kind of work at all since it's easier to make a mistake working like that. At least in my experience. Eh...I'd rather see it just for fossils and special ores like gemstones. I wouldn't want to see it applied to ores and cracked stone in general, mainly because when I'm mining I like to just drill my way through everything before carting the resources home. Is it particularly exciting? No, but then again I don't really expect it to be. Sometimes it's nice to have a task be simple and straightforward, and not something you need to think about, while saving the more exciting mechanics for the activities you're not necessarily doing all that often(like smithing). Isn't there already something of a bandaging animation in the game? I wouldn't mind seeing the animation polished a little more, perhaps with a temporary loss of speed since it's not really feasible to be patching yourself up while running at full speed. Given that some medicines don't keep long-term, it's also possible to require the player to create some of them fresh in order to treat certain injuries--perhaps grinding up fresh ingredients or combining powders/oils into a fresh salve? Even in this case though, I'm not really sure I would consider it a "minigame" as much as I would just adding immersive animation for what the player happens to be doing.

It's an interesting idea, but aside from users submitting conflicting bounties, it also presents the issue of determining who wins the prize.

In my experience the RA tends to spawn to the north, but about the time you expect it to be north is when it winds up to the south. I'm guessing the controlled randomness is partly to keep things fresh from world to world, as well as to ensure that players can't so easily bypass completing quests, using maps, or otherwise doing things out of order.

That's just the forums for you. There may or may not be some mod confusion in the mix as well, since mods can change a lot of things about the game and it's sometimes easy to forget that mods are installed. It depends on how much the player is trying to cook at once. Firepits were modified so that items no longer reset their temperature when they start cooking, however, that also means the time required to bring the items to temperature will be proportional to the stack size. Which makes sense, but unfortunately stacks do not currently cool off in proportion to their size. There is a mod for that though: https://mods.vintagestory.at/scs My best guess is that either building blocks using ashlar blocks/bricks were cheaper than intended, or that the old recipe output could easily make too much and be a little frustrating if one only needed a little bit of mortar for a specific task. But I'm not sure. Honestly, I don't think it will be much of an issue, unless you're trying to make a huge build out of blocks requiring mortar. But even in that case, huge builds are going to be a massive time and resource sink no matter what construction materials one chooses to work with. If you're having trouble finding lime, don't forget that it's possible to buy it from commodities traders. I think survival goods traders sell it as well. The price tends to be rather reasonable and traders often have it in stock.

Story locations are randomized within certain parameters. The Resonance Archive, for example, spawns on the north-south axis at around 4-6000 blocks from spawn by default. The general locations of chapter 2 spawn on the east-west axis from world spawn, with the third and fourth locations spawning on a rough north-south axis relative to the second location(and if one spawns to the north, the other seems to always spawn to the south). Aside from that, it's luck-of-the-draw as to which directions you'll need to travel for that world in order to reach the locations. Some of them are fairly obvious, so you could decide to pick a direction and start walking, and find your way to certain places without using a map at all. It's going to be quite the walk though, and you have a 50% chance of going in the wrong direction.

The thing about really grindy games too is they remain extremely niche because of the grind. Vintage Story, at least currently, seems to be planned around an average of 100 real life hours of play to complete the general tech tree and main story. Requiring the player to invest several hours in a world in order to progress can tie the player to the world more closely, but it's also very easy to push that requirement too far, and many players like to start new worlds fairly often in order to have a change of scenery, replay the progression, play with friends, or just try a new class/modlist. Some players already complain about the current VS time requirements being too demanding. I don't see most players being excited about dumping thousands of hours of real time into trying to go from "caveman to cosmos". It'd be fun for a single challenge playthrough, but it's not going to be particularly fun to replay. It's also going to get really frustrating for players who like the space stuff but don't enjoy the slog of primitive tech that comes before it, or players that only enjoy the more primitive tech but not the space stuff(they will get outclassed in multiplayer, and that's never fun).

I don't think this would make mining faster or more fun, personally. It seems like it would be something of a difficult mechanic for new players to grasp easily, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but mundane activities like mining should be rather easy to figure out. I also think the split-second delay on analyzing the crack and figuring out where to point the cursor to "break it faster" will ultimately end up breaking the block slower than the conventional method--those split-seconds add up rather easily. A better option would be applying this sort of logic to trees--simply hitting the base of the tree until the whole thing falls apart is a useful utility, but not particularly exciting or realistic. Cutting out wedges and then being able to watch the tree actually fall over before picking up the resulting blocks(or log, and needing to refine said log into the appropriate products) would be a lot more interesting. The cutting process might be slower than the current process when it comes to small trees, but larger trees might actually be harvested a bit faster, balancing out the mechanic. For mining, I think it would work as a specific action for fossils, and make a pretty fun mini-game for the player every once in a while. Fossils can be delicate, and to extract them intact one needs to take special care to chisel away the rock around them. In this case, it makes more sense that the player would take their time and be very careful about where they swing their pick, lest they destroy their prize. Once the fossil has been carved out, the player can use a hammer and chisel to polish the result.

Aside from reading the wiki, a lot of it is going to be googling. A lot of googling. If you are comfortable using AI, it can be a handy tool for learning as well, but you should exercise caution when using AI tools since not all AI models are equal and AI is not a replacement for understanding and doing the work yourself. Likewise, if you use AI in the final product, it's a good idea to disclose that in the mod description, since not all users are keen on AI use and fair disclosure tends to avoid a lot of problems. Do keep in mind that code mods are the most difficult category to create, and the more complexity you want to add the more issues you're likely to run into. Also keep in mind that users might ask you if your mod is compatible with other popular mods. Now I'm not saying you can't just jump into the "deep end" of modding and create code mods as your first mods, as it's certainly possible to learn that way, but I would highly recommend keeping your scope very limited at the start in order to make learning a little easier. That is, think of a simple piece of tech, break down exactly what functions it needs to perform, and then figure out how to code those functions in addition to creating whatever models, textures, and animations that are required. It's okay if the result is a little rough at first; the main goal is to just get things working before polishing the assets and releasing it as a proper mod. The modding section of the forum is a good place to ask around for help, especially if you have specific questions related to mod creation. There's also an active modding channel on the Discord, I believe.

Yes. Always leave one populated skep to repopulate the fresh skeps after a honey harvest.

I'm guessing they've already got measures in place to punish those who try to weaponize reports, so I daresay the system will be fine. I'm also guessing that "low quality" flags will apply to stuff that is actually low-quality; that is, it doesn't matter what tools someone used to create the mod if the end product itself is rather terrible. Except mod authors can already flag their mods as using AI by adding disclosure in the mod description or adding the AI tag to their mod. Mod authors who use AI tools in their work tend to disclose such use, but not all of them do. The main problem with requiring everyone to tag their stuff is that there needs to be a clear set of rules of exactly what sort of AI use warrants a tag and what does not(ie, were AI-generated assets actually used, or did the mod author just use AI to get some ideas/information of how to do stuff but did the actual work themselves), and having to check everything for compliance bogs down the system. And it still doesn't stop false reports from happening because some people have personal vendettas or otherwise erroneously assume something is AI when it's not. Ultimately, I think making sure that the community has the freedom to make their own choices and punishing those who try to abuse the system is the best way to handle it. Those who don't want anything to do with AI can just use the filter and not have to see it, and those who don't mind AI can browse those mods and determine which they want to use and which they do not. And of course, mods that break TOS will be dealt with the same way they've always been.

I wouldn't mind seeing a Galacticraft-style mod for VS, but I also agree with @Rainbow Fresh. While anything goes in the modded realm, it's fairly difficult to put something like space travel into a game focused on medieval technology and survival, without things feeling very out-of-place. That's probably why we haven't seen such a mod yet--it'd be a LOT of work just making the space part and then a LOT of work trying to make all the different tech to even allow the player to make space-age stuff. From a coding standpoint, that is, I don't think the workload for the player matters as much. As for TOBG, it's been around longer so space mods have had more time to be developed, but TOBG also has the advantage of having a rather whimsical nature that's not particularly grounded in reality. So no one's going to be asking too many questions about slapping some metal plates together and going to the moon when the character can also glue diamonds together into a pickaxe and visit biomes made entirely out of mushrooms.

Welcome to the forums! Interesting idea, but I don't like the thought of turning absolutely everything into a series of mini-games, and that seems to be what's suggested here. Tasks like mining are always going to be a little tedious, to an extent, but...they're mundane tasks. The action is supposed to be something that the player can understand immediately and complete quickly, so they can get the resources they're after and move on to the more complex work of refining said resources. Turning the action into a mini-game might make it more "interesting" at a glance, but more of a hassle to deal with in the long term since now it takes several seconds to mine a block for resources rather than just a couple. Dave the Diver suffered from this somewhat. Very fun game, but it really loved to throw multiple mini-games at the player, and rather frequently too, which could be overwhelming to downright aggravating to deal with.

Another angle I forgot to mention in regards to how penalties could work--I modded my Skyrim files to have an injury system, and the general penalty of those is decreasing player health/stamina/magicka/movement speed as appropriate until the injury is treated or heals. Treating the injury can clear up some, but not all of the penalties, and failing to treat the injury properly can potentially lead to it getting worse. The more serious injuries, like broken bones, heal very slowly and can prevent players from moving quickly or wielding physical weapons, but splinting the bone can restore some movement(allowing the player to use things in that hand) as well as help the break heal faster. Of course, there are also potions that will heal injuries instantly, but the system feels rather insignificant if one can just make instant cures. I could see a similar system working for Vintage Story, in that illness and wounds will heal on their own over time, but will heal much faster with proper care. Serious injuries will need more diligent care lest they become worse, like a gash becoming infected because the player couldn't be bothered to clean and bandage the wound.

From a cosmetic standpoint, maybe, but from a practical standpoint? No, because of the respawn mechanic actually being canon. It makes sense that the player might be "frozen" at a certain point in time, and thus be able to "reset" back to the point at death no matter how much damage their body sustained. However, at the same time, it's worth pointing out that even with prosthetics, a missing limb is still a major disadvantage when it comes to survival situations, and many of the things that the player character does are things that really require peak conditioning. You don't need to make the injuries carry over after respawn to discourage the player from resorting to death to fix things instead of proper medical treatment, although to be fair, handling it that way is a pretty strong deterrent. A simpler solution is to give the player a fresh start but impose "resurrection sickness" for a while after they respawn, debuffing some of the player's stats for several hours/a couple of days so they'll need to take it easy rather than participate in strenuous activities. There should be a short grace period though--a few real life minutes--to ensure that if the player died in combat, they have a chance to get their stuff back before suffering penalties from resurrection sickness. World of Warcraft used resurrection sickness to push players to run back to their bodies if they died in the open world, rather than just take the convenience of the graveyard healer every time. The graveyard healer was still useful in the event you couldn't make it back to your body for some reason, but the resulting debuff meant you were going to be taking a short break from your adventures to recover your health and strength. If you tried adventuring with that debuff, you were going to be fighting at a significant disadvantage.

Servers would need some sort of control over the mechanic. Otherwise you end up with griefers deliberately sabotaging a town with vermin and frustrating everyone else. Or players who take a break from the game get overrun by vermin while they're away and there's nothing anyone can really do about it, aside from server admins. In fairness, you don't really need a server-wide plague to RP a doctor effectively, and a server-wide plague is probably going to require admin intervention in order to actually stop. For roleplaying though, a status effect system should be enough to make RPing a doctor worthwhile. It's not just disease that needs to be treated--it's the combat injuries and broken bones from falls as well. For a traveling doctor, it could be as simple as venturing outside the office to make house calls, or actively traveling from town to town, though I'd wager most sizeable settlements will try to convince a doctor to stay in order to ensure they have better access to medical care.

Technically, monsters should be able to tear through a lot of things, but destroying builds is one quick way to produce a lot of frustrated players. It also leads to issues in ruins as well, since there are ruined doors that monsters could be messing with. That can render searching for them pointless, as well as diminish the concept of the place being untouched for decades. Bellhead shivers only spawn deep underground, so they aren't really a threat to player bases unless the player turned off stability mechanics and built down near bedrock. That could change if they were allowed to spawn on the surface outside of temporal storms, but in that case you have a nightmare tier enemy running around wreaking havoc on players who don't have access to good weapons and armor yet.

A little blood splatter is probably fine; the entire model doesn't need to be drenched or anything. Monster blood has been described as sludgy, and I'm not sure they really have any blood circulation, so there's not as much there to really splatter. Automatons would have oil and hydraulic fluid, and probably be messier in that case. Of course, all the above could be ignored in favor of adjusting animations based on remaining creature health. It still gets the point across while avoiding potentially upsetting visuals. It'd also be interesting if perhaps certain enemy actions were disabled when at low health or under certain status effects. For example, a locust at low health might not be able to use its spring attack anymore, allowing the player to back away to safety or finish it off more easily.

Maybe rapids spawn too frequently and need to be a more rare occurrence? That way watermills still remain strong, but are highly situational, lending more use to windmills and other power sources. Although that being said...I've found myself relying more heavily on windmills despite the frequency of rapids, since I don't always want to settle near rapids. Personally, I find windmills a little less awkward to work with. Watermills are very handy, but it's possible to misplace the block or mess up the water flow. It's also a little awkward trying to deal with a lateral connection for multiple machines rather than connect a vertical shaft to a large gear and run everything off that.

Also worth noting that you're using out-of-date mods. Older mods sometimes work fine on newer versions, but 1.22 introduced code changes that a broke a lot of older mods, especially those involving entities. I recommend checking your modlist and making sure everything is updated correctly, in addition to what @MKMoose stated above.

Welcome to the forums! My best guess, at a glance, is that it's the shader mod having some goofy interference with another mod, or perhaps not playing nicely with the player's hardware or settings. You could try removing that mod and see if that clears up the issue. If it's a fresh client then there shouldn't have been any older mods in the folder that could interfere. That being said, do check the modlist to make sure everything is updated correctly for 1.22, just in case there's an outdated mod in the list. Otherwise, the only way to figure out which mod is causing the issue is to disable them all, make sure vanilla works correctly, and then re-enable them one by one and test as you do so until you encounter the problem again.

No, dry dirt is pretty noticeable too. Mud makes a mess faster, but dry dirt is still a rather gritty, unpleasant feeling and gets rather messy when mixed with sweat. And other people do notice if you're all dusty. I like the idea, but I think it should have an effect on NPC interactions so that there's a reason for the player to take a bath, in addition to making the player more likely to get sick if they don't keep themselves clean. Harvesting carcasses and melee combat with certain creatures could splatter the player in blood. I dunno about black lung disease. It is a realistic risk of coal mining, but given how much coal/charcoal the player needs to process throughout the game, it probably needs to be either a difficult disease to catch, or an easy disease to treat if added.

If it is some sort of monetization program, the best I can think of is some sort of "tip jar" system so that players can donate to their favorite mod authors without needing to rely on a middleman like Patreon or Ko-fi or something. With the understanding, of course, that the mods have to be free by default--no locking things behind a paywall. Minecraft's Marketplace, as well as the Sims' marketplace, are good examples of how wrong monetization can go. There's also the incident that happened with Skyrim, when monetized mods were allowed there. Aside from the typical "low quality mod attempting to make a quick buck", some of the more prominent mods that other mods/modlists relied on to work correctly were getting locked behind paywalls and thus breaking things, and the modding community itself was going to war over who was okay with the policies versus who was not. Ultimately things got straightened out, at least somewhat, but the damage was already done and I'm not sure that the community has ever really recovered from it.