LadyWYT

Bumping this back up to the forefront for a moment since I encountered this bug the other day. I reported it on the tracker and managed to replicate it consistently on vanilla, version 1.22.0-pre5. The steps to produce the bug in question seem to be something like this: 1. Hold item in offhand(in this case, a small copper lantern) 2. Exit the world 3. Load the world 4. Open the inventory but NOT the character information panel 5. Remove the item from the offhand manually with the mouse rather than using the keyboard shortcut 6. Open a chest containing another item that can be put in the offhand slot(torch, in this case) 7. Shift-click the item from the chest into the inventory 8. Hold the item in the main hand, do not put in the offhand! 9. Open the character information window 10. The offhand penalty gets applied despite the offhand being empty

Welcome to the forums! To my knowledge, the fish population should recover after a while if a body of water is overfished. How long it takes though, I don't know. I will also note that overfishing a location doesn't mean no fish at all. It just means that catching a fish will take much longer in the overfished area than if the player had gone fishing elsewhere. The ideal fishing strategy, as far as I can tell, is just to find a handful of favorite fishing spots and visit a different one each time you go fishing, rather than relying on a single location.

I have no idea who came up with the idea, but I know it does get mentioned frequently: some sort of Jonas tech device that can create a safety bubble within a certain area. That way the early storms can stay dangerous and the player can struggle, but the player can also have solution to work towards to mitigate storm effects. Basically, the player earns safety. It's also a way to flesh out the late game Jonas tech options, which are rather lacking at the moment. Mostly I mean big changes, like making stuff spawn on the ground, or relegating storms to specific areas, etc. Changes like adjusting monster loot can already be done with available mods.

The full dive on where temporal storms are referenced, both in lore as well as advertising, for those interested: This presents a different problem: the player still needs to drop whatever they're doing in order to go interact with the storm, but now they have to travel. Which I will note, some players already complain about the traveling required to do the current story. Additionally, if an idea like this is to work, then it also begs the questions: How does the player know where to go for a temporal storm? How does the player know when a temporal storm is going to occur? Realistically, if the storm is only occurring in a specific area, the player would need to get the information from someone in that area, or have some sort of tracking device that alerts them to such anomalies. Does the storm only start once the player enters that area, or does it just occur regardless of whether or not the player is there? If the former, that seems a good way to get players to avoid certain areas entirely, or otherwise get frustrated about having to fight on ground not of their choosing(ie, no chance to make fortifications or traps). If the latter, that seems like it could lead to some performance issues with chunk loading, as well as the issue of the player missing out on the storm because they couldn't get there in time.

Given certain NPC dialogues, I would say that such an idea does conflict with the lore. However, I don't think the lore is necessarily the strongest argument against that particular idea and here's why: Letting the storms be static event locations that the player travels to in order to engage at a time of their choosing is certainly more convenient for the player. However, it also results in a world that feels static, where nothing ever happens without the player's involvement. The goal of VS seems to be not just to tell a good story, but to build a world that feels alive. That is, things will be happening regardless of player involvement. The seasons change, NPCs go about their day, animals will wander around and do various things, etc.

I don't think anyone's exactly opposed to discussing changes for the storms. The main problem, I think, is that the storms are a very divisive feature, and what would be a good change for one type of player would be a very bad change for another type of player. @Calmest_of_lakes did a pretty good outline of various commonly suggested changes, and what problems those changes can introduce. I'll also note that, while players might be open to discussing changes, this particular topic is one that no one really likes to discuss that much anymore, because the suggestions are often the same and player opinions are often quite polarized on what they would/wouldn't like to see change. Or to put it another way, whatever change happens to temporal storms is almost guaranteed to upset a decent portion of players. The only thing that really changes, I think, is which players love it versus which hate it. Precisely. I don't mind change that much, but change that clashes with the established setting and lore I decidedly do not like, because then the story feels unimmersive. That doesn't mean that every single game mechanic needs to track 100% with how things would realistically be in that setting(for example, I appreciate being able to kill large metal monsters with a sword, despite the fact that doing so is wildly unrealistic), but it does mean that the game ought to be taking its own setting seriously. To paraphrase what someone else said about realism in a different thread: gameplay needs to be realistic enough to be believable, but not so realistic that it's an exact copy of real life. Also you brought up a great point about there being some inconsistency in the lore regarding temporal storms strength, or at least I think you were the one that mentioned it earlier. In the lore, storms are stated to have been at their worst post-calamity, diminishing in strength as time goes on. In actual practice, however, the storms start as weaker and become stronger as the game progresses. To be fair, there could be a lore reason for this that has yet to be discovered in a later story chapter, but as it is currently, I think it's a decent example of making a needed exception for the sake of the player's enjoyment. Players aren't equipped to handle strong storms when they first start the game; likewise, the player would probably be disappointed to work their way up to steel equipment and then find out that now the storms are very weak, making their accomplishment feel less satisfying. It's an exception that works in this specific case, but doesn't necessarily hold true for every suggested temporal storm change.

Which is fine. Though I would argue that D&D is also a good example of why it's a bad idea to go messing too much with established lore and mechanics. As I understand it, modern editions of the game aren't doing as well as older editions due to changes that WotC made to both mechanics and established lore and settings. D&D and other tabletop games are also a bit of a special case given that the entire idea behind them is for the players to use the rulebooks and lorebooks as guides and tailor the actual game to their own tastes. It's a little harder to do that when it comes to books, videogames, TV, and movies. For videogames in particular, the closest it comes is whatever settings the developer decides to include, as well as mods, if mods are available for the game in question. I would say the original Transformers cartoon is also a pretty good example of why it's not a good idea to go making drastic changes to a story for reasons outside the story. As I understand it, the older toys weren't selling as well, so Hasbro opted to kill most of the main characters in the movie, or otherwise turn them into completely new characters. That's not to say that the movie was bad, or that the show that came after the movie was bad either. But a lot of people were very upset about beloved characters getting killed off, and lost interest in the show because they weren't interested in the new characters. The show also changed focus from robots fighting on Earth to adventures with robots in space and galactic diplomacy, which wasn't bad but it was a pretty drastic tone shift. Viewers who preferred more grounded(relatively) adventures on Earth rather than a space opera also lost interest, since the show content was no longer something they enjoyed. To my knowledge the most popular episodes of that show are the couple of episodes that feature Starscream(as ghost...which is never really explained), and Optimus Prime's return. Pretty much. I swear I saw a bit somewhere that described Tyron pitching the initial story idea to the lead writer, but I can't seem to find it at the moment. That being said, if the story and lore weren't important, I'd think they wouldn't be advertising the story as a prominent feature on the homepage, or putting so much effort into building cool locations, cool lorebooks and tapestries, and interesting characters to meet.

It could change by stable release. Does seem to be some conflicting information over whether the nutrient loss is intended to drop to 0, or whether it becomes basically negligible but will still need fertilizing once in a blue moon. Twenty years does seem like quite a long time, a bit too long in some ways, but at the same time, if there's going to be a lot of other stuff to do in the game as well as the main story events(which may or may not take a while to complete), I think it's maybe not that unreasonable. I would say it's the kind of thing that will probably feel a little steep now, but perhaps less so later in the game's life.

Right, but my reasoning was basically just...make sure temporal storms and related mechanics are very easy to mod. Then players can balance those things however they'd like. I'm not entirely sure why those areas are hard to mod. It seems like it's a portion of code that's not easy to access or something? I'm not really sure how accurate that impression is either, but it's the impression I've got and it seems a reasonable explanation as to why there aren't many mods that really alter temporal storms, despite there being plenty of suggestions on how storms could be altered. Pretty much. Lore is important because those are the established rules that stories and settings must follow. Changes can be made, but must be done with care, or else the story loses integrity because it doesn't follow its own rules. And a story that doesn't follow its own rules isn't worth investing in, because what's interesting one moment might not present at all the next, and major plot points like hero/villain deaths don't really mean anything if the same character is just going to turn up again later for arbitrary reasons. It's no different for videogames, movies, or other media. One reason the Hobbit movies didn't do so well is they weren't very faithful to the books, whereas the LotR movies remain popular because they did their best to remain faithful to the source material. Edit: It's also why studios have, or at least used to have, "lore bibles" for their various franchises. Keeping lore organized and consistent across multiple forms of media, products, and teams of people can be difficult, so it's a good idea to have some sort of in-house encyclopedia to keep everything in order. From a fandom standpoint, it's why wikis for things exist--it helps the fans keep a record of what's known about the setting and related characters, so they know who did what where, and when, and why it's important.

I don't know that I'd ever really want to see blights, at least not for fruit trees and berry bushes. Maybe if it was the result of poor care, and just resulted in no crop that year rather than killing the plant. But otherwise, while realistic, it seems like the kind of thing that easily tips into the "punishment" category. It'd feel pretty bad to put all that work into a nice orchard, only to have it ravaged by something outside your control due to getting unlucky. Oh for sure. Whoever gets the bushes will all the positive traits is going to make an absolute fortune selling cuttings. I think even cuttings that only have a couple of positives and no negatives will fetch high prices as well. It also looks like the bushes might properly go dormant, so yeah definitely agree here. Not that berry bushes didn't go dormant before...it just seems like it might be a little more of a factor now.

Oh for sure. To be fair, it's still very WIP, but it's a little easier to figure out where the devs are going with this and how things will play out on stable. The trait system looks incredibly interesting, and aside from perhaps being a glimpse at what a status effect system could hold, I think it's a system that will likely include fruit trees at some point in the future. Which, I think, would be a very good thing. It would mean the player might need to be more picky about which trees they take cuttings from, for one, and it might also make grafting cuttings onto existing trees more valuable than just a vanity feature. In that case, the player could potentially get rootstock established with good traits, and then graft cuttings from lesser trees onto said rootstock in order for those cuttings to take on the rootstock's traits rather than the traits of the tree the cutting initially came from.

The main issue here is that the reason certain events of Chapter 2 are so shocking, is that is the first time the player really sees just how bad things can truly get. If the player could experience similar but smaller areas like that earlier in the game, then Chapter 2 becomes much less interesting because, well, the player's seen it before. Even Chapter 1 would be more underwhelming, I think, because the strangeness that happens there pales in comparison to that kind of mess. As it stands now, the player can uncover enough in the early game via ruins, lore books, and tapestries to figure out that some pretty bad stuff happened, and certain things are definitely wrong with the world now as a result. But the player won't really be able to start understanding just how dire the situation really is until reaching certain points in the main story. I've had similar thoughts running through my mind. It's not really bad to have such a divisive mechanic, but it does make it a hard one to balance in such a fashion that every type of player will enjoy it. The better option overall, I think, is probably just to ensure that temporal mechanics are as mod-friendly as possible, since my understanding currently is that is one area of the game that is incredibly difficult to mod. If modding such things were easier, then players could adjust it however they'd like, and we'd have a wider range of options to play with in addition to the devs' vision.

For what it's worth, according to the handbook in pre5, only cultivated bushes will require maintenance. Even then, it seems to be more of a yearly thing, since the nutrients will only deplete after a harvest, but producing a harvest doesn't guarantee that nutrients will be used up. It also looks like cultivated bushes will require less and less attention over time, eventually requiring no fertilizer at all, though it appears to take several in-game years to get them to that point. Basically, it looks like they'll require a little more maintenance up front to get going, eventually getting to the point they need no further attention. Wild bushes don't appear to need attention at all, which makes sense, but won't be able to produce the same yields as cultivated bushes, so to get the best yields players will want to spend some time setting up their own berry patch. Relying on wild bushes though still seems like it will be perfectly viable as well, just not as lucrative as it was previously.

Try reducing the respawn radius from world spawn. By default, I believe it's 50 blocks. /worldconfig spawnRadius 0 might fix it. You might also trying standing exactly where you want the spawn point to be and use the command /serverconfig setspawnhere That may work as well.

If only. Cooking the shrooms seems to remove the hallucinogenic effects. Which I mean...makes sense. To my knowledge that's one way to tell if certain mushrooms have been properly cooked or not.

Slight correction to the above: Berry bushes can indeed spawn with more than two traits, since I just found one that had all four trait categories. It's very rare though, and even more unlikely that all of the traits will be positive ones.

Just some more notes on the berry bushes so far: The traits seem quite nice, and while wild bushes seem to be plain for the most part, it's not uncommon to find bushes with one trait, though they will sometimes spawn with two traits although more rarely. The traits can be either good or bad, and a bush with two traits might have one good trait and one bad trait. Taking a cutting from a bush appears to propagate the respective traits of that bush. The cuttings seem to require medium or better quality soil in order to plant, will take around 6-12 months to reach maturity. Only one cutting per bush, per year. Only propagated bushes need to be fertilized, and only propagated bushes can produce the best possible yields. Bushes will use nutrients when they produce crops, but won't necessarily use up the nutrients for every crop. Nutrients that are used will need to be replenished with fertilizer, as it won't replenish nutrients naturally like farmland. Keeping the bushes fertilized will increase their quality over time, while neglecting to take care of them can result in the bushes' quality diminishing. For the long term, bushes will gradually need less fertilizer to stay productive, eventually needing no fertilizer at all to stay healthy(roughly 20 years, according to the current handbook information). Seems like a pretty good initial balance. Long term players can see more benefits on their worlds, while players with shorter-lived worlds can still easily get really good berry crops going without a huge time sink. I think it also makes travel prospects a little more interesting as well, without being too punishing, in that players might want to be careful about spending too much time away from home if they have freshly planted cuttings and whatnot.

As of pre5 they can spawn with berries. The worldgen is still buggy though since the berry bushes will now spawn in lakes sometimes. I don't think the moisture level matters for berry bushes. It's just a reading borrowed from the standard crop growth code, I think, that hasn't been fixed for bushes yet. I will note that there does seem to be a distinction between wild bushes and cultivated ones. Likewise, bushes seem to be able to produce berries even at very poor(barren) health, but the yield will be significantly lower than a healthy bush. At a glance, it's enough to keep a player alive via foraging, but getting a proper harvest of berries will take either quite a bit of devoted foraging, or some dedicated farming effort.

More options to control the interval between storms would be nice. That way the player can choose whether or not they want more predictable storms, or less predictable ones. I agree this seems like it would be too punishing for most players in general, not just new ones. However, I do think that the stability drain could be increased for heavier storms, so that the player should consider going out and killing a few monsters or sacrificing a temporal gear in order to avoid falling too low on stability. Light storms should remain relatively less threatening in comparison, since the player is already going to struggle in the early game(when these storms occur) due to lack of good equipment.

One thing that doesn't seem to be listed in the patch notes--procedural dungeons. I can't really say much about them as I've not had a chance to toy much with pre5, but they do seem to have been added to the game.

The full patch notes for 1.22.0-pre5:

pre5 up in the Downloads section! Patch notes on berry bushes:

To my knowledge, no, at least not currently. Could probably be modded, but I don't think anyone's made a mod for that kind of thing. Closest you can get to a hedge at the moment is stacking currant bushes and keeping them pruned.

I wouldn't mind being able to craft Blackguard armor as a Blackguard. I've always thought it just a little strange that they can make their namesake weapons but can't make the armor. I don't know what sort of unique craftables each class would have though. Clockmaker seems like it could have some interesting steampunk cosmetic, or at least, some bonuses to working with Jonas tech once more gets added. More traps for Malefactor makes sense, but maybe they could craft different styles of masks to wear as well. Hunter could perhaps craft a special hunting knife that makes the butchering job even faster, meaning they could give those knives to their friends to help with hunting/livestock processing. Anyone is susceptible to greed, and any player can get tired of always being relegated to the same tasks all the time. I'd say it's still a self-inflicted problem in this scenario as well, and one best fixed by the players themselves. There's nothing wrong with min-maxing, but if a player is doing it to the point they aren't having fun anymore, that's a problem for the player to fix themselves, generally, rather than change the game for everyone else. I'm not entirely sure that I follow here, but it sounds like you're suggesting some sort of reputation system with individual traders? In that if the player buys/sells with a particular trader often enough, they can have more options when dealing with that trader? That seems like a pretty good idea to me. It's something that all classes could take advantage of, with Tailor perhaps earning those kinds of benefits a little faster thanks to refined manners/more business sense. From just a flavor standpoint though, I do think it would be cool if NPCs were more polite/friendly/eager to deal with Tailors than other classes. One aspect I enjoy about Blackguard is that NPCs aren't necessarily rude when they encounter one, but they aren't really thrilled to see one either since Blackguards have a bit of a dubious reputation(you don't really know if they're there to be helpful or stir up trouble, maybe both). Of course the NPCs are still in the very early stages of development and I'm sure interactions like that will be fleshed out more later, but it is an aspect I'd like to see leaned into more heavily.

If transplanting the adult bush is a higher risk/higher reward situation then it might be okay. However, I'm still not keen on the idea since it's likely to cause issues in multiplayer with players opting to continue digging up all the berry bushes within decent walking distance rather than take the time to propagate cuttings. While that's never been a problem I've had to deal with(private server), it does seem to be a common problem with public servers, especially the larger ones. Agreed. If terra preta practically negated the need for fertilizer, that'd probably prompt more players to invest in it, as well as just make those first few pieces more valuable. Terra preta isn't difficult to make by any means, but it does take quite a bit of time and effort to actually produce any notable quantity. A week sounds pretty reasonable to me. I like that idea. It sounds quite fair, and offers some interesting options. Maybe we'll see something like it in the future? If not in the vanilla game, then perhaps as a mod.