LadyWYT

It really depends on what the update does. In Vintage Story, a mod made for an older version of the game can still work on a newer version, though it's best to test first before adding to cherished worlds. Popular mods tend to be kept up to date though, so at worst you might end up waiting a few days for the mod to update before updating your game version. Hunter can do just fine in melee--the class itself is just optimal for ranged combat. What the bonus and penalty to combat equates to is hunter takes one less shot to kill something at range, and one extra hit in melee to kill a target. So it's more ideal to fight at range when possible, but hunters can still hold their own in melee when needed. @Tom Cantine provided a good summary of hunter: it's a class that's very strong on the surface(particularly in the early game), and weak underground. The opposite of hunter is Blackguard, which is perhaps the strongest class for the underground and late game, but really struggles in the early game. As for the armor, gambeson is probably the best general purpose armor regardless of class, but it won't be sufficient for more dangerous work like the deep underground or certain story locations. For hunter, as Tom says, chain is best since it's very protective while not penalizing accuracy or speed that much. Bear in mind that as a hunter, you have an inherent boost to accuracy and speed, so the armor penalties aren't as bad as they're going to be for other classes, especially if you're using the recurve bow. I can confirm though that hunter is one of the best pairings for Blackguard, since the classes cover each other's weaknesses. I play Blackguard a lot, and my friend plays hunter, and having that extra food in the early game is very nice. When it comes to caving, it's not unusual for him to switch to melee and use the bow as his secondary weapon. It's not optimal for hunter, but it does buy sufficient time for me to catch up to wherever he's at and deal with the rest of the monsters...and also keep me from getting shot in the rear by accident. Aside from everything said above, you might try out some of the other classes, if you haven't already. While hunter is a strong class in general, it's also possible that it's just not quite your jam, and you might find one of the others more enjoyable to play.

I know that server mods are stored in their own special folders in the ModsByServer folder in VintagestoryData; each server will have its own folder. You shouldn't need to mess with those folders at all, save for the occasional check to delete old mods in the event a server updated its modlist, or to delete the folder of servers you no longer are going to play on. Singleplayer mods are what is stored in the Mods folder. I'm not sure how the mod manager tracks which mods are enabled or disabled, but generally your singleplayer modlist won't interfere with whatever you're doing in multuplayer. As for a proper mod manager to make swapping lists easy...I want to say there's a couple out there, but I'm not sure of the names, nor of their effectiveness. I do know that the ability to switch modlists is a highly requested game feature though.

There is, which is fitting given the lore, and the overall village design. According to the lore, most of humanity was wiped out, and the few that remain are gathered into small settlements that are very few and far between. That doesn't mean that more couldn't have cropped up over the years, however, if you talk to some of the denizens within the current village they will explain that expansion is very tough(monsters will massacre anyone who tries). Adding randomly generated villages across the landscape, like what the other block game has, would ruin the post-apocalyptic wilderness vibe. As for the design, it's easier to flesh things out fully, in a way that makes sense, if a location is built by hand. Nothing against random generation, but generally the pieces have to be simplified in order to make sure the random generation actually makes sense. The current village has NPCs with varying personalities and specific comments/reactions to specific things/people. A randomly generated village I would still expect to have fleshed out NPCs, but instead of having Bob the blacksmith gossip about his neighbors or give you his opinion on monsters or something, Bob is just a blacksmith there to sell you blacksmith goods and services, and that's it.

Coffee: https://mods.vintagestory.at/vintagecoffee The mod that adds chocolate requires Wildcraft, and neither are updated properly for 1.21 yet, so unfortunately I don't think there's a way to add chocolate outside of modding it by oneself, unless I missed something.

You're not--I noticed it when playing on friend's server. Seems to be hot ingots that have the issue, so I assume it's related to the color changes as the hot stuff cools off.

You might consider trying out Combat Overhaul. I've not used myself, but that seems to be the go-to for those who want a more combat oriented game. One thing I will note about VS combat, that(in my opinion) is quite different from other games: getting into a fight is not always beneficial, and enemies can still be dangerous even if you have the appropriate gear equipped. It's not that you'll never have to fight, or that you shouldn't engage with the enemies when you run across them, but in general it's better to treat enemies like an environmental hazard rather than as targets to actively hunt. An example on that is saying indoors on a night with higher rift activity rather than running around outside. As for equipment, having the appropriate tier for the monster tier that you're facing mitigates most of the incoming damage, but not all, so if you get complacent(or otherwise overwhelmed) it's still very possible to die. It tends to be most noticeable with early armor, since it breaks quickly and doesn't mitigate much damage. I'm thinking that may be what's happening in this scenario with the leather armor; it's better than nothing and will help keep you alive, but it doesn't make you anywhere near impervious. Bronze weapons are fine for caving(though I recommend a falx in addition to the bow, since melee is a bit easier to use in close quarters), and leather will work, but I do agree with @ifoz--you'll want to be fast about your exploration, grabbing what you need and getting out ASAP. If you want to take your time while caving and conduct more thorough searches, I recommend gambeson as the minimum armor requirement, or iron if you're venturing into the deepest caves(enemies get stronger the deeper you go). The last time I played it(several weeks ago), it was still having issues actually showing up at the arena, though this may have been fixed since. I do know that the arena itself was modified to stop a specific cheese strategy though.

I wonder if new players are reading some of the tactics of the more experienced, and simply skipping early armor since it's "useless", when in reality it's useful for reducing damage but won't turn the player into a tank. Or maybe it's just a force of habit for all players to skip early armors since prior to 1.20, the monsters were hardly much of a threat given that drifters were the only thing you'd be running across on the regular. For myself, I still skip early armor most of the time, since gambeson isn't too hard to acquire before winter and I tend to either sleep through nights or just work indoors. Natural threats like bears and wolves are typically easy to avoid, but the rifts being able to produce the occasional monster in daytime does make me reconsider the overall strategy of skipping early armor. The bear armor would be my choice, in that case. It's not terribly durable, but it looks cool and is decently protective for its tier, and also has the warmth bonus in the event that I lowered the seraph's temperature tolerances.

I would try planting them in greenhouses. My best guess is that it's not quite getting warm enough for them to grow properly, but isn't so cold that it will kill them either.

Welcome to the forums! I suppose it's possible, but the whole "instrument = voice" idea has been around for ages. Banjo-Kazooie is a notable example, as is Animal Crossing(I think). The benefit to instruments as vocals is that it conveys character personality, without being mistaken for an actual language. The Sims had this issue, in that EA was apparently getting emails from foreign players asking how to switch the Sim language from English to their native tongue.

To my knowledge, it's mostly RNG. However, it does seem like bears are a bit more inclined to show up in the fall, or at least it seems like I tend to see brown bears more often in the fall and winter than spring and summer. Black bears I see whenever. I've also seen the occasional polar bear spawn on mountaintop glaciers outside the arctic. My best guess is that the temperature parameters might be better meeting the spawn requirements for certain bears at certain times of the year, which is how polar bears can be on glaciers or brown bears seem to show up more often in the fall. But that's all pure speculation on my part. They do not disappear, no. While the game does try to simulate realistic animal behaviors, the simulation isn't that realistic. At least not yet.

The main gist I recall getting from the opening post wasn't so much that there was nothing for him to do at night...it's that he didn't want to use any of the options the game offers(like working indoors or sleeping) and expected the game itself to change to suit his individual preference rather than tweak settings or use mods to achieve his goals. That's not to say that people aren't entitled to have opinions, because they are, but to quote Echo Weaver here as an example: In general, most "complaints" I've seen roll across the forums have been of this nature. The OP expresses an opinion about the game that may or may not be popular, but they politely make their case on what they aren't enjoying and why, and how they think it could change to be more fun for the general playerbase. The opposite of that is the complaints that also express opinions that may or may not be popular...and advocate for the base game to change to suit individual taste rather than offer a solution that could benefit the entire playerbase. In both cases, there tends to be quite a lot of discussion generated, but the latter case is almost guaranteed to generate more pushback and argument rather than productive discussion. Pretty much my sentiment regarding Combat Overhaul. I've never used it, and I'm not inclined to use it as I enjoy the vanilla system. It might not be complex, but it gets the job done, and action isn't why I play Vintage Story either(I have plenty of other games for that). I think if more focus were placed on combat, then it's less a survival game about homesteading in the wild and solving creepy mysteries, and more of a generic adventure game where the main goal is slaughtering monsters with some building and story tacked onto the side. That being said, I can understand why some would prefer a system like Combat Overhaul. It seems to be a more action-oriented mod, so it's probably pretty fun to use if one is looking for more of an action game. To my knowledge, it also retunes the hitboxes for creatures as well, and in fairness the vanilla hitboxes could use some work as they are a bit wonky at times. And wonky hitboxes can make an otherwise solid combat system feel underwhelming. Bowtorn lingering after a storm is a bug. I think it's been mostly fixed though. It's not unusual for the odd monster or two to linger for a bit after a storm, but generally they will wander off and disappear. As for monsters appearing during the day--that's actually been confirmed a deliberate change to the rift system. If there are rifts active, they can spawn monsters regardless of the time of day, but daytime spawns are still a lot more rare and tend to disappear rather quickly unless aggroed. I assume this change was made to better match what's presented in the lore, as well as to make rift weather more foreboding in general as a challenge and lend greater value to rift wards. I actually disagree here. There are actually times it's more beneficial to the player for the drifter to launch a rock rather than try a melee hit. If you have a high level one after you and don't have the means to deal with it(poor equipment or too much health loss), the tier 0 rock throw probably won't kill you, but the tier 3+ melee hit certainly will! The rock throwing on a whim also makes drifters somewhat unpredictable, which makes it a little harder for the player to exploit their behavior. Additionally, while drifters do seem to be somewhat intelligent, they aren't on the same level as seraphs or humans. They're smarter than animals, but are otherwise governed by basic instinct rather than rational thought.

Welcome to the forums! Quoting from the FAQ section: So it looks like a console version is planned, but I doubt it's coming anytime soon. If it happens at all, it would be something I would expect to see once the game is considered complete(all story chapters implemented). That being said...I have to agree with @Thorfinn on this one, for the most part. I'm not sure how you port something as complex as Vintage Story to a console and still retain the same experience. It's difficult to offer the exact same experience for both pc and console without either limiting features on pc so that consoles can handle the game, or stripping out features from the base pc version so it can run on consoles. If Anego Studios can manage to make it happen without sacrificing quality, that would be super, but like I said before, if it's possible to accomplish that, I don't think it's actually feasible to do so until the game is complete.

I'm thinking a lot of the complaints stem from players coming to Vintage Story from the other block game, expecting the same style of game and getting a rude shock when it becomes apparent that Vintage Story is not that kind of game. I'd wager it's also due to a lot of games limiting opponents to what the average player can easily handle for different tiers of progression, in that early game enemies will be pushovers and late game enemies will be tough(but still easy enough to manage provided one has appropriate equipment). Vintage Story isn't shy about throwing the player more than they can handle up front and letting them figure out how to deal with the challenges that ensue, and that's also what makes the game so much fun for a lot of players. It's also not everyone's cup of tea, and I think a lot of new players aren't really aware of just how much one can customize their game with the vanilla settings, let alone mods. Overall though, I think it's just a mismatch of players expectations versus what the game actually offers.

This is actually one reason I'm more in favor of handcannons than proper guns: boss fights shouldn't be trivial encounters, and guns that are both high damage and accurate would almost certainly make them so. Sure, a long reload time balances a gun somewhat against a bow, but the thing is...the player can just carry multiple loaded firearms, fire them at closer range to make sure each shot hits, and then finish off whatever's left of the enemy. At a glance, the arquebus also seems to have been invented around the early 1500s, so it does qualify as a late medieval weapon. However, while the setting of Vintage Story is the late Middle Ages, I believe the more specific timeframe is somewhere between the late 1200s and early 1400s(if I'm not mistaken, the specified year in the game code is 1386). The reason I say that is that's the time period that both the Hanseatic League and the Byzantine Empire existed, and both are referenced directly by certain in-game items. I suppose it's an area that could still be anachronistic, and something like a matchlock could be added, but in that case I would probably also make it so that such firearms are ineffective in wet weather, or otherwise ineffective if the powder gets wet(so don't go swimming with them either!). That way, it still a more powerful weapon in comparison to the bow, but a lot more finicky to use.

As @Brady_The said, there is a surface entrance that you will need to find in order to enter. It's not possible to mine your way in as the structure itself is protected. How do I know this? I tried it myself the very first time I did the Archives, as I couldn't find the entrance at all and just assumed things were like the other block game. Boy did I get schooled hard! In any case, check the area around the marked location carefully, as the treasure hunter's map only marks the approximate location of the entrance and not the exact. It should be somewhere within a 50 block radius of the marker though. Depending on how the Archive generated, the entrance can be tucked into the cleft of a mountain, so it can be very difficult to spot unless you're standing in just the right spot and looking at just the right angle. Additionally, the high altitude can create weather conditions that reduce visibility as well. If you scour the area and still can't find it, you might pop into spectator mode and take a peek just beneath the surface to figure out where it spawned. The entrance shouldn't be buried, but it did happen once to my friend and I.

The thing about bowtorns as well is that they aren't smart enough to check and make sure they have a clear line of fire; they only care if they can "see" the player. I've seen one sit in a two block deep hole and happily keep firing away at me, despite the fact that every single shot was going right into the dirt in front of its face. The other thing I've noticed is while they do have a somewhat fast fire rate, it's still slow compared to the player's fire rate/reaction time, and the bowtorn have a loud initial warning screech and fairly long windup before they really get going with their shots. In any case, while they are fairly effective turrets, they're also pretty easy to counter simply by equipping a shield, getting close enough to make them flee, or otherwise ducking behind cover/stepping out of the way of incoming fire(this is easier to do at range than up close). One bowtorn by itself isn't a problem unless you allow it to be one; it's when you start getting more than one and/or mixing them with the other monsters that things can get very dangerous(which is also part of the survival challenge).

Oh yeah, the library doors will stay open, so you don't need to complete all the puzzles again in order to get back to the final area, unless you reset the location itself. If it's been several days since you were last at the Archive though I would absolutely go prepared for a fight, just in case the boss respawned. You might also take a trunk or two with you to plunk down at the entrance, and use that to store whatever loot you won't be able to carry home on that trip.

Welcome to the forums! The mod itself seems to be updated for 1.21, so it should, in theory, work on 1.21.4. However, when in doubt, best to make a backup of the world and/or test in singleplayer to make sure there are no issues. As for it breaking a vanilla run, this mod doesn't really change much, aside from acting as an option in-between losing items your stuff on death, and just keeping inventory in spite of death. You could keep the server pure vanilla by just turning the "keep inventory" rule on, but that might make the experience easier than what you're looking for, so the mod is probably the way to go.

The item in question is called something like the elucidatory vessel/gearbox, or something to that effect. Should be simple enough to pop into creative and give yourself one, instead of running all the way back and hoping it hasn't despawned. It's possible that the gearbox hasn't despawned, as dropped items do seem to hang around in unloaded chunks(I've dumped things in the wilderness and run across them much, much later), but it's not really worth a trip back specifically to check for it. However... I think this is the bigger issue, potentially. You mentioned grabbing the glider schematic, but didn't mention the resonator. You'll need to interact with it in order to get the information you need to start chapter two. From the sounds of it though, you're intending to make a trip or two back anyway for books and things, so in that case you can just check for the gearbox then(and give one to yourself if it despawned) and otherwise take care of the resonator, if you haven't already. I do recommend making that second trip sooner rather than later though, as the boss will respawn(one in-game week, I think).

I think making it a server option would probably be the best way to implement it. Or if nothing else, allow different chat channels to be created, so a server has one global channel as a sort of lounge for everyone to hang out in, and then separate smaller channels for different groups.

I'm not sure. I would think it would, since water physics in VS seem to be a bit more complex than what's in the other block game. But I don't think water physics are the worst offender when it comes to performance. What I try to wrap my mind around is more just...how do you scale rivers for the game, so that they feel like proper rivers and not little streams? Or perhaps most rivers just end up more as creeks, that are still usable for power generation but not really useful for actual travel. Maybe it's only the occasional river that's big enough to facilitate proper travel. The "small pond" bit was a real problem with Minecraft's Create mod(and perhaps still is, it's been quite a while since I played it). Way too easy to build watermills wherever and just use bucket power to run them. Granted, watermills weren't the strongest power source either, but still...very fun, but would be out of place if they operated like that in VS.

I do agree that the mods are almost certainly the culprit regarding the stutters, but I'm not sure about rolling back game versions or uninstalling the mods and continuing on the same world. Generally, uninstalling mods mid-playthrough isn't recommended, but in my experience it's safe in VS, for the most part, and most mods will list whether or not it's safe to do so on the mod page. As for rolling back the world to a previous version...that I'm not sure. I would absolutely make a backup of the world in case something goes wrong. In any case, removing the offending mods should fix the stutter, and probably the "host not responding" bit as well. However, I have seen "host not responding" occasionally in vanilla singleplayer, so it's not limited to multiplayer. I've not noticed it causing issues the few times it occurs, and it generally crops up when new chunks are being generated, or when the game is otherwise putting a heavier workload on the pc.

For me it really depends on what kind of character I want to play for that world. Higher pitches and instruments for female characters, lower pitches and more bass for males.

The only thing I can recall hearing was a bit from Tyron in an interview he did a while back. The idea that was floated for how to generate water power, without being cheaty, is to perhaps place special sources of flowing water into the world, that cannot be picked up and moved via bucket like regular water. That way the player needs to actually build machinery right next to the source, as it should be, instead of scooping up buckets of it and creating their own sources elsewhere. Such a thing also helps keep windmills relevant, given that windmills can be utilized pretty much anywhere.

I've stopped questioning the whys and just enjoy the stories about the legend of @Thorfinn. Although I daresay he's not always escaping the bears, as much as becoming lunch and starting over thanks to permadeath settings. Pure speculation on my part though.