LadyWYT

I mean, given what certain NPCs say about the storms...yeah. Most just hide in a safe room, while the bravest of them stand guard keeping the most persistent monsters out. As a general rule, most characters that are actually fighters in the game also express a grim displeasure in the action. It's not something they want to do, but rather have to in order to prevent more deaths. Which I mean...is accurate to warfare in general, regardless of what one goes up against. Overall, the storms themselves are meant to be an unnatural disaster that players need to plan around, rather than a quick-time loot event the player actively chases. It's nothing new--it's been there ever since I started playing at least, which was 1.18. Apocalyptic levels of activity are very rare though, and generally don't last terribly long when they do occur. The AI is already aggressive, and I will note that if you allow the monsters to break down doors, then players are left with absolutely no counters to the storms early in the game/if they don't wish to fight through it, aside from just turning off the mechanic entirely/sleeping through it. Likewise, monsters already drop Jonas parts--special monsters that spawn during the storms aren't the only way to acquire said parts, but hunting them is perhaps one of the more sustainable, reliable ways of farming parts. I'd actually disagree a bit here--recently, rifts were adjusted to spawn monsters in the daylight as well as the night, but it's a more rare occurrence in the daylight. I think this applies to light levels in general, so lighting up one's base is no longer as reliable for spawnproofing, which makes the rift ward(which was recently buffed) a more valuable goal to work towards. In any case, the player knows that things will spawn from rifts, but still doesn't know when. It's not to the extent that the player needs to wear armor 24/7, but they will need to be vigilant on days with rift activity, and consider investing in rift wards to stop rifts from spawning nearby.

Welcome to the forums! To my knowledge, the game should prompt him and download/install the mods he needs automatically with the simple click of a button when he first tries to join the modded world. The only potential issue I could see is performance, depending on which mods you install, since you're running a server and playing on the same PC, essentially.

Yeah I could see it, especially when they have an idle animation that bends them over backwards. So maybe it's not actually bending over backwards, as much as it is trying to return to a sense of normal, much like the shiver attempting to stand up from time to time(I'm pretty sure these both utilize the same animation as well).

I think hunger rate might increase as much as 25% when out in the cold, not 20%. But otherwise I think what you've written here is fairly accurate. As far as interior spaces, it does need to be an insulated room in order for the cold to quit affecting the player; otherwise, a fire will need to be lit in order to warm up. To my knowledge, torches don't count as heat sources currently. As for the idea itself...it's not a terrible idea, but I don't think it's really necessary for the base game. If it's warm outside you're not going to get cold. If it's cold outside, you'll probably get cold if you go out and will need to take breaks to warm up if you're going to avoid freezing to death. I don't think a "perceived temperature" reading really adds anything to that, aside from maybe helping the player decide if they want to go outside that day or not. However, it's not really feasible for the player to stay indoors all winter as they'll most likely get bored/have things they need to do outside, and such decisions can already be made with the current temperature system for reasons stated above.

I actually disagree that the early game should be made easier--one of the points of the difficulty is to push the player to make progress. As the player progresses, new equipment and whatnot feels properly rewarding, because it makes tasks so much easier to do. How the player chooses to go about progressing in the game is entirely up to them, and the game has pretty high expectations of new players and veterans alike. New players will struggle, because they don't yet have the experience require to utilize the best strategies. Veteran players will struggle if they get complacent about their own abilities. I think this is fine, and likely one of the qualities that makes Vintage Story attractive. The game might be tough, but it doesn't assume the player is dumb/inept and lead them around by the hand for everything. There's a tutorial to teach new players basic controls so they aren't completely lost, yes, and there is a handbook full of information, but ultimately it's up to the player themselves to decide whether they succeed or fail.

Welcome to the forums! That might be more possible than you might suspect: https://mods.vintagestory.at/chargedjump It's a little bit extra than just a basic jump while sneaking, but the function is there. If it were added to the base game, I'd probably opt for something like the charged jump to allow the player to jump up two blocks instead of one, and just allow the player to move up one block heights automatically while sneaking(but not down, so they can still use sneak to avoid falling).

Hmmm...have you checked your mouse to make sure that's not causing any issues? It's a bit of an odd thing to check, but sometimes high polling rates on gaming mice affect VS performance.

There's this mod you might keep an eye on as well: https://mods.vintagestory.at/crstoneage Not sure how nicely it plays with other mods, and it still seems to be a work in progress, but it does make the stone age significantly harder, it seems.

It's nothing crazy--whatever the default is(high, I think), with FPS limited to 80, VSync off, and View Distance set to 224. I also turned off the Bloom effect. That tends to get me a solid 60 FPS for most situations in the game.

I'm not sure but what part of the learning curve of VS is just learning to let go of things sometimes. Depending on settings, it's very possible for the player to end up dying and being unable to recover their stuff. Too high of rift activity might mean sleeping or working indoors at night, instead of running around outside. The temporal stability mechanic means that underground bases aren't that feasible in general, and that sometimes there will be a beautiful area that's unsuitable for a permanent residence due to being too unstable. Get complacent about food stores and suddenly everything's rotted and you're scrambling to find something edible. And the list goes on. That's not to say that any of those situations aren't frustrating, or that there's not room for improvement. But I do think a big portion of Vintage Story is knowing you will get punched, and learning to roll with those punches when they happen.

If you can't find what you're looking for, you could always try hosting your own. Yes, it's a bit more effort than just joining someone else's server, but it does give you complete control over what rules are in place.

Possibly, but they can still getcha if you aren't paying attention, especially if you're unarmored at the time. Not that players need to start wearing armor 24/7, but it does mean more vigilance will be required on days with high rift activity. Plus it's more incentive to build rift wards, rather than rely on lanterns.

For what it's worth, the ones that spawn in the daylight don't seem to hang around terribly long. They'll wander around for a bit before disappearing, unless they happen to notice you. In which case, they'll get aggressive until you either kill them or run outside of their aggro range.

If you're building a town, why not turn the unstable areas into storage? No need to hang around storage, just drop off materials or grab what you need and go elsewhere. Or build a jail or asylum as set pieces, because hey, decoration is cool, and those are two places no one wants to be anyway.

Are you running with VSync turned on? That can make a decent impact to performance in 1.21. Turning off VSync tends to boost the framerate. I have a Ryzen 5 1600 and Sapphire 580 for CPU and GPU respectively, and 16 GB of RAM, and had some performance issues when updating to 1.21, when VSync is enabled. Forested areas are more likely to impact performance regardless, given all the foliage that needs rendering. However, there were a few changes to rendering in 1.21, I believe, that were supposed to improve performance, though it also seems like AMD hardware and Macs are struggling with some of those changes.

I second the tropical map idea, though maybe nix the island part unless you just really love sailing. There is more water content so I would definitely increase the amount of water you have covering the map in order to have more ocean, but otherwise there's not yet enough water content to justify a proper islands map, in my opinion. I would say add dinosaurs as well, but it doesn't look like those mods are updated for 1.21 yet.

I want to say that shearing sheep or goats for wool is intended, but I can't recall having seen any particular official statement on it other than cloth weaving being on the roadmap. In any case, without a way to actually process the wool into something useful, there's not much benefit to a shearing mechanic.

As @Echo Weaver noted, the mechanic is already telegraphed clearly in the game by the big teal gear on one's hotbar. There's also an entire handbook page on temporal stability as well. However, it is a feature unique to Vintage Story, so it's also something that will probably catch new players off-guard quite easily. As for why the mechanic exists...it's mostly just an extra challenge for the player to deal with, and it can be turned on and off in the world creation settings or via console command after world creation(make sure to reload the world for the change to take effect). The lore reason for the mechanic's existence, without spoiling too much, is that someone in the past essentially scienced a little too hard and tampered with things they shouldn't have tampered with in order to save humanity from being wiped out. The result was some sort of cataclysmic event that allowed humanity to survive extinction, but broke the world in the process and caused all the chaos the player encounters in the present day.

Just highlight the piece that you want to quote--it should bring up a green box that says "Quote Selection".

This is mainly due to Vintage Story being a slow-paced game in general. It is possible to make very fast progression, but that requires a lot of effort and knowledge on the player's part. Which, I think is fine; the game is better when taken slowly, but it's nice to have the option to "speedrun" certain things if one has the skill and desire. The drawback to the slower overall pace though is that it can definitely be a turn-off for players who'd rather just complete a game in a weekend's worth of play(not saying that's the case here though). As for progression speeding up after copper...I think there's a two-fold reason for that, the foremost being player skill. A more experienced player will be able to build off of copper tools quickly, since they know the basic steps of progression that come next. A brand new player though will probably be stuck at copper for a while, since they're still figuring out how various things in the game work. The other main reason copper speeds up progression, is that copper unlocks the rest of the game's general toolset(chisel, saw, quern, etc); from there it's just a matter of finding better metals. Tagging on to what @Echo Weaver already said--keep in mind the game is still very much unfinished. There is a main story to complete, yes, and while there is quite a lot of content for what is implemented so far, it's still only two chapters out of a planned eight. As far as end game content in general, currently end game tech is still mostly undeveloped--we have a handful of Jonas tech devices, but that's about it. I think the next major update though is supposed to be fleshing out the end game tech, so that issue should be remedied within an update or two. The idea of increasing tool durability across the board, in exchange for making surface copper more rare, feels like a fair trade off. However, I think the current balance is fine as it is, and probably better suited to the average player given how many complaints there have been about early tools being too hard to acquire. So an early metal tool that is fairly easy to acquire(plenty of surface copper) but that breaks relatively easily compared to other metal tools is probably more satisfying since it gets the tool in the player's hands faster, while still pushing the player to seek out better materials instead of sticking to copper. And yeah, I think you're spot on with that statement about panning. It's pretty boring, and not really a good idea to force the player into that path, but it's there as a safe, convenient way to get a few early game minerals. The player needs them not just because they last longer, but also because some content requires better equipment to handle it. For example, chromite ore requires steel to mine and process, and is a required mineral for crafting sturdy leather for the best backpacks in the game. Likewise, the first story chapter requires a minimum gear level of tier 2; while the player can complete it with less, that requires much more skill. Chapter 2 requires iron gear as a minimum. There's a lot of things that happen in the game that aren't accurate to real life. The reason those decisions exist is for balancing reasons. "Realistic" doesn't always mean "fun", and part of the general challenge of the game is that the player will need to replace equipment every so often, and thus need to devote the time and energy to acquiring the necessary resources and crafting the items. Better quality materials are harder to get, but also mean less effort long-term for the player since the tools last much longer. That's progress though; if the new equipment isn't actively better than the old, there's no reason to work towards new equipment as there's no progress actually being made. However, I wouldn't call low-tier materials entirely obsolete. In the late game, copper is still very useful, but the player is using it for lanterns, lightning rods, and machine parts rather than using it for tools. Many players still use flint axes to chop firewood(I do this myself), or a flint knife or shovel as a cheap tool to collect a few things instead of retrieving a better tool for the job.

This isn't true--you can milk a gen 0 ewe, it's just very difficult. I think the failure rate is something like 95% or higher. In any case, I've done it, so I know that it's possible, but it does take a lot of patience and isn't really worth the effort most of the time. You're much better off waiting until gen 1. In any case, welcome to the forums! You don't need to keep feeding your ewes in order for them to produce milk. You can only milk them once per day(24 in-game hours between milking times), so it's more just a matter of being patient. The once-per-day limit is also why it's not a bad idea to keep older ewes around until you have enough higher generations to replace them, though do make sure the older ewes are at least gen 1, for reasons stated above.

I think the intended solution is for the player to use rift wards to defend their base from rifts. It takes a fair amount of work to acquire one, and it'll cost the occasional temporal gear to keep it powered, but for that level of security it's a fair trade. Given the recent changes to rifts that allow them to spawn the occasional monster in daylight, I'd say that's also going to be the reason the player needs to invest in rift wards over relying on cheap lanterns everywhere.

I've made cheese a few times, but usually by the time I'm acquiring dairy in any reasonable amount in a world I'm dropping the old world in favor of starting over fresh for an update or new modlist. For just building the initial dairy nutrition, I think drinking milk is the best way to build up the points. From there, it's just a matter of eating the occasional slice of cheese or so to maintain it. Cheese is definitely something that could be a more appealing trade item though. Currently, only the agriculture trader offers it for sale, and even then only on occasion(and it's expensive). Make cheese available at a cheaper price though, and available at survival good and commodities traders, and now the player has a feasible source of early dairy nutrition until they can acquire proper dairy livestock themselves. Or in the event the player doesn't want livestock at all, they have a viable way of obtaining and maintaining dairy nutrition.

You can, it's just a more uncommon drop compared to regular quartz. You might have to pick up several pieces in order to get a couple pieces of clear quartz.

Should be possible, though a pure trade strategy will hinge on access to survival goods and commodities traders, as those seem to offer raw materials specifically.