LadyWYT

I'm not against it entirely, given that firearms were beginning to catch on in Europe during the late Middle Ages. However...I would expect any firearms added to reflect that level of tech as well. That is...expensive, slow to reload, poor accuracy, and limited damage versus armor. Not a musket, so much as a hand cannon. Through some grenades in there too--expensive, short range, but good against groups of enemies. In any case, I wouldn't expect much from firearms. They'd be a neat novelty item to play with late-game, but hardly that useful outside of very specific scenarios. For damage overall, they should be easily outclassed by the bow simply due to the rate of fire and accuracy, especially at range.

I would try digging at Reading 1 first, since that is the best reading you're found. The area might be unstable, but you should have several minutes real time to work with before your stability drops too low to continue mining. If you have extra temporal gears, you could also bring one or two with you to restore stability, rather than take a break from the expedition. In any case, you'll want to go deep for chromite, as it spawns down near the mantle. You probably know this bit already, but make sure you are digging with a steel pick as well, since chromite requires steel tools to mine. If there's nothing at Reading 1, check any other readings of chromite that you've found, unless they are marked miniscule. Poor or Very Poor readings aren't ideal, but that doesn't mean the ore isn't there at all. If you still can't find anything, then it's time to go prospect other territory until you find more readings that seem worth checking. If it's an older world that was updated to 1.21, I would try to search freshly generated chunks if possible, as it seems border chunks on older worlds have issues with prospecting data. I will note that chromite deposits, while not nearly as large as iron, do tend to be a decent size, so one deposit is likely all you will need to find.

Oh they definitely exist. I've found Ultra High readings of both hematite and magnetite several many times. When it comes to finding what's actually there though, it's a lot easier to find hematite than magnetite. Pretty much all high readings of hematite that I've checked had hematite available, but I've checked several ultra high readings of magnetite and found nothing. In any case, it's worth checking Poor readings if you've got nothing better to work with, especially for iron. To my knowledge, the reading only indicates the chance of the ore spawning, not so much the deposit size. Since iron deposits are so large, there will be plenty of ore to dig up if it did spawn, even for a smaller node.

*pat pat* It's okay buddy, we've all been there. Vintage Story does seem a fearsome beast when one starts out, but once you start figuring out your strategies and things the game starts feeling a lot more manageable. For clay, there are three different types: red, blue, and fire clay. Clay deposits are difficult to spot until you learn what to look for--if you are using the colored world map, you can look for circular discolorations in grassy areas, as those are usually either clay or peat. Otherwise, clay is distinguished by the patchy covering of grass on top, and the obvious mottled clay texture on the sides(which will be a stark contrast to dirt). Red clay is the most common type to find, and occurs in places that have enough rainfall. You can also find small deposits of it in the arctic, but that likely doesn't apply here. Blue clay is also somewhat common, and occurs near sea level in places that get enough rainfall. You can also find blue clay occasionally from panning gravel/sand, or as cracked vessel loot. Fire clay only spawns naturally in bauxite biomes or underneath block coal/anthracite deposits. You can sometimes find it in cracked vessels as well. Fire clay is needed for certain bits of late game industry, but it can be crafted easily enough by mixing calcined flint powder into one of the other clay types. The best general places to look for clay is along water lines and in grassy areas. It won't spawn in deserts(unless it's fire clay in a bauxite desert), and if it spawns in forested areas it generally ends up buried under the forest floor and won't be noticeable.

Aside from the locusts not being able to spawn there anymore, nests can drop things such as rope, coal(I think), metal parts, and sometimes a Jonas part, is my understanding. Blackguard, if armed with a decent weapon, will one-shot locusts--only the sawblades are tough enough to withstand multiple hits--and also be able to break the nests faster thanks to the increased mining speed. If you aren't a Blackguard yourself but are playing multiplayer, it doesn't hurt to befriend the local Blackguard and take them with you to handle the little buggers...although really, having a friend or two helps anyway regardless of class. Otherwise, I would make sure you're tackling locust nests during periods of low rift activity, just to make sure you're not getting other monsters to dogpile you as well when dealing with them. Picking some of the locusts off at range can help, but the primary danger of locusts is their numbers and fast spawn time. They aren't very durable and don't hit all that hard, but the swarm itself can be troublesome. As others have already noted, it helps if you can stay out of the locusts' way while breaking the nest; blocking off the locusts' path or using ladders/nerdpoles will limit their access to you, while allowing you to deal with the nest and the few locusts that get through more easily. Also make sure that you are using a pickaxe to break the nest, as that tool should help you break the nest faster.

I actually disagree here, at least partially. Yes, the player will want to pick their fights carefully, when possible, and most of the time it's better to avoid a fight if possible to avoid wear-and-tear on one's equipment and oneself. However, it is actually advisable to go kill some surface monsters if an easy opportunity presents itself, as this is a decent way to get an early temporal gear. And a temporal gear is what's needed to reset one's spawn point. Incidentally, the cost of resetting one's spawn is why it's also a good idea to build a temporary base within walking distance of the world spawn, provided one isn't playing Homo Sapiens or Wilderness Survival. In those cases, setting near world spawn won't save you any walking, as the player respawns somewhere within a 5k radius of world spawn in those cases. The rest of this is solid though. Tagging on to this: you can also shrink the polar-equator distance to make it easier to get to the arctic and the tropics, although I will note this is really only applicable to worlds with the realistic terrain generation and not the patchwork. Regarding biomes though...it's very important to take note of what kind of climate one settles in, as the game will try to realistically simulate that climate. That is, cold climates will actually experience winter, complete with absolutely brutal cold and long nights for the arctic(but long days in the summer as well). The tropics...don't actually have as much challenge at the moment, since heat doesn't really affect the player unless mods are involved(though you will die if you jump into a hot spring or lava).

Honestly, I think this is everyone on their first day in Vintage Story, myself included. I dunno man... I do my best, but it's still wise to take whatever I say with a grain of salt, as I've been spectacularly wrong on occasion as well.

Welcome to the forums! I'm guess that you were probably expecting Minecraft-style biome generation? Vintage Story does not have that, though if you go through the settings at world creation, there should be a world generation style known as "patchwork". The default generation in Vintage Story is realistic, in that there aren't any crazy biomes like mushroom islands or deep dark, and the biome distribution is styled after the real world. That is, the further north you go, the colder it gets, and going south will take you to the tropics. The default start location is the temperate climate zone, which will give the player a balance of flora, fauna, and seasons. However, you can also change which climate zone you start in at world creation. Ruins are hit or miss; the cracked vessels almost always have useful loot, but it's nothing particularly game-breaking. The best loot you can possibly get is a tin bronze weapon or tool, but that's if you get very lucky. There are two different versions of the map--by default, the map is stylized. You can enable the world map colors though at world generation, or by using the command /worldconfigcreate bool colorAccurateWorldmap true Make sure you reload your world after running that command for the change to take effect. Also, it's a good idea in general to mark anything you think might be useful on your map in order to make it easy to find later. Hitting C will bring up your character menu, which contains information about your character, the rainfall for that region, and the current rift activity, among other thing. What's most likely happening here in that you are currently in a region with high rainfall; moving to a region with less rainfall will mean more clear weather, but the weather itself should clear after a few days, unless that region has rainfall almost all the time. I think the main thing is that you're trying to compare Vintage Story gameplay to Minecraft gameplay, and while both games utilize similar voxel graphics...that's about as far as the similarity goes. Vintage Story pushes the player a lot harder, and leans a lot more into grit and realism than Minecraft, so a lot of logic useful in Minecraft doesn't really apply in Vintage Story. It's a quality that often catches many off-guard when they first try Vintage Story, regardless of whether or not they played Minecraft either. My advice is to take things slow and work on one thing at a time. A good first major goal is just to survive your first winter, with the main short term goals being to secure a food supply, establish a base, and acquire pottery and your first set of copper tools. The in-game handbook is your best friend, and the wiki has a lot of good information too, although some of it can be dated. There are also several good videos on YouTube about various aspects of the game, and asking questions on the forums is also a good way to get advice from others who've been through the same struggles. Last but not least, if the game turns out to be not your thing--that's perfectly okay! It's not a requirement to like the game, and the devs have a generous refund policy should you decide that's the course of action needed.

I absolutely love that idea! Plus it wouldn't even have to be a late game thing. It could just be a variation of the translocators that can already be found, but instead of needing repair before it can be used, it can be used as-is...albeit with the chance to fail and break after use, resetting the player's spawn elsewhere in the world and otherwise stranding them. If stranded, the player can either start anew where they are, start walking back toward know territory(if possible, would need map enabled), or attempt to fix the now broken translocator. Of course, the player could also just opt to fix the translocator before using it and thus avoid the risk, in which case I would increase the general cost of translocator repair in order to make taking the risk a bit more attractive. If the player opts to risk it though and breaks the translocator in the process, attempting to fix it will require the same amount of materials but have a chance to fail, consuming the materials and requiring the player to find more and try again. Clockmakers, in addition to being able to fix translocators with fewer materials, would also be more likely to use a dodgy translocator without it breaking, or otherwise repair a broken dodgy translocator with a higher rate of success. For additional cheap amusement, there could also be a variation of the base return teleporter(or whatever it's called). Instead of being a single-use item that teleports you back to your spawnpoint, it could simply teleport you somewhere on the surface several thousand blocks away. In order to keep it from being a really cheaty method of travel(like getting to the tropics and back easily), this particular contraption won't be of use if the player has a base return teleport in their inventory. In other words, this thing is 100% a one-way trip, though it won't reset your spawn(you'll have to do that yourself, lest you die and lose your stuff!).

Welcome to the forums! Luckily, someone had the same idea and turned it into a mod, so it's already possible to play this way if one wishes: https://mods.vintagestory.at/temporallife Granted, the mod hasn't been updated for 1.21, so I'm not sure whether or not it's still functional. As for adding such a thing to the base game...there is already a hardcore option available, for players that wish to play hardcore. Given that option already exists, and that the mod in question isn't popular at all, I think this particular idea is best left as a mod rather than a vanilla addition. As for the player respawning...I will note that is actual canon lore. The player is functionally immortal and will always return to a specific point should they suffer fatal damage; temporal gears simply allow the player to change that point's location.

First off, welcome to the forums! One thing I would check, is to make sure that you restart the server after making such changes. Console commands that change configurations like this require reboots in order for the changes to actually take effect.

This. So much this. I don't mind unlocking specific areas with unique enemies or more difficult challenges, as that does make for good late game challenges. However, that doesn't mean I want the world as a whole affected. If the world as a whole is constantly throwing harder enemies or hazards at the player just because they got better equipment...the player isn't actually making any progress. It'd be the equivalent of making all enemies tier 4 as soon as the player achieves steel. With the current setup, yes, the game does get easier as the player acquires better tech...but that's the point of progress. It's also why there are soft gear requirements for certain areas and activities--to push the player to make progress so they can handle those things. For example, the player needs tier 2 equipment to complete the first story chapter; the content is still able to be completed with weaker equipment, but it's a lot riskier. Another example is the surface monsters and temporal storms--the player can handle both with stone age tech, yes, but it doesn't really become safe to go out and properly fight the hordes until the player has achieved bronze. Once the player has better gear though, then they can start doing things like tackling the story content, or venturing out into the temporal storms to slay the special monsters, or even just cutting through the surface monsters like a hot knife through butter.

Yeah pretty much. I think the idea was meant to be more interesting gameplay, but relying on more tedious challenge to make it interesting. Hence why it does work as a mod, but not really for the base game, since most players aren't really after something that brutally punishing. Yeah pretty much. I generally keep one vanilla world going, just to mess around with new content more easily as it releases as well as have a longer-running world. Multiplayer is modded, so friend and I have extra goodies to mess with, but I usually have a modded singleplayer world as well, for messing around if not actually playing. That's usually where I add in extra challenges like thirst or disease or whatnot, to see how well an idea actually works or to just have some additional challenges.

It depends...are you just removing drifters only via a mod, setting everything to passive or neutral, or turning off lore content entirely? If you turn off lore content, then no monsters will spawn at all, but neither will any of the story content or other lore tidbits. If you set creatures to neutral or passive, they won't attack until you attack them in the case of the former, and won't fight back at all in the case of the latter. If you're just removing drifters only via a mod, the Resonance Archive should still retain some challenge aside from the boss fight, since drifters are not the only monster that spawns there. However, the overall challenge for the Archive will be reduced since monster spawns are static for most story locations, and the Archive relies heavily on drifters as a primary threat.

Well now I am sad; I was quite enjoying the new rounded moon. Oh well, I daresay the new looks quite nice too.

That did actually make me giggle a bit. @Thorfinn gets it though--the player shouldn't be comfortable until they've made adequate progress appropriate for their settings in order to achieve that comfort. And once the player has put in the time and effort to achieve comfort via progress(like building machinery for easier metalworking or steel for better equipment) then they shouldn't just have all that stripped away from them just because they played the game for X amount of time. In regards to nightmare monsters spawning in the first temporal storms...that's much different than the natural weather changing drastically after X amount of time "just because". The player knows up front what they are getting into with temporal storms, for the most part, and has adequate advance warning and time to figure out a way to deal with it, whether it be fighting through the storm or hunkering down until it's over. Likewise, the first storms are fairly weak compared to later storms, and the weaker storms tend not to spawn as many high tier monsters. In other words, temporal storms are a big challenge early on, but they don't wipe player progress and the player is able to develop better equipment to handle the storms. What's been proposed here is much different, in that the proposal is arbitrary natural disasters that don't give the player advance warning, aren't countered by the player making progress, and actively wipe out the player's progress in many cases.

Not really, it feels well-balanced as is. While that might make bronze a little stronger in the short term, think about what that does to long term balance. Tier 2 equipment like bronze is the minimum recommended level for completing chapter one, however, tier 3 equipment is the general recommended level for chapter 2, I do believe. As the story progresses, I only expect equipment requirements to become more stringent, with the last chapters requiring steel or possibly something even better(Jonas tech?) to complete them. Aside from the story content, strong temporal storms require better equipment in order to survive and hunt the special monster spawns. I will also note that the player isn't meant to remain in the bronze age, and bronze armor itself is already outclassed in the tier 2 category by gambeson. All that a change like this really accomplishes is punishing the player for making progress by making them weaker in the late game. Honestly, I think the likely issue here is just...becoming more experienced at the game. When one first starts out in Vintage Story, the world is a scary place and it's very tough to survive. The early game armor feels like a massive safety blanket, and the first sets of copper and bronze tools/weapons/armor feel amazing. Naturally, bronze gets outclasses by iron and steel, but new players will struggle a while to get there and thus be using bronze for a while. However, as a player becomes more experienced with the game, they become less reliant on early game armors, since they've acquired enough skill to not need such in order to survive. Likewise, as the player becomes more skilled, they're able to make progress much faster and thus able to skip most of copper and bronze and go straight for iron thanks to their skills. That doesn't make bronze or copper gear any less useful overall, but how useful such gear is to the player depends heavily on the player's preferred playstyle: fast progress, or slow and steady. I'll do a rare double quote on the same bit here--I think a better route for extending the amount of time a player potentially spends in the earlier portions of the game...is simply to give them more options of things to do early in the game, rather than smack late game equipment with the nerf bat in order to make early gear appear stronger. I'm talking add gameplay loops like herbalism, or weaving, or woodworking, or fishing, or even flesh out some of the gameplay we already have further(watermills to go with windmills, more complex creature behavior to make hunting more interesting, etc). The idea isn't to force the player to complete extra steps to get to iron, but rather to provide multiple ways for the player to get distracted and thus spend longer at lower tech levels than they might otherwise.

Would you actually need this, or could you get away with adding something like a butter churn instead, and thus have a device that's got multiple uses? Honey would work, but this is also a prime opportunity to add sugar cane as a tropical crop.

I went and looked it up...believe it or not, ice cream(or a similar frozen dessert) would actually be a feasible addition. It didn't really become a thing in Europe until the 1700-1800s, but it seems to have existed during the Middle Ages in places such as China. So there's certainly some wiggle room for adding it. Though I would say that if it was added to the game, it should be a food that the player has to eat immediately--no storing it, or it melts!

What I like to do is put my clay oven a block above the ground, and then either store a pile of firewood underneath it, or build a cooking fire underneath. Not only is a convenient use of space, but it also looks rather nice and somewhat realistic. From there, I add a table proper for pie forming, shelves for crocks and things, and then chisel counters and other furniture to round out the decor.

Um...that's the reward for making progress in the game though. Everything should get easier overall as the player acquires better equipment and tech. If the player isn't actually able to be more effective at tasks or have a safer base with better tech, then they really aren't making any more progress than a hamster running on a wheel. Absolutely not. Weather conditions should remain consistent for a region so that players can play appropriately for the weather in their region. If the weather is changing drastically from year to year, that's just going to punish the player and strip them of the ability to plan for the future. An ice storm would probably be fine as an occasional hazard for certain regions, but probably shouldn't have this severe of effects. The player still needs to be able to handle the conditions, after all. It's also not a good idea to go damaging structures or tools like that unless the player has clear ways to prevent such damage, especially in the cases of intricate chiselwork or machinery like windmills that actively can't be put under protective cover. I'm also not sure how code for such things would work when taking such things into account. Again, no, for similar reasons as above. Getting progress wiped by something the player really didn't have a way to prevent isn't fun, unless they are actively wanting to play with that severe of punishment. I don't think that's most players, so it works as an optional modded challenge, but not so much for the base game. Best as mod, since this doesn't really fit a medieval-type setting. These already exist in the game in dry regions, are not limited to summer, and will reduce visibility. I will also note that dust storms themselves don't cause fires. I believe this is called a desert. Again, it's not fun for the player to have progress wiped due to something they couldn't prevent. Hail storms already exist in the game, and already damage the player if the hailstones are large enough. I would agree that hail ought to damage crops--that's both realistic, and hailstorms are rare enough to keep it from being too punishing of mechanic. However, hail shouldn't be damaging structures, as that is both a lot harder to code/more expensive to fix, and strips players of the option of using greenhouses to protect crops. We already have this somewhat, in the form of temporal storms. And given the mixed feelings regarding those, I don't see this being a popular addition at all. Likewise, there's absolutely no way for the player to plan for this kind of event, so it's just arbitrary punishment. Same as above--it strips players of the ability to plan appropriately for their climate and acts as arbitrary punishment. Keeping in mind that the setting is the late Middle Ages, so a lot of this tech will be limited. Likewise, I don't think "build a reinforced nuclear bunker, or else!" is really the vibe that the game is going for. I mean, sure, but if the weather events are completely random, there's not really a way to make plans to handle them. As I said before, regional weather should be consistent, so the player can actually make appropriate--ie, players who settle in tropical regions shouldn't be needing to prep their bases for blizzards and such. Okay, and that's fine, but most of these ideas still work better as modded challenges since most of them have rather niche appeal. That way players who want that kind of challenge can have it, without changing the base game for the majority. It's not really fair to change the default game experience for everyone to suit an individual's specific gameplay preferences.

Try rebooting your pc and see if that helps. If everything runs smoothly after a reboot, it's very possible you've run into a memory leak somewhere, which can easily tank performance even on beefier hardware.

If you have the block information overlay enabled, I think it should give you the temperature if you are looking at the hot spring. However... The "smart" method is to let the local wildlife test it. A hot spring will kill a rabbit almost instantly--larger creatures may or may not take longer to die. There is a special death message for them though, in that the game will list the corpse as partially dissolved. Of course, if you are playing multiplayer and don't have any local wildlife handy, you could always dare your friend to go for a swim. Or push them in, if you're feeling particularly mean Just make sure you have a bandage handy/way to otherwise get them fished out and back on their feet after the test!

Prior to 1.19, it was different, in that ProspectTogether would actually log prospecting results to the player map, which was a utility that didn't yet exist in the base game. The player would have to log their prospecting data manually if not using a mod. After 1.19 though, the logging utility was added to the base game, and essentially used the same system that ProspectTogether did, but in the form of a heatmap of colored dots instead of a grid heatmap. The green dots indicate good places to dig, yellow are okay spots, orange isn't great, and red of course is bad. So density search is still a hot/cold game, in that the player is looking for green/yellow dots to dig, and from there the hot/cold game continues via node search to pinpoint the exact locations of existing ore. The only real functionality that ProspectTogether offers over the base game is the ability to share prospecting data between players--only useful in cooperative multiplayer. Of course, all of the above also hinges upon the player picking a difficulty that actually supports the full prospecting mechanic; ie, the player needs access to both the map and the node search functions. By default, harder difficulties like Wilderness Survival and Homo Sapiens don't have the map or node search enabled, so it's not possible to log prospecting data or pinpoint the exact location of ore veins--it's pure educated guesswork, for the most part. In multiplayer, node search is turned off by default. In all three of these cases though, it's not necessary to use a mod to "fix" the prospecting mechanic; all the player has to do is turn on the map and enable the propick's node search. Obviously for multiplayer, one needs to be a server owner in order to change anything, but in singleplayer instances those gamerules can be changed at any time via a couple of console commands and a world reload. In the instance of Wilderness Survival/Homo Sapiens...those are intended to be very tough and unforgiving, which is the experience that the player signed up for by picking one of those difficulties. It can, of course, be altered by changing the game rules if certain bits prove too difficult, but otherwise the answer isn't to make those particular game modes easier. I like this idea. I've kinda experimented a bit with it in the game too, although it's been a while, via the Geologic Additions mod...I think it was, anyway. In any case, one of the things the mod added was pyrite ore, which was quite easy to find since it was fairly common and spawned near the surface. Bog iron was also a thing, and also easily found since it spawned on the surface in bodies of water. The drawback to both sources though was that they were low quality; pyrite occurred in big deposits, but it took a lot more pyrite ore to get the same amount of iron as one would get from typical ore. Bog iron was more comparable to typical iron ore in terms of output, but there were only a few blocks in a deposit, so it was necessarily to find several many deposits of bog iron to get any kind of useful quantity. Is it actually easier like that? Yes and no. It was less dangerous to go after ore like pyrite and bog iron, but overall took a lot more work to get the same results as a standard iron mine.

Only allowed if your name is Goldilocks.