LadyWYT

Welcome to the forums(and the game)! Ultimately, the choice is up to you, but since you've not even played the game yet, I highly recommend playing just vanilla for a while and just focus on figuring out the basics first. Doing this will give you a much better grasp of the game overall, as well as allow you time to figure out which parts of the base game you'd most like to change. Regarding vanilla options, I would recommend picking Standard or Exploration as the starting difficulty. Standard is tough, but fair, and also the intended developer experience. Exploration is less challenging, but may be the more attractive option if you find yourself struggling too much while trying to learn. Wilderness Survival and Homo Sapiens are both the hardest difficulties, and while it is possible to start learning the game on these difficulties, it's definitely not something I'd recommend for brand new players unless they really really want that kind of challenge. One important thing to note about vanilla options, is that most of them can be changed via console commands after creating the world(though you may need to reload the world for the changes to take effect). A couple of options you might consider tweaking, are enabling the Color-Accurate World Map under the Survival Challenges tab, as well as setting a brief grace period for monster spawns under the Player Spawn/Death tab(in this case, rifts will still appear if enabled, but won't spawn monsters until the grace timer is up). You may also wish to enable the "keep inventory" option for Death Punishment, if you find yourself dying a little too often.

So it occurred to me earlier that, instead of trying to always loot decorative furniture from ruins, or buy it from traders, or stare in wistfulness at all the fancy stuff NPCs have and you don't...why not add something like a woodworking workbench to allow the player to craft a selection of nice furniture themselves? The workbench can act similar to the anvil and sailboat roller logs. The player simply interacts with the workbench to bring up the interface and a list of options, picks the option they wish to make, and then supplies the appropriate tools and materials as needed(planks, saw, cloth, nails and strips, etc). Doing it this way offers a more immersive way to craft decor, without the need for a lot of clicking or memorizing grid recipes(or otherwise needing to look them up in the handbook). As a bonus, the player also gets to see the item in question take shape before them, similar to watching progress made on sailboat construction. But I changed my mind and want to craft something else! Not a problem! If the player changes their mind before the project is complete, they can scrap the project and get the raw materials back, before picking something else to make. Further customization: Use colored cloth on chairs/upholstered seats in order to change the upholstery to that color. The bolt of cloth will be consumed in the process. Some pieces of furniture could probably have special "slots" that the player can use to place additional pieces to further customize the look, such as re-purposing sailboat figurehead carvings to decorate fancy chairs, or socketing gemstones into fancy furniture for that extra bling.

Now that I'm not sure. It's worth trying, given that the worst that happens is it doesn't work. Bear in mind though that grafting has an even lower chance of success than standard cuttings.

Welcome to the forums! Unfortunately, I'm not sure that there's currently a way to adjust the stability aside from turning off the mechanic entirely. The best fix is to just move your smithing setup to a more stable area, or else be prepared to burn a lot of temporal gears and healing items to keep your stability topped off. If you're willing to mod, you could try one of these, though bear in mind that mods aren't guaranteed to be maintained, and may have unintended consequences. Older mods will sometimes work on a newer version, but best to make a backup of your world just in case something goes wrong. Temporal Amulets: https://mods.vintagestory.at/temporalamulets Temporal StabiliTea: https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/27496 Chunk Stability Override: https://mods.vintagestory.at/chunkstaboverride

Given it's possible to fistfight a wolf and win...I'm not even sure one needs to have gear, or even be a Blackguard. Both qualities do, however, greatly increase survival chances.

Oh there is--how else are you going to make delicious redmeat-mushroom stew? Or "stew surprise" to feed to your friends? You can also stick shrooms into flowerpots and use them as decoration. They're also handy to have around when you're out on an expedition; bring a cookpot and just forage some ingredients to cook with instead of bringing your larder with you. Yep, that's the one I was thinking of. Ironically, I don't play with it myself, but the way it implements the mechanic seems like it would be a good way to add more depth in a way that isn't frustrating.

I wouldn't mind having some pelt options for bedrolls or quick lean-to shelters; it would be great for hunting camps or traveling around. However... In my opinion, the stone age tier should remain rather basic, since this is just a brief stepping stone to the meatier portion of the game and not a tech tier at which the player is intended to linger. The stone age tier has just enough for the player to survive, and that's it. Also keep in mind that it takes time to actually process a hide into a pelt, and crafting something like a tent is going to require several large pelts--medium or smaller pelts just won't do here. In the time it takes the player to acquire all the suggested resources to make the tent, they could have built a small house from packed earth and thatch, and possibly even acquired their first pottery and metal tools as well.

Maybe, but I think it's more along the lines of, most every time someone brings this topic up, the suggested method they lay out is essentially equating realism to fun, which ends up requiring the player to spend the majority of their time just caring for their farmland if they want a good harvest. While that is realistic, it's not really fun, unless that's all the gameplay the player is interested in. For me personally, I do think farming could use a bit more depth, but while I do enjoy farming in the game I would quickly grow to absolutely hate it if I felt like I had to be constantly checking my farms or following very specific maintenance constraints to keep it going. With the current system, I can make my farms as big or as small as I like, without care requirements changing too drastically. Likewise, I don't have to be constantly battling weeds to ensure I get a harvest; I just need to deal with the weeds before I can plant new crops. I don't like dealing with fertilizer either, especially since I like to use compost and saltpeter for other things, so I sink more time into carefully rotating crop types. And though farming can sometimes be a bit of a time sink, it's not so much that I can't easily take breaks and go mess around with other gameplay when I wish to. Yeah pretty much. As noted above, I do like to putter, but I want to be the one choosing to putter, and what I putter around with and when. There are certain requirements for progression, and time limits to certain activities(like you can't grow crops in the cold), but as a general rule the game is still fairly lenient about giving the player plenty of freedom to pick a method that works for their playstyle. I think this is also a good chunk of the reason that some gameplay aspects, like fruit trees and animal husbandry, feel "worthless" at the moment: there's only two of a planned eight story chapters implemented. If the player is completing roughly one chapter per in-game year, that means the player will take about eight years to complete the story, which is a few hundred hours worth of gameplay and easily enough time to make things like animal husbandry worthwhile. Going back to this bit, I think a better way to smooth out farming progression, is instead of adding weeds or more "busywork" for the player to manage, perhaps just tweak how the player acquires seeds. Make wild crops a lot more scarce, so that the player can't just gather a couple stacks of the main seed types within a day's travel spawn. Instead, the player needs to either scavenge vessels for seeds, purchase seeds from the agriculture traders, or otherwise manage their crops carefully to acquire more seeds if they don't wish to spend days scouring the landscape. As for how to get seeds from crops, now the player needs to choose between harvesting their crops for edible food, or letting them go to seed in order to have seeds to plant for next harvest. The main exception to this rule is grain, since...well...grains are both the edible food part and the seed part. In any case, a change like that would slow down early farming a bit, and make it more of a process the player needs to actively build up, much like metalworking or livestock.

This is what I do--have two barrels going for the same liquid. One set of barrels is meant for fresh batches, where each barrel contains 50L of appropriate solution and I stuff as much hide as possible in. If there is any solution left over, it gets dumped into the secondary barrel and used to process smaller batches of hide(or dye cloth, in the case of strong tannin).

Welcome to the forums! I'm guessing you messed with the world generation settings in order to get this. I wouldn't trash the world, but I would start over on a new save file, with something closer to standard world generation, as that will make it easier to learn gameplay basics(you'll have an easier time actually finding resources you need to progress). Once you've got more of the basics down, then then you could come back to this world for a more challenging playthrough. That's not to say you can't play this one as your first world, but...an island that small is going to be incredibly restricting, and if the only land out there is tiny islands like this, it's going to be much more difficult to secure critical progression resources. Even more so if you don't even have cattails, as those are needed to make rope, which is used for the raft(the first water vehicle). You can use vines to make rope as well, but I'm guessing there likely aren't enough vines for that here(and vines don't regrow like cattails).

Like @Zane Mordien already mentioned, it's just set design. Albeit poor design, since this would have been a prime spot just add some iron bars instead of invisible walls. That way, it would look like a built-in safety feature to prevent falls, instead of obvious game mechanics to prevent the player from cheesing the fight.

Oh yeah, cosmetic definitely aren't a solution to combat, that's just me getting sidetracked from the main topic. That tends to happen easily.

Eh, I have a similar outlook on farming, but I chalk the sentiment up to just having what's probably several hundred hours worth of gameplay under my belt at this point. Not everyone enjoys ultra hardcore, and given my time lurking the forums, it seems several players(usually newer players, but not always) tend to struggle with managing their food supply, which suggests to me that the standard difficulty is working as intended. The main reasoning I had for opting for an animal-powered plow, is that ties into the husbandry gameplay loop, as well as likely being more fun to use than trying to pull the plow yourself. It's also a little easier to steer it if you're behind the device rather than in front of it. Yeah, that's the main way I see a weed mechanic working, without it getting incredibly annoying. Weeds have to be removed before you can use the farmland again, but otherwise can be left alone to turn farmland back into standard grassy dirt. As for the hoe requirement...maybe the hoe can instead remove weeds in a 3x3 area, giving the player incentive to use a hoe over doing the work by hand. That is pretty much it, however, you do need to be careful about what crops you plant where, and when you plant them. Otherwise, you can screw up a harvest by planting too early/too late, or end up having no consistency between what nutrients are where(which makes management a pain). Mostly just because not every player wants that much farmland. Of course, the other problem is that the player doesn't need to expand their farms to get around crop rotation and fertilizer; they can simply go dig up dirt elsewhere in the world and replace the farmland dirt to restore nutrients entirely. Right, but the thing is, it's not uncommon for players to lean into the most efficient routes of doing things, or strive to get the best possible yields from things like farming. If the player isn't at the base to pull the weeds(or check to make sure there's no weeds to pull), that's something likely to pester at the back of their mind while they're away. I will note though, that this doesn't really dissuade players from just...ignoring the mechanic entirely, putting up with the weeds, and just making absolutely massive farms to counteract the crop loss from neglect. What the mechanic does do though, is make it more frustrating to maintain farms at a large scale, which isn't really ideal given that it cuts down on player choice(now they're going to feel forced into small gardens). Yeah pretty much. I still recall you telling the tale of your adventures with modded weeds. I do enjoy farming in this game, and while I do think it could be complex, I don't know that most other players would enjoy the same level of challenge that I do.

Yes and no...those "miracle elixirs" and useless trinkets could serve as interesting cosmetics or decorative items. Not exactly useful for practical gameplay, but for players who like roleplaying or collecting things, there would be a reason to frequent those traders. That's fair, and in fairness it's possible there are settlements out there, that aren't yet implemented, that lean heavily into that aesthetic. I forgot these were a thing as well. Typically I end up crafting one early, as it just seems a fitting knick-knack to carry around. For brevity's sake I'm just quoting this part, but yeah I don't disagree with what you said. I'm not against stuff like that getting added to the game, as those are fun cosmetic items to collect and decorate with, but it's also the kind of thing I'd want to be strictly cosmetic. Kind of...but as I understand it(spoilers just in case):

The recipes, yes, you'd have to write those down. But as to the basic properties of the spices involved, the idea is to have a "quick reference" for the player to figure out the recipes, just in case they couldn't write them down, haven't played in a while, or it otherwise slipped their mind.

Tagging on to this, if spices have inherent hidden properties, perhaps they could have an implementation similar to Elder Scrolls alchemy ingredients. That is, once you've successfully cooked with the ingredient in question, or sampled it to determine overall flavor profile, then the item tooltip will always list the basic properties discovered. That way, the player can easily track the basic ingredient properties and figure out better recipes, which is especially useful in the event the player hasn't played in a while.

Honestly, I could picture this too, although the implementation I see is the standard snake oil salesman . The charms don't actually do anything, and maybe the "miracle elixirs" being sold actually turn out to be poison, or perhaps the player gets "instant riches" only to find out that the shady merchant stole the goods from the local village and now the player gets the blame for it. Whatever the case may be, the player ultimately ends up several gears poorer, with nothing to show for it.

Welcome to the forums! The good news is that fishing is already on the roadmap. The bad news is that we don't know when the devs will implement it. However, the good news is that if you're open to modding, the Primitive Survival mod offers a few ways to fish along with other neat gameplay bits(although you may want to tweak the configuration files if you don't want Cthulu in your game).

Yeah, if you just press and hold shift(or whichever key you have sneak/crouch bound to), your character should climb down the ladder without issue. If you're falling off the ladder while trying to do so, it's likely because you are pressing the backward movement key while descending(or perhaps pressing one of the side movement keys by accident) which will cause your character to move off the ladder and thus fall.

This is the main reason I'm not in favor of intense overhauls like this. While Vintage Story farming is highly simplified compared to what real farming is, it's still more complex than what a lot of other games offer(stick seeds in ground, come back later to harvest, rinse and repeat). The more time the player has to spend farming, the less time they're spending doing other things the game has to offer, that they may enjoy more. As it stands, the current system is complex enough that the player does have to think a bit in order to get the most from their farms, but it's not so complex that they have to spend a lot of time micromanaging it, or pick between farming and other gameplay. I do think they would be great as mods, and a few mods that implement some of the concepts do exist. However, I will also note that those mods aren't very popular. Depending on which one you look at, in some cases the farming complexity mods are less popular than the mod that...uh...makes bathroom functions a thing. Honestly, I don't think it's necessarily bad to have more challenge up front for new players, given that Vintage Story is already a very challenging game and that's part of the appeal. It's a tough mountain to conquer, but very satisfying when one manages to do so. However, you do have a point, in that you don't want to make the early so difficult that new players get too discouraged by the default difficulty and quit. I do agree that there ought to be more use for the hoe, but I think the better way to go about it, without upsetting the current balance, is to simply require the hoe if one wishes to remove the weeds from fallow farmland. Likewise, if farmland sits fallow for too long, it should revert back to dirt, at which point it can either be dug up safely, or tilled again in order to keep farming. The plow would be great for large scale farming, but should probably be a tool that's available later in the game, once the player has access to bronze and a creature strong enough to pull it. That way, it's something for the player to work their way up to, but also something that could be safely skipped if the player really doesn't enjoy farming or livestock that much. As for the current farming balance, here are the main advantages I see: 1. There are two different options when it comes to planting crops. The player can either put in the effort to rotate their crops carefully and avoid the need for fertilizer, or they can use fertilizer to focus on specific crops and thus avoid needing to bother with crop rotation or massive farms. 2. If the player designed their farms with good irrigation and were careful about what crops they planted and when, they can safely plant their fields and leave on an extended expedition(exploration, story content, etc), and have fields ready to harvest(or nearly ready) upon their return. They don't have to choose between having flax/a full cellar for the winter, and doing the story or exploring. 3. The player can build farms however big or small they wish. However, adding a mechanic like needing to weed crops to ensure a good harvest is going to limit farm scale severely since larger farms are going to require a lot more time and effort to maintain. If month length is set to longer than default, larger farms will be required in order to produce enough food to sustain the player through the winter, and some players just really enjoy building massive farms. However, it's not really going to be fun for the player if they have to end up spending all day doing nothing but take care of weeds. Likewise, it's also not really going to be fun for the player if they have to choose between progressing the story or exploring, or taking care of a farm to make sure they can actually stay fed over the winter or have flax for windmills and bandages.

Yeah, but my main point is that if you going to refer to the things in question specifically as "rituals" and "charms", then you're going to end up painting a picture of witches in the woods or druids circling a bonfire or other associated things, and not steampunk tech or realistic natural process. Well, either that, or you get something like the Imperium of Man from Warhammer 40k, with the tech priests and whatnot, but that kind of setting just doesn't quite fit with what's been presented in Vintage Story so far. For the player to accomplish things, it's better to rely on natural process, or steampunk gizmos, like what's implemented in the game already. In the event of natural processes, the player can draw upon real world knowledge to make things happen, such as building a charcoal pit, or refining various metals. For Jonas tech, the premise is building machinery and powering it to accomplish a goal, except the machinery in question is more heavily stylized to fit a medieval steampunk aesthetic. As for rituals and charms though, that's why I laid out my dreamcatcher example the way that I did, as well as cited Witchery and Thaumcraft as examples of what I would expect from actual rituals and charms. Tying a bunch of sticks and feathers together with string to create something that magically wards away monsters, or sprinkling a bunch of powders on the ground in geometric designs to summon entities, transmute material, or control natural processes, just isn't the same thing as building machines or using conventional work(farming, smelting, smithing, etc) to get things done.

No, I'm afraid I really don't get what you mean. Regarding the story, Tyron has a very clear vision of how things are meant to unfold, but of a planned eight story chapters only two have been implemented. While it is fair to point out things one dislikes in the storytelling, or suggest improvements, it's also pretty rude to demand the entire work of art change to something it's not meant to be. Spoilers ahead: In short, the theme of the story so far has been persevering in the face of adversity and winning, so if the ultimate conclusion after several many hours of gameplay is just "Rocks fall, everyone dies, the end", that's not going to be satisfying for anyone, nor does it fit the tone and style of writing that's been presented thus far. The ideas you've been proposing are better suited for mods(in which case, some already exist to do what you want, such as the one I linked earlier), which allows players who actually want that kind of gameplay to have it, without changing the game entirely for everyone else.

It actually was possible at one time, as I recall it happening to me in my earlier days of VS(1.18). However, that's also why the devs ended up adding an invisible wall there. If the player got rocketed up onto one of those ledges, they could either skip the boss and go straight to the library, or cheese the boss by shooting at it until it died.

THIS. Plus I think that realistically, if the player had the option to be evil, then logically they should only get the worst ending possible, and have a horrible time getting there(in which case, they're probably also going to complain about getting such a bad ending, despite the fact that they did so much evil). Even with just committing petty crimes regularly, the only ending that should be possible there is a mediocre one--not bad, but nothing satisfying either(which again, will probably generate several complaints when players inevitably play a tamer murderhobo, and don't receive a hero's reward). In order to actually get a good ending befitting a heroic character, one needs to actually act like one. And as I mentioned before, the player isn't exactly a nobody in the story...spoilers: Overall, the devs have a specific story to tell, and it doesn't seem to be one that encourages, or otherwise supports, evil actions on the player's part. The NPCs will respawn if killed, partly to avoid the player breaking things(because it's inevitable that most players will try killing an NPC at least once, to see what happens), and also likely to avoid the player being unable to complete the story in the event an NPC dies accidentally(like falling from the sky...and yes that's actually been an issue). Not to be rude, but I do have to ask now...did you actually play through the story of Vintage Story and read the associated dialogue and lore text? Because there's a lot of this that just does not fit at all with what's laid out in the lore.

It's not the fire, as much as it is just the light level that cuts down on spawns. Torches are the earliest source of bright light the player can obtain en masse, and while they aren't as effective as lanterns, they're a lot more effective than oil lamps. Realistically, I wouldn't expect fire to affect rifts at all, but a large enough fire might be enough to keep small numbers of monsters at bay.