LadyWYT

I keep forgetting that leather is a decorative option now. I'll probably end up using it in some chiselwork or simple base decor, if I don't forget about it again.

I'm not sure creepypasta is really needed when the main story itself is supposed to have eldritch horror elements in the background, occasionally in the foreground. Plus there's lore excerpts like "Blind Bat Rickhart", "Letters", the "Ghosts" short story, and certain lore pieces unique to certain story locations. Players can, of course, make up their own stuff, but I think player-made content like that maybe doesn't catch on quite so easily since it will either clash with the game's lore too much, or otherwise blend in a little too well(and thus not really feel like something is amiss). For ideas like Herobrine specifically...to my knowledge Herobrine really only became a thing back in the very early days of Minecraft, when little was known about the game and stuff was added randomly in the updates and not always noted, and the game itself was perhaps buggier in some ways than it is today(which means that odd behavior is more likely to occur). Thus it was quite easy for someone to make up a story, with enough "evidence" to be convincing, especially when the lead developer(Notch, in those days) decides to play along.

The title made me giggle. I suspect that the ruined torch holders might be replaced in some ruins, but perhaps not all. While they are a nice find, honestly I do think it is just a little too easy to find them in ruins, to the extent that there's no reason for the player to bother crafting their own torch holders in most cases. Now that I think about it, it could also be in preparation for the procedural dungeons. If the dungeons are different from story locations, in that the player is allowed to break blocks and loot everything, then it makes sense to add something like this so that the player can light the dungeon up without being able to get a bunch of free, better lights early in the game. The berry bush rework isn't full implemented, so right now it doesn't feel particularly satisfying to play, but I do expect that to change once the rework is fully implemented. Based on what I see right now though, it is a change for the better, since berry bushes were incredibly strong before. While it might be convenient for the player to loot the surrounding countryside for every bush and plop said bushes back at base for an easy harvest, it's not particularly realistic nor a particularly good design for long term play. The ease of berry bushes was also a rather large reason, I believe, that many players didn't even bother with fruit trees. How I see it is that in the early game, the player will need to rely on foraging wild bushes while they wait on cuttings to establish themselves. Berry bush cuttings, at a glance, don't seem to have a failure rate, and mature to fruit-bearing bushes much faster than fruit trees. Fruit trees, in contrast, have a pretty high failure rate on the cuttings and it takes an in-game year or two for the trees to mature enough to have decent yields. In order to keep it balanced, berry bushes need fertilizer every once in a while(perhaps just once, maybe twice, a year) to keep them productive, making them a little more expensive over time, while fruit trees are expensive up front but rather cheap on the upkeep(which could be changed later to better match the new berry bush upkeep). I do want to note too that the ability to propagate berry bushes should mean that more players have a chance at having a berry patch at their base in multiplayer, rather than all the nearby bushes getting pilfered and the player needing to go miles away or rely on admin intervention to get some. Pretty much. Berries were also a problem when it came to composting. Bushmeat, at least, requires some effort to get, and dough required the player to actually grind the grain into flour before turning the flour into dough. Berries, on the other hand...it was very easy to just plunk all the bushes back at base and then let most of the harvests rot.

I like skill-based progression, but I don't think it really fits with what Vintage Story is very well. It also has the major flaw of being a bit of a snowball system, in that in multiplayer scenarios it's very easy for players to fall behind the power curve simply because they didn't play as frequently as other players. What I like about Vintage Story's progression is that it's not really gated behind specific skills. The player can achieve pretty much whatever they want, whenever they want, provided they have the experience and knowledge required to pull it off. No need to grind one's smithing skill to X level to be able to work steel, in other words. Regarding the classes themselves, I like that each class is a specific individual, with a specific history in the world. They aren't just arbitrary collections of buffs, debuffs, and cosmetics.

Simply by keeping those activities indoors during a temporal storm. In my experience, enemies typically don't spawn indoors, and the rare time that they do it's just one, which is quite easy to poke to death with a spear in most cases. Where the problems tend to occur, in my experience, is in large interior spaces that aren't well-lit or that are otherwise free of clutter. Oil lamps are a convenient early game lighting solution, but terrible for stopping spawns. Torches can be decent at stopping spawns but aren't very good for lighting up large interiors. Lanterns are the best suited for stopping spawns, however, even they can struggle when it comes to large interior spaces. Cluttering the space with storage and decor helps a lot; the interior doesn't need to look like a hoarder house, but some shelves, trunks, other storage can help break up the space in a useful fashion. Fur rugs on the floor and decorative/useful piles of stored materials also seems to help reduce the amount of open space available for enemies to spawn. I think also, perhaps, that stopping spawns entirely during temporal storms isn't the best main goal to work towards when it comes to building a good base to weather the storm in. I've had more luck concerning myself less with stopping all the spawns, and more building compact designs that keeps spawns to a minimum while allowing me enough room to deal with the occasional one that does slip through.

Which really doesn't make any sense other than being an explicit videogame convenience for the player. Simply picking up a frying pan doesn't make one a chef, same as picking up a bow doesn't make one an expert archer. And as I said before, the player's class is tied to certain NPC interactions. Tying player class to specific equipment would muddy the waters and either result in some very confusing scenarios(why are NPCs treating you like you've been a Hunter your whole life one moment, and then treating you like a Blackguard thug the next when you show up in Blackguard gear?), or a very watered down story experience where the interactions are always the same regardless of player choice. One of those NPCs that references player class is rather important as well:

Welcome to the forums! You could try a mod like this one and see if that solves the issue: https://mods.vintagestory.at/naturalspawns There's also mods to adjust what light level that monsters can spawn at, and a mod or two to stop monsters from spawning on the surface entirely(outside of temporal storms), though I'm not sure how well the latter works regarding the story. The pure vanilla solution is to turn rifts off, and temporal storms as well potentially, since conventional spawn rules are ignored during temporal storms. That should cut down on most of the spawns, at least.

Welcome to the forums! From a lore standpoint I don't think it's entirely out of the question for the player to visit the Rust World a time or two. However, if that turns out to be the case, it's something that I expect to happen as a specific story event, and not something that the player can just do casually. For a casual thing that the player can do whenever they want...I think it works as a mod, but doesn't really make sense regarding the lore, nor is it something that I personally find very interesting. It feels too "videogamey" and there explicitly for the player's benefit and entertainment, rather than a clever feature built into the world. There's also something to be said for having some forces and things remain mysterious and outside the player's control. When there's no longer any mystery then there's no longer any room for imaginative speculation, and the things in question can grow stale rather quickly as a result. I think it's also worth noting that the reason some players turn the storms off is that they don't really like combat, and don't really like having such disruptions to their gameplay. As it stands, they can simply turn off the part of the game they don't really enjoy, or otherwise enable sleeping through storms to skip the ones they don't want to deal with. If the storms were essentially a "whole other game" then that would suggest the storms have lots of unique features and items, in which case players who turn that mechanic off will likely get upset over losing access to said content. If the storms don't have that kind of unique stuff though, then I don't think that's really fixing a problem as much as it is just changing who likes the storms versus who doesn't.

The player can already change their class via console command, if they so desire. Otherwise, given that classes are specific people in the lore and story, and have appropriate class-specific interactions, it's not really possible to let the player switch classes with ease like that as it leads to either significant cognitive dissonance in the story telling, or the story itself to be the same generic experience for every player rather than something that differs depending on certain player choices. This is essentially how the classes already work, in my opinion. Each one has clear strengths and weaknesses, as well as specific lore and interactions unavailable to other classes. However, the benefits are never really so strong that any class becomes an instant pick lest the player miss out, nor are any of the weaknesses detrimental to the point that a class gets soft-locked out of specific types of gameplay. If Vintage Story were a purely multiplayer experience then the class traits could be stronger than they are, since there would be other players there to assist, but Vintage Story is designed to be a solid singleplayer experience too.Thus each class needs to be able to function on its own well enough that the player can enjoy every aspect of the game as well as complete the main story without issue.

The "less efficient" part, primarily. The harvest window could be narrowed easily enough, but it also seems the kind of thing that could easily be overdone. I might be generalizing a bit here, but one common thread of many player complaints seems to be having to do X task at Y time, instead of a time the player would prefer. I don't necessarily think that's bad design, as there are, realistically, some things that must be done at certain times, that the player will need to comply with. However, too many scenarios like that stacked together at once can easily narrow the range of options that the player actually has to work with. In the case of berry bushes versus fruit trees, the scenario that ends up playing out in my mind in this case is that the berry bushes might be balanced by offering seasonal harvest, and being limited to a window of a couple days to harvest, with the fruit trees being harvestable for several days in contrast. It does seem likely to generate at least some complaints though, for players who don't like the time investment and relative difficulty of getting a fruit tree orchard going. Harvesting berry bushes in the wild is an option, yes, but the player ought to be able to cultivate bushes at home if they choose, for less upfront investment than fruit trees. That's also why I think needing to fertilize the cultivated bushes every now and then isn't a terrible design decision(pardon if I'm repeating myself a bit here), since it's an option that requires less work up front but a little more management effort over time to keep good yields. In contrast, the fruit trees require quite a bit of work and patience up front, since cuttings have a high failure rate and it takes a lot of time for them to mature enough to really produce good yields, but the main benefits of investing in them is that most of their yields store rather well and they don't require much long-term maintenance currently(that could easily change given how berry bushes are changing!) in order to keep producing good yields. I'm also inclined to agree here, for the most part, same as there's not really a good way to stop players from farming nothing but turnips for vegetable nutrition. Or at least, it's not really possible to stop that kind of min-maxing without outright cutting down on player options and forcing them into specific styles of play. I do think it's something that will change as more story chapters are added, since it does take a little while to complete the story and more content means that players will, on average, be playing their worlds longer thus long-term investments like dairy stock and fruit trees will feel more worth it. As it stands now though, it's relatively easy to reach steel and beat the main story within an in-game year or two, so unless the player prefers a slower pace or otherwise wants to hang on to the world for a while, long-term investments don't really feel as satisfying.

I typically craft extra leather into backpacks and boots to sell to the local treasure hunters. It's a fairly inexpensive thing for me to craft, that fetches a rather good price.

I enjoy them. They keep me on my toes and make planning trips and other activities a lot more interesting, since the temporal storms bring with them an unknown risk. The storms might be somewhat predictable, however, there's still a pretty broad range at which they can occur. By default they occur every 10-20 days, which is more than enough time for most long trips. However, I'm pretty bad about leaving on said trips right after storms occur, so while 20 days might be enough time, it's very likely I'll have to deal with at least one storm if the interval is shorter. The storms can be just as dangerous even around home, since there's been a time or two I returned from a mining trip at low stability, only to see that a heavier storm was imminent. In those situations, there's really no choice but to sacrifice a gear or fight the enemies to restore stability. Honestly, I don't really see much of a problem here. The temporal storms are essentially unnatural disasters, and overall not something you really want to be caught out in. There is some loot that can be acquired by fighting the monsters in the storms, however, doing so is risky and said loot can be acquired by other means, if at a slower rate. Sitting inside in safety might not be the most exciting thing, but like most things in Vintage Story the player isn't going to get something for nothing. The price of that safety is the player being limited in what they can do while the storm rages on, but that being said, there are quite a bit of indoor activities that can be done. Panning is a decent early game activity, since it will net copper and other goodies. Baking pies or otherwise preserving food in crocks is also a good activity, since it's something the player will need to do anyway for winter prep/general food stores. Casting metal can also be a good option, as it's easy to do, allows the player to babysit the forge without getting distracted, and gives the metal plenty of time to cool off so it's ready to be worked when the storm is over. I will also note that turning the storms off or enabling the sleep option are not bad ways to handle storms either. Turning them off is the best option for players who really don't find the mechanic fun at all and would rather just explore/do whatever without being hampered. Sleeping through the storms might not be realistic from the lore standpoint, however, it's a very good option for players who enjoy the storms but don't necessarily want to fight monsters or find indoor activities every time one occurs. Another option is just increasing the interval between storms--that way they still occur every once in a while, but otherwise give the player plenty of time for doing stuff before they need to deal with one. The maximum interval is 30-40 days, so if the player is still playing with default 9 day months that should mean they only have to deal with about 2-3 storms per year. A few more options regarding temporal mechanics in general would be nice, as that is one config page that really doesn't have a lot going on right now. As for the storms themselves, I don't think they really need a rework, as much as they could use a few minor tweaks to smooth out the experience. Chiefly, it would be nice to have some sort of "safe zone" around the player, so that monsters don't get dropped right on the player. For passive players, that would make it a little easier for them to hide indoors without having to worry about something spawning with them in what should be a safe spot. For aggressive players, it would smooth out the storm combat a bit by giving the player a chance to spot incoming enemies and react, rather than have to deal with a nightmare getting dropped on top of them. Having the enemies scale a bit with storm strength would also help smooth out the combat by giving the player more manageable enemies in the early game when their equipment isn't a good, while saving the tougher stuff(except the special monsters) for the late game when the player has had time to equip themselves and will be wanting those prime goodies. For example, light storms could spawn tier 0-2 enemies, medium storms tier 1-3, and heavy storms be predominantly tier 3-4. The special monsters like the double-headed drifter could spawn in any storm strength in order to preserve the player's chance at the really good loot. I think this kind of change would be quite good, since handling tier 0-2 is fairly manageable even with the most basic gear, but still enough of a risk that players won't necessarily default to charging blindly into every storm, every game. This one is a bit more iffy, but I also think it could be interesting to have a bit of loot left to scavenge after the storm passes. By that I mean a few flax fibers and maybe a rusty gear or two, or a temporal gear/Jonas part if the player is really lucky. Such items would need to be picked up quickly, since they would despawn shortly after the storm ends, but I think it would be a decent way to give passive players a bit of loot without a lot of risk and perhaps encourage them to give the storms more of a try rather than just turn them off.

Not sure. It does get a little goofy with the dairy stock, but given how long it takes to tame said stock enough to be somewhat milkable, I think it's acceptable compromise.

I'm pretty sure bonemeal is the P nutrient and compost is the N nutrient. I'm inclined to agree, however, the main hiccup I see with reducing yields is that it might make early game survival more difficult than what's maybe intended for the average player. Granted, I don't necessarily think it's bad for the early game to be a bit more difficult in terms of food, but no berries at all due to everything not quite being in season yet seems a bit harsh. That being said, even with only one harvest per year in the seasonal scenario, I'm guessing that many players might still continue to ignore fruit trees in favor of just cultivating more berry bushes or relying on bees, since fruit trees still take some effort to get properly going. Animals are a bit more skittish, but not to the point they all just run away as soon as the player comes within view. The player still needs to get a little close to them before they start to move away, and even then the player can still outrun some creatures such as boar. I think they probably could have gone a little further with it, honestly, since it's still pretty easy to walk up and pick melee fights, but it's a start. The fishing feels much stronger to me than it was before. Yes, it is a bit more involved, however, a baited hook in a decent pond will catch plenty of fish to eat. Many fish now yield more than 1-2 fillets, and some can yield as much as 5+ per fish. That's quite a lot for relatively little effort and risk on the player's part.

I think that's better suited to an alchemist or herbalist than the Tailor. Tailors are predominantly concerned with clothing, and while they could have tried their hand at medical work, that's a rather specialized field. I don't think they would have picked up the trade that quickly.

A pinned thread in the Multiplayer section of the forums seems like the perfect spot for such thing.

No. It was a bug that has since been fixed, to my knowledge.

I would say make them tier 1 damage and roughly similar to boar regarding health BUT able to easily outrun the player. In that case, the player isn't going to be able to rely on kiting them around in order to kill them, nor is the player going to be able to easily escape such a big angry bird.

Oops. I can read, I swear! Yeah, I mostly agree there. Or at least, that's how it feels those two classes should be, but they don't quite feel that way in actual practice, I think. Mind you, I don't want to nerf hunter as I don't think that really helps anything. I do think that Hunter is going to be a little more balanced in 1.22 thanks to the spear changes and other additions to the game. In the early game, Hunter will be much more focused on hunting wildlife for food, before shifting focus into more of a proper archer in the late game. Malefactor will be a more attractive pick since wild grains won't be dropping as much, meaning that Malefactor will have an advantage when it comes to getting early windmills/linen sacks/other linen goods. They exist for certain lore reasons. I think they're supposed to be engineers, essentially, but...well, without more Jonas tech stuff they don't really have much to engineer. Once more Jonas tech gets added the class might see some changes. As for speed, they're matched with Hunter. Ironically, both Hunter and Clockmaker are the fastest classes in armor. The one exception is plate armor, where they are evenly matched with Blackguard. I forgot to mention it, but one change I would like to see to Tailors is some kind of trade/social bonus when interacting with NPCs. They're a merchant type class, with the most manners of anyone! They should be great at getting better prices for stuff! Pretty much. A new player can still handle it just fine if that's what they really want to play, but it will make for a more difficult experience. For 1.22 right now, the Blackguard seems to be getting a bit weaker in the early game but even stronger in the late game due to changes to animal behavior, spears, and the new smithing processes. I would say Hunter is still a very solid class choice for new players, even with the spear nerfs. The damage itself is still solid but the big game changer is the time it takes to charge a spear shot. Spears were ridiculous before since they could be fired almost as rapidly as a bow; now firing a spear is a much more deliberate action. That's why I'm expecting Hunter to be more focused on actually hunting animals for food in the early game, and not being as strong in combat until later when they have better bow/spear options available.

I do agree that the bear spawn rate seems a bit goofy right now in 1.22. I don't know that I would call it horrible, exactly, but I'm not going to be surprised if it gets turned down a bit.

To me the complexity for berry bushes is just the trade off for them being easier to propagate and harvest in the wild. It's quite easy for a player to visit the local berry patches and harvest quite a lot of berries, while wild fruit trees tend to be quite scattered and only ripen at very specific times of year. Likewise, it takes a couple of in-game years for fruit trees cuttings to really establish themselves, and those cuttings also have a pretty high rate of failure. In contrast, the berry bush cuttings don't seem to have a failure chance(currently) and mature into fruit-bearing bushes in under a year, meaning that it will be much easier and faster for the player to get a field of berry bushes going than it will be to get an orchard of fruit trees. In which case, most players would likely continue the same meta of ignoring fruit trees entirely and relying entirely on berry bushes. By needing to fertilize the cultivated bushes every once in a while though to keep them productive, then the player has a choice of whether they want an easy investment initially that will require more maintenance over time, or a harder initial investment that requires less maintenance for more reward in the long term. I also wouldn't be surprised if fruit trees were revisited later to give them a bit more complexity though. Perhaps no fertilizer requirement, but maybe the player will just need to prune the branches once in a while to keep the trees at their most productive.

I don't think I would change anything, aside from adding a couple more classes like alchemist/herbalist and noble, since those are specific jobs that would be appropriate for who the player character is, as well as jobs that don't easily fit under one of the other existing classes. I think what class a player picks hinges heavily on individual playstyle. Commoner is fairly popular because it's a straightforward experience--there are no downsides to account for, but there are also no upsides, and I think that's fine. Blackguard is quite strong, but I've not really gotten the impression that it's a particularly popular option aside from more veteran players, specific combat players, or players that just like the class lore. The gathering penalties and increased hunger rate are an immediate turn-off for many, despite the fact that Blackguard has a strong late game to account for a weak early game. I wouldn't call Clockmaker a counterpart to Hunter at all. The classes have completely different flavors, with the only real overlap being they both have the same 10% speed boost. Hunter is one of the strongest picks in the game, since the ranged bonuses make early hunting easier while still being very useful into the late game. The same applies to the animal harvesting bonus. The melee penalty is really only a concern if the Hunter gets ambushed or otherwise cannot soften up a target before it can engage the player in melee combat; the mining penalty equates to missing out on a bit of ore every now and then, which isn't really a big deal. In my opinion, Hunter is more similar to Commoner, but perhaps a little better, in that it has some very good bonuses for relatively little penalty. Clockmaker is a strange class, in that it has a penalty to health and melee damage, so it's really not ideal for melee combat. While it doesn't have a penalty to ranged damage, it does have a -25% penalty to effective range, meaning that Clockmakers can't shoot as far as most other classes. Their main benefit in combat is the damage boost against mechanicals, and the ability to tame locusts. However, Blackguard will still outclass them on damage, I'm pretty sure, and the locust taming is tricky to balance since if it's too strong the Clockmaker easily becomes an instant pick over everything else. Their main strength, I think, lies in the reduced translocator repair cost; the Clockmaker can more easily explore the world, especially in the early game, if they're willing to take risks and go cave diving. The Tailor is an odd class given that it seems to be almost exclusively penalties, however, I think that's also fine considering what the class is. Tailors are meant for civilized life in the cities, not harsh survival in the wilds, so it's basically a challenge class for those who want a more "fish out of water" style of experience. Despite the penalty to foraging and animal harvesting and the penalty to health, Tailor is one of the better combat classes since it doesn't have penalties to ranged or melee damage, and has a bonus to armor durability. It's at least equal to, if not a little stronger than, the Commoner in that regard. As for Malefactors, it's perhaps the strongest early game class, in exchange for being the weakest in the late game(in my opinion). The foraging bonuses will help them survive better in the early game, as well as make it easier to get farms going with less work. The bonus to looting means they can get rich rather quickly and take more advantage of trading, while the boost to stealth means they don't need to worry as much about hostile wildlife(potentially monsters as well, though I don't know if the stealth bonus applies here). However, the penalty to range, melee damage, and health means that Malefactor is going to struggle in all types of combat, which really hurts going into the late game as that tends to be when the player is getting into more fights. Likewise, foraging and stealth bonuses aren't as useful in the late game since the player will have established farms and livestock for food, and have good enough equipment to handle the local wildlife threats.

I'm guessing the idea is that the berry bushes are supposed to operate similar to fruit trees, in that the player actually needs to take cuttings to propagate new bushes rather than loot the mature bushes from the surrounding countryside and replant at base, but with the main difference being that berry bush cuttings have a much higher survival rate and grow to maturity much faster than fruit trees. In order to keep it balanced though, they'll require a little more investment from the player long-term, in that the player will need to fertilize the bushes every once in a while to keep up the yields. Wild bushes, I'm guessing, will probably operate similar to wild crops, in that they grow but don't actually use up the soil nutrients. Ideally, the player should be able to have consistent harvests from those just fine, at the cost of needing to actually go out and forage rather than harvest from the safety of their base.

What about a pinned thread in the Multiplayer section? That way it's easy to find for reading and posting.

I'm guessing that it probably would depend on type, since the crops have different nutrient requirements. I doubt just replanting the bush rather than fertilize will be very viable though. Unless something major changes, it looks like it will take several months for a cutting to grow into a proper mature bush that can bear fruit. Pulling from the patch notes: If a bush has a special trait, it might be able to propagate more bushes like that via cutting, in which case ditching the old bushes certainly won't be desirable as you'll want the old bushes to keep producing cuttings and fruit until you have more bushes of that type established. Overall, fertilizer isn't really that hard to come by, and I daresay it's easier to just sprinkle a bit on every now and then rather than go through the process of trying to cut up old bushes and regrow new ones.