LadyWYT

I agree with most of this sentiment, however, I wouldn't say that I want to be absolutely demolished by enemies...at least not if I have the appropriate gear. One thing I like about the current balance is that having the appropriate gear will make most scenarios a lot more manageable than they would be without. However, if you get too complacent, take too many risks, or otherwise plan poorly, you can still die even if you have the best weapons and armor available. It helps keep the world feeling dangerous, and prevents the high-tier enemies from feeling like an absolute joke. It also means that you need to be deliberate when you go hunting high-level monsters and plan carefully, as you may not be able to escape the situation easily should you encounter unexpected trouble.

Honestly I think the idea is fine, but this is probably going to be what makes or breaks it. From your description, it sounds like a project that's going to require more than just a handful of players in order to really work, although I could be wrong. In any case, the more players you have, the harder it's going to be to get everyone(or at least, a majority of them) online at the same time. That's not to say that it can't be done--I would just make sure you have plenty of flexibility built into your event plans to account for how erratic players can be with their times.

I dunno. Would have to ask Mr. Falx, assuming he can ever be found.

I think there is a limit, but I'm not sure exactly what it is. Generally, rain will put out the fire, or it'll run out of nearby combustible material. I'm not sure, but I think if the lightning strikes in an unloaded chunk, the resulting fire might only burn the stuff in that chunk. I say that because the server I play on has the fire mechanic enabled, and I've found several spots where there's been an obvious fire. However, those spots weren't particularly close to the chunks anyone frequents, and the damage seemed to be contained within a 15 block radius, roughly.

One thing I forgot to mention--if you are playing with temporal stability enabled, the teal gear in the middle of your hotbar will be very important when choosing a place to settle. If it's spinning clockwise, you're in a stable area, which is a really good spot for a base. If it's spinning counterclockwise, the area is unstable and you don't want to settle there. If it's not spinning at all, you're either at 100% stability, or the area is neutral and still okay to settle in. As for your stability percentage, you don't need to worry about it too much when out and about doing things. Just makes sure it stays above 25%, as if it falls below that monsters will start spawning nearby. If it drains to 0%, then it will start draining your health until you recover your stability. Killing monsters or hanging out in a stable area will restore stability, however, you can also replenish a good chunk instantly by sacrificing a temporal gear and a bit of health.

Maybe twice as loud at most, but that tends to be a rare occurrence, usually as a result of my headset being adjusted to be a bit louder.

Don't sweat it. To loosely paraphrase the late great Bob Ross--it's your world, so you get to decide what kind of happy little things go where. The mods themselves are fairly popular and kept up to date, so they should be relatively easy to find. I know there are more mods than that installed(though I don't remember exactly what), but those are the most relevant in terms of decoration.

I think digging a well or having natural springs would be a fair trade for preventing water buckets from placing water sources blocks. I'd also throw rain barrels in as an option as well--put some empty barrels out to collect rainwater, and bucket it out to use as needed. Hydrate or Diedrate offers similar concepts, which have been fun to play with(I don't know that I'd add the thirst mechanic to the base game). It is, however, the kind of change I probably wouldn't expect to see until water power is implemented into the game. I'm guessing that's about the time we'd get rivers, or at least streams, so it would be a prime time to make that kind of change, I would think.

Or I mean...mechanical "pigeon". Not only do you not have to domesticate it, but if one was feeling evil...rare flying enemy. I think I'd rather have the natural domesticated pigeon.

It's tawhai, I believe, from this mod: https://mods.vintagestory.at/floralzonesneozeylandicregion The planks you see used in the forge are also tawhai. As for the lodge flooring, that is totara, also from the same mod. Stripped kapok and kapok boards have a beautiful golden brown color--kapok was used for a few of the antler mounts, as well as the dining table. I swear, one of us will fix it! Maybe...someday...eventually...I swear the one on the last server looked a lot nicer. As @traugdor already noted, that is taxidermy. The blockier looking animals are from Primitive Survival, which allows you to place pelts on the walls and floor as decoration(you can place pelts on the floor in vanilla too, but it won't look like an actual creature). The mounted fish are also from Primitive Survival. The rest of the taxidermy is from the Fauna of Stone Age mods.

Don't discount yourself--if you set your mind to it, you can do it! One nice thing about building in Vintage Story is that it gives you a nice selection of premade pieces to build with, such as roofs and stone tile flooring. You don't need to be a master chiseler or anything to build something that looks good, although I do recommend playing around with chiseling when you get the chance . My advice is to start simple, and then add more bits as you're inspired. If you start with a small single-room house, you can add a longer rectangle to it to give it a more interesting shape. Add more boxes and rectangles as needed, connecting them together with doorways and staircases and whatever else makes sense for your vision. Simple squares and rectangles also mean that building the roof will be an easier task too. Add windows where desired in order to enjoy the local views. Once you have the main shell of your building in place, then you can start adding in decorations like paintings or tapestries, or adding in utility items like chests and crates. Bookcases are useful for storing lore books(if you play with lore enabled); potted plants add a natural touch. To showcase other curiosities you've found in your travels, display cases will offer the perfect placement solution.

Blackguard needs to clean up that bedroom; it's a mess.

I agree with @Never Jhonsen, you might look into your system's audio settings or your audio hardware. Maybe some drivers are out of date? I have my music level set to 25% and everything else set to 100% in the game. Windows audio is set to 30%. I use a basic gaming headset--not a cheap one but nothing very expensive/fancy either--and have the volume on it set to about 30-40% of max, roughly. In any case, I've never run into issues with the music, but I do agree with part of your post OP--the balance between track volumes could be a bit better. The highs and lows feel fine to me, but a couple of tracks feel a bit louder than the others("Hallowcroft" and "Vintage Story" as a couple of examples). It could just be the choice of instruments for those tracks though.

Welcome to the forums! Sorry to hear that you're having trouble installing the game. I don't know a lot about Linux, but maybe these links will help? https://wiki.vintagestory.at/Installing_the_game_on_Linux/en

I would just make the really valuable tools and items very rare, and near the breaking point when you find them. An iron blade might be a super lucky find when you're still in the stone age, but if it breaks after 50 uses or so? Well, then it's good for a temporal storm or a couple of caving expeditions, maybe, but it's not something you'll be able to actually rely on. Same with armor--it might hold up for a fight or two, but it's not something you'll be able to rely on until you have the materials needed for repairs. In the case of armor, if the player found a good piece, it could save them some materials later as it's cheaper to repair than craft new, but that's a fairly big if.

Of the two, I would go the half block route. That way, nothing needs to be done to player movement. It also allows more variety in slopes; half-block slopes would be gentle hills that are easy for the player to navigate, while the standard one-block slope would be the equivalent of a steep hill and require the player to slow down in order to navigate it. As for slopes taller than that...well, at that point, it's too steep for the player to navigate on foot, so they'll need to either find a sure-footed mount or find a way around. Maybe at first. But it's something players would get used to. One other drawback I see though is that currently it's not possible to place items on a lower half-slab block. That might need some tweaking for half-slab dirt blocks, if they're going to actually look like a natural piece of terrain. Maybe you don't. I'd worry more about bears than wolves, really. In all seriousness though, you could probably tweak predator behavior to be more defensive than offensive if their space is invaded by the player. They should certainly attack players that bumble into their personal space, however, unless the predator is actually hungry, they probably shouldn't be spending all their energy trying to chase you down.

Not to get too sidetracked from the main thread, but that's not quite how the rankings work. I don't know exactly what goes on behind the scenes with it, but I do know there is a limit to how many rank points you can get from people reacting to your posts. The reactions don't need to be likes to count as a point, I don't believe--as long as it's a reaction, it counts. Once you hit Steel Worker, I think the reactions stop counting towards your rank somewhere in there, and only your posts will count towards ranking up. My rough guess on the Historian rank is that a member will need at least 1k posts to achieve it.

There's a contraption you can build that teleports you to the last point of death--the Terminus Teleporter. It costs one temporal gear per use. It's a late game tech item, but it makes retrieving your stuff much easier in the event of an accident. This is what I did when I first started playing. Personally, I think the gears being limited to 20 respawns per use is fine; temporal gears are meant to be somewhat limited in their power, and it's not terribly difficult to acquire a crate or two full of them by mid-game to late-game. As others have noted, the limitations also encourage players to be careful about when and where they set their spawn points. That being said, players have differing preferences on that mechanic, which is why we have a list of options to pick from.

I like this idea, and would add in seals and whatnot for a source of food and fat. Fat burns for quite a while, and arctic creatures tend to have lots of it, so that solves the issue of a fuel for cooking and to keep warm. Likewise, there's also driftwood that can serve for firewood, and that could probably be tweaked to offer sticks as well. The dogsled sounds really fun, and you could probably have tamed caribou as a larger mount or pulling a larger sled. One thing I forgot about earlier regarding whales--there are whale skeletons already in the game, though unimplemented to my knowledge. I think they were supposed to be part of the oceanic decor for 1.20, but got pushed back with coral reefs. Either that, or they do exist but no one's dived deep enough to find one. In any case, those could potentially drop huge bones that could be used for all kinds of things useful to arctic survival. Also, if you've not already tried this, I recommend installing the Wildcraft mods along with Ancient Tools and taking a stab at an arctic playthrough. Wildcraft: Fruits and Nuts will add berries to forage, while the Trees module adds thin canes to the trees that can be used to craft things like handbaskets and the like(a cattail substitute). Ancient Tools gives an alternate method of processing hides into leather, as well as allows the crafting of bark baskets, bark breads, and other various useful things. Survival is still tough, but more manageable since you won't be needing to rely on cracked vessel RNG nearly as much.

I second this, plus making potted plants stay green all year long if they are sitting in a legitimate room.

It wouldn't be so bad if there were another fiber crop that used a different nutrient, like cotton. Currently, the only way to get cloth in any useful quantity is flax. Yes, one can trade for linen, or kill monsters for fibers, but those methods aren't reliable for acquiring large amounts of cloth.

Actually that gives me an idea. What about tweaking the existing weeds for fallow farmland, and require the player to use a hoe to remove them? Planted farmland remains unchanged, so the player doesn't need to worry about running off to explore or devoting time to other things. If the tile remains unplanted for a decent period of time though, that gives weeds the opportunity to establish themselves, so the player will need to put a bit of effort into turning it back into usable farmland, but it's not a task they'll need to do very often at all. Of course, if the weather permits, the player could opt to keep the farmland tiles planted instead of letting them lie fallow, which gives more incentive to use fertilizers(or more careful crop rotation) to keep that kind of constant growth.

The first game is good, but avoid the second. The first has a couple of rough spots, but you can interact with most of the environment, and the choices you make regarding most things may help you or haunt you later. The characters are very likeable, and while the story is fairly serious, the game isn't afraid to poke fun at itself. I will also note that while it's recommended to be an appropriate level to enter some areas, the game doesn't stop you from doing things if you're underleveled, and if you have the skills you can actually get some great rewards early on if you're willing to take risks like that. The sequel to Divinity: Original Sin? Uh...well some people praise it. It has flashier graphics and a few more playable races and cosmetics, I suppose. I made it through the first couple of story chapters before I quit. The best way I can describe the experience is that it feels like playing with a DM that's only interested in killing the player, or otherwise punishing them for playing well. If you're the least bit underleveled for an area, you'll die. Your character builds don't matter, because the enemy will have a teleport, or a damage resistance, or some other way to deal with whatever you throw at them. Pretty much every NPC treats you like absolute dirt, and there's no playing the hero because benevolent actions are punished. As for the ending...I looked up what the story's conclusion was supposed to be, and it's...underwhelming, at best. From what I saw, it breaks the lore of the first game entirely. As for other Divinity titles, I can't really speak for them, as I've not played them or watched someone else play them.

Oh, I really like this idea! Not every ruin needs a puzzlebox or some equivalent, but having small puzzles to solve in order to get some better loot is a lot more interesting than just running in, grabbing what you see, and leaving. I think as it stands now, some ruins have hidden areas that you need to dig around to find. So I suppose the mechanic exists after a fashion, but this would be a great expansion to the concept.

My main sticking point when it comes to quests in videogames, is that most of the time, there's only a couple of ways to complete the quest, and the outcome is the same regardless of what option you pick. Sometimes NPCs might offer different reactions depending on the option you pick, but the quest's outcome still remains the same. Which, in all fairness, it's difficult to weave open-ended quests together into a story, since there are many more variables to deal with than there are with linear quests. The main example I would cite of such linear quest design is Skyrim. Love the game, but your actions don't really have any impact on the world, and when presented with a quest your only real option is to either complete it, or just leave it sitting there in your quest log for eternity. Divinity: Original Sin also has a rather linear storyline and quest system, however, most of the quests have a few different ways that you can choose to complete them, with appropriate outcomes for each option. Granted, the outcomes are usually something to the effect of good vs bad, but it's still a choice that actually means something to player. Picking the bad option might mean missing some loot, or missing some information important to a later challenge, or even kill a party member. Likewise, picking the good option might yield some extra loot, or some information useful to figuring out a puzzle, or let the player even bypass certain challenges entirely. I was going to cite World of Warcraft as an example of linear questing, but this is also why I decided against it. MMOs are a different beast than singleplayer games. In any case, what I'd like to see from a quest-heavy spin-off of Vintage Story, is something more similar to Divinity than to Skyrim. Let the player make choices and suffer the consequences! It's okay if they aren't able to do everything in one playthrough. If player choice has a noticeable impact on the world, it's a lot easier to get immersed in the story and take it seriously.