LadyWYT

I like this approach. Throwable grenades would be useful against packs of enemies, or for achieving effects like smoke screens(perhaps this stops enemies caught within from targeting you for a brief time). Noisemakers could attract rotbeasts to specific areas, while flares could do the same for bells(apparently those are attracted to really bright light). Flares could also provide much more light than torches, at the expense of having a faster burnout time. Caltrops could slow down entities that step on them, or disappear after a short time if not stepped on. In any case, I think this kind of approach would allow the player more options, without needing to rework the locations already in the game.

I mean, it would definitely be a useful option to have for making custom maps. If it were something added, I'd expect it to be in a story update, or perhaps procedural dungeons, so that the feature can be showcased properly. It's still a feature I'd prefer to see more in procedural dungeons than story locations, I think, simply because those aren't really plot critical and more meant as entertaining side quests. Thus the more intricate details and tougher challenges can be left to main story locations, while procedural dungeons could be more relaxed and handle a greater variety of problem solving. As for keeping main locations "exciting"...I think a better option might be including secrets that have specific conditions to unlock. That is, perhaps the secret is only unlocked by a certain class(or certain class items), or perhaps the player needs to make certain choices in the story in order to have certain options available later. For example, instead of demanding more reward for your efforts at the end of chapter two, perhaps the player could forgo the immediate reward in exchange for something better later. Or perhaps there could be side quests for certain NPCs that increase your reputation with them, that eventually yields access to secrets later. Of course, these secrets wouldn't be critical to completing the main story, but rather just fun little side bits. Technically, this is already a thing, in that one location from chapter two. It works a bit differently, but it's the same general concept of working one's way through things...er...frozen in time. Of course, that's also the lore reason why the player can't just go tampering with things in that area too; without spoiling too much, the area is a giant anomaly, and it's either not possible to mess with things, or messing with things would have catastrophic consequences. I'm inclined to think it's the former, and not the latter, in that everything is literally frozen in time. Other locations, like the Resonance Archive, seem to have similar anomalies occurring, but not to the same extent.

It could be just meals in general, and not necessarily cookpot. I just tend to think "cookpot" when I think saturation, especially since pies stack more conveniently. Redmeat is the most critical ingredient, if you want the meal to be lasting a while before getting hungry again. It's the kind of thing I'd figure that would be noted in the handbook: spices add saturation value to cooked food. I definitely would not make a special meter just for tracking it, since that runs the risk of making the interface too cluttered.

Oh nice, I'm glad my rambling helps somebody. Picking apart the lore and trying to figure out how it all fits together is a favorite hobby in the game, although it's been a while since I've done any written delves.

Actually, the player should be able to kill small animals like chickens and rabbits on default settings, with only one flint spear, assuming that the player is throwing said spear and not stabbing. The only class that cannot do this, is Blackguard, as it takes two shots minimum to kill. I have to disagree here. First and foremost, nerfing the hitpoints of wildlife(especially to that extent) will make the predators essentially no threat, and make hunting way too easy. One benefit of investing in livestock is having an easy supply of meat, fat, hides, and dairy once you get the herds going. Likewise, picking the Hunter class offers an advantage early on by making it easier to kill things at range, and getting a bit more reward for one's butchering endeavors. Secondly, while it may seem a bit harsh for wolves and bears to be killing new players that easily, it is at least somewhat realistic(unless one has very good weapons/armor, the odds are absolutely stacked in the large predator's favor) and teaches the player a very important lesson early in the game about how the game's world operates. That is, the world is dangerous, and while the game will give the player a fair shot at success, it absolutely will not pull punches or otherwise stack the deck in the player's favor, as other games tend to do. Success or failure hinges heavily on the player's own ingenuity and efforts. As for predators not actually being that aggressive in real life...there are lore reasons for why wildlife is more aggressive in Vintage Story, although it has yet to really be explained. I did this too, however, I wouldn't say my immersion was broken. Rather, it was a rare shocking reminder that Vintage Story plays by a different set of rules than the other block game, or even titles like Skyrim. The puzzles themselves aren't terribly difficult, but they aren't so simple that the player won't have to actually search for clues or think about how to solve it for a little bit(puzzle doors in the draugr crypts, anyone?). Likewise, the player can't just break blocks to bypass the challenges within, or otherwise tear the entire place apart in order to cart it home. I would agree that it's restrictive, and that having a few more options would be nice. However, as you've already noted, it's difficult to pull that off without enabling the player to cheat and bypass the challenges. Likewise, it's also easier to design a dungeon location with a more linear route/challenges, and then spend more time detailing the set pieces or hiding little goodies around for the player to find. Currently, that also seems to be the design the VS devs are working with, given that the path through the location puzzles is fairly straightforward, but there's a lot of storytelling going on with the set design and lots of hidden goodies to discover. The Resonance Archive itself has at least three or four hidden locations to find; it's not unusual for those nooks and crannies in the walls to turn out to be more than just background detail. Like I said before, some of this is already part of the location design, as there are hidden bits that are easily missed, until the player figures out that not everything is just set dressing. As for placing blocks...I think that's a big "maybe". I think it's a concept better suited for procedural dungeons, while saving really special things(like the special bit from chapter two) for story locations. As for enemies interacting with placed blocks...rotbeasts don't seem intelligent enough to really do stuff like. Mechanicals like the locusts might, but creature AI needs more improvement to handle something like that, really. Overall, I think one of the present weak points of current location design, is that it's not always obvious what the player can interact with/is supposed to interact with. Obviously, extra goodies aren't that important, and there mostly as a fun little reward for a player's exploration efforts. Objects related to the main story recently got an improvement, in that they now emit particles if they are something the player can interact with(like lore books or the library resonator). Interesting. I'll have to go try to find the interview at some point. It makes sense that there would be some more nefarious humans out there, especially given that many NPCs suggest as much, however, I would also expect bandits to be a fairly rare occurrence out in the wild. The wilds are, after all, incredibly unsafe, and the idea behind being a bandit is making your living by stealing other people's livings. Can't really do that if there's no people to steal from.

Adding on to this, there's also that mysterious inscription in the Lazaret, that may or may not have been made by our good friend Tobias. I forget how the inscription reads exactly, but it references a crack in the firmament and witnessing the gears of the mechanisms that make the world turn, among other things. Now, from the sounds of it, whoever wrote it was not in their right mind, however, the passage likely points to the author witnessing the Rust world bleeding through into reality. Of course, the author could have also been telling the truth, in that if the premise of Vintage Story's reality is an antiquated theory of the world, the gears we see during temporal storms could be part of a literal mechanism(not the Salvation Engine!) that makes the world turn. I don't think this is quite right. It's possible some survivors took to worshiping the Great Machine, but the lore suggests that the survivors were turning from whatever their prior faith was and worshiping Jonas himself as a deity. Tying into the above, I'm not sure that there's a specific answer to the question, as much as it is left up to player interpretation. The main setting of the Old World seems to be central Europe, so Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy would have been the most prevalent religions, though I would say that most religions prevalent in Africa, Europe, and Asia during the late medieval period likely had some sort of following among humanity's survivors. It also stands to reason that the survivors carried on those traditions over the years as a way of maintaining their heritage and some sense of "normal". However, as I mentioned before, the lore also makes it pretty clear that many survivors had turned to worshiping Jonas as a deity. It's clear from NPC speech that at least most of them believe in some sort of divine figure, but whether they're referring to an actual deity or to Jonas himself isn't clear. Honestly, I basically just chalked up "The Morning" as more poetic myth than actual fact. Things do seem to get worse the deeper underground one ventures, yes, but I don't think that's due to an eldritch entity as much as it is a separate dimension trying to merge with reality, or perhaps literal machinery that operates reality having a major malfunction. This one I think is both a legend of surviving humans, and actual fact. From the sounds of it, a young lad from one of the remaining settlements ventured too deep, found a ruin, was chased deeper into said ruin by a shiver, and encountered an active eidolon before somehow managing to escape in...well, mostly one piece. For whatever reason, the mechanical horrors seem to mostly only be found deep underground, presumably lurking around what were once underground bunkers and workshops. My guess is that after the cataclysm that ended the Old World, such mechanical monstrosities eventually faded from memory and become more the stuff of legends. The occasional explorer would manage to encounter one and survive, thus keeping the legends alive as cautionary tales rather than being forgotten entirely. I think they're a mix of both, really. Certain dialogue from Tobias suggests that some individuals were turned rather than disappeared like the seraphs, which points to the rotbeast monsters perhaps having been human once. If they were human and twisted to such horrible forms, that might also explain why they have such murderous intent toward human survivors and seraphs alike, but leave other living creatures alone. Possibly. I suspect the cause will become more clear in later chapters, but I am inclined to think that the Rot was an unintended side effect of messing around with prima materia/temporality. It seems to be implied that even Jonas himself didn't fully understand what made his creations tick, however, I get that impression that Jonas(and at least most of his actual followers) were smart enough to realize that caution should be exercised while exploring the tech. However, I have the suspicion that others perhaps didn't have such caution and tried to hijack Jonas's work for their own selfish ends, and created a disaster in the process. Of course, it's also possible that Jonas perhaps made some sort of a Faustian bargain with an otherworldly entity in exchange for knowledge of prima materia, and gotten way more than he bargained for in the process. I'll post this behind spoilers just in case, but: I agree with most of this, save for I'm not sure it's an eldritch deity as the mastermind behind it all, as much as it is basic consequences for tampering with esoteric forces that really shouldn't have been tampered with. Or at the very least, I think it's a lot more unsettling if the feeling of some malevolent eldritch entity is there, without any actual confirmation that one exists. As for what happened to Jonas after the cataclysm...hard to say for sure. I'm quite certain he's still alive...or at least, as much alive as the player is, anyway. As for what state he's in, that I'm not sure. I doubt he's human anymore, since anyone who was at "ground zero" when the Salvation Engine was activated seems to have either been turned into a monster, or a seraph. I don't think Jonas was turned into a monster, since Tobias seems to have had some interaction with him after the cataclysm, so it's more likely that Jonas is either a seraph(or a super-seraph, if such is possible), or in a state similar to Tobias--ie, not a seraph but not quite a typical human either. As for what Jonas is up to...based on the "Breakdown" lore entry, and what Tobias said in passing, I think Jonas most likely suffered a complete mental break after the Old World was brought to an end, and went into hiding, likely swearing to never pick his old work back up.

And this is why you always use crude doors when playing with friends.

https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/22371 Technically, it's kinda already somewhat a thing. Kind of. But yeah, something like Distant Horizons is pretty much mandatory if one is going to play with epic terrain scales. Given how well Tyron and co. have optimized Vintage Story already, I think it's just a matter of time before they figure out some work-around for larger scale terrain features.

This is why, barring any major breakthroughs in drastically improving performance at very high render distances, terrain really ought to be scaled down like it is now. It's nice to have grand landscapes, yes, but if one doesn't have the render distance to actually see it then it's not all that enjoyable. And not everyone has the beefy hardware required for exceptionally high render distance. However, I do think that certain types of terrain could easily be fitted to a grander scale, without the need for high render distance. Plains or small, gentle hills are a good example, since a lower render distance will work decently well for getting the "vibe", so to speak. That is, the plain will still have that Kansas feel, since the player could go for miles without seeing a single mountain or hill. As for a mountain proper...that doesn't work so well on a lower render distance, since the player won't be able to actually climb to the top and view the surroundings for miles around. They'd be aware they're on a massive mountain, yes, but if the view is exactly the same as at the foot of the mountain, there's no real point.

Given the couple of snippets I saw, I'm guessing that metal tools will still be at risk of breaking. However, it looks like the player might have more control over how likely those tools are to break, via the tempering process. I'm guessing that tempering tools to be harder will allow them to retain a sharper edge for a longer time, with the tradeoff being a higher chance to break. Less tempering probably results in a softer tool that won't hold an edge so well, but won't be as prone to breaking either. Is it true to real life? Eh, kind of. In real life, you can recycle broken metal tools back into something usable, but in the context of a videogame like Vintage Story, I think some risk of breaking(and losing the tool) is needed to help keep things balanced. Otherwise, the player will never need to seek out new ore deposits.

In my experience, Tyron posts only occur every few months, when there's concrete news to post. That is, what's getting posted is actually going to be in the game, and not speculation, unless it's otherwise explicitly labeled as such. While that does mean fewer news posts, that does mean the posts we get are a lot more detailed.

They might be irritated at first, however, I think players would warm up to such a system relatively quickly once they figure out it allows most foodstuffs to qualify for meal saturation, and not just things stewed in a cookpot. The main concern, I think, would be pies becoming too strong, however, pies are locked behind the quern and it's not really feasible to carry a whole table and bread oven with you for cooking on the road.

Unless it's a quokka, that is.

That could be said of pretty much any contraption in Vintage Story, really. Well if the Blackguard ate all the food, I guess stone soup is the only option.

And here I just thought time went sideways...

Welcome to the forums! First and foremost, the easiest way to address your issue is to invest in higher quality soils like high fertility soil(found in the wild) or terra preta(crafted). That alone should boost crop growth significantly. You can also make your farms larger, which doesn't speed up growth time but does ensure a larger harvest when everything does mature. Aside from what I mentioned above, the only other option I'm aware of is the modded route, which may or may not actually be possible depending on how your server is hosted. The official VS servers are currently vanilla-only. If your server can be modded though, you might try something like this: https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/28295

Apples, pears, and cherries ASAP. Otherwise, currants and blueberries. Cranberries...uh...not really a fan of those, so those tend to be juiced and turned into aqua vitae within short order. The longer shelf life and relative abundance makes them a prime candidate for that.

I do like this idea, and that probably allows certain recipes to be narrowed down(like requiring curry powder to be added to rice in order to qualify as a curry). I dunno about that. I think rather than boost the nutritional value of the food, I would instead perhaps add a saturation bonus to food cooked with spices, similar to how meals already have an inherent saturation boost. Perhaps the current base saturation could even be nerfed, or removed entirely, and require addition of spice in order to pause the hunger rate(and add a slot for spices to go in, so the player isn't sacrificing nutrition in the process). In that way, players are encouraged to use spices and herbs when possible, in order for the food to last them longer. It could also prove to be an advantage in the early game, since instead of going straight for pottery, players could have the option of spicing their roast meat and save inventory space that otherwise would have been used for crocks, bowls, and cookpots. Of course, I would also wager that spices don't necessarily have to do anything mechanically in order to justify adding them. One of the most popular mods ever is Expanded Foods, and most of the food it adds don't really do anything outside of what base game foods already do. The main reason it's popular, in my opinion, is that many players just enjoy the sheer variety that it offers.

And then there's Skyrim, that doesn't utilize carbon at all when making steel... Sorry, couldn't resist

Yes, that is what you need to do--trap an elk calf, and then feed it enough before it grows up in order to have a partially tamed elk. From there, you can saddlebreak it to achieve full tameness. You can try searching mountaintops or other high altitude places, as those may be cool enough to spawn elk that far south. Otherwise, your best bet is making a trek north...way north...and establishing a temporary base for a year or two while conducting your search. Elk are most common in cool taiga regions, typically grasslands or sparse forest(I've not seen them in dense forest--they may still spawn there but will be difficult to see). In temperate zones, this typically means poking around on high altitude plateaus. Of course, finding the elk is probably the easiest part. It's acquiring an elk calf that's going to be difficult, since I'm not sure that you can actually breed deer to get babies.

Rivers I wouldn't expect to see until a very major update, given that's the kind of thing that would essentially require a new world(they could probably generate in old worlds fine, but who wants to walk for miles to find one) and it's something very difficult to do right. If it's not done right, then it won't feel like it fits properly in the VS world. And yes, I know there is a mod or two that adds rivers, so it seems "easy" to implement, however...to my knowledge, those mods also have a lot of issues(bugs, doesn't play nicely with other mods, etc) and leave oddities in the landscape(like tunnels through mountains). A proper river in the game shouldn't be causing issues and should look like it actually belongs where it exists.

Definitely a bug. You'll want to report it on the Github bug tracker, if it's not been reported already.

I mean, on paper it sounds good, but... The current cementation furnace is stupidly simple in comparison, and a fraction of the cost. By the looks of it, you could build the blast furnace pictured here, or build two cementation furnaces for the same cost. You also have to factor in repair cost, especially with lower tiers of refractory bricks, as well as the fact that you can cheese helve hammers a bit with some ridiculous windmill setups. All in all, it still sounds good, especially for a cooperative multiplayer setup, however, the cost is disproportionate to the other pieces of the metalworking tech tree. Mass-refining and producing iron products is a start, but there needs to be a similar process available for steel as well, or else there's a big complicated step sandwiched between two simple ones. I think a better place for this level of tech, is to have it available as a late game metalworking option, after the player has already achieved steel via cementation furnace. That way, it has the high cost expected of such tech, while the incredible utility is a natural next step of pursuit after the simpler methods have served their purpose.

Well first of all, good job on laying everything out. Seems like a solid idea that would fit into the game nicely. However, the main flaw I see, is that adding something like what you've laid out, would pretty much require a complete overhaul of the current metalworking system, in addition to this idea itself needing a rework in order to accommodate steel production. As it stands, it's a huge jump from basic iron bloomeries, but unless it can handle steel production in some fashion as well there's really no point in sinking that many resources into such a massive structure. If the player can building refractory brick, they can refine steel, which is much better than iron, and it's a lot cheaper(in time and resources) to mass produce iron itself via bloomery.

Ah, gotcha. In that case, it's almost certainly Better Ruins that is the culprit. Ruined translocators do exist in vanilla, however, they are set dressing for a specific location, and not found elsewhere to my knowledge. Better Ruins is likely just reusing that asset for the locations it adds.