LadyWYT

Weird. I've been playing on 1.20.7 still(because mods) and haven't noticed an issue with it. Maybe it's a bug in a newer version? Or the block column could be messing with the pathing, as you said.

Yeah I was trying to be nice and not go there. I watched the first few episodes of his series after he made that funny wolf post on the forum a while back. It had its entertaining moments, and it's cute watching new players figure out the game. I've admittedly been curious about that, given the arguments he's been making. I suppose that's the handy part, and a drawback of posting on social media--it leaves a paper trail for others to follow. Personally, I've nothing against inexperienced players presenting their suggestions. However, it's also not unusual for many of those suggestions to be quite flawed, especially in relation to other parts of the game, which is to be expected from inexperience. As I've said before, where it gets aggravating is when questions and concerns about the suggestions get brushed aside with a simple "you're wrong, you don't know what you're talking, it'll just work and be fun before I said so!" argument, instead of an explanation of how such a thing could work and how the concerns would just be addressed. Keeping in mind that Wilderness Survival is the "hardcore" preset, same as Exploration is the "easy". The Standard version is the developer's intended difficulty, and as a result that's the metric I use when making assessments about suggestions. That, and my own experience with the game itself, and other ideas that others have tried via mods. Sometimes an idea works, and sometimes it only sounds fun on paper but isn't fun in practice. With all due respect my man, I believe you when you say you're passionate about the game and want to see it improve. You wouldn't be here making suggestions or having fun with it on YouTube if you weren't. And not everyone has fun in the same way, and that's okay. But I honestly don't believe that you want to be friends or hold a discussion to actually find common ground. Your actions haven't backed up your words in that regard, since you've not done anything except dismiss any opposing viewpoints as "irrelevant" because "we don't know what we're talking about, we're just stubborn old veterans chasing people away" and "you have a game-design oriented brain, so you're automatically right". Maybe that's not what you meant to say, but if it wasn't I would recommend taking a look at word and phrasing choices, as that's how you're coming across. Otherwise, I will note that you're free to defend your points by simply ignoring every counterpoint and labeling it as "irrelevant", but that destroys your case more than supports it. In any case, I'm glad you're having fun with the game. Hopefully you continue to do so. I don't have anything else to add regarding the rest of your post, since everything I've said up until now has essentially been ignored.

Assuming you're playing with lore content enabled, have you checked out any of the story content yet? You don't have to actually complete the initial content if you're not yet confidently equipped, but bronze should at least let you comfortably poke around in the first location. There's also decorating your base, if you're inclined to mess around with chiselwork. Winter has a lot of downtime, which makes it an ideal time to do things like chiseling. If you're inclined to invest more heavily in farming, winter is a great time to go collect cuttings of fruit trees so you can plant them towards the end of winter/beginning of spring. Cuttings need cooler weather in order to vernalize, but it can't be too cold when you plant them or they'll almost assuredly all die. Last but not least, there's always exploration. Frozen water is easier to traverse, and you can make notes of the extra resources you find. Of course, if you're really worried about the cold, you could venture into some of the caves in search of ruins and translocators. I don't recommend going too deep, as the high level monsters can overwhelm bronze fairly easily, though if you're skilled enough it shouldn't be too much of an issue if you're careful.

If you're seeing a shiver crawling around in broad daylight, it's usually due to the sun just rising, a temporal storm just ending, or a cave/overhang somewhere nearby. However, I will note that some recent versions of 1.20 had issues with monsters spawning in broad daylight, so if you're playing on an older game version you may be running into a bug(which could also be occurring on the latest versions, though I'm not aware of any bugs of that sort). In any case, you shouldn't be seeing monsters out and about during the day.

I daresay it's just bad luck. Sometimes there can be complete calm for several days, and sometimes the activity is nothing but high levels. You might try looking into acquiring a rift ward or two to curb some of the spawns, although rift wards are a late game tech item so I'm not sure how feasible that would be for the present. You might also try fencing off a safe perimeter around your base and lighting up everything inside. Shivers currently can't climb over fences, and the lights will at least cut back on some of the spawns, if not curb them entirely.

Welcome to the forums! For resources, I don't think you have anything to worry about there in terms of basic progression. For the story itself, however, some locations require specific types of terrain to generate in. The Resonance Archive requires a large mountain, and a certain other location requires a smaller mountain or hill I think. I'm not sure that those locations will generate naturally if the required terrain isn't present, so you may need to place them manually in order to complete the main story.

Hmmm. Iron should be sufficient for fighting sawblade locusts, although if you're getting by multiple sawblade locusts at once(or other higher tier monsters) that might be a bit much. Keep in mind that plate armor offers the worst healing stats, so if you need to rely a bit more heavily on healing items in combat you may want to switch armor types. As for fighting sawblade locusts in general...they're somewhat rare and you don't usually see more than one at a time. They are fairly tough, requiring a few hits to kill, and like other locusts have a special leap attack they can do. If you plunk down a light source before engaging them, a shield is useful to help block at least some of the incoming damage. You may also try softening them up a bit with ranged damaged before engaging them in melee.

Smithing is one of my favorite parts about the time, though ironically I hate spending long hours at the anvil banging out repetitive items. I daresay most players would agree that it's very tedious. However, in the case of smithing, it's generally not something you need to do very often, with certain exceptions such as iron blooms and plates. That is where the helve hammer shines though, and also what pushes players to go to the trouble of setting one up. A helve hammer will make processing all that iron and manufacturing all those parts much less tedious, and by the time you actually need all that stuff you should already have a helve hammer set up. Yeah, I wouldn't do that to pottery--that's a bit much. Smaller recipes like pots and bowls don't really benefit from a turning ability; in that case, I'm thinking more of a niche QoL feature for larger objects like storage vessels and planters. Not that it's hard to just walk around the object in question either, but it can be a bit of a hassle whereas a pottery wheel you can just shove into a corner and keep the project out of the way. I don't recall suggesting texture variations, but different textures is a decent way to give a pottery wheel a bit more purpose. You could take that a step further and make certain items like vases, pitchers, and whatnot as decorative/functional items exclusive to the wheel. In that case, you still have functional pottery that can be completed with the system we have at the moment, and ignore the wheel entirely if you wish, without penalty. But for those wanting more decorative vessels, or a wider range of function, the wheel could serve that niche. With a proper glazing system added for pottery, perhaps you could limit glazing to only the higher quality pottery crafted on the wheel, and leave the standard pottery as-is. That way players just in it for pure function aren't punished for ignoring the pottery wheel(which may not be something they enjoy messing with), while players who lean more heavily into the decorative aspects of the game will probably love it. Oh I can think of worse things than QTEs...microtransanctions.

Welcome to the forums! It's a neat concept, but I don't think it should be part of the core game. This is one major reason why it shouldn't be added as a core feature: religion, whether it pulls from real world religions or not, is a touchy subject for many people. The game does feature some loose religious references, but overall, religion is left up to a player's own interpretation, and is therefore able to appeal to a wider variety of players as a result. This is the best way to implement religion as a gameplay mechanic. If players desire it, leave it up to them to determine how it's implemented. A whole lot of controversy is avoided that way. Edit: because I'm a dumb-dumb sometimes and forgot what section of the forums I was in. I want to say someone already made a mod that implements this sort of idea, though without the religious aspect. https://mods.vintagestory.at/temporallife

As someone who enjoys the Wildcraft mod suite...does voting for everything count? I like all these options, really, and I like collecting crops to grow. For the vanilla game, I might stick more closely to the kind of flora that can be found in Europe/Asia/North Africa during the late Middle Ages. However, given how scrambled the world is...it might be anachronistic to have things like potatoes and tomatoes available as crops, but I don't think it would be a deal-breaker either when it comes to immersion. After all, we have cassava in the game, which is a New World crop.

Oh right, I forgot about that.

There's also mods like this that remove them: https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/19636 There are other mods too that do similar(and not just for shivers)--this just happened to be the simplest one I found with a quick search.

Welcome to the forums! I want to say this feature already exists somewhere in the library of console commands and world edit tool, but I'm not 100% certain.

This is true, however, if a suggestion is meant to be a feature of standard gameplay, then it should be a feature that is enjoyable for most players. As I've noted, I look at suggestions through the lens of the Standard game mode on default settings, which seems to be the general intended experience the developers have in mind. A fair point in some regards, but I still maintain my previous position that such a mechanic needs to be balanced around other gameplay that demands player attention as well, such as the player needing to be absent from their base for extended times in order to complete the main story. As I've stated previously, the current system of farming allows a player to plant a crop, leave, and have it ready to harvest by the time they return, so they don't feel like they're actively sabotaging themselves to pursue the main story or go exploring. Unfortunately, I've not seen a counterpoint to such concerns other than "the concern is irrelevant", "it's fun, because I think it's fun", or "it'll just work, because I said it would". Perhaps something got lost in translation, but that's how it comes across. As for implementing things like spontaneous crop death, weeds, and whatnot...here's the gist of how I see such things panning out: Spontaneous Crop Death It's true that sometimes crops just up and fail, despite your best efforts. You could have crops randomly die in the game and accompany the dead crop with a brief explanation of how it died(disease, pests, etc) as an easy way to make farming "tougher". I believe @Rudometkin suggested it be a somewhat common occurrence, like 1 tile out of every 10 crop tiles failing on average. I would probably expect 1 in 8 though, since a fully irrigated farm consists of 8 farmable tiles around 1 tile of water. The average is probably a mix of getting a harvestable 8/8 tiles per irrigated unit; 7/8 to 5/8 depending on how many tiles fail in a unit. For brevity's sake, let's assume that 5/8 tiles is the worst possible outcome per unit. The problem here is...how does the player counter the crop loss? Every other challenge in the game, that I can think of, gives the player options to counter it before it becomes a problem. In this case, however, the crop just dies despite the player's best efforts, and they get nothing in return for their work. If a crop dies to lack of water, wildlife, or inappropriate temperature, the player can at least learn from that experience and improve their farming strategy by irrigating, planting at a different time of year, or fencing off their farmland. The most they can do in the case of spontaneous crop death is just plant more farms to compensate, but that unpreventable crop loss is going to reduce the sense of accomplishment at harvest time, because the player is getting screwed by RNG. Weeds Currently, we have weeds in that fallow farmland will grow grass and horsetails, which you will need to remove before you can plant anything in the tile. Adding the need to weed growing crops in order to avoid reduced harvest(bad result) or crop death(worst result) is at least a better option than spontaneous crop death, as it gives the player to chance to counteract a bad outcome. I think the main question to answer here is...how often is the player expected to weed their crops? If the player doesn't need to check often at all and can safely ignore the mechanic without penalty, I'm not sure it's really worth adding in the first place, as the current system already provides similar results. If the player needs to check almost daily and dispose of weeds promptly lest the crop be damaged, then you run into the issue of the player having to spend more time babysitting their farm, which is less time they're able to spend doing other things. I'll also note that the more often a player has to repeat a task, the more tedious it tends to become. Some tasks need to be done more often than others(like cooking or charcoal), that's true, however those tasks are fairly flexible in how and when you accomplish them. Exploration and pursuing the main story also become less attractive, as now the player has to choose between having a harvest of food or industrial material(flax, or similar crops if added), or pursuing the story or other resources. Honestly, the best alternative I see to a weed mechanic, is to simply allow weeds to turn farmland back into dirt blocks if left fallow for an extended time. That gives players an option to relocate farms without needing to replace all their dirt, while giving the consequence of needing to till your farmland again if they let their farm idle for too long. Crop Disease/Pests If weeds were bad about demanding player attention before something undesirable happens, these particular problems are much worse. Realistically, a player would need to destroy a diseased/pest-ridden tile immediately to prevent other tiles from getting infected, which is going to mean a LOT more micromanagement. Keep in mind that the setting is the late Middle Ages, so pesticides and whatnot aren't much of an option when it comes to counterplay. And it's not like the player can just ignore the affected tiles either, as doing so means losing the entire harvest. In any case, players who really enjoy farming and a lot of micromanagement might enjoy a mechanic like that, but I daresay the average player is going to find it frustrating if they need to devote that much attention to one gameplay loop just to ensure they get a good result. And like I mentioned previously, more micromanagement is going to discourage players from going on long exploration trips or pursing the main story, as they're likely to end up feeling like they're sabotaging their progress. The current implementation of farming might not be the most exciting thing in the world, but it does allow the player the option to plant crops before leaving on an expedition, and have a full harvest to look forward to when they return. ---------- After saying all that, I suppose one could simply brush off all those points by saying players should spend more time getting their base well-established before heading off to explore the story. However, that narrows the options that players have when it comes to the game's pacing. The current standard mode allows players to progress as fast or as slow as they'd like, which allows for a broader appeal. Requiring 100 hours or so of gameplay to set up a base just so a player can think about actually playing the story content might appeal to those who like a really slow pace game, but it's going to be a turn-off for those preferring a faster pace or preferring to have more control over their own pacing. Pretty much my general complaints in a nutshell. I've done my best to provide my thoughts, concerns, and otherwise attempt at well-ordered constructive criticism. Unfortunately, I've not seen much of a counter-argument to my points aside from getting told it's all irrelevant...because reasons...and other similar brush-offs.

I will note that number of downloads is a decent indicator of whether or not an idea is popular with the community. Mods like Primitive Survival, Expanded Foods, or Fauna of the Stone Age all have very high download counts, and also have features that are frequently asked for here in the forums. If I'm not mistaken, the devs themselves have stated that one of the best ways to get one's idea into the game, is to make a mod for it. The devs watch the modding database and it's not unusual for the most popular mods to be implemented into the game in some fashion, provided the mod fits the developers' vision for the game.

The problem with that statement? The more you ratchet up the difficulty of pursuing the main story, the less likely players will be to bother engaging that content. There's a delicate balance with the time and resources a player invests into a gameplay loop versus the reward they get for their efforts. If you make players jump through a bunch of difficult hoops just to eke by and survive as the favorable outcome...that's not a fun game anymore. It's a digital hamster wheel. It depends on how they're tweaked. What you've proposed, I don't think would work well at all, and would likely make the game more frustrating for the average player. I think the better option to improve farming without making it too much of a hassle, is simply decrease the crops dropped per tile slightly, and increase the time it takes crops to reach maturity slightly. The end result there is that one harvest per growing season on average(two with high quality soil); at that point, planting times become a little more critical to ensure you get a full harvest, and you're less likely to get an overflow of crops with a smaller farm. A change like this would help encourage players to make their farms a little bigger to compensate and pay closer attention to planting times for their climate, but it shouldn't otherwise make farming demand more of their time overall than it already does. Ruined farms and decrepit infrastructure is the end consequence I see when suggestions like this arise(that is, suggestions for increased maintenance to keep you crops and machinery going or it falls apart, etc). There are already mods that achieve similar effects in some cases, when they exist, though I don't recall seeing any of those mods be wildly popular. I believe you're also failing to understand just how long the player is expected to be away from home for current story content, let alone doing something like traveling to the tropics. On default settings, completing the entirety of chapter two will take the player away from home for about two in-game months; that's a lot of time to be losing progress. With the current balance, however, players are able to finish their chores at home, leave for a while, and pick up where they left off when they return. If you're wiping out crops, killing livestock, or destroying machinery because the player wasn't around to perform necessary chores and maintenance though...sure it's immersive, but now the player has to look forward to putting their base back together and trying to recover their progress every single time they leave for an extended period of time. If you're wipe player progress at random just in the name of "it's a hard game, get over it"...that's artificial difficulty. With the current state of the game, it's clear what the player has to do to get specific things. I will also note that some crops already die spontaneously--fruit trees. That's a big reason that many players just ignore fruit trees entirely; they take a lot of time to actually get going, and don't survive the planting oftentimes. I also think that when Vintage Story brands itself as "uncompromising", that means it doesn't really hold the player's hand. It doesn't mean stripping players of progress arbitrarily just because "it's a difficult survival game, so it must be difficult 100% of the time". The game has a steep learning curve, but the reward for learning how it works is that tasks get a lot easier to do. If you change the end result to that learning to more busywork with less reward, the gameplay becomes less satisfying to engage with. Yeah, because in the current state of the game it is a challenge depending on crop and climate, but there's quite a bit of wiggle room still to ensure that a broad range of player skill levels can achieve similar results. I've also not noticed a lot of people complain about farming being too hard or too easy, which suggests to me that farming is well-balanced in its current state, and not an issue. There are mods available to make certain farming aspects a bit more in-depth, for those that wish more detail, but I wouldn't call those mods wildly popular either. Right there. You're implying that players who don't like your proposed changes can decide whether they have the patience or not to keep playing the game, and just quit if it's too frustrating. At least that's how your statements read. With all due respect, that's exactly what you seem to be supporting your proposed changes with though. "Just deal with it, they don't adversely affect anything because I said so! Your concerns are irrelevant and unfounded, and it's an uncompromising survival game anyway!" I would say it's very relevant information. If you yourself haven't experienced long times away from your infrastructure, how can you just say that your changes won't cause problems? Likewise, how can you just brush off concerns about such changes potentially causing issues when players leave their bases for long trips(which you HAVE to do to complete the main story), if you don't have experience making those kinds of trips yourself? You don't need to live in the source code to consider the game as a whole. I would agree though, given some of what I've witnessed on the forums, that players who consider the game as a whole when making suggestions aren't the majority. That is a concern, yes. Only 2 of a planned 8 chapters have been implemented, and I suspect that future chapters will require the player to do a lot of traveling as well, or otherwise spend a decent chunk of time away from home per chapter. It might be further down the development road, but that's not a reason to say you can just ignore that part of design when suggesting changes like this. It's also not fair to say implementing your proposed changes now would have no effect on the story and required player travels, since the currently implemented story already have the player doing a lot of traveling. Story content isn't the only reason I've argued against plant diseases, weeds, and other related changes. Story content is the main reason a player is going to leave their base for long periods of time, hence why I keep referring to story content, but it's not the only reason a player can leave. In any case, the issue isn't just "what happens when the player leaves"; it's also a matter of how much extra time they'll have to sink into farming with your proposed changes. The more time they have to spend babysitting the farm, the less time they'll have to engage in other gameplay that they may enjoy more. I haven't played Better Than Wolves, but I've heard stories about it. Great point here about mods though--they're a great way to gauge how well an idea plays with the rest of the game, and whether or not the community as a whole enjoys it. I agree with @Thorfinn here; if you believe that strongly in your proposed changes to farming, turn them into a mod and see how it flies in the community. If it gains enough traction, it could be implemented into the game. Worst case scenario? You just make a niche difficulty mod that will still be enjoyed by some players. Agreed. I would also note that sometimes compromise needs to be made in order to achieve a fun end result. An example I would cite from Vintage Story itself is the fiasco that ensued when 1.20 first released. Sailboats were a bit...underwhelming...and some players REALLY did not like the distances that chapter 2 required you to travel for the story. The solution was to make the sailboat faster(which was needed) and add an option to allow player to customize the distance between story structures. In my opinion the distances were fine and set the tone beautifully for the story, so I don't think that change was needed, but I also think it's nice that the developers gave players that option. Pretty much my sentiment as well. I don't mind turning my own game into a ruthless challenge via mods, but that's my choice. Not everyone plays at the same level I do. Speaking from the artisan standpoint...creative mode is for experimenting with ideas easily and not having to worry about acquiring your own building materials. A good chunk of the fun of making works of art in the standard game mode is the process of gathering your own materials and bringing the work to life over time(also holds true for making art IRL). Likewise, some players will turn down the difficulty significantly so they focus more on just the cozy or creative aspects of the game, and some players will do the opposite because they want to enjoy other aspects of the game in addition to the creative one. There's also this weird artist trait that we make some our best work under pressure. I'm not saying that stressing yourself out to make art is healthy though! Beauty comes from pain, but make sure to take care of yourself as well.

I do like the concept of a pottery wheel, but I agree with @Rudometkin here--it shouldn't be a way to automate pottery. What a pottery wheel should do, is allow the player to rotate the project without needing to physically move around the project--similar to rotating forged items on an anvil. There might be a few exceptions, such as roof tiles, but otherwise most clayworks should fit on the wheel(technically, it's more of a turntable in this case, but still). I would say that some pottery could be locked behind the making of a pottery wheel in order to smooth out the early game a bit more. However, I think that kind of change would introduce unnecessary frustration for players, not to mention the fact that you don't need a pottery wheel in order to make pottery. A pottery wheel expedites the process and results in a prettier product in general, to be sure(been there done that), but it's not absolutely critical to have in order to make something functional.

This Simon you refer to is the original creator of the Hytale project, I would assume. I never really followed Hytale's development that closely, especially since it seems to essentially disappear shortly after the release of the initial teaser trailer. In any case, if the guy wants to invest his own resources into the project, and manages to actually release a product, more power to him. The main hurdle I see to overcome in that regard is all the negative news and sentiments regarding the difficulties of Hytale's development and recent cancellation. Not that it can't be overcome, mind you, but I daresay many people will be skeptical until a playable product is actually delivered.

Welcome to the forums! The dialogue you're looking for should be "Know of any interesting places around here?". Selecting it should prompt the treasure hunter to ask for a tin bronze pick in return for giving you a map to the location. If you don't see that dialogue option at all(or any similar option, though I don't think that dialogue has been modified), it sounds like you've encountered a bug and you'll want to consider reporting it over on the bug tracker.

Wait...really? Now I've got to try this... Also I thought that door style was just...barn doors. Did not know it had a proper name. TIL!

I wouldn't say that I play at a snail's pace, but I do like to take my time and put some effort into the aesthetics of my base instead of just building purely for function. I also enjoy collecting various things in the game and displaying them...seashells has been the latest obsession. Overall, I'd say that I don't usually start the main story until spring of year 1; by this time I have plenty of iron to work with, if not steel itself. A typical game from start to finish(completing current story content) runs about 100 hours of playtime, for me. Bear in mind that I do sleep through most nights--partly for immersion and partly because I don't like working in the dark. The next time you have a fire going, try sitting next to it. There's a special tune that plays for just such an occasion! I'm not sure of the exact conditions it needs to trigger, but you do have to be sitting by a lit firepit, and I think it may need to be nighttime. The cooking part is optional I believe, but if you've got the fire going anyway why not cook something tasty?

Vintage Story is a slow burn regarding gameplay and story pacing, however, I don't think it's a good idea to force players to wait until the second or third in-game year to be well-established enough to even think of pursuing story content. The great thing about the current structure is that it's flexible enough to allow players to take things as fast or as slow as they like--and that's on the default settings. As for traveling very long distances, yes, players will usually need to supplement supplies with foraging and hunting, but that doesn't mean that they should always have to be coming back to ruined food stores and decrepit infrastructure after every long outing. Again, if you're simply going to wipe player progress at random, despite the fact that they put in the work to do everything right...that's going to frustrate the player more likely than not. As a mod, sure, it would be fine, and add an optional challenge for those that want it. You contradict yourself here, somewhat. Death by lightning is kind of one of those "bad luck" deaths, in that it's extremely unlikely to occur, but the player also has an opportunity to prevent deaths like that by simply taking shelter during thunderstorms. The lightning death scenario doesn't really work as an equal comparison here though, since again...death to lightning is extremely unlikely(and also requires a very specific set of circumstances to occur) and also preventable by the player. Pest-destroying crops and disease don't have nearly as strict of parameters, so they're much more likely to occur. Perhaps not with the extreme side effect of death, but again...if you're just destroying crops at random to simulate pests/disease, you're still wiping player progress without giving them opportunity to salvage the situation(and also telling them to just "deal with it"!). Now perhaps you could give them opportunity to deal with the issues before they lose their crops, but keep in mind that the methods need to match medieval technology. Also keep in mind too that the more resources from the player a gameplay loop demands, the less resources they'll have to devote elsewhere to gameplay they may enjoy more. Not every animal lives on just grass, and most food will rot in troughs. Water will freeze in the winter, if it gets cold enough in that climate. Quality soil like terra preta takes a long time to produce in quantity, and if you're sealing off farms to stop weeds you're essentially just farming exclusively in greenhouses. That's not to say players couldn't find solutions to those issues, however...the reason things are set up the way they are now is to allow players flexibility. Most players know that animals need to be tended, but I daresay that most players also appreciate that they can run off on adventures when they wish and return home to an intact base, instead of needing to constantly babysit their animals and farms. If you change that balance too much, you're narrowing the range of gameplay options that players have. The average player should find at least most gameplay loops worth completing. Farming is already a little more intensive than it is in other games, as you need to manage soil quality, moisture, and temperature parameters to ensure you get a harvest. However, it's also a simple enough system that most players can manage it and have some fun, even if they don't enjoy farming that much, while still leaving players plenty of time to work on other gameplay loops. Torches burn out in order to encourage the player to seek better lighting solutions. The advantage of torches is that they're very cheap and easily made while offering a decent light radius; if you simply made them permanent light without needing a torch holder, then there's no reason to invest in things like lanterns aside from aesthetics. I will also note that the burnout timer on a torch is quite generous--48 in-game hours. Likewise, you can reset that timer just by breaking and replacing a torch, so it's possible to keep your starting home lit with just a single torch until you have a better option. There's also this phenomenon where people hate the extremely punishing aspects of the game and come on to the forums to demand change(sometimes they ask nicely though). In my experience, it's more common to have a bunch of complaint threads arise when default gameplay is tweaked to be more challenging, than it is for threads complaining about the game being too easy. Generally, I would guess that players who find certain gameplay loops not quite challenging enough will be tweaking things to their liking with mods. One good example I can think of here is the recent change to fire clay and the quern crafting recipe--there were quite a few players that complained about the changes. It was, however, a change for the better since it smoothed out the early portions of the game and gave more value to all the flint one inevitably collects. What the change did not do, however, was require players to spend a significantly larger portion of their time in a specific gameplay loop at the expense of others. Actually, I would argue objections like that are a great reason not to add certain features to a game, provided that a strong supporting case is made for said objections. A steep learning curve is fine, but one that is too steep will discourage more players from sticking with the game(or trying it in the first place) than it will draw in new players. Gameplay that becomes a chore rather than fun also isn't going to retain players, as the main reason for playing a videogame to begin with is getting a fun escape from reality for a while. I mean, if you're going to use that argument, they can always just...not play the game too. Generally, it's not good for a game's long term health to frustrate players to the point of quitting(especially newer players). There will always be a handful that do, of course, and that's natural, but if it becomes a common occurrence that's not good. Currently, you can plant your farms, go off on an adventure, and return to harvest, provided you timed things appropriately. A player may or may not need the food, but they'll most likely want a flax harvest to come back to, given how useful flax is. They may want food as well, depending on their game settings and the time of year that they return. In any case, they're not going to need to worry about having to start over from scratch or missing out on too many resources vital to other gameplay loops(such as flax). It's great that we have a lot of settings and toggle to adjust various things. However, I'm personally not a fan of "just make it a toggle" as an answer to most arguments, as coding often isn't as simple as it seems. Likewise, a toggle for something that is supposed to be part of the core game experience feels...cheap, though that's just my opinion. I should also note that when it comes to suggestions for the game, I tend to look through the lens of what fits the overall vision that's been presented for the Standard gameplay mode, as that is what I would consider the default mode for the average player. I'm curious about the answer here as well. As I recall, the entirety of the planned story was supposed to take a hundred hours of gameplay to complete or so, once the full story is fully implemented. Of an eight planned chapters, we have two implemented so far, and judging based on @Thorfinn's gameplay style it's possible to complete the current two in about 50 hours of playtime...although as I understand it that's also pushing the absolute bleeding edge of how fast one can progress in the game. For my own experience, I'm somewhat laid back and usually end up finishing the story content about 75-100 hours into the world. Not to spoil too much regarding chapter 2, but it's very intense regarding the amount of time the average player will need to spend away from home in order to complete it. On default settings, I'm usually gone for about one and a half in-game months, and that's with really pushing the progress instead of taking my time traveling, assuming no delays due to death. Since the answer posted before I finished typing all this...I wouldn't say it's irrelevant at all. It's not really fair to say your proposed changes would be "no big deal to long player outings" and that players can just "deal with it", if you yourself haven't completed the main story(which is one of the core reasons to play the game). It's also not fair to push for a change that may drastically affect the story content already implemented, and just expect the story content to be reworked to support said change. I'm not trying to put you down for not having played through the story either. However, it's unfortunately not an uncommon occurrence for inexperienced players to hop on the forums and start asking for things that already exist in the game or proposing changes that haven't been fully thought out regarding the game as a whole. It's also why you tend to see veteran players react with "not for the vanilla game, but it would make a great mod" regarding a lot of suggestions. Vintage Story was built to be highly moddable, and the beauty of mods is that they allow players to season the game exactly to their liking, without altering the overall core experience for everyone else.

Welcome to the forums! Unfortunately, if there is no crafting recipe in the handbook, it's not a craftable item(generally--there are bugs or oversights on occasion). Until a proper recipe is added to the game, you'll need to either get those blocks from creative(you can substitute a recipe from a similar block and just sacrifice necessary materials if you wish), or check the mod database for a mod that adds a proper recipe.

Welcome to the forums! You guys might consider checking out this mod: https://mods.vintagestory.at/craftablecartography I don't know that it works in the latest stable version, but you might keep an eye on it.

Animals do already run away when damaged, and if they're close enough and inclined to aggression they will absolutely try to attack you. Domesticated animals will still alert their herdmates if they feel there is a threat nearby, and can be notoriously uncooperative if they don't want to do something. This is why some farm chores are multi-man tasks. I would also say that the behavior already exists for in-game livestock, to an extent. Domestication simply causes them to stop automatically trying to run away or attack if you get too close, however, it won't stop them from reacting to being smacked. I'm inclined to agree, however...I'm not sure it would be a good addition in terms of fun gameplay. Currently, it takes at least a handful of shots to kill most game, likely for balance reasons since being able to kill most animals with a single shot would make hunting too easy and strong compared to acquiring livestock. If you can scare an animal away or provoke attack simply by missing, that's going to lead to a lot of frustration on the player's part.