LadyWYT

Another angle I forgot to mention in regards to how penalties could work--I modded my Skyrim files to have an injury system, and the general penalty of those is decreasing player health/stamina/magicka/movement speed as appropriate until the injury is treated or heals. Treating the injury can clear up some, but not all of the penalties, and failing to treat the injury properly can potentially lead to it getting worse. The more serious injuries, like broken bones, heal very slowly and can prevent players from moving quickly or wielding physical weapons, but splinting the bone can restore some movement(allowing the player to use things in that hand) as well as help the break heal faster. Of course, there are also potions that will heal injuries instantly, but the system feels rather insignificant if one can just make instant cures. I could see a similar system working for Vintage Story, in that illness and wounds will heal on their own over time, but will heal much faster with proper care. Serious injuries will need more diligent care lest they become worse, like a gash becoming infected because the player couldn't be bothered to clean and bandage the wound.

From a cosmetic standpoint, maybe, but from a practical standpoint? No, because of the respawn mechanic actually being canon. It makes sense that the player might be "frozen" at a certain point in time, and thus be able to "reset" back to the point at death no matter how much damage their body sustained. However, at the same time, it's worth pointing out that even with prosthetics, a missing limb is still a major disadvantage when it comes to survival situations, and many of the things that the player character does are things that really require peak conditioning. You don't need to make the injuries carry over after respawn to discourage the player from resorting to death to fix things instead of proper medical treatment, although to be fair, handling it that way is a pretty strong deterrent. A simpler solution is to give the player a fresh start but impose "resurrection sickness" for a while after they respawn, debuffing some of the player's stats for several hours/a couple of days so they'll need to take it easy rather than participate in strenuous activities. There should be a short grace period though--a few real life minutes--to ensure that if the player died in combat, they have a chance to get their stuff back before suffering penalties from resurrection sickness. World of Warcraft used resurrection sickness to push players to run back to their bodies if they died in the open world, rather than just take the convenience of the graveyard healer every time. The graveyard healer was still useful in the event you couldn't make it back to your body for some reason, but the resulting debuff meant you were going to be taking a short break from your adventures to recover your health and strength. If you tried adventuring with that debuff, you were going to be fighting at a significant disadvantage.

Servers would need some sort of control over the mechanic. Otherwise you end up with griefers deliberately sabotaging a town with vermin and frustrating everyone else. Or players who take a break from the game get overrun by vermin while they're away and there's nothing anyone can really do about it, aside from server admins. In fairness, you don't really need a server-wide plague to RP a doctor effectively, and a server-wide plague is probably going to require admin intervention in order to actually stop. For roleplaying though, a status effect system should be enough to make RPing a doctor worthwhile. It's not just disease that needs to be treated--it's the combat injuries and broken bones from falls as well. For a traveling doctor, it could be as simple as venturing outside the office to make house calls, or actively traveling from town to town, though I'd wager most sizeable settlements will try to convince a doctor to stay in order to ensure they have better access to medical care.

Technically, monsters should be able to tear through a lot of things, but destroying builds is one quick way to produce a lot of frustrated players. It also leads to issues in ruins as well, since there are ruined doors that monsters could be messing with. That can render searching for them pointless, as well as diminish the concept of the place being untouched for decades. Bellhead shivers only spawn deep underground, so they aren't really a threat to player bases unless the player turned off stability mechanics and built down near bedrock. That could change if they were allowed to spawn on the surface outside of temporal storms, but in that case you have a nightmare tier enemy running around wreaking havoc on players who don't have access to good weapons and armor yet.

A little blood splatter is probably fine; the entire model doesn't need to be drenched or anything. Monster blood has been described as sludgy, and I'm not sure they really have any blood circulation, so there's not as much there to really splatter. Automatons would have oil and hydraulic fluid, and probably be messier in that case. Of course, all the above could be ignored in favor of adjusting animations based on remaining creature health. It still gets the point across while avoiding potentially upsetting visuals. It'd also be interesting if perhaps certain enemy actions were disabled when at low health or under certain status effects. For example, a locust at low health might not be able to use its spring attack anymore, allowing the player to back away to safety or finish it off more easily.

Maybe rapids spawn too frequently and need to be a more rare occurrence? That way watermills still remain strong, but are highly situational, lending more use to windmills and other power sources. Although that being said...I've found myself relying more heavily on windmills despite the frequency of rapids, since I don't always want to settle near rapids. Personally, I find windmills a little less awkward to work with. Watermills are very handy, but it's possible to misplace the block or mess up the water flow. It's also a little awkward trying to deal with a lateral connection for multiple machines rather than connect a vertical shaft to a large gear and run everything off that.

Also worth noting that you're using out-of-date mods. Older mods sometimes work fine on newer versions, but 1.22 introduced code changes that a broke a lot of older mods, especially those involving entities. I recommend checking your modlist and making sure everything is updated correctly, in addition to what @MKMoose stated above.

Welcome to the forums! My best guess, at a glance, is that it's the shader mod having some goofy interference with another mod, or perhaps not playing nicely with the player's hardware or settings. You could try removing that mod and see if that clears up the issue. If it's a fresh client then there shouldn't have been any older mods in the folder that could interfere. That being said, do check the modlist to make sure everything is updated correctly for 1.22, just in case there's an outdated mod in the list. Otherwise, the only way to figure out which mod is causing the issue is to disable them all, make sure vanilla works correctly, and then re-enable them one by one and test as you do so until you encounter the problem again.

No, dry dirt is pretty noticeable too. Mud makes a mess faster, but dry dirt is still a rather gritty, unpleasant feeling and gets rather messy when mixed with sweat. And other people do notice if you're all dusty. I like the idea, but I think it should have an effect on NPC interactions so that there's a reason for the player to take a bath, in addition to making the player more likely to get sick if they don't keep themselves clean. Harvesting carcasses and melee combat with certain creatures could splatter the player in blood. I dunno about black lung disease. It is a realistic risk of coal mining, but given how much coal/charcoal the player needs to process throughout the game, it probably needs to be either a difficult disease to catch, or an easy disease to treat if added.

If it is some sort of monetization program, the best I can think of is some sort of "tip jar" system so that players can donate to their favorite mod authors without needing to rely on a middleman like Patreon or Ko-fi or something. With the understanding, of course, that the mods have to be free by default--no locking things behind a paywall. Minecraft's Marketplace, as well as the Sims' marketplace, are good examples of how wrong monetization can go. There's also the incident that happened with Skyrim, when monetized mods were allowed there. Aside from the typical "low quality mod attempting to make a quick buck", some of the more prominent mods that other mods/modlists relied on to work correctly were getting locked behind paywalls and thus breaking things, and the modding community itself was going to war over who was okay with the policies versus who was not. Ultimately things got straightened out, at least somewhat, but the damage was already done and I'm not sure that the community has ever really recovered from it.

Welcome to the forums! This mod might be a good alternative: https://mods.vintagestory.at/catchlivestock I seem to recall seeing a snippet somewhere indicating that Pure Winter stopped modding, left the modding community, and took down whatever mods they had made. I'm not sure why. But that's likely why you're not able to find the mod page. Aside from mods that violate the TOS, it's up to the mod authors whether or not they want to leave their mod on the database.

Welcome to the forums! I'm not sure, but they may be working towards implementing this kind of feature sometime in the near future, based on this bit from the news thread: That's not to say that the feature will ever be implemented either, but it seems like a reasonable thing to add to me. If things are required for entry, it's fair to know about those things in advance so that you can make sure you meet the entry requirements before finding out the hard way at the door.

I think drifters are fine. They're simple enemies, yes, but every game is going to have a "basic" enemy, and drifters have a few more tools than basic enemies in other games. Drifters prefer melee attacks, but can throw rocks, meaning that players can't just sit on a pillar or other safe vantage point and shoot them entirely from safety. The crawling drifters are slower than their shuffling counterparts, but unlike the standard drifter, the crawlers can fit through one-block spaces. Tier 3+ drifters have much higher knockback on their attacks, which can easily send a player flying into a corner or over a ledge if the player isn't careful. And of course, while surface drifters die rather quickly to decent weapons, high rift activity can produce them in swarms, giving them a numbers advantage. In any case, while more complex enemies are oftentimes more fun and challenging to fight, it's important to have some basic enemies in the mix as well to offer the player a break. Shivers I don't mind as they are, but in some ways I think they should have had a lower health pool as a trade-off for the increased speed and attack. The deepsplits are fine, since nightmare tier enemies are supposed to be terrifying monstrosities at all levels of play, and the deepsplit shivers seem to be a bit slower than their counterparts. That stuff is pretty important to singleplayer as well. Part of the reason combat feels so clunky right now is how the hitboxes and animations are set up. It's quite easy to get swatted into a wall, or clip into an entity's hitbox so you can't hit it but it can still hit you(bears are really bad about this), or swing at a target and miss entirely because you moved your crosshair off-target before the attack animation finished playing. By fine-tuning hitboxes and animations, players will be able to dodge attacks and land their own attacks with greater success.

I'm not sure that I would call just making bigger farms and storing more food very satisfying counterplay. The player still loses the crop to bad RNG, and rather than do the math and produce what they need to survive the winter and plan for trips, they're reduced to hoarding food because there's just no way to know when the game will decide disaster strikes. Though I would argue that hoarding food for multiple years isn't foolproof either since there could be bad vermin RNG and wipe out those stores. There's also the problem of what happens in multiplayer if everyone's crops fail, or a few players get struck by bad RNG and the rest don't. Do the fortunate players get forced to share? Do the unfortunate players get told to suck it up and deal with it? Griefing tends to be frowned upon, and most players tend not to be keen on giving away the fruits of their labor. Currently, food isn't terribly tough to manage, but it's deceptively simple. If the player gets lazy about foodstores or makes a miscalculation, they'll likely have to stop what they're doing and scramble to deal with the problem lest they starve. Other mistakes tend not to be quite as severe. I mean if you dump enough large hail on an area, I don't think it really matters what crops are planted there--something is getting damaged. To be fair, I'm not entirely against having large hail damage crops, since that's a pretty rare weather event in the game, but heat waves and frosts are a lot more common, and thus the player should have a way to plan around them. Kind of, but I was leaning more into the cosmetic strengths here. If players really need more incentive to dress scarecrows in something other than basic rawhide and strawhats, perhaps just give a "scare bonus" to scarecrows that have more clothing slots filled. Mice, rats, crows, and other pests are fairly smart though, and quite widespread. It doesn't really make sense that the player's homestead is going to magically be pest-free for the first year and then get assaulted for eternity when the timer is up. Setting up a grace period like that can also easily lull players into a false sense of security--since they don't have any pests or other problems the entire first year, they're going to assume that they don't need to worry about things like that. I would want an option to turn this off, since I really don't want vermin chewing holes in my builds, and I don't want to constantly be patching holes in my builds either. Or patching holes in the furniture. Or having potential storage sacks rendered entirely unusable because something chewed a hole in it. Probably also fair to point out that rats and mice can chew through some pretty tough materials. Mortar and some types of concrete definitely aren't immune.

For a space to qualify as a room, it needs to be no bigger than 14x14x14 and sealed off with appropriate doors, windows, and insulating blocks. https://wiki.vintagestory.at/Room Exceeding those dimensions, chiseling away too much of the structure, or using crude doors will render a room invalid. Likewise, using fences and gates to cover windows instead of glass might look nice and keep creatures out, but those won't count as insulating blocks. /debug rooms hi should be the correct command for checking whether or not a space qualifies as a room. Since you mentioned there was no chiselwork involved, I'd recommend making sure the room dimensions aren't exceeding the 14x14x14 limit and otherwise make sure that you have proper doors and windows. If you used slabs in the construction, make sure that the slabs are flush to the interior; if they are flush to the exterior then they won't count as insulating blocks for that space. I'm guessing the problem is just that your rooms are too big to qualify as insulated spaces. Splitting the big rooms into smaller rooms should solve the problem. Or build a fireplace and light a cozy fire as needed.

Welcome to the game and forums! Even with modern advancements, it's still quite easy for a crop to fail or get wiped out by pests or weather. That being said, while these might be realistic threats, they don't make for very fun videogame mechanics since there's often no counterplay options. Some players might enjoy that kind of gameplay, but most are likely to get very frustrated when say, they planted their crops at the correct time and otherwise did everything properly, only to lose the crop because of bad RNG. While greenhouses are useful, I don't think players should be forced into building greenhouses for absolutely everything. Likewise, telling the player "you lose" despite them doing everything right does not make for happy players. A better solution here would probably be to add a bit of temperature fluctuation throughout the year, rather than have temperature be a static increase/decrease. That is, winters will still be appropriately cold, and summers appropriately hot, but the ideal time for planting and harvest isn't necessarily going to fall on the exact same day every year. The player could choose to plant crops as early as possible, and potentially get an earlier harvest, but it's also possible that there could be a cold snap that damages the crops. Waiting a few days to make sure the danger of frost has passed will delay a crop and might mean fewer plantings, but it's also less of a risk. Same goes for planting heat-sensitive crops later in the year--planting your turnips later in the spring might mean the crop gets damaged by an early heat wave. In any case, this solution allows the player to take some risks, as well as use their knowledge to mitigate existing risks, without slapping them with a penalty "just because". Locusts are a bit much. Yes, they are edible. I don't think most players would be thrilled about eating them. The thing about locusts is that they eat every green thing in sight, so they'd be eating up more than just the crops, and to my knowledge there's no way to really slow down a locust swarm either. Maybe burning off large swaths of land, perhaps, but that's a bit much to ask of the player. Trying to simulate all those bugs and the resulting damage is also likely to be rather rough on weaker hardware. I think this works better if it's a penalty for planting the same crops in the same tiles for an extended time; same goes for pests affecting crops. Part of the reason crop rotation is a thing is to prevent diseases and pests. The player could still engage in monoculture and use fertilizer to replenish soil nutrients, but it's the kind of strategy that would become less effective over long periods of time. Scarecrows are a good solution to warding off birds from certain crops. However, I don't think it's necessary to require the player to move them around. It'd not only be a hassle, but also easy to cheese, since moving the scarecrow a single tile over would probably satisfy the requirements(or if not, then it becomes even more hassle trying to figure out how to move everything around). The player should absolutely be able to dress up the scarecrows though--not only would it be fun, but it would also be something of a resource sink for the player. They'd either need to make clothes, buy clothes, or find clothes to dress the scarecrow in. Rats and mice get into storage even with cats and dogs prowling your property, though perhaps at a lower rate. In any case, I'm not sure this would be a very fun one to deal with. I'd like to see them as ambient creatures(and pets, in the case of rats), but I think a better threat to foodstores would be making rot/spoiled food increase the spoilage rate of fresher foods stored in the same containers. In that case, the player isn't going to get frustrated by trying to fight a never-ending battle with vermin, but they will need to check their foodstuffs every so often and discard items that are starting to spoil, lest they lose the entire container's worth of food. As it currently stands, the player can store fresh meat in a jar full of rot, without any consequences. As a general rule, I think the player should face the same challenges in the first year that they will need to face throughout the rest of the game, at least when it comes to basic survival. That way they know what to expect and aren't lulled into a false sense of security, or otherwise feeling cheated when the game stops playing nice.

Winter months are ideal for refining iron and steel, since you're not really going to be traveling much of anywhere and winter often brings stronger, more frequent winds. The forge and refractory fires are also very good at keeping you warm. Otherwise, winter is a prime time for decorating and organizing your base, as well as making plans for the big projects you'd like to accomplish when warmer weather arrives. If you don't mind a challenge though, winter can also be an interesting time to travel, since stopping to camp from time to time will be a lot more important, and you'll be able to cross water on ice in certain instances, if the ice has had time to form. In these cases, that's when I log out of the world and go find something else to do for a while. Moments like these act as natural break points, so I walk away feeling satisfied with what I accomplished rather than feeling like I had to force myself to stop.

Welcome to the game and forums! The main advantage of windmills is that they can output more power than a watermill, to an extent, and can be built anywhere. The main disadvantage is...if the wind isn't strong enough, you're not going to get much out of it. Watermills require you to build in a specific location and might be a little slower, but they provide constant power. I recommend double-checking your setup; there's probably something wrong with how everything is linked together. A single full windmill should be able to operate a helve hammer or turn a quern without any issues, as long as the wind is blowing. However, if the gears aren't set up correctly then it's very possible that the power being generated isn't actually making it to the machines. It's also possible that the gears could be set up correctly, but you might be trying to run everything at once and not be meeting the power requirements. Helve hammers take a lot of power; querns not so much, but four of them is still a pretty good load. If you don't have switches to shut off the power to the machines, you might want to try investing in some so that only the machines currently being used will receive the power.

Why not both? The former can act as a small convenience for tougher story locations, perhaps requiring the player to sacrifice a bit of health or otherwise complete a small puzzle in order to activate the device. The latter would be extremely useful for players who want to play without the map enabled, or who otherwise might want to build a puzzle somewhere and send their friends on a treasure hunt. It could also serve as a useful plot device to point a player to a location, instead of always needing to rely on maps(that characters may or may not be able to feasibly draw). Likewise, those anchors could be a component needed to build one's own teleporters, and it would make it very easy to change the teleporter's destination as well by simply swapping out the "anchor". That means players could build a single teleporter at their base and swap the anchors as needed, rather than needing to build an entire hall of teleporters to handle a network. I think in this case, the base return teleporter(BRT) will still work as long as the anchor it's linked to is actually placed down in the world. If the anchor is sitting in someone's inventory or sitting in a storage container, then it will be unusable until the anchor is placed down somewhere. Of course, the easiest solution is probably just to break the link if the anchor is picked up. Overall, the BRT is best suited to the job it has now--a single-use convenience item that allows the player to safely skip the walk home. I'm okay with random part drops, but I would like a way to exchange parts that I don't need for parts that I do need. Perhaps even a way to purchase parts with rusty gears, albeit at an expensive price. Actually, I don't think Jonas parts should be craftable, at least not on the basic level. The player does have most advanced knowledge, yes, since much knowledge has been lost to time, but the player isn't exactly on the same level as Jonas himself or the lead engineers. Except maybe the Clockmaker, but that's too much power for a single class. I wouldn't mind seeing more advanced parts required in construction though, in return for making the basic parts a little easier to acquire. Not everything requires lots of complex parts, but it is rather satisfying to build the more complex pieces of a project over time before finally being able to assemble it all later. This is why the player gets a "fast travel" option as a reward for completing Chapter Two. Yes, the journey takes a lot of time, but the time spent makes the world feel believably big, so it's not something you finish only to think "gee, why couldn't any of the local traders tell me about any of this" or "why does everyone act like it's some sort of vast distance when it only took me a few minutes to jog there." However, like you said, return trips aren't going to be as exciting, because you already know what's there and at that point you're just doing a mundane task rather than setting forth on a quest. In these cases, it's not a bad idea to give players some sort of option to make these future trips a little shorter.

Tagging on to what @williams_482 said, soil fertility doesn't affect how fast the cutting will grow, but will affect its health and care requirements once it matures. Low fertility soil will produce a bush that is struggling; better soils will produce a healthy bush. Getting a bush to the bountiful state, I think, requires terra preta, or high fertility soil treated with potash. As for the nutrient use, bushes will use up the nutrients as they produce crops; the nutrient demand does decrease slowly over time, but those nutrients won't be replenished unless you fertilize the tile. Actually, I'm more inclined to say that terra preta is better suited to berry bushes, and high/medium fertility soil better suited for crops. Terra preta is hard to get, but it makes for a very productive bush that won't need quite as much attention. That means you don't need to worry about planting and taking care of as many bushes. In contrast, crop fields are always going to be rather large, so it's going to be difficult to get that much terra preta to cover them all. High/medium fertility soil is much easier to fill a large area with, and crop fields will also replenish their nutrients over time if you let them fallow or rotate crops properly. The one exception I can think of is a greenhouse--you might want to invest terra preta there if you're trying to grow an exotic crop like pineapple outside of its natural climate.

I think the idea is that the more lethal combat pushes the player to invest in things like copper armor, since it will allow them a second chance in the fight rather than just dying to the first hit. On standard difficulty there's not as much reason to make that kind of investment, since an unarmored player can take a handful of hits from most common creatures before they die.

Oddly enough it's the hunter who ends up breaking more doors than me. But this is also why using a crude door when playing with friends is a very good idea. You just never know when the thing is going to fall off its hinges and it's almost always hilarious when it happens. I think PvP is where damage types really start to shine. For a singleplayer setup, it's not such a big deal except maybe in the case of a proper RPG, since most games tend to favor allowing the player to pick whatever weapon they want and then stick to that. The player might struggle a little more on certain fights in that case, but they're probably not going to fail the fight entirely and need to retreat. To cite some of my own gameplay as an example--I installed a mod for Skyrim that adds different damage types and resistances to various enemies and armor. A sword will take care of most things, even if you run into some resistance, but it's generally possible to power your way through, especially with the right perks. There are a few instances though where perks and enchantments won't really save you, and you'll need to invest in a proper counter. Dwarven centurions are highly resistant to slashing damage, so it's a good idea to have some sort of magic at the ready or otherwise bring a follower that can counter what you cannot. Though regarding armor and damage resistance...I think for the player armor, a simple system such as what Age of Empires II employs would work rather well. Basically, different armors could be better at preventing certain status effects, but when it comes to the damage reduction itself, you have two basic armor rating--melee and pierce. Melee armor is how much damage from a melee attack will be prevented, while pierce armor determines how much damage from projectiles will be prevented. In AoE II, it works out rather well because you can have a unit with high melee armor that will be brutal in brawls, but easy to deal with at range. The huskarl's high pierce armor makes them highly effective at killing ranged units, but while they can hold their own in a melee fight they don't have quite as much melee armor and tend to struggle a bit. I mean, to some extent this is how it is now. You get used to playing a certain class, then switch for a while and get very confused when you're not hitting as hard as you should or you have way more food than you know what to do with. At least in my case, I tend to end up a little confused when playing Hunter/Malefactor, as the experience is very easy compared to what I'm used to.

Posture/stance could be what determines which idle animations play and how often. Though idle animations are also fairly generic so I'm not quite sure how that would work.

No matter what the date is, "customer service face" will always be a thing. Honestly, I don't really mind the static expressions. It helps depict the character's personality. However, I do think that the expression could change while the character is emoting. Gloomy characters can easily offer a brief smile when they're happy or excited; cheerful characters will absolutely cry when they're sad. Sick characters would look a little stressed. If there was an actual exhaustion mechanic, characters who go too long without sleeping would definitely look tired. There's also the reputation aspect. NPCs might be more reserved around characters they don't know very well or otherwise don't trust very much. Characters that are friends with NPCs or otherwise look like friendly sorts would be more likely to be greeted with smiles.

In fairness I wouldn't call it a total flop either. But to my knowledge it's not exactly a game you can mention and have people immediately know what you're talking about(as opposed to Minecraft, WoW, FFXIV, Mario, Skyrim, etc). According to Steam, it has a Mixed reception at 62%. The positive reviews seem to be those that really enjoy crafting, games that are heavily focused on community(so not friendly to solo play), and extremely grindy MMOs. The negative reviews express a lot of frustration with how much the game makes players grind to get anywhere, clunky controls and mechanics, dated graphics, not enough players, "free to play" being a little misleading...the nail in the coffin, in my opinion, was the negative review from the guy who put over 2400 hours into the game, and he made it pretty clear that it was the friends he had in the game, and not the game itself, that really kept him invested.