LadyWYT

I'd wager that probably hinges on what they're planning for 1.21 and how close they are to finishing it, compared to lingering issues from 1.20. If there's no terribly serious lingering issues(ie, issues that absolutely can't wait to be fixed) and 1.21 is decently close to a trial version, then I would say fixes will be implemented in 1.21. Otherwise, I'd expect another patch or two for 1.20 bugfixes while the devs are working on 1.21.

I'd argue it's been implied that the world was heavily messed up in the initial cataclysm, and then rearranged further in some of the temporal storms that followed, as those have been noted to have been a lot stronger than the ones the player currently faces. For at least one important story location, the structure's exact position is specifically stated to be unknown by a particular NPC, as the world has shifted. Gotcha. Floating islands aren't realistic, though I find them neat to look at and would chalk it up to be a side effect of the temporal forces exerting themselves on the world. As for the other bits, that's what I would call marshes, sand hills, or canyons/mesas. Certainly not as big as what you'd find in real life, but that kind of terrain does exist in certain parts of the world. As for navigating those areas in the game, I usually either find an easier path around, or sink in the time and resources to build a proper road through the terrain so future travels go more smoothly.

Welcome to the forums! Personally, I think first-person mode is the stronger mode to play in for a game like this, HOWEVER...it would also be nice to have a more functional third-person mode for playing so players can pick whichever they prefer. I'd also wager that such a mode would open up more possibilities for filming short stories and such in the game, especially if the crosshair was able to be toggled. You might give this mod a shot in the meantime. Judging by the comments section, it may be having some issues at the moment, but it's something to keep an eye on/fiddle with until a proper third person option is implemented in the game. https://mods.vintagestory.at/immersivetpscamera

I would assume by "ads" they meant the Youtube trailers. Which personally, what's showcased in the trailers fits my general experiences with the game pretty well, though I would say a lot of trailer showcase vs. actual player experience hinges heavily on individual playstyle.

I'd suspect such a change to drifters would result in an increase of complaints of how they hit too hard and take too long to kill. The rock throws are more annoying than actually dangerous most of the time, which is somewhat the point--to annoy players enough to potentially provoke a fight or otherwise cause errors in judgment. In large packs, drifter rocks can be much more dangerous, however, drifters are also a lot more likely to pelt each other instead and start a brawl between themselves in that scenario(which a player can use to their advantage). Bowtorn do a lot more damage, yes, however...their ranged attacks are currently countered easily by a shield or the most basic of armors.

Have you tried turning down the upheaval rate and/or turning up the landform scale? The upheaval rate is what governs how rough the terrain is, so turning it down will smooth things out significantly, though at the expense of losing more proper mountain terrain the further down you crank it. Landform scale affects how much area things like mountains, plains, and lakes cover, so the higher you set that value the larger the particular landform will be. Of course, while it can make the flat spaces a lot bigger, it also means that when you encounter difficult terrain(like mountains) it will cover a wider area as well. I do like this idea, and I suspect we'll see it implemented someday. Personally I'm satisfied with what we have available regarding terrain generation. However, I also expect it to go through a few more changes before the game reaches a "finished" state. Given some of the recent patch notes, this seems to be something the devs are working to fix.

I'm curious how you managed that, as I'm assuming you're hunting that area outside of temporal storm activity. Do the special enemies spawn there naturally? I know the place is crawling with higher tiers of enemies, and has little loot boxes scattered around to find that can include Jonas parts, but I've never considered going there to look for the special enemy spawns.

I think bowtorns and temporal storms are a case of buggy bits of code that haven't been fully swatted yet. I've been playing on 1.20.7 and the storms have been a LOT better in terms of monster ratios, being mostly drifters and shivers and almost no bowtorn. I say "almost", because my friend and I have been absolutely dumped on by armies of bowtorn spawning sometimes, to the point he has to go into creative with the admin blade and clean them up. I've noticed that when those armies spawn though, there's always higher rift activity, with rifts nearby that churn out nothing but bowtorn. Doesn't matter if it's day or night. And since those bowtorn are spawned from a rift and not the temporal storm, they will linger after the storm instead of poofing from existence. In other words, fix the rift spawns, and I think the bowtorn stop being a problem during temporal storms. I'm pretty sure this is a deliberate design decision to keep the monsters as an esoteric environmental hazard constantly looming in the background, rather than entities you actively want to hunt. Subnautica made similar decisions with its monsters--they don't drop anything or have cool death animations, so players don't have a lot of incentive to go hunt them. You can, of course, despite the lack of weapons, but overall they remain an environmental hazard that's best avoided in most cases than confronted head-on. Vintage Story is a bit different, in that you actually have the means to counter enemies. In most cases, it's still to your advantage to avoid combat if you can, since injury increases your death risk(which can have potentially severe penalties) and wears out gear faster. Sometimes you need to deal with the enemies though, whether to complete story objectives or otherwise secure an area, and in those cases the stuff the enemies drop is just a nice little bonus every now and then(and not enough to unbalance progression). Probably symptoms of hitboxes that need some tuning. The faster creatures tend to be harder to hit, especially if they move erratically, however, I'm not sure that the hitboxes always match the size of the creature they belong to. I'm guessing the hitbox sizes are probably why some attacks miss when it feels like they should have hit. It's something that I would expect to improve with time. I've not looked at hitboxes in other games, but my guess is that in some other games the hitboxes might be a bit bigger than the creatures they belong to, making it much easier to land attacks. This is something that may or may not change with a future update. Personally, I don't expect to be entering rifts, outside of specific story pieces. There's not a lot of lore on the Rust World yet, but what's been presented so far has made it out to be a place that you REALLY don't want to be. I also suspect that the majority of the game is meant to focus on the natural world, and from a narrative standpoint it's a lot easier to keep the Rust World esoteric if it's not something you can just visit on a whim or otherwise familiarize yourself with. To my knowledge, creature behavior is something the devs have been trying to work on. I do agree with @Thorfinn, in that I don't think wolves are really a big problem for the most part, outside of some goofy spawn mechanics. There's potentially lore reasons for wildlife being so hostile(though I think it's a point that hasn't been fully explained), but outside of that wolves are mostly a major hazard for brand new players and veterans who get overconfident. I'm guessing that we may see some major changes to wolf behavior once wolf taming is implemented. After all, if you're going to domesticate the beasts, they do need to be at least somewhat approachable(likely once certain conditions are met).

Welcome to the forums! The answer is yes and no...there are currently two story chapters implemented of the eight chapters planned. So far, each story chapter has had a "boss fight" as one of its highlights, though whether that remains a pattern for future chapters remains to be seen. As far as needing a Blackguard to tank...you don't need a Blackguard specifically to tank. They're the class best suited for it, but I would say it's more important to have a player that's good at that role filling said role, and then just give them the appropriate equipment. Ideally, they will be playing a Blackguard, Commoner, or Tailor since none of those classes have a penalty to melee damage, but the other roles could work in a pinch too if necessary. In regards to feeding a Blackguard...they aren't really hard to keep fed, especially if you have a dedicated Hunter or livestock. Now if you have several Blackguards, cranked up the hunger/spoilage rates, or otherwise have problems managing your food supplies, then you might have some problems. But if everyone is playing at least somewhat competently food really shouldn't be an issue.

It's an interesting idea, but... I'd argue that the primary fault of Valheim's comfort system is that it tries to translate aesthetical pleasure to mathematics. Now there is some math that's important for what makes things aesthetically pleasing(golden ratios, color theory, and the like), but you can't just translate art to a single numerical formula and expect it to work, because individual taste is a thing. If you try to tie the aesthetic elements to pure math formula and associated buffs and debuffs, then what happens is players will figure out the most efficient formula and just go with that every time. Which isn't exactly wrong, but it leads to gameplay going stale a lot more easily. Which is why I think that players are missing out on a certain element of sandbox games like Vintage Story if they never bother to engage with any roleplaying elements. Sure, not everyone is a roleplayer, and that's fine, but part of the fun of games like this is the ability to impose your own rules and thus experience something new rather than the exact same thing each time. It's partly why challenges like Snowball Earth and Scorched Earth exist, and why we have different classes rather than just a blank slate of a character. I think it also depends on which demographics one wants to appeal to. The wider general audience you try to appeal to, the more simplified/diluted the gameplay ends up being in order to have the needed broad appeal to keep the players happy. However, if you're trying to appeal to more specific demographics, then you'll need to tailor the gameplay to suit the kind of audience you're trying to attract, which usually results in a more niche product. A product that is too niche won't be able to garner enough support to stay afloat, whereas a product with mass appeal might have a huge playerbase but a comparatively shallow experience since it's trying to please everyone. Ideally, a game strikes a balance between those extremes so that it offers a rich, in-depth experience without being so niche that it can't garner the support it needs to stay afloat. Incidentally, that's one of the advantages of a sandbox game that has a robust modding community; the devs can create a solid baseline product, and players can season to their specific tastes with mods.

The main advantage to raising swine/other livestock over hunting, is that it's a lot less risky. When out hunting, it's possible to fall in a hole, get ambushed by a predator(or prey!), or potentially even get caught in a temporal storm/die from exposure if one isn't paying attention. With livestock, you don't have to leave the comfort of your base, and it becomes even easier to harvest them once they hit generation 3. The main nitpick I would have here is that for players who aren't in to roleplaying and just want to constantly push for progress, there's no real reason to sit in the base for extended periods, as that's basically time wasted. Which I'm not entirely sure how you fix that, as forcing players to sit in their bases for some reason will probably end up being more frustrating than rewarding. I think what we have now is fine, as it allows players to choose how they want to approach their own gameplay and doesn't force a specific route for acquiring food. I'd also suggest that a "Well-Rested" bonus could be used to deal with certain status effects, if one doesn't have the means to create a cure for it otherwise. It'd be the slower method of dealing with a temporary penalty though, so that players don't end up just ignoring a medicine system entirely. Incidentally, I think one of the main hurdles of game design to overcome is the tendency of players to opt for the path of least resistance...that is, the gameplay that appears "most efficient". While it's natural to default to the most efficient gameplay methods, efficiency doesn't always translate to fun. I'd cite bunny traps as an example--if you dig a deep trench around crops in Vintage Story, bunnies will happily hop into said trench to try to get those crops. It results in an easy source of protein, but it's not as engaging as hunting food yourself or putting in the effort to manage farms and livestock. Likewise, living in a basic dirt cube the whole game is efficient, but not aesthetically pleasing. That's not to say those ways of playing the game are wrong, but players might be setting themselves up for a shallower experience if efficiency is the only focus.

You can do this...and it's also ugly to live in. Now some players don't care about aesthetics, but most do in some form or another, so most are probably going to end up building something that looks a bit nicer than a packed dirt cube. So I think there's already a fair incentive to build nice structures. While this is true, I believe you also get about 2.5 extra HP per nutrition bar that you fill, and those extra HP can be vital to your survival depending on the circumstances. Keeping the bars filled isn't terribly hard either; it's a matter of not eating the same food all the time. Easy as swapping some of that meaty stew for a fruit pie every now and then. Defense rules in Vintage Story are a little different than they might be in other titles. Normal monster spawn rules get temporarily repealed during temporal storms, as those storms are anomalies that are meant to be very dangerous. Otherwise, keeping your perimeter fenced will help keep natural predators from wandering in, and lighting your base up well(and keeping your interiors on a smaller scale too) will significantly decrease monster spawns. To keep rifts from appearing in your base, you'll need to build and maintain rift wards--a late game piece of tech game that prevents rifts from spawning in an area as long as it has power. The food spoilage rate can be adjusted to be faster or slower, depending on player preferences. It also depends on your climate and days per month. A hot climate will be more difficult to store food in long-term, whereas longer months mean more days that you need to feed yourself and longer times for crops/livestock to produce. Overall though, no, food supply isn't a particularly difficult problem to solve if you know what you're doing and plan ahead. However, I would also point out that the more time the player has to spend just on securing food sources, that's less time they're spending in other areas. If food supply is a big enough hurdle that a player spends the bulk of their time on it, they're going to be much less inclined to go adventure or otherwise take risks to progress in other fields. Not ideal when you actively need to travel quite a lot both to locate other resources and complete the main story. I'm not really sure how you make mining more exciting than prospecting and digging hoping you find what's advertised. Perhaps making exposed ore nodes spawn a little more frequently underground, especially in the deep underground, so there's both more reason to venture there and an alternate method of acquiring resources for those who don't like digging holes. Winter is a good time to do things like blacksmithing and steel refining, since there's no farm chores to do and exploration is a lot riskier. If you know how to counter the cold, no, it's not terribly challenging, however, it also depends on what activities you choose to do during winter. If you're primarily hanging out at your base, living off your food stores, then yes it's going to be an easy time. If you're going out on long exploration trips, then the difficulty increases since supplies, shelter, and daylight are harder to come by. I'd also note that how challenging the cold is depends partly on your game settings. Enabling true winters and making your seraph more sensitive to the cold will increase the threat that the cold presents, though much like I said about food supply...how much of your time do you want to have to devote to just keeping yourself from freezing? Personally, I think Vintage Story does fine in giving the player goals and incentive to work towards them. The main story and other lore helps push players to progress and explore the world, and each "tech tier" feels like a proper step up from the one before it. Aside from that, it's also somewhat a sandbox game, so it's up to you to decide your own goals to work towards and how you're going to go about it. I do like Valheim, but it's a very different game from what Vintage Story wants to be. With Valheim, your express goal is to find specific monsters and slay them to get to Valhalla; yes, you build some cool bases along the way, but the game revolves around monster hunting. Which is a goal it does very well, but if you don't enjoy monster hunting that much or want gameplay options to pick from...it's going to end up falling short. Valheim's food system is good for adjusting your stats on a whim, and it serves its purpose well for what the goal of the game is. I don't think it would work very well in something like Vintage Story though, and I would also say that Valheim's food system is boring in comparison. Old food becomes practically irrelevant once you unlock something new, which means that while there's a variety to pick from, it really only makes sense to be eating the best you have available for the specific task you're trying to do...which also means you're pretty much eating the same thing all the time. Farming also isn't complicated, as you simply stick seeds in the dirt and wait for them to grow; no crop rotation needed and water supply/climate/soil fertility doesn't matter. When it comes to building defenses, it's more critical in Valheim given that enemies will actively try to destroy your stuff. Which I will also note is highly aggravating if you're wanting to focus more on building. Now it's possible that we could see some kind of weathering mechanic or destructive enemies in Vintage Story, however, I also think such an addition would need to be done very carefully, especially since the game currently encourages a lot of fine detailing via the chisel system. It's one thing to just replace a few simple broken blocks, but quite another to have to replace blocks that you may have spent hours chiseling to perfection. As for Valheim's sea travel...it's well-done and absolutely makes sense for a Viking game, but it's also a gameplay feature I both love and hate. In small doses, the sailing is fun, but otherwise it tends to up something I find tedious. There's not much to see out at sea, the wind can be aggravating(there's an ability that solves that problem, but taking it means not picking other abilities that have more utility), and not everything can be transported via portal meaning that you'll end up needing to spend a good chunk of time just hauling cargo around. That's not to say that water-dominant worlds aren't viable in Vintage Story--there's already settings to achieve that. But I don't think it should be the default. What I would expect for a "standard world" is primarily land navigation, with an area or two where a boat is a requirement for timely progress.

It shouldn't be possible--I believe that's been patched. The barricade I was referring to is the one blocking the hallway to the library, forcing you to drop into the hole and fight the eidolon under normal circumstances. There was once a bug that let you "bounce" over it, that has since been fixed, but you can still bypass the fight and get to the library that way if you have the means to get over the wall. There's no invisible barriers to stop you. You do not. The drop is just to help you acquire an elk to help you travel. You actually don't need to visit the Archive at all to progress the storyline, as it's possible to essentially skip to the end of chapter 2 if you know what to look for. However, you'll miss out on a lot of interesting lore by doing that, and it's highly unlikely you'll be able to achieve such events anyway as it would mean finding certain very hard to find things without using a map. But it is possible, in theory.

I'm guessing it's probably luck of the draw on what size antlers a deer will grow that year. I'm not sure if the size is locked to the individual creature, or randomized per year. In any case, I'd assume it's coded that way so that there's more variety in antler drops, as well as ensuring that the largest horns/antlers are proper trophies.

I don't think it's been directly explained as to why some areas of the Archive have been copied. My general assumption, without spoiling too much, is that during the events of the initial cataclysm and the resulting temporal storms after, some parts of the structure fared better than others. Canonically, the temporal storms used to be a lot stronger than the ones we face now, and there were forces strong enough to shift locations like the Archive around, though those forces may or may not be related to the temporal storms. In any case, some parts probably got duplicated in the process, and the parts most affected also seem to be the parts that are covered in the weird rusty tendrils. Such tendrils seem to be a recurring motif so there's certainly some sort of connection.

Just a side note, but if you switch to spectator/creative and fly over the barricade, or have a mod that allows you to climb over the barricade, you can still skip the fight. Friend has such a mod installed on his server, and we discovered the other day that we could climb the barricade and skip the fight entirely(though we did go fight the eidolon anyway).

I'm guessing as a cross between a joke, and a way to push players to build better doors instead of relying on the cheapest thing they could get their hands on at the time.

They do if you stand under the tree you're chopping down. It's rare, but it does happen.

Or perhaps make flint available as a trade item sold by certain NPCs? That would solve the issue for really old worlds, while also acting as a currency sink for players that would rather spend a few gears instead of looking for flint themselves. I like this idea better though.

I'd make it a full hit point, really. You can lose as much from getting bonked on the head by falling logs or getting kneecapped by a tiny carcass reacting to gravity, so it's only fair. Would make for a potentially interesting death message if it manages to kill the player too.

That's odd...sows should give similar drops to boars. If they aren't dropping anything at all, and assuming you aren't playing with mods that could be affecting the drops, sounds like you've found a bug to report.

Welcome to the forums! The time switch ability should be functioning as soon as you reach the Tower, however, it can be a bit finicky if you teleported/flew there instead of traveling there on foot. I would give it a minute or two to sort itself out and then try again; the ability icon should be a teal blue when it is ready to use. Now if you've given it plenty of time to stabilize itself, and it still doesn't work, even after a relog, then I would consider making a bug report. If you're playing with mods, I'd also check your modlist to make sure there's nothing that could be conflicting. The final thing you can try to fix it is to back up your world and start over with a fresh install of the game. Sometimes things go haywire, and a fresh install will usually fix it.

I think the general aggravation about necro posts is that they shove fresh topics to the wayside, and I'd also assume that's why many forums have rules against necroing posts. @gogeode is right, in that the old threads would still be available for the reading(unless deleted for some reason), so that's not really an issue. But if a thread hasn't seen any new posts in a year then I wouldn't exactly call it part of a productive discussion anymore. I mean...it would be really nice if posts were kept to a single relevant thread that already covers said topic, but given how often we see the same things posted in Suggestions, for example? How many new bird suggestions a week, instead of posting in a pre-existing thread suggesting the same thing? I think it's easier to just lock really old threads, instead of trying to corral everything into its own special mega-thread. That way the fresh discussion stays at the top.

Welcome to the forums! What you're seeing here is a snippet of one of the story locations in the game. You can begin the story by talking to a treasure hunter about interesting places. Of course, if you just want to teleport to the locations without doing the story, I believe the command is /tpstoryloc, followed by the appropriate location name that you would like to teleport to. Edit: The specific place pictured in this screenshot is...

Which version are you playing on and do you have the temporal stability mechanic enabled or disabled? There's been a few bugs regarding monster spawns in 1.20.8/9; if I'm recalling correctly, most of the issues have been fixed in 1.20.9, save for a lingering bug if you have temporal stability disabled.