Ender Riens

There are a lot of good posts here, and I agree with a lot of the recommendations, especially those that suggest more content or system overhauls. However, I can say with confidence that the singular most important thing needed before a release of any kind is a well-structured tutorial system. This is where Minecraft and other knock-offs have horribly failed, and in a game like Vintage Story (where many varied systems, mechanics, and obstacles interact all at once) it will be the sole factor that influences whether new players want to keep playing or ask for a refund. Open-world sandbox games like these need a very clear sense of direction. One of the biggest issues facing new players is a sense of goallessness, where they do not have enough game knowledge yet to know what to do, what to aim for, or how to progress. The "Progression" and "Starter Survival Guide" sections of the in-game help guide are a much-needed start, but it needs more. Text alone is one of the worst methods of learning and leads to the poorest information retention, and though players are effectively learning from the guide as they actually play, there is much improvement to be made. Even just putting the dynamic help-guide item icons into progression guide sections where relevant would be an immense improvement. Adding images (or gifs especially--learning is best done by copying actions) would also assist immensely in ease of learning and begin to remove the disconnect between text and gameplay. A tutorial mode may be a good idea, or even better isolated tutorial modes that apply to individual mechanic systems (see how Factorio, an incredibly complex game, isolates parts of learning into digestible sections for tutorial purposes). Such would allow you to remove unnecessary distractions or components (e.g. learning to claymold can be frustrating or inhibited when you are also impeded by wolves, hunger, drifters, etc.) and optimize the learning process to maximize learning and minimize frustration. The greatest new-player interest killers are not knowing what to do, not knowing how to do something, being unable to learn how to do something, or failing because of something they have not yet learned. All of these issues very quickly generate frustration, which will push players away from a complex game like this. Brand new players plopped in a new world as of right now are tasked with learning many different things before nightfall, and oftentimes the hard way. To put it in perspective, one of the most important things to a functional, non-frustrating night is simply creating a torch (which I do not see emphasized enough in the help guide, but I see many complaints about from new players). To create a torch before nightfall, new players have limited time to learn the class system, movement system, basic controls, crafting, knapping, toolmaking, collecting ground materials (grass/stones/sticks), how to collect wood, how to make firewood, how to construct a campfire, how to light a campfire, how to fire a torch, how the fire fuel/temperature systems work, etc. (among other intermediary tasks like collecting reeds for hand baskets, avoiding dangers, caring about hunger, what is this blue gear on my toolbar? etc.). Some of these may take seconds, some minutes--it depends on the player's familiarity with games and how fast of learners they are. Not everyone is equal. And when tutorial systems do not accommodate this inequality as much as possible, learning becomes frustrating, which in turn causes discontent with the game. The first few minutes of gameplay are the indisputably most important moments when it comes to playing or refunding (keeping or losing a player). And 95% of the first few minutes of games will need to be telling the player how to play at a very basic level, then giving them a clear sense of direction. This is especially important in complex sandbox games that otherwise dump rules and systems on the player, and easing newcomers into the experience at their own customized pace will ensure that no one loses interest due to an absence of game knowledge.

Not sure if this is an oversight, a bug, or if I'm missing something, but I have tried to break work items with a chisel in almost every possible way in the crafting grid. Ingots work and will break down, but the moment a copper ingot is turned into a work item it no longer works. I've seen a number of forum posts claiming breaking work items as a feature, but has anyone actually tested it? I have tried extensively, to no avail.

It's possible that the world itself was created on an older update. Most new major updates invalidate old seeds and reset them to a different layout. If your friend made their world before the version you are currently playing on, then the seed will not work. If you need to play on the world your friend is playing on, your best choice may be to downgrade your Vintage Story version to the version the world was made on, make a world with the seed, then reupdate and refactor the world once you enter it. In theory this should work, but I am uncertain. If the world is in fact made on the same version you are playing on (probably v1.15) then I am not sure what the issue may be. Your best option may be to have your friend use a new world, check the seed, and send it to you (all on the most recent update), or alternatively copy the current world file over directly to your saves folder and just use that. Both of these options obviously have their downsides.

As far as I know, no, but someone may know something I don't. v1.15 made it so larger items have to be broken down into bits with a chisel in the crafting grid before you can melt them in a crucible again. However, as far as I'm aware and have tested this only works on ingots, not work items (an oversight, maybe?). And since larger items (including work items) can no longer be placed in the crucible, your only choice would be to add another ingot and finish what you started, or hold the work item somewhere for if/when chiseling is implemented. The only thing I'm aware of that you can recycle after a mistake is iron blooms, which you can put under a helve hammer to produce a perfect iron ingot even if it may be short of voxels. I have tried this with plates, but a helve hammer will not turn unfinished work items into plates as far as I can tell unless the crafting is set to a plate (maybe they could let you change your desired output from a work item in the future?). Even if it is set to a plate, however, it will not add voxels (unlike iron blooms), meaning you'd need to add extra ingots anyways.

As far as I'm aware they're only available in creative mode as of right now.

As far as I know there is no clear, intended, or safe way to modify such values, though someone with more knowledge of how the game configs work may know something I don't. Part of the reason you're doing so little damage is how the game is balanced. Flint arrows are the easiest and cheapest arrows to obtain in the game (minus crude arrows), and thus they have a significant damage deduction (-0.5 piercing) where other arrows don't. To put it in perspective: Crude/flint arrows should take 3 hits to kill a hare, Copper and bronze arrows should take 2, and iron arrows and above should 1-hit hares. These all assume you are using a fully-charged simple bow (3 piercing damage), but better bows can reduce these numbers depending on the arrow due to their additional piercing damage. Your problem may not necessarily be that everything has too much HP, but moreso you are using fairly low-tier tools. Consider upgrading your arrows or bow. Even just the +0.25 damage you get from using a longbow instead is enough to kill a hare in 2 hits (flint arrows) instead of 3. Or, alternatively, copper arrows should deliver the same result.

Yes. As of so far, it is the best tier of metal to use by a landslide in terms of durability, and one of the most labor-intensive metals to gain access to. Meteoric iron is your next best metal and usually slightly better than normal iron, but steel is often around 2.5x better than normal iron and 2x better than meteoric. It also almost always has better mining speed modifiers than any iron.

Not a question for the game, but for the forums. Is there any place currently, or could there be a place for guides? The wiki and in-game help database are good starts, but neither are easily accessible by your average member nor are they very personalized. I'm mainly looking for somewhere to post comprehensive guides that are visible and accessible to newer players that may need them, as there isn't really any clearly-designated spot for them at the moment. Current best option is probably a google doc link in a forum post, though I'd hope for something a little more formal than that. Though, a section on the forums for guides would work very well and allow for multimedia (videos, docs, etc.). Would it be plausible to add one?

Seen this twice now. When cooking, sometimes portions of food will refuse to combine with others in a crock despite being the exact same recipe and the correct amount. My most recent encounter refused to combine two fresh-made redcurrant jams (both with 2 servings). Combining pot to crock did not work, neither did crock to crock. It's like one of the batches is simply immune to any form of combining. I may be missing something extremely nuanced with combining foods, but my best guess is it may have something to do with first taking a portion out with a bowl. I do not remember if I did so the first time it happened, but this recent encounter I first pulled a portion out with a bowl.

The only real benefit it has is you can continually pelt arrows (which stack) while you can only throw a very limited amount of (non-stackable) spears that you must manually recover. Otherwise, spears or kiting are drastically better alternatives in almost every way. On the aforementioned status effects idea, I personally think arrows should embed in enemies and slow them down.

I can agree with the trees being rare but I have to disagree as well with seed drop rate being neutered. If you want to make a tree/plant species harder to propagate, artificial rarity is not the way to go about it. It is much better to create engagement around difficulty, i.e. making the trees literally harder to propagate than just crouch-clicking (e.g. special conditions, specific temperature, needs good soil, watering, required fertilization, interaction (pruning with shears?)). Having some rarity is okay, but making them unrenewable is not, imo. Crop farming issues I also agree with. The temperature damage mechanic should not exist without a clear way to avoid it. This is how most game mechanics work--you put in a mechanic, players need some way to circumvent that. Players currently have seasons/dates and time of day to predict heat patterns, which is semi-reliable and could be satisfactory for player experience, except for the fact that there isn't much clarity. Iterating off of previous comment ideas, this could be solved by giving certain seasons/months set temperature ranges so players know what times they can grow crops instead of having to just guess--a loose guidance. With the randomness of temperature, a "growable for X days" tooltip solution is difficult to implement and hard to make accurate. The watering mechanic is obviously for realism but I agree with the notion that it does nothing except force more water space (or manual watering) on farms. Not an amazing mechanic, does not promote many interesting player dynamics. Would be much greater validated if they had an irrigation system in place, which would create new dynamics and engagement behind watering beyond manual labor. There are also other solutions that promote engagement. Wind mechanics are out-of-place, in my opinion. Somewhat pointless, unrealistic, and unnecessary. Maybe neat if they pushed lighter items on the ground, but nothing more than that. Pushing the player makes no sense and is nothing but annoying, and the system itself creates no player dynamics (no unique interactions/items/solutions players can use to circumvent the problem of wind [does armor weigh you down? I haven't tested it]) I feel many of these new mechanics' problems are they either A) Introduce obstacles that do not promote player engagement with game systems, or B) (as mentioned in other comments) stride towards realism in a way that is unnecessary or absent of engagement.

The devs have mentioned a lot of the systems in-game are mere placeholders for what they're planning in the future, and I wouldn't be surprised if they had plans to expand the food-preparation system in this fashion.

It probably depends on how you host it. Your safest bet (3rd party or your own host) is to simply shut down the server when no one is using it. I'm not entirely convinced 3rd party hosting would automatically shut down if no one is online, which makes me iffy about recommending leaving your server up. But then again, I'm not a dev and I don't fully know the answer. I can tell you for certain, however, that a shut-down server passes no time, and will start off right where you left it once you turn it back on.

The only thing that can be put in crocks are meals. Meals are only cookable with a cooking pot. You can put a fired cooking pot into a firepit for a new inventory that will allow you to cook, but crocks do not share the same function. You can also right-click with another crock to get less than 4 portions given that you're pulling from a source with less than 4--it only maxes out at 4. If the crock already contains meals and the meals you're picking up are the same type, it will stack them up to 4 and combine the spoil rates, much like how other foods function. Grains (and most foods) are optimally placed in fired clay storage vessels, and cannot be placed in crocks. You can cook meals with grains (and most foods) however, which can be placed into crocks to extend their shelf life. Meals placed in a crock instead of a pot or bowl will last significantly longer, and you can place that crock into a cellar to extend it even further. Most meals will spoil in around 2-3 days, but with a crock and an optimal cellar you can increase that by around 10-fold. Sealing the crock will increase that by another 10-fold, resulting in meals that will keep for around 1.5 in-game years (200-300 days), assuming your month-length settings are the default. Sealing the crocks or even putting the food into crocks is not necessary to get cellar benefits, though the upsides of both crocks and sealing may be well worth your time.

Might slot into the "woodworking" part of the roadmap, but the current axe/crafting method of processing feels like a placeholder. Chopping block, etc., what-have-you would be tons more immersive and considerably more engaging if it involved manual labor, much like how knapping or clay forming currently functions. I'd assume they'll do something manual like such with hand saws at minimum, but I figure it'd be interesting to do similarly with making planks as well as firewood. Would personally love to see how such a system might function, as the systems (knapping, clay) so far are creative, engaging, and well-made.

Pots, crocks, and bowls will release rot if you throw them (Q) into standing water. Sometimes it takes a couple seconds, so have patience. Simply throw the rot-filled vessel of choice into a block of water so it is submerged, wait a bit, and the rot should pop out and the vessel should be clean. Make sure you are throwing the item itself in the water, not placing it.

Theming is a bit of a touchy subject. As much as I'd like to see the game lean solely towards a better, more realistic version of Minecraft, the devs have a vision for the game and it is a tough topic to suggest removing all the Lovecraftian and fantasy elements that they have implemented/planned. As of right now you have a way to circumvent some of it (disabling temporal storms/stability, etc.) and more may come, and I have confidence that mods may support the experience you're looking for in the future if not now. I personally think the fantasy elements keep the game interesting, and many others may or may not share the same opinion. It's impossible to please everyone.

Glad to know it worked. I forgot config settings might affect ungenerated chunks, which you seem to have figured out for me. Unfortunately, servers are somewhat tough to change worldgen on (especially with third-party hosting), which hopefully should change once they get around to improving multiplayer.

The ones that don't have commands usually don't for a reason--those settings are applied upon world generation and can't be retroactively changed without regenerating the world. Copying the config file would likely either do nothing, crash the world, or the game would demand a regeneration, the former two of which I find much more likely. It may do nothing if those particular settings are only applied on world gen, which I find the most likely. If you paste them on an already-generated world, it doesn't have a chance to apply the settings, as the world is already generated. It may crash your game because some config settings may be actively used in-game, and changing them might create some obvious complications/disconnect between the world itself and what the config tells it to do, and might result in disaster. The last outcome would be the server demanding a regenerated world, which would only happen if the devs have already thought about this issue and put something in place, which at most would regenerate your world and be no different than copying in a different world file. It is very difficult to "repair" a world to a new config because of having to replace things, avoid overlap, and potentially modifying existing generation, all of which may cause problems in the long run. It is simply not worth the effort to implement function that fixes all those issues. The last last outcome (and the least likely imo) would be that the config simply wouldn't care about the aforementioned issues and simply paste over your existing world with changed settings, which would not create your desired world. For instance, if you changed ore deposit rates, it would paste new ore deposit rates over the old ones, resulting in both new and old deposit rates combined--much more than you originally intended. What would work is generating a new world with your desired settings and replacing all of the world files in your server with those. Such would make sure the config is applied on generation and that nothing is missed, and that all potential conflict issues are avoided. If your main desire is to keep a certain world you like, the best I can recommend is generating a new world (with your desired settings) but the same seed. It may or may not work depending on how the world generation system is set up, but it'd be your best shot.

True, which I ignored because this method is about as tedious as the original dry grass complaint. You could still collect the cobble from ruins, though, for a slightly faster method. ^

There are world config commands, but nothing that would change what you're looking for. It's likely you could generate a singleplayer world with those settings and replace the server's world files with those.

Boats are currently on the agenda for future updates. As for building materials, most fancier blocks (wood, cobblestone, etc.) are locked behind your first copper tools. If you have your surface copper on default rarity, try looking around--you can find the 40 nuggets you need for a pick and hammer pretty quickly with a bit of luck, and from there you can mine the full surface deposits and make tools like scythes, picks, and saws to get you fast grass, cobblestone blocks, and wood blocks respectively. The official wiki mentions using hay blocks, cob, or soil as early building materials, and I find it somewhat unlikely they'd add a bunch more since a bit of effort can get you the aforementioned tools in a reasonably short amount of time. I may be wrong, though--I'd personally support some basic thatch blocks or other simple solutions.

I believe they've mentioned expanding content for different biome temperatures (e.g. most berries are temperate, they would add more for hot/cold), but I can't definitively say anything about the stones/grass problem. Would personally love extreme-biome survivability at some point as well, though.

Dry grass as (large) trough feed feels like a cheaper yet more labor-intensive alternative to grain, which feels like a less-effort yet more expensive feed. Time is always the most limiting factor of increasing generation nevertheless, but berries might provide a more laborious option for feeding/breeding chickens for those willing to put in the effort, just like dry grass. Plus, it would give purpose to collecting berries beyond just eating. Portion size (and potentially berry type) could be used to fine-tune balance. Thoughts?