Nagahiro

in vanilla you'd have to dig up soil first to craft them into packed dirt lol, 6 soil = 6 packed dirt, 6 soil = -6 durability, therefore shovel to packed dirt ratio is 1:1, for 1 packed dirt the shovel uses 1 durability. this principle is applied to the mod. I don't know if it's balanced tho, maybe I would have to play with it more

I use this mod for that feature: https://mods.vintagestory.at/packyourshovel it would be neat tho to have it in the base game. however, from my hours of experience playing the game I do think shovels and axes are my most used and consumed tool out of all the other tools, so that much uses out of a shovel would probably make you burn through many more shovels to come

I love the landslides in VS because it changes the world dynamically and incentivizes the player to build with packed dirt or rammed earth at the start of the game, but unfortunately it's not perfect. soil would often be too sensitive to gravity that even the slightest footstep would cause you to tumble down a hill or even a hole. it would also leave trees floating in the wilderness because trees are not affected by gravity, and leaves an unwanted sight in your world. the sound of falling soil will burn itself in your ears from how many times you will hear it. and lastly, depending on the amount of sediment you disrupt, it will cost you your PC's performance. a huge landslide caused by a mountain goat almost froze my game once. whether it's caused by you or the natural world, the current block gravity for soil is too unstable and sadly the cons outweighs the challenge I thought I would be able to tolerate

I just think it would be neat. you gain nothing from digging up farmland for game balance with the farming mechanic, so you might at least recover some soil for different uses other than farming. this doesn't really matter since soil is everywhere, but I just think it's a neat trick, or for people doing an island challenge

this is hype, I never knew they added this, I don't remember seeing it featured in the devlogs/update news. I must've missed it. however, in my testing, for some reason chalk doesn't pile up which I find funny because tuff and scoria, which aren't implemented yet have their respective piles working, lol. the error it gave me is that "chalk is not suitable for knapping". thank you for telling me this regardless lol

I know it is for ores and nuggets, but plain stones I'm pretty sure still only brings up the knapping mechanic, at least on version 1.21.6. if it does work I NEED to see, I'm excited for that

suddenly remembered this post, and I love that the stick stacking is a thing now. now we wait for stones.. would also be nice for coal and charcoal pieces to stack like the stones depicted in my suggestion too. probably, idk.

just give more uses to metals, like rails, fittings, more uses for nails (like for the sailboat maybe), machinery, pipes/conduits, decorations, reinforcing/fortifications, chain links, anchors/weights. and a lot more other uses. doesn't have to account for the other metal variants, only those that would believably be suited for the job, like copper for pipes, and steel for rails, and such. however it would be way long before we get all those lol. let's just hope for the best

I feel like thirst could only fit in hardcore playstyles which restricts you to settle by fresh water sources. since there's no rivers, streams, groundwater or even any form of rain collecting, this would not be viable and would only dissuade casual players. however, a form of thirst would be possible that allows you to control your core temperature in different climates. such as bringing water in deserts and dry climates, as a heat counterpart to the freezing system during winters. until water sources are accounted for, I doubt any sort of thirst system would be implemented. I figured the juice and alcohol mechanics are there for stat boosts. or for recreational purposes, that just so happens to also restore some hunger and nutrition.

there's this mod called Toolsmith which adds everything you needed. it adds whetstones and grindstones that allows you to sharpen your tools and maintain their efficiency, as well as a handle and binding system that allows you to swap out the handles and bindings which allows for more durability and a less likely chance for the tool head to fly off the handle which you must then reattach it. it makes tools last longer than vanilla counterparts, but the trade off is that they need to be maintained, so you should bring a whetstone with you everywhere. I highly recommend this mod as it's very nice to have and to actually interact and get invested in your tools instead of carelessly throwing them away once they become useless. it's not a matter of realism for me, but for an innate care towards the tools I use.

I actually have another idea related to trees. I play with landslides/soil gravity on, and whenever there's a landslide on the side of a mountain or hill with trees, the tree will just float mid-air. I was thinking maybe the logs would have gravity. it wouldn't destroy the tree necessarily, just make the tree fall and leave the blocks intact, so the player can't cheat their way out of not crafting an axe to chop logs by digging the soil beneath its roots. speaking of roots, an alternative method so they don't look out of place floating on the side of a mountain is to just prevent the landslide in the first place, like soil near trees should stay intact because tree roots are holding them in place, and such.

like acorns falling out of oak trees, pine cones out of pine trees. or even their branches or deadwood. it would honestly be cool. I think the only draw back I could think of this idea is that it would make trees take longer to grow. which I'm honestly not against, the way I play is clear an area and just plant trees and wait for them to grow anyway. I like the idea of a woodlot method. for what I was thinking, it's that the tree would just grow like how it currently grows, just with an added phase that is similar to how fruit trees grow from cuttings. so it would be seed, to sapling, to fruit tree cuttings, to logs. it would scale just as much as the current system scales I think. I don't necessarily want it to be "realistic", but rather for it to be more interesting and dynamic. I love how the world is simulated and kinda want to see it grow and change, even for a tiny bit so it doesn't get resource intensive.

I know there are some large birch species, but it would be nice to have most of them be the size and thickness of the fruit bearing trees, just significantly taller. Would be nice to see an entire birch forest of it in autumn. It doesn't have to be exclusive to birch either. It could work for other tree species as well after it grows from the sapling stage. Maybe dot the world gen with these young trees, and maybe some other small shrub or tree species. The thin wood you get from it is easier to work with, turn it into handles, stakes, firewood, etc. This would of course change how birch is used and processed into planks, but there's probably an easy work around for it on grid crafting. maybe until the introduction of workbenches will we be able to cut and saw wood according to their size and shape and whatnot. Thinking about it now, Vintage Story would benefit with more tropical species like coconut, palms, or maybe even papaya.

a way to mitigate that is to have it so rafts can be damaged in a way or have a "weight limit", too heavy and it can sink. or have strong waves at sea that could flip your raft once you're able to make planks you could make a much sturdier rowboat and better oars that can carry more items, like a couple wooden chests or barrels, and be more stable at sea perhaps (also, it kind of bothers me that the sailboat doesn't require any waterproofing or caulking on the hull, lol, but that's getting off topic)

because they're bells, I imagine sound would resonate through their hollow body which allows them to sort of "echolocate". maybe they do have vision, but something similar to primitive organisms, such that they can "sense light", they can distinguish between brightness and darkness. good to know tho, I haven't actually read much of the lore in-game