EnbyKaiju

This is fantastic, thanks Feels like you've got everything, I can't think of any I've found that had other than these though I've opened more this run than I have in all my previous games put together, haha. The Alchemist one saved me a bunch of work when I was making up some Jonas tech, but all in all I love how random they all feel, and how even in the late game they are worth having a dig around. I'll be keen to see if they add more in the updates to come.

I hope you find some great stuff! And if you find a few less fun chests now and then (I think the worst I got was a granite spear but even that made me laugh so I consider it a win) don't give up! You could even make a trophy room or lost & found store of all the weird stuff you find that isn't entirely useful

Welcome to the forums! And that's a damn fine looking church! I don't think I could go in without being struck by lightning, but I'm definitely appreciating all the work you put into it

Yeah, it's pretty wild what you can find in treasure chests. And I've found more than a couple exposed to the elements in my current run. I think you're more likely to find them in areas with jagged terrain, as they are generating off the idea of a flat plane and then their edges get exposed. But I checked against the list on the wiki, which could just be incomplete, and they have definitely updated some of the stuff in them. I found an iron hammer when I was still in the copper age, and another had a chandelier and 8 candles, another had a hecking resonator!. All I can say is that while you can get a few duds now and then, treasure maps are definitely a worthwhile investment if you've got gears to spend.

As someone who prefers consistency over efficiency I'm a real fan of the waterwheel's speed. It's not fast, but being a consistent & reliable source of power more than makes up for the relatively slow speed compared to a full-power windmill. A water wheel, on its own, is enough to do all the fiddly work of smithing plates or hammering ingots with only a minimal amount of manual handling, and for it to keep the forge going without stopping. Anything more feels unnecessary. And as others have said, there's the aesthetic value to them, as well as offering up a great way to build smaller & less in your face. I'm well into the steel age in my current run, and a single water wheel has been more than enough to make sure I'm never short of plates, iron & steel. I didn't even bother with a windmill as it doesn't fit what I'm doing, so I consider the current implementation a total win.

I think over the years I've only gone all the way to steel maybe twice. It's something I only really need for long term worlds where I have really big projects I know that things like steel pickaxes & hammers will give the the boost I need. But even then most of my tools end up as meteoric iron as they are fast to process. But even then I don't rush it. Heck, I don't even go into the iron age until at least a year or two in (and I do long years, with 30 day months), so that I can properly enjoy the limitations of each age. Steel is kind of my "I earned this, I put in the time & emotional energy to get myself this far, so let's go for the good stuff." and even then only really when I can fit it into my design space I have to whatever I'm building. Echoing, Aranyani, that I think it's great to see such variation in responses. It demonstrates a really healthy community of minds that everyone does things a bit differently, there's no "one way" and that the community doesn't treat this as a solved experience. However folks want to play, that's the right way to play for them

Then I enter the scene, recurve bow & stack of arrows at the ready, jumping into the lake to take the pike on in ranged combat like it's Age of Empires I have had a lot of luck with both thrown spears and bow for fishing. If I ever wanna stock up on salted fish for a long trip that's usually how I do it.

The seam is gone?? It had been there so long I thought it was intentional. But that seam always made me not want to use it. Huge improvement, thank you!!

Welcome to the forums, and a great first post that's definitely through provoking. Finding the right difficulty can really be a bit of a challenge, I spent years playing trough different modes till I found the level that felt right for me (a bit of a survival/wilderness mash-up with some bigger challenges but lessened punishments for a game that's already pretty heavy on them), and I hope in time you will too. Thankfully the devs have been working hard over the years to give folks the options, and if the one you want isn't in there yet, I hope it will be. Maybe someone here will be able to suggest a mod that is still functional, a way to make your own, or a debug that might work. Good luck on your journey, seraph!

I think the only addition to pottery I would really like, in terms of realism (aside from being able to glaze pottery, maybe through a second firing) is that the oven should need to be fired internally to dry it out before it can be used to bake in it. So you'd make a raw clay oven, then place that and have to fire it for a couple of hours for it to harden first. But then I also kinda like the idea of being able to make a wooden hatch or something for the front that would keep the heat in longer. I've done pottery here and there too (I learned how to do Japanese style ceramics years back and I think of it fondly), but it is one of those things that would be a bit tricky to balance immersion & complexity without it being frustrating or overwhelming to some folks.

I go as lightly modded as possible, barely a vanilla+. The two I use are Carry On (because I don't understand why we wouldn't be able to carry a heavy box at the cost of a lot of mobility) And Farseer (because I do a lot of majority water worlds and it helps to be able to see when there is an island in the distance) I used to use a few more, like metal tongs, but every update took away the need for something that I felt was necessary to the experience. Heck, we don't even need mods for fishing any more. As a vanilla game I think Vintage Story has *almost* everything in it that I need to long term, aside from those little quality of life adjustments, but I'm also real hesitant to rely on mods that could end up breaking my game or trivilaising the experiences that I enjoy. Not that I don't enjoy mods in a multiplayer server, as that is more about tweaking the game to more enjoyable in a shared dynamic, but as a solo experience I'd rather a really good vanilla over too many mixed flavours.

There was a really good long-term food mod that did hard tack of a sort (you bake the bread, take it out, slice it, then put it back to dry as rusks), as well as pemmican and vintage beef. Unfortunately it then went off script and started adding new crops and stuff that actually affected the game world, so I had to stop using it. But something similar to that I think would be a good idea. And given the scale of the kind of additions the devs have already added I don't think would be asking too much. But then they have a LOT of thing they wanna add, I'm sure cooking revamp is in there somewhere.

Absolutely here for some kind of travel food inclusion in vanilla. There are plenty of modded versions of long-term foods, but for those of us who like to stick to vanilla or want to avoid having mods that nuke our pantry whenever there's an update, we really need some more options. Technically the best long-term travel foods we've currently got are salted meat, grain and jam, as they have the best travel pack life. But it would be really nice to have more variety, or at least give us the opportunity to make rations that last more than a few weeks for those long voyages. It also sucks if you don't have ready access to salt (a way to process sea-water into salt like boiling or salt-panning would help there) for preservation of basics. Hardtack is a great suggestion, one that should be super easy to do as opposed to charred bread (maybe include salt in the grid recipie it to make the difference like expanded foods does?), dried fruit, meat & mushrooms would work too. It's not like the ancient Romans/Greeks/Egyptians/Chinese...etc carried their food cellars with them, they had preserved food options (though to be fair a lot of those were just carrying grain stores with them and eating porridge + whatever they could scavenge.) Anyway, as someone who is on a long-term long-month long-distance world (60k blocks from spawn to equator) I really would love a bit more variety in travel rations that aren't just salted meat, grain, and hoping my apples don't go mouldy during the trip. lol

If you've managed to scrape together at least two colours to a semi-decent amount you could play Squares: make a grid with a space between each piece, then each player takes turn to connect two of the dots, whoever completes a square claims it and gets another turn. I used to play it a ton in school with grit paper but it would work on the omok board too. If you only have a single colour of pieces you could probably use it as a kind of tic-tac-toe board, just give either player a different shape they need to make.

This is such a great looking house already! You've set yourself a great task there of filling in the spaces you have already made. So first up I'd recommend working out what functional elements you need. You said you'd like at least a living area & kitchen in, so start by working out what those rooms would need and how the spaces would work with that. So for kitchen you ideally want at least one stove and two ovens, traditionally kitchens were build around the cooking areas, so that's the best place to start. Maybe make yourself a pretty oven/stove setup out of bricks or nice stone, then from there build out with kitchen tables, maybe a cellar entrance...etc For living room do the same, but there's less need there so you can focus on detail. A couple of tables & chairs to start out, somewhere to play omok maybe, then start filling in details with potted plants, paintings...etc. Once you get started you'll find the spaces develop as you go. Just be mindful of the freedom of movement, so you can get to everything you'd ideally want to. Something I do is I look at the stuff I have, all the weird loot & collectables, and try to figure out how I would build around those. Got a lot of books & scrolls? Maybe a nice little reading den. Bought a music player? Where would be the best spot to be heard throughout the house...etc I could come up with more advice, but in the end start with needs, move to wants, then fill in the little details till it feels like home. Good luck!!