EnbyKaiju

So historically the VS devs have done an unstable release update pretty much every week until they believe it's ready to go. Starting with patching out the biggest/most occuring bugs and working down. That usually goes for about 4-6 weeks. Then they do a full release of it, followed by a couple of hotfix runs for the next week or so after it's out. Though those are usually small fix updates that don't need a world reset or anything. So my guess, they will probably have everything ready to roll by the end of March. Maybe a little longer, maybe a little sooner. They have been bringing on a lot more staff over the last year or so, but they changes are also getting more ambitious (like the proceedurally generated dungeons), so that's the best guess I can make. And it makes sense for a release schedule that's not crunching the devs.

Absolutely, I think in terms of actually added mechanics this is the biggest one they have done in quite a long time, at least as long as I've been playing (not counting the absolutely blistering additions in the latest story update), so it's gonna take a lot of balancing to get it right. And I know what you mean about wanting to take things slower. I already have a personal rule which is "no iron in the first year, no steel till the second" (and that's with 30 day months so the winters start to hurt), that keeps me pretty focused on a more relaxed progression experience, but now I'm planning on taking that even further. Instead of just building up one space and rebuilding on top of it I'm wanting to build separate period-accurate villages for each age I want to go through. So these last few weeks have involved a lot of documentary watching and reference taking, haha.

At this point I'm just checking a few times a day waiting for the next unstable update to drop. Not because I'm expecting it to be fully game playable but because I want to get in and toy with all the new toys & mechanics so I can work out my long-term plans better. Anyone else? Just me? lol Given how much is going into this update I don't expect them to have the full thing out for a solid month at least, and I hope they take their time to work-life balance through all the changes and not feel rushed. Honestly even if they just update the handbook entries & recipes in the next unstable that'll be good enough for me. My creative world yearns for test-cases.

Ohhh, getting big Sunless Sea vibes from this and I love it, especially with all the mobs that would spawn in a situation like that making the darkness & depth of it all feeling that much more atmospheric. There's definitely enough depth to the world, but you're right about the sheer amount of effort required to make it happen in survival. I am 100% on board to seeing you make that one happen, because it sounds amazing.

Now THAT is ambitious! Definitely waiting for VS to implement minecarts or go for mods to make that happen, but I'd love to see it become a reality.

I like watching this really neat fellow called Mongster, they seem to primarily a minecraft creator but did a great Vintage Story series on their second channel that I loved Outside of that I love RubixRaptors roleplay videos and Drifter Hater Club. Mostly I look for very calm, long-form videos that give me a happy space just to exist. Yet to find more that scratch that itch but there's a few out there!

I'm the same. The three woods I love most to work with are walnut, ebony and acacia. Which makes my usual temperate start-twice the distance to the equator worlds a lot more of a challenge, haha. Makes it all the more satisfying.

That might honestly be one of the loveliest ideas I've heard for a build idea. Bring a piece of what's special about where you came from to the world of VS. I hope when you get around to it you'll share it with us.

A great idea for a build, one of the true classics of the genre that VS really feels designed for. And I absolutely agree with the sentiment of scale. VS allows you to actually build smaller scale but highly detailed, vs Minecraft where you really need to start working big to get the detail in. I think it helps a lot that if you can't find the kind of decoration you want in VS you can just make it yourself. I hope we get to see it someday!

Let's have a little positive hypothetical time here with a simple question, you can be as detailed in your answer as you want. If you could build anything, at any scale, in Vintage Story, be it a singular thing or a massive-spanning endeavor, what would it be? Could be something you've tried building in the past but don't feel you got right, or something you haven't been brave enough to tackle, or just something you're waiting for the right gameplay includes to make a possibility? I'll start with mine, because I hardly keep it a secret. Full scale Edo period Japanese castle town that represents different levels of social development as it works out further from the Castle, all the way to an Ainu village in the outskirts. All I'm waiting for now is the waterwheels in the new update.

I watch so many episodes of the Townsends 18th Century Cooking & Tasting History series' and the sheer number of things that could be made with what we already have in the system, including plum puddings, makes me kinda giddy. Unfortunately even the really basic ones like hardtack & pemmican are locked behind mods. Which is a real shame because there's a ton of absolutely ancient survival foods that would make the game more enjoyable. Especially for long-distance travel. Bonus points if they let you clap hardtack together to get the clack clack sound. haha

So far in the experimental build rapids are one of the types of waterfall that naturally spawns. Below is a screenshot I took of a random hilly area I found in the unstable branch and about half of these are rapids. So it looks like we won't be lacking for rapid water (fingers crossed) I didn't get a chance to test with the waterwheels, because the game was crashing every time I tried to make one (that's what unstable is for), but my assumption is that regular water-flow will give you one speed from the waterwheel, and rapids will give you the fast speed. You just need to make an aqueduct from one of these rivulets to wherever your wheel is. Again, this is still the experimental branch, so who knows how often these kinds of water formations will occur. But I hope if it is this kind of scale (and I've seen much bigger waterfalls from mountain regions) that they will form natural pools since we're unlikely to get rivers this update. As for fishing poles? Not sure. They are very easy to craft, a few sticks/bamboo and some rope, and they do have durability, but I didn't get a chance to test. So I'm guessing we get the basic ones now, and later we'll get better ones that don't break as easy. Would be nice to have rods of different wood & line types.

VS is a perfect example of that. I remember when there was an exploit to just totally bypass one of the main story segments to get to the loot and I am so glad they patched that out. There are times when invisible walls frustrate me, and times when I absolutely believe they are necessary to prevent folks from just skipping important parts of the game. Though I think giving folks the opportunity to get an elk, and get it cheaper, definitely was a way to encourage folks to engage with that part of the story more and to do it the way the devs intended. I call that damn good game design.

Yeah, that's what I'd heard too, regarding the labels. The screenshot they used looked great. And yeah, when I was talking about treating them the same way as trees I meant like doing cuttings. Maybe you only get a couple from each bush before it has to grow them back. And there's a chance they don't take. Honestly I'd much rather have to grow my own berry plantation over time than see an area stripped of all the berry bushes so someone can have a massive berry field. I still hope that one day we'll get to put saplings in planters. Maybe not to grow fruit (or maybe the fruit you do get you only get like, one apple from an apple sapling in a pot), but I'd love to have a little cherry tree in a planter and see it blossom in the spring. Though maybe that's because I've done both blueberry & strawberry picking as summer jobs before, the extra effort makes the berries all the sweeter.

If they start treating berry bushes like fruit tress we'll likely see climate-specific growth ability, so it'll be interesting. Maybe a greenhouse would be enough to grow more of the warmer-climate berries, and you'd have to grow the colder climate ones on mountains. Either way I'm keen to learn. At worst you could travel to wherever the berries are, make the jam there & seal it, then high-tail it back home again. A cunning Seraph always finds a way to fill their larder. On the up side, if they do actually make cold-weather berries that grow in tundra (which it looks like a few IRL are the kind that do), then we'll actually see them in snowball earth runs. Which would be rad.

We've got fruit, we've got bread, it's only a matter of time before the VS devs give us the ultimate survival foodstuff: Fruitcake!!! Judging by the sheer number of changed berry types in the experimental build I'm pretty sure the berry rework will be making it out this update. It's one of the ones they have been really keen to build on and I'm super keen to get a little more challenge & planning in to my berry harvests. Also being able to find different berry types in different climates. I'm gonna end up with an entire pantry full of different kinds of berry jam, and I can't wait!!

It's absolutely part of game development (speaking from years in games journalism/development). When devs see players finding exploits they have two options: either find ways to mitigate those exploits so that it doesn't detract from the experience they wanted to make, or indulge the exploits and leave them in. In which case they become features. The latter you often see end up in the speedrunning community. Though personally I don't like the idea of VS as something to speedrun, but each to their own. The VS devs seem to like to skirt a line between taking out the exploits/cheesing mechanics that make the game too easy or metagameable, and encouraging folks to play in their own way. We see that a lot in how the game customisation allows for a lot of things that the devs might not consider their way of doing things. The Project Zomboid devs do the same thing. That's why these are sandbox games where you get to determine a lot of factors. Sometimes you'll find mechanics that the devs definitely don't want to you to exploit (e.g. the story elements), in which case I say just let the devs cook and see what they turn up. If they think something is broken, and they get feedback to that extent, they will decide if it's worth changing. But for Dave's sake, be polite about it. We've enough games out there where the devs walk away because people scream at them or make the fanbase hostile. We don't need more of that. I sure as heck wouldn't want to see it happen to VS. Speak your thoughts, consider that everyone plays differently, and encourage things you think might help change the game for the better without being overly critical. That's just my perspective of someone having seen this kind of thing go on many, many times.

That's my take on it too. I've been working with that understanding since they introduced the no infinite water block creation option, and it makes for a great additional challenge (and also prevents metagaming/min-maxing). With the introduction of so many more elevation-based water sources my hope is that the VS team start giving us new ways to do irrigation. As at the moment I'm stuck using irrigation mods to make something that feels both realistic and works with the current mechanics. I think once they eventually get rivers working right, and we get a proper water table it'll work out a lot better for what they have been planning.

Look on the map for any circular depressions in the ground. The more it looks like a perfect circle about 5-7 blocks across the more likely you've got a meteor crater. Once you start noticing the patterns you'll find them everywhere. Deserts are the best place to start looking because there aren't trees getting in the way.

I would be very happy to see even a scaled down version of what Expanded Foods gives us. The basics are in there of a Northern European diet of the middle ages (pies, roast meat, bread, wine, preserves, cheese), and that's a great starting point. But I'd love to see at least small additions over future updates. Not just variety of what we already have (all the new berries will be amazing to have once the berry bush mechanics are updated), but additions of period appropriate foods from different cultures. Especially since the game lore already acknowledges a level of interaction with those cultures. For example, we've got rice, and a variety of tasty ingredients, so why not let us make jam donuts? (for those of us old enough to get the reference), I mean rice balls. I'm not asking for potatoes or anything, but the earliest pasta dishes date back into the BCE years. That's something to use up extra eggs and all that extra flour. Maybe make jellies using all those spare bones, as an additional way to preserve fruit & veges in not as much a diminished state. None of these would require additional materials or cooking equipment. I know updated cooking is on the roadmap, but little additions would be cool. Heck, we're already getting cooking fish whole in the new one. That's something new, and I'll happily take it :)

Absolutely agree. I'm old enough to remember the forum flame wars of old, and how folks wouldn't take the time to think their responses out before coming down on opinions. The difference between the two definitely shows up in that difference of time-scale, with discord being extremely fast-paced if just for the sheen number of people talking at once. There's always 20 people talking at a time, with about 10 different subjects going on, in one channel, and it can get rough at times. It's a very reactionary world we live in, and I think folks could do with taking a little time to smell the flowers and consider their approach to things You're definitely one of the familiar faces I appreciate seeing around, LadyWYT. Nice to have other folks around who take things a little slower.

Just wanted to reach out and say a big thank you, both to the amazing VS team, and the wonderful people in this forum. I'm both here and the discord server and I've found the server to be far too busy, often chaotic, and sometimes a hostile place to exist. To the point where I keep every channel except the devlogs muted. But every interaction here I've had has been wonderful and I've started to recognize familiar faces that I always know bring considered opinions and a kind word that makes this space far more welcoming. In time I could easily see myself becoming fast friends with a bunch of you. Maybe it's just that I grew up on forums, and that really busy spaces like discord can be overstimulating, but this space feels like far more of a home that embraces what I love about VS and the community. So thank you, to the VS team for providing this space (and the incredible game we all love to play & talk about), and to the lovely folks that share it with me. Y'all make me grateful to be part of this wonderful community. Keep building, keep having fun, and stay safe out there

The insulating block tip doesn't always appear, in my experience. It can be kind of frustrating at times when doing chisel work. What I would recommend doing is using the command "/debug rooms hi" (can't remember if it's "room" or "rooms" to check if the space you've made counts as a room. That'll usually show up red where it doesn't count as a block. I've had to do that a bunch in the past and it's how I found out chiselling the inside face can really mess things up at times. Chiselling glass definitely does leave you with a block that counts though, if you've got the correct face solid. I found that out when making greenhouses so I think with a bit of trial and error you should find a way to make it work. Just do one block at a time till you know what you're doing works for the build style you're making.

The last windmill I made for a longer term world was part of a larger workshop build I was trying, with a layout inspired by the design style of Kingdoms Reborn. There are definitely some improvements that could be made, especially with the axel-in-blocks that are coming in the new update, but this felt like it worked well for what I was trying to do and adds to the layered effect I absolutely love to work with and see from others. I try and keep my mechanical setup very simple. One windmill, with as little mechanical complexity as possible, and this one work very nicely for a solo experience.

I don't do full builds in creative, but I do test building techniques & material palettes. Usually if I see something cool in the real world, or when watching a movie and think that might be fun to try down the line I'll mock-up the basic principles in creative and go from there. It really helps since the worlds I tend to like to build on most are where it's 90% ocean, so there's a lot of time dedicated to finding materials, so I have to be sure that the thing I want actually works first. It also lets me play with mods to decide if I want to bring them into the game or not. As a result my creative world is a mish-mash of ideas taken from all-over. I'm really looking forward to pushing forward with my Japanese castle town build in the next update, so as a result I've got part-built things that will give me a place to start that and give me an overall idea of scale I'll need to be working with. e.g. how big do I want the castle? What are the best ways to do streets & walls? Does this lighthouse work vs this one? Can I stick to the Edo period style, or do I need to move up to the Meiji period to give me what I need for this idea? A bonus of doing it this way I've found is that I can get a general idea of the space I need, both internal and external. So when I get around to building it in the actual game I can have a lot more freedom of layouts, and enjoy working all the pieces together. In the end Vintage Story is played how you want to play it. But take it at your pace. Everything will look blocky to start with, it's a block game, but it's where you take it afterwards that matters. Shoom made a very good point too; focus on the survival, and as you go just keep tinkering until it all feels right. VS is a long-term game, not meant to be rushed, allow yourself that time to make something that feels right to you. And if it doesn't work out? You just learned something for the next build. Have fun with it all, and don't try and compare yourself to others. We all play, and create art, in our own ways //content.invisioncic.com/r268468/emoticons/smile.png