Vratislav

I was stupid enough to visit a Better Ruins' flagship location in the begining of March. That place is located in the middle of freezing biome and when I climbed at it's top, there was -42 °C. I had to burn wood in its kitchen to heat myself up repeatedly while making short runs to fight monsters and find loot on other levels. Also, I have realized that being near to hot firepit heats the seraph's body only when a firewood or something else is actually burning. When the firewood runs out, your body temperature stars decreasing despite the adjacent firepit has 300+° temperature. Was not satisfied with it, fortunately, there was enough wood in the ruin.

Well, I am not too effective as I have no specific setup for harvesting monsters. I do usually up to five kills of 3+ tier monsters and one to two dozens of others.

I am sure that regardless to the worldgen, it is worthwhile to explore a little in the beginning. Either you die (and may start a new world), or you find some spot up to 1-2 thousand blocks that is good enough to become loved in time. For my successful gameplays, I have always found satisfying spot mostly up to 500 blocks from the spawn, once or twice up to one thousand. Yes, the early game with distant spawn is more challenging, but it also improved my survival skills. About landform mods, I was most satisfied with Plains and Valleys. If I remember, it was on standard settings in 1.19. (landform scale 100% , upheaval 30%). I am not sure how they deal with new 1.21 defaults that expanded default landform scale significantly. Recently tried Terra Pretty, but it did not satisfied me (I have tried like 2 or 3 worlds with it so not so many). Also, I am exact opposite of CigsAndHam, as it is a landscape I see that brings ideas what to build there .

I was not able to read trough all recent release notes, I only vaguely remember there were some tweaks of loot from monsters in 1.21 and 1.21.1 . But after I have upgraded on 1.21.1 version, the latest heavy temporal strorm was like huge improvement in loot falling from monsters. It spawned mostly corrupt bowtons and I received 4 temporal gears during this storm (three from bowtons, one from nightmare drifter). It might be just a great luck, as my experience was like one temporal gear from 2-3 storms previously (or was I so unlucky in tenths of temporal storms before?). So I just want to ask, if I was just lucky, or if the loot tables did really change recently.

Well, late game. I have steel tools (tier 3 furnace), large flax fields and automated pig feeder. So it was possible to establish an "usual trading route," selling leather products, clothing and bronze tools en masse to several Agriculture, Building Material, Clothing and Treasure Hunter traders around. Really, flax is OP in late game as it provides both fibres and grain for pigs in large amounts. This earns enough gears for buying wallpapers, colored glass, chandeliers and luxuries. Been travelling far, I have most of obtainable resources. The most time in the recent gameplay was spent on repairing shiny armors and copper tubes for item sorter. (And in 1.19. when building first part of manor, I have spent soo much time travelling among building traders for red clay shingles.) I was also lucky to find white marble deposit underground nearby to base when digging for iron, so that the corridor ceiling comes from. Still, some resources are scarce. I have no easy access to coal, sulfur, salt and lime (it took me like 10k block of travel to obtain large batch of limestone sand for white wattle and daub ). But I like riding my Elk. Also, it is not fully vanilla. The QP Chisel tools are essential, particularly pantograph that copies patterns among chiseled blocks (I have spent steel one already). Also, most of collected items and some materials are from Better ruins. Recently, I have added Stone Quarry that quickened stone collection for the new manor wings, but it would be possible also without it.

I did not have much time to play VS during summer, but still, some base improvements are here to be shared. Spring of year 6 and continuing. Still tasks to do. You may check previous stage of the development here. I have expanded the manor part of the castle by adding two wings that allowed me to provide ballroom and dining room more suitable space. The ballroom takes whole western wing and uses full height of the building. There is custom furniture and piano moved from large "better" ruin. The room is still unfinished, I have tried to make curtains in creative but not yet made them here. The dining room takes one half of the eastern wing. I still need to make custom table and chairs. I have changed interior style to be more noble in the whole first floor. Also, obtaining several more chandeliers helped a lot. The room behind the left main entrance, previously planned ballroom became something like corridor. Similarly, the room next to it is also rather empty (I do not show it). A corridor with a main staircase was rebuilt entirely. Stairs were remodelled to gentler slope, and the ceiling was made as posh as possible: Other rooms in the first floor. A "moody saloon" is located between the entrance corridor and the dining room. Room for playing games was moved from the second floor to the first floor. I really like how many wallpapers are in the game: Rooms in the second floor are not yet rebuilt. I will show only an amenity that was desperately missing in the manor building: The old castle interiors were also improved. In the Knights' hall, a new gothic cupboard was made, there are new shiny armors (Forlorn Hope and meteoric iron plate) and some details were changed. The cupboard is functional, you may put scrolls and books inside. There are other rooms I haven't shown yet. The museum in the old tower has improved valut, so it is worthy to show: Also, I have moved the original armory in the manor to its zero level, under the ballroom (as ceiling shows, I have to do something with it). I have used wattle and daub for walls instead of much expansive plaster. The armory is already full of weapons from ruins. And as inspired by the other discussion, I have made small item sorter to throw the most common stuff when returning from errands. It sorts just several kinds of stones, clay, dirt, cattails, grass, flax fibes and some other things that are permanently clogging an inventory when on journeys: The expansion of the manor interrupted a road around the castle. Because the castle is located in narrow ridge among three lakes, I had to build a bridge for the road bypass. And this is all for this moment. Have nice time playing Vintage Story! (sorry I can't get rid of the duplicate picture here:)

I think Stone Quarry mod is also a good candidate to help. https://mods.vintagestory.at/stonequarry

Also, I am not sure with the mechanics, but the core of the problem may be not the delayed unfreezing, but the exact opposite: that the water is actually freezing in the border of loaded area, where it should not happen. There is mechanic that lakes ice starts generate from shores, so shore and neigbouring ice probably initialize further freezing. And I feel like the border of loaded chinks is by mistake (or due to some more complicated reasons) considered as a shore or an ice. So the freezing is activated by the whole border of loaded chunks needlessly.

Welcome to the forums! This is actually well known problem. The ice is not unfreezing fast enough on the edge of loaded chunks. In recent updates, there were some mentions that it was partially addressed, but yeah, the everlasting ice is still there. What works, is to move a bit towards the lake and to be occupied there (like to build there or do some chores) until the ice melts. Actually, my base in long play world is located among three lakes, so I am pretty much destined to have ice borders there usually till end of May or even longer.

It is possible, however I did not try. In fact I was a bit scared of the feeder effectivness, so I was putting like four stacks of flax grain at once, and then waited for empty troughs. The actual amount of pigs does not make any noticable lag in singleplayer. Of course may I use all my flax deposit... (But I have not enough salt for dealing with results of such enterprise.)

Let's admit that in the latest world, I returned to humble pile of crates too. But the temptation to have something, where I can throw all stuff brought from the journey just to hear that metal bouncing....

What also works is an animal feeding

I did not know that my small item sorter made in survival grew in storytelling to such epic magnificence!! Also, do not forget that this is probably still cheaper than comparator hopper locks or copper golems.

Nice ideas. I'd note that tunnel si OK when dug straight, but digging diagonally is much more effort and you will be slow down by corners of exposed blocks. Maybe, a combined approach would be working well, so to find a place, where atraight tunnel would bring the best effect. Something line this: I have some tunnels using profile 2x3 (it is an elk path) and even 4x6 (for the boat), and also some channels for boat, but I try to make them always perpendicular with X or Y axis. I have some channel that is slanted and I had to widen it like almost to the double to have smooth boat ride.

Is it without worldgen mods? This landscape reminds me Plains and Valleys a lot...

I KNEW you note this!

I second to noticing the problem. Also I thank Tyron that he will address the issue. I must admit that my case was not serious enough, it was rather absurd, because I was not prepared to fight Eidolon at all when I met him. I have visited RA in the long play world just to finally take all remaining loot I left there some game's year ago. I have just forgotten that Eidolon may respawn, and nothing triggered a suspicion: no bell in the Workshop, no sawblade locust in the Commons and no nightmare drifters in the mines. So I just jumped into Eidolon's room in my late game gear (Steel scale I have found in some better ruin), however with pretty low amount of arrows (around ten). And, of course, I was caught by surprise that the damned robot is alive, so before I went from a panic mode to fight mode, I was kicked around the room two times and already half dead. I have tried healing, but two or three attempts interrupted by being thrown up even when I was hiding behind the column, I just gave up and went to the method "shoot three rounds of arrows, die and jump down again". It took three lives to remove Eidolon's health bar. The experience was absurd enough to be bearable, but also rather tedious. Still, the new, slow mechanics of damage taking and healing feels nicer under other circumstances and I see as mistake that I did not anticipate the possibility of Eidolons' respawn. But after this experience, I'd like to have opportunity of healing in that room expanded.

Maybe the mechanics of door breaking probablity based on class is already in the game!

I'd really like a mod that will make crude door broken whenever a blackguard tries to touch them.

I think that standard IT method (restart the server once more) should help. In standalone game, stopping and starting once more helped.

Who went from pre-6 to pre-7 in a testing world, he is already experienced

Yes, it is a difficult choice. When i bump up the view distance to make my computer burn, the Farseer may be not used. But also I am not sure if I am satisfied with the actual river generation in the mod. Especially I dislike these narrow ridges close to rivers' springs, they are just so unnatural...

Actually, I am using this limbo to try feeling of some mods and worldgen changes for next possible long play world. (...and being disappointed that Rivergen breaks Farseer.)

Thanks, just wanted to check if some glitch I have experienced was noticed.

Also, obtaining eight or how many gears to actually buy the pickaxe may be challenging enough in early game if your are not lucky to hit the proper ruin.