Teh Pizza Lady

I'm going to give a careful and measured response, not because this discussion demands it, but because I want to clarify my position on Anego and because you implied I think they can do no wrong. I do think Anego has missed the mark on some things. However, I’m holding off from speaking until the game is more "finished," in case my concerns become irrelevant as issues are addressed behind the scenes. Side note time. It’s worth noting that the yearly cost of hosting their type of server infrastructure, combined with what Tyron pays his developers and the additional servers they own, means that any spending on "upgrades" is not a one-time expense. Server space, unless you own the physical hardware, is expensive, especially if you want enterprise-level support for critical game systems that must run 24/7. So yes, they have money. And it is likely budgeted at least a couple of years in advance to ensure they can stay afloat while building the framework necessary for Chapter 3 to work seamlessly. For context, I did the math on running TOPS based on Vintage Story’s baseline requirements for a smooth multiplayer experience. Official guidance is 1 GB plus roughly 0.25–0.3 GB per player slot. For a 75-slot server, that is about 18–24 GB of RAM just for the server, not counting the hard disk space needed for the world, which can grow significantly as players explore. Add the CPU needed to calculate chunks for all those players, and a server with this capability costs roughly $60–$180 USD per month, without any extras like automatic backups or DDoS protection. Costs vary depending on the service and configuration chosen. That works out to $720–$2,160 per year. Converting a 20 EUR license to USD (~$23.50), they would need to sell roughly 30–90 licenses per year just to cover server costs alone. When you factor in developer pay and the additional servers they own, the number of licenses they need to sell each year goes much, much higher. Business models like theirs are very risky because once people buy the game, the source of revenue immediately dries up. There are no fallbacks, no merchandise store, no monthly subscription revenue. It is a one-time payment that can never be collected again. So was it a bad launch? No, the game is clearly successful. That is why people are waiting at the door for a chance to play on the only official multiplayer server. Anego probably just cannot afford to spend more on that server at the moment. Sorry you didn’t get to play. If it matters that much to you, try hosting a private server that you and your friends can play on.

The max temp of peat is lower than the max temp of coal. So the fire would be hotter with coal meaning that there's a bigger difference in energy for the stacks to absorb. The way the game calculates it is that the further from the temp of the fire the item is, the faster it will heat until it reaches the processing temperature, then it will rise more slowly, so keeping a fire is more to prevent it from cooling down too quickly. That said, I did release a mod that patches this up a bit so that a stack of items will take just as long to cool down as it did to heat up. Just search the ModDB for Stacks Cool Slowly or click this link: https://mods.vintagestory.at/scs

The fact that many people want to play the game is great! It's good news for the team if their game is that popular and so many people want to play that there is a line to get into TOPS! As time goes on, the team earns more capital to spend on server infrastructure, I'm sure TOPS slots will increase or they might spin up a 2nd server. The game is still in early access so there's no reason to think that one instance defines the state of the entire game.

TOPS isn't the only server you can play on... Just throwing that out there.

I'm sure the mod author would appreciate that if you approached in a way that didn't make it seem like they did a bad thing but more along the lines of "I love your mod so much I made art for it!" or something. Some people can get pretty defensive about stuff like that.

My recommendation is to get an actual mouse if you're going to be doing any kind of gaming, especially on a laptop

I love the berry rework and have zero complaints about it.

It has nothing to do with the nomadic playstyle in my opinion. It has everything to do with basic survival expectations regardless of playstyle. Cookpots aren’t just for settled players. Without one, you’re locking yourself out of core systems like meal nutrition bonuses and more efficient food usage. That’s not a playstyle issue, that’s a self-imposed limitation. Being nomadic doesn’t mean having zero infrastructure. It means carrying what you need and setting up temporary camps. Historically, nomads still stopped to repair equipment, gather supplies, and restock food. Firing clay for an afternoon before moving on fits that pattern perfectly. Locking hide production behind the cookpot doesn’t force settlement, it encourages preparation. You’re not being told to stay, just to engage with a basic survival loop before moving on. And practically speaking, a cookpot is already essential for travel. If you’re moving between locations, having a way to make proper meals on the road is a necessity or you will find yourself having to stop more frequently to gather more food. The same applies to hide processing: rendering fat improves preservation, reduces spoilage risk, and makes the whole process more reliable. If you want anything beyond basic armor, you’re going to have to stop for a while anyway. Tanning hides into leather takes time, and most metal armor depends on it. The same goes for things like better backpacks. Those are long-term prep steps, not signs that the game is forcing you to settle permanently. Nomadic play isn’t about never stopping. It’s about not staying longer than necessary. Taking time to prepare food, process materials, and stock up before moving on is part of that, not a contradiction of it. Using nomadism as a reason to avoid making a cookpot just doesn’t really hold up. This is the real reason the game doesn't really support the nomadic playstyle very well. Things that would make being a nomad worth it (like making a loop of all the traders in the game) start becoming chores as soon as you find out that there are only a few places worth visiting and half of the stuff you gather either goes to waste or gets left behind for use never later.

Not going to lie, I was kind of hoping that the rift bug was just a silent, sneaky adjustment to the rifts and that it would be explained in an official update. Welp, now I have to deal with rifts cluttering up the place instead of going "Woah! This area is NOT okay!" and just being wary of it for a minute. oh well! I can just make my own mod and break them again.

In my humble opinion, I do believe that pottery should be one of the first steps after obtaining flint tools since you will need a way to cook and store meals. You can just cook red meat over an open flame, but it loses nutrients compared to what you'd get if you tossed a couple pieces into a pot with some berries and/or mushrooms. I see it as a space saving measure once you get your 2nd crock which can be sealed to delay spoilage. It's one of those things, for me, that just feels logical once you try it a few times and compare it to the alternative. You get better food that lasts longer and takes up less space in your inventory once you get a few meals established.

Welcome to the forums! The spear changes weren't arbitrary and they made hunter pretty much the default class for many because you could literally machine gun spears at targets. Bows got out-classed and just felt... worthless. Now you can use a spear for the initial attack and swap to your bow and it feels, honestly, good. Because spear damage was nerfed, but bows weren't, you can actually do more damage per second with a bow and arrow now. Because spears were nerfed, they also nerfed the health of some common animals to compensate so that spears wouldn't be a completely useless weapon. So what has happened is that bows (even the crude bow) and arrows just became a whole lot more useful, especially in the early days of your playthrough. Cooking the fat to get the hide is known as rendering the fat. It has to be done because the oil is locked away in the fat cells. Rendering the fat causes them to break down and release their oil. It also preserves the oil because the fat cells get left behind. Fat locked away in a decaying cell is what causes it to go rancid. Rendering it down kills the bacteria, removes moisture and releases the oil from the decaying flesh. You can also do this with beef tallow and duck fat. I actually fact-checked you on the historical uses of fat without rendering it first. Turns out you are correct! However rubbing fat/oil into the hide is less about realism and more about representing that you're making a fine product. In that light, I think your suggestion of allowing fat to work the way it does to produce a crude product but rendering it down into oil could produce a finer product. I'm not sure how that would work in the game as it is, since there is hide and there is leather (tanned using barrels), but nothing really in between. What would YOU suggest for the difference between a hide that was oiled with raw fat and one that was oiled with rendered fat?

I get where y'all are coming from with AI "art" feeling bland or generic. Gone are the days of pranking your friends with ChatBot or similar. My sister once fended off a random guy who kept texting her by feeding his text messages into an AI chat and then copying the responses back to him. He eventually got the hint when his advances were getting him nowhere. AI is essentially an approximation of anything ever written from the dumbest of takes to the most eloquently stated thought pieces. As a result, in order to be coherent, it cannot be creative. In order to be creative, it has to produce things that don't make sense. It cannot produce things that are both coherent and creative. This is established fact. Link takes you to a PsyPost article with more information on that subject. That said, as someone who actually made an in-depth mod from scratch but can't draw, the choice isn't "AI vs handmade art", it's "placeholder until I get an artist to draw something real". Not everyone has the time, skill, or access to an artist especially for free projects as you all have stated. A lot of us are programmers or designers, not illustrators. Using AI for an image doesn't mean the mod itself was low-effort. It means we needed something so the page wouldn't look like a generic download page from a shady 90's website. I'd absolutely prefer to use custom art, but until I can, I'd rather have something visual than a jarring lack of anything at all. I think a better standard is judging the mod itself by the comments, the author's engagement and the content of the mod, not just the thumbnail. As the old saying goes, don't judge a book by its cover... And for what it's worth, I used a local copy of Flux Dev on my PC to create the image so no environmentally exploitative methods were used for it, but I get the concerns. AI is broken and a poor substitute for the real thing and doesn't deserve the attention and funding that it gets. Should I remove the AI image from my mod? Probably. But not until I get something to replace it. I used to be heavy into AI, because I thought it offered me a way to get my creative ideas out of my head. Instead it's only lead me down a path of disappointment of never quite reaching the mark.

Minus all your items, however, so unless that's all you were carrying, uh... good luck.

The problem is that bloomeries still require calcinated flint to make the fireclay (unless you got lucky with an early deposit in a bauxite biome), so the initial cost is still up-front which still requires considerable resources to get those six flint to cook.

guys chill, I'm pretty sure he can't respond to you even if he wanted to.

A clock that chimes as a storm is approaching would be fun. Especially if it continued to chime during the storm like an alarm.

They sound like sniper rifles, too, lol. It would definitely give the Malefactor way more utility and not be quite so useless late game, especially if you can upgrade the sling with better materials to allow you to chuck those stones even further. Malefactor should also get the ability to craft a bola and other types of throwing weapons, in my opinion. Also the ability to craft lead glandes for extra damage.

I believe what you are making is a strawman argument, because you are arguing against something I never actually said. I never said they should fix things that are broken, even though they sometimes do. I said the game was intentionally designed to allow players to modify things to their own needs and preferences. The major difference is that mods fixing a broken game means the developer has a track record of leaving broken systems alone and never fixing them. Mods allowing customization to suit your needs or preferences is a sign that the game is actually balanced at its core, and the majority of players probably agree, but not everyone. Vintage Story, obviously, is the second one. The game isn't broken (aside from obvious bugs in the pre and rc downloads), but instead is full of deliberate design choices that allow the developers to give the players the freedom to customize the game without diluting their own vision for it. Mods WILL fix it but only because you think it's broken compared to what you actually need or want, not because it actually is. So the idea that "mods fixing it" is a sign of bad design just does not make sense to me in the context of a game that was built around modding from the start, especially since I don't think it is in particular need of fixing aside from a few bugs here and there.

This may be a triggered response, but alas, I have been triggered, so this is my soapbox and the hill I will absolutely die on. Your statement, in my opinion, is objectively wrong on several different levels. First, Vintage Story was designed around modding. From the very beginning, even the game itself is a collection of 3 different mods working together. The architecture of the game intentionally exposes itself to mod creators to tweak, modify, and enhance the features within. The modding API is extensive, well-documented and very stable compared to other game creators (cough cough bethesda cough). The developers not only expect the players to want to mod it, but also encourage it. It is far easier to create a Vintage Story mod than it is for other block games. So when someone says, "Mods will fix it", it means the base game provided the framework and the players can tailor it to their specific needs. That's a feature, not a failure. Second, Vintage Story cannot and should not satisfy everyone. The game sits in a weird position between sandbox and simulation. Some players want more realism and complexity. Others want less grind and faster progression. Some players want different crafting mechanics. Others want simple, uncomplicated recipes to bypass the established progression systems. If the developers tried to satisfy everyone in the base game, the design would be bloated and inconsistent. Modding solves this problem by allowing the different groups and communities within the playerbase to customize the game differently. Third, Vintage Story mod support reduces the need for "lowest common denominator" design. Games without official mod support have to dumb themselves down to satisfy everyone who plays them. The Vintage Story developers, instead, can afford to shape the game the way they see fit and experiment with deeper mechanics instead of keeping everything bland. If players think something doesn't work the way they want, they can adjust it without diluting the core design of the base game that someone else may enjoy. Finally, your statement undermines and dismisses a major strength of the game community itself. Because Vintage Story has such extensive modding support, the community can produce QOL improvements that eventually become part of the base game itself. They can produce total gameplay overhauls or even small tweaks. They can create new game mechanics. They can find performance improvements that get absorbed into the game code and added to the next release. TL;DR: Assuming that modding is a bandaid for bad design is a very close-minded view and misunderstands the entire philosophy behind Vintage Story's core design. Dismissing mod support ignores the flexibility, experimentation, and creativity the developers deliberately built into the game.

traders are bugged on this rc

Ah, I understand a bit better now. I'm no engineer (in fact my BS degree is in Computer Science, not Computer Engineering because I elected NOT to go to the engineering school in my state due to cost O_O ), but I can understand and appreciate the engineer's approach to subjects and methodologies in creating solutions to the problems. While the science is more about the theory, I can appreciate the execution of said theories. Anyway, I agree that many of the conversations had here about new game mechanics are definitely premature and a great source of disagreement as opinions and speculations are too often treated as facts rather than a subjective idea.

@williams_482 I fixed it. Stacks Cool Slower mod now on the Vintage Story ModDB: https://mods.vintagestory.at/scs

Neither one is wrong. You are allowed to enjoy what you enjoy. As the game changes (and it will) so must the tactics and motives for gameplay. There is nothing wrong with setting it aside for a while and returning to it later.

Welcome to the forums! Have you tried out Expanded Foods yet? It is a work-in-progress, but it definitely gives you the ability to use honey in recipes more than the base game. If you are wary of using a WIP mod, you can always just fill a barrel with honey and come back to it in a couple of weeks and it will have fermented into mead which can be distilled into Distilled Mead and again into Aqua Vitae, giving you access to soaked bandages which heal for about the same amount as honey-sulfur poultices without the sulfur requirement!

Welcome to the forums! This would definitely be an interesting change especially for users with lower-end computers.