Andael

Why such a "hard stop"? For me, any "non-shooter" is preferably either third-person, or first-person via VR. First-person through a screen has too many limitations and leads to quirky implementation choices. Sense of a character's body in the world is poor with first-person (screen). This impacts melee combat and more complex navigation like climbing or careful footwork. Vintage Story at least doesn't have too much for "platforming", but it does have melee combat which I feel is a weak-point, largely with the minecraft-esque object-at-reticle as the focus for evaluating combat. Weapons become abstracted as a distance of interaction along this reticle-ray, rather than something like a physical arc through the world. Focused work like knap/clayform/forge are good in first-person. But I'd really prefer more body-sense while out in the world. That said, Vintage Story is designed with certain choices made already, and I wouldn't change it. But for my own designs of a "survival-craft", you'd better believe it's majorly third-person (exceptions being aimed actions and focused work).

This complaint I can understand, and agree. The initial spawn is far too random. First time I played I started trapped inside trees+shrubs, couldn't see and just punched the branches to end up falling from a cliff edge because I was also on a steep cliff. It was not a great initial impression. I'd say more than half of my new-game starts have been "randomly unfortunate" -- start points I wouldn't want to introduce a new player with. Valheim is an excellent game on so many counts, and its rather tame and mostly-controlled start in a generated world is pretty well done. However, the first time I played Valheim, before I could read the first thing Hugin had to say, I was being attacked by a neck. Having no time to figure out controls I ran -- no, walked because I didn't try L1 on the controller (I later came to appreciate the choice of L1) -- while testing buttons. But that brought a boar and a greyling to the train following me and I died. Respawned, only to die before the screen fully faded in... repeat for 10 minutes. I exited, saying "My Dad will not be able to play this", as it was the time of covid and I was looking for multiplayer games to play with family between cities. I never had such an unlucky start again in Valheim, over the next 30-or-so(!) times I've played. But my point is that even with their pretty-well controlled start, there's enough random that someone's going to have a bad initial impression. As a game-developer myself, I often consider the statistical outliers. Relying on statistical norms as "typical player experience" ignores the fact that some un/fortunate players will experience the edge case -- and I consider how bad that can be.

Faerador, I feel the same way. I've been playing Vintage Story since last year, and I mentally treat "Medium" rift activity as could-be-nearly-Apocalyptic. Really, results vary broadly for any given rift-activity. But when my home feels ready to be lifted off its foundation by the weight of drifters outside... I assume it's a Medium or Apocalyptic night... and when I check, it's usually Medium. I honestly will feel more comfortable going out in Very High activity than Medium. What seems correct: the number of rifts, as Faerador also reports. Medium doesn't have high rift density. What seems wrong: the number of drifters is *often* (but not always) higher than "High" or "Very High" activity. In my mind, I keep imagining there's a switch statement that for some reason falls through to Apocalyptic when the activity is Medium... maybe for the target drifter population? Perhaps the times when Medium isn't so bad it's because of the few rifts around curtailing the ability to reach a higher population? Speculation, as I don't know the mechanics of spawning. I've had some memorable cases while I'm caught exploring... drifters practically raining down off a ledge like a waterfall. When I check and see "Medium" I'm not surprised. What annoys me the most about this, is that Medium seems to be rather common, and results in many nights of smithing or other activity suffering this horrible cacophony. Such that in my mind it's a signature part of Vintage Story: the cacophony of night. Maybe playing a tune on the Resonator could calm their blather... giving more value to building/owning one.

The storm will pass. Give it another 10-15min. Meanwhile, keep moving! Or bury yourself into a vertical coffin. Yeah, not the most enticing gameplay. I agree with some of the other points here than the storms kinda suck. I like some of the ideas and intent (perhaps), but not the current implementation. Without exploiting the game (which I never feel is good) or having end-game gear, it's easy to be insta-ganked. By chance, the most powerful enemies can spawn behind you, immediately attacking as they're still settling to ground. I think the light should still be a valid deterrent (at least to spawning), but have light itself being part of the game -- to sustain it. Such as lobes of darkness drifting up (akin to all these little dark particles)... so you can see where your light might dim and either bolster or prepare from such directions. There needs to be more ways to *play* with the storm by *design*. Rather than exploiting implementation details of spawning or other mechanics.

I suspect there is a rare storm condition where there is a "shitstorm" of one type. I had this with Nightmares, and it was in v1.19.8. I only saw this once. Maybe it's a long standing bug or quirk of implementation (some kind of edge-case overflow/wraparound/fallthrough)... or maybe intentional. It was very unusual though, not just for having a single spawn-type but also for the spawn-rate being so extreme. It wasn't anything I could "play" with much... just try to endure. 1.20 does add some kind of storm variations, I think? I expect these might be different distributions of spawn-types. But the rate/quantity you experienced sounds to me more like what I had the once: beyond any other Heavy storm or Apocalyptic night that I've had... and suspiciously so.

I can sympathize there. That was my first experience of Valheim. I spent 10 minutes repeatedly dying/respawning while trying to discover the controls. Said "my Dad will hate this", and quit. It made the game feel ill-designed. It was just bad luck though -- thirty-some playthroughs later and I never had another start like that. However, that "luck" bit is a bit of bad game design IMO. Overuse of random. People easily fall prey to thinking of statistical randomness as "averaging out" -- but that's only with statistical sample-sizes: ie. the playerbase over time. Enough players and someone will experience a lot of bad edge-cases, effectively just having "bad luck" which they can do nothing about. Like rolling an oldschool D&D character and rolling a few 3's for stats... except that you get to discover slowly over play that your stats rolled so bad. Procedural worldgen and some kind of spawn rules are essential to a game like this, but there's also the player experience to consider and tune for. Sure, the world has it's (probably too simple) rules, which shouldn't care about the player... however, why is the player starting in the midst of a huge shrubbery which a wolf has taken as rest-spot?

In 1.19.8, my experience with moose is that they are always hyper-aggressive. Once one has their antlers squared on me, the chase is on -- and I'm not the hunter. At least they're a bit slower so I can eventually get away, but they are very tenacious. I exploit this to lure them to bear-pits. On a slightly tangential note, I had a moose chasing me and I stumbled across a grizzly while running... managed to veer aside and the grizzly was then chasing us both. What surprised me is that the grizzly didn't even stop a moment to kill the moose. The moose was dead (and mostly eaten!) in an instant, and I followed in the next. It'd be a little more tolerable if they had to either take a moment to eat, or the corpse isn't "mostly eaten" in one hit.

Thank-you for the advice, both! I did end up eventually finding more copper to make the new anvil from smelted bits. What really misled me was the way it's presented in the Handbook. It suggests breaking down a copper anvil to make a bronze anvil. It also makes it clear that a chisel (of equal tier to the anvil) will be consumed in the process. And there are diagrams of various chiseled items being broken down into bits... but (as far as I could find) there is no information on how the anvil breaks down -- I knew there was a loss of material (maybe said somewhere in the handbook or I caught in a comment on here), but had no expectation it would become ingots... and further, than I would be so blocked by having the ingots! Perhaps following the handbook's note about upgrading an anvil, it could mention something or warn that a chisel will further be needed to break down the resulting ingots. Or even if it had something on the chisel page about the breakdown of anvils I would have seen the problem I'd create. It's not a big issue, and one that a person will only get caught by once (and even then, likely in Standard play, where more copper can be found readily). But damn I regretted breaking my anvil for a solid in-game week!

I'm guessing this kind of exploitation is exactly why chiseling is disabled in "Wilderness Survival"? I'm a little sad that I can't chisel some detailing, but I can imagine that I might slide down that slippery slope even though I generally avoid exploits.

Yes, a storm with only Nightmares. As I described, the only non-Nightmare were there before the storm due to the adjacent rift. And afterward, the pile of corpses were all Nightmares and at least 10 were chasing me -- very clearly visible in the light of dawn and without temporal gliches. During the storm, Nightmares were the exclusive spawn, and it seemed they spawned at a higher rate than any other spawn situation I've had. I've only experienced around 30-ish heavy storms across all playthroughs. Any other heavy storm I've had a mix, and particularly of note: I'd be able to at least harvest some double-headed drifters. I'm still on v0.19.8. Playing Wilderness Survival completely vanilla with no custom settings. The new "patterns" to the storms did have me do a mental double-check that I didn't somehow update to a newer version, and I didn't. Because this seemed like the kind of variant I might expect based on that feature hint.

I haven't seen mention of this peculiarity, but I just had a pure-Nightmare storm, and they were flowing into my world, or I intersected with a nightmare-pit of the Rust... however it goes. I roughly counted at least 12 active at any one time -- hard to be sure with trying to avoid rocks and stretchy arms and the severe glichness. Many more corpses were piled, mostly from infighting as I only have copper spears and a copper falx... paired with improvised armor and a crude shield (having a rough go). I mostly huddled in a small squat tower. I got one-shot, as they sometimes push onto each other and they can then reach. Early on there were a few lower-class drifters because there was a rift right beside the tower and activity was high -- so before the storm I already had a cadre of heavy breathers. Once the storm began though, it quickly became all Nightmares and stayed that way. No double-headed. After the storm passed, trying to leave the area I was chased by a horde which was too reminiscent of Helldivers. I only managed to loot about 1/5th of the corpses... must've been more than 30 through the night. First time I'm playing on Wilderness Survival. Y'know... watch a youtube video of someone playing and it doesn't look so bad... they find a trader with chests for sale, easy ores even though one must take care of cave-ins... So I try: cursed. Into late November and not even properly "bronze age", had 5 heavy and 3 medium storms. Three traders found: all agriculture, offering what I already have (crazy since I have nothing!) and buying things I can't make. Caves have mostly been vertical shafts into nests... short on ores, ruins, or translocators. This is actually my fourth area in this world -- I couldn't get a temporal gear to anchor myself earlier. My first was going well -- had good amounts of copper and clays; bismuth-bronze soon, nice region... but as I crested a small hill: surprise-wolf-chomp. Then an ill-fated respawn with nothing at night before a heavy storm... killed by a Nightmare doing the step-up-and-reach off of a buddy. Surprise! But not really surprising... Next life also cut short in the stone-age, by a bear in dense foliage. Anyway... Nightmare storm! Anyone else experience this? Most who keep storms active seem to only do it for farming double-headed drifters. This seems like a big middle-finger to them. I am keeping storms and glitches to play "as designed". I kinda like some of the idea... but in practice rather hate the storms as they are. I'm cultivating a list of thoughts/ideas about them.

I'm playing Wilderness Survival... and been having a tough roll. Copper (and most other early ore) has been scarce. It's the first time I made a copper anvil though, because I couldn't find any tin or bismuth. I've now found some meagre tin (24 nuggets)... but needed to recycle the copper anvil for enough bronze to make a new anvil (I've found sources of iron, so a bronze anvil, hammer, and pick will get me past this struggle). Well, I didn't expect the anvil to break into 8 copper ingots. I did expect to use up the copper chisel (more precious copper gone). But now I don't think I can do anything with the ingots. Can't smelt them, no chisel to break them down to smelt, no way to make a chisel now that I have no anvil. Effectively, breaking the copper anvil left me with less copper (usable copper in my current state). Or is there a way to fix this? Without just finding enough copper nuggets for the anvil -- because that's the only path I see now. And a frustrating one in this locale... half of my copper was obtained through panning. I've found 3 small surface deposits and one "minuscule" prospecting reading. Whereas I've found plenty of hematite and three meteors. If there's no alternative, the harsh lesson is "build two chisels, or one of bronze, if you actually want to upgrade copper->bronze anvil".

Shoot... I'm guessing that since you're suggesting a mod we're stuck with either always-hostile or always-passive drifters, without mods? I might just enable aggression. At 5yo the boy's favorite biome in Valheim was the Swamp... I suspect he might've just been unnerved here by the sounds of the temporal rifts and the cacophony of heavy breathing. If it doesn't work out I'll look into mods! Thanks!

My 8yo nephew wanted to try this game I was playing... He took to it, but was creeped out by the rifts and almost paralyzed by fear of the drifters. So after buying a copy for him to play on a shared world he preferred the sound of "Explorer" mode. The wildlife at least fights back when injured, but the drifters are always passive... which he doesn't like now that he's gotten more comfortable. And it really does feel bad that these things littering the landscape and sounding all ominous are completely passive. The world configuration seems to only have the one setting for all hostility, with three states: aggressive/passive/off. Does "passive" mean that wildlife fights back but drifters never do? Or does Explore-mode have a finer distinction where drifters are set to "hostility=off"? I've been hesitant to experiment in case I can't re-set back to the Explorer default. I think "aggressive" might be too much for him, especially at the rate that wolves spawn. (Really, these baying nuisances can be too much... In my own world: 36 hides in 3 days, from around my home which I am constantly trying to keep clear of wolves? I've started to let hides rot... I'm overflowing in mostly-wolf leather.)

Swimming is a pretty safe way to travel it seems. Except it was still as cold as -20 while I was doing this journey... so I tried to avoid getting wet. When I did, I had to dig a little shelter from the wind and snow/sleet for a campfire to dry and warm-up. I keep forgetting to try a raft!

I finally found bauxite. Almost exactly 10000 blocks away from origin, to the north-northeast. With the advice here I decided to commit to a long run I'd probably die on... goal being bauxite or death. So I went lean, with only one old hunter's backpack, no heavier armor, old gear, and three sliced up pies (I should've taken more... got lucky with a lot of frozen berries though -- it was March and northerly). Because I was hedging my bet and traveling light, yet managed to return home safely... I had to make another trip -- properly equipped (with two mining sacks). You ain't kiddin'. From the translocator I started from, heading away from "home"... the world soon turned to granite, and granite... and granite. While I crossed fields of granite gravel... shorelines of only granite sand, and nothing exposed but granite beneath the thinnest topsoil... I kept thinking back to your comment. But I didn't have much choice in direction from this translocator, else I'd be headed toward explored territory. I went 11k blocks and still granite, so I began to loop back... and on that large loop I finally found the bauxite. In my initial searching I was trying to sweep "breadth-first", hoping to find the closest bauxite to home. I also didn't want to risk losing gear days away from spawn. But sometimes you need to clear large spans of a particular geology... so maybe better to just pick a direction and keep going, fast.

I find plenty of sconces in underground ruins. However, you might be thinking of lighting a larger base than I am. Base layout... it seems in every game I build into the environment. Never the same twice. In this case, I started in a tunnel: walled off the two openings, added doors. Over time fixed things up. Main room functions as the kitchen, still kept most of the natural sandstone and granite cave walls. Bedroom in an alcove. A slightly lower area for crafting: crucible and clay. Front porch has crates of stone, barrels for compost, and some garden tools leaning. Blue clay shingles extend from the natural cave opening. I have a small cellar (3x2) of ashlar blocks beside the kitchen area -- convenient to access for cooking, or for grabbing a meal from a crock. A tunnel runs through the mountain ridge I'm built into... which passes through a larger 7x7 room for tanning, brining, fruit juice, and distilling. This room formed as a side-effect of mining out granite blocks. Deeper along the tunnel I have a "temporal storm arena" with weapons, armor, and spawn-prevention except inside a fenced pit. Other side of the tunnel (south facing) exits into a greenhouse which I open during the summer for rainfall. A pigfarm is also nearby. A ladder goes up from the main room to the mechanized forge. Powered Quern, Helve Hammer, and Pulverizer. An iron anvil for smithing. From this raised forge, the windmill tower extends a bit higher. Elevation of the upper sails is only about 160 (I favor a reasonable aesthetic). I have two sails up there, plus one rigged directly into the forge's large-gear. The forge area is built into a natural ledge of the mountain slope -- basically I dug upward from my home until I emerged, then leveled it off, walled it up and added the shingled roof to match the roof down below. Having the forge area raised means I can barely hear the machinery working from the main room, plus the mechanical losses are less. Overall look from outside is kind of like some mountain monastery integrated into the rock. I get drifters moaning outside -- often get rifts up on the mountain slope above me, with drifters raining down. Annoying. I only get drifters inside in the prepared arena pit. Though during a storm I need to be in there to avoid getting ganked by something spawning behind me (twice I've had a corrupt do that in my kitchen -- I mean, spawning on my pie table!? Jerk).

Thank-you. Then I will avoid such caverns unless I know there's something I want. Or, if I want to explore nearby but with some peace rather than having my thoughts impeded by a blaring Bell.

I've felt somewhat encouraged to resume the search -- to just load up on pies and travel overland forever... but waiting until winter passes again so I don't have snow obscuring things. To bide my time, I'm again searching for translocators. Only found one more so far, but nothing immediately interesting on the other end -- I'll probably use it as the launch-point for my later walkabout. On the speculations of where to find translocators... I've wondered if rusty gears in caves could be a hint? I could easily be seeing coincidence, since a rusty gear leads me to search more thoroughly. So far, four translocators in my world are within about 300 blocks of home (which is right at 0, 0). So they do seem fairly common. I've been trying to find and fully explore every cave during this winter... except the deep occupied caverns I'm not comfortable tackling. It's what I'd like steel plate for. My iron chain gets shredded too easily. About those particularly bad caverns with nests, bells, and everything spawning... I've only cleared two, but there wasn't really anything worthwhile to gain aside from access to more cavern -- ultimately deadends and the usual loot drops of nests and bells. They don't seem very worthwhile to tackle compared to the resources to repair armor and make new weapons. So I'm wondering if I'm missing something of value there or have just been unlucky?

It can't be found under other sedimentary layers? It seems my world has endless strata of claystone/limestone/sandstone/shale overlapping each other, sometimes with soil on top. Thick enough that steep cliffsides are often just the sedimentary rock without any visible metamorphic layer. After struggling to find any visible bauxite I started boring holes until I find the underlying metamorphic. Or am I wrong here and bauxite will only be on top aside from soil or igneous?

Ha, okay thanks for that. I've been checking a commodity trader on occasion, just in case. I've repaired five translocators, and made use of them to extend my reach. I keep checking caves for more. But it's getting to the point where I have to range far even to explore new caves. Is there a rough "density" of translocators to be expected? Two of mine are about a 15min run away. I imagine there must be many more closer. Also, are they guaranteed to be connected to caves? I found a ruin structure completely sealed underground, at something like y=-60. Only found it because of a drifter sloshing around in water surrounding the ruin in it's sealed chamber. It might be neat to have a Jonas-type device you could make which resonated with other such machinery, like a dowsing rod. That would certainly be something I'd invest some effort into in this world to help my otherwise blind and desperate search. Every time I find a translocator, that's been the hope! Only to feel that hope drain away into misery over the course of the following game-week as I explore around and eventually make the trek home the long-way, overland. All of my destinations have been very similar/familar, except one with redwoods which was nice. Still with rocks like "home" though.

Someone has to be worst-case. It's one of the things about statistics... a specific sample case isn't guaranteed to fall into normal, and *someone* will be an outlier. Perhaps I have more running to do. Some of this terrain is so arduous. Like swiss-cheese mountains having vertical pits extending deep below sealevel. I imagine the terrain generation parameters at some extremes.

Thanks for the tip about granite, I hadn't seen that before. The world I got had me starting in sandstone with underlying granite and andesite. Traveling out from here most directions gets me hills and plains of thick claystone, limestone, or shale. I'll burrow 40 blocks before I hit granite or andesite (checking in case bauxite has been hiding beneath all this sedimentary layering). Really, it seems like my situation should be ideal -- the sedimentary layers are so thick and layered; I need to dig deep to even find the underlying hard rock. Just hasn't been any bauxite in the mix. Plenty of every other sedimentary rock. When I went through translocators I basically find more of the same. Two of them exited deep under limestone hills. I can only imagine that those having trouble finding limestone must be living on top of bauxite or something, being my karmic complement. I've had no end of limestone. I imagine borax can be a problem, since you pretty much have to stumble into it. With that I've been lucky in three worlds -- finding borax rather early in caves, and then more later. I've rarely found ores in caves, as many recommend. Instead I find brown coal, sulfur, saltpeter, and borax. Ores I've been getting almost entirely by prospecting and vertical shafts.

I've read some comments about how some have loved the struggle to find bauxite... but that's after they eventually found it. In a recent playthrough I was ready for steel at about 80h in. My primary focus became "find bauxite". I spent winters delving caves for translocators. Found and repaired five in total. I spent summers exploring the lands they sent me to. I toggled the map settings to the old "truecolor" to help reveal exposed bauxite (with the intent to turn it back after finding, which never happened). I traveled from each of the translocator endpoints back to "home", and then even between the endpoints, desperate to fill out the map. I bored holes through the sedimentary layers periodically to check for a bauxite layer beneath all the dirt, lime, clay, and sand... I used someone's tip about lapis lazuli occuring in only a few rock types including bauxite... but it was always limestone. I found olivine and titanium. And trunks of iron ore, waiting. As the search continues, the overhead to even get to the frontiers increases. I considered heading out minimally and just dying to respawn at home... but that feels bad to intentionally use the mechanic in this way. That's not surviving, and not fun for me... though I wasn't having fun anymore anyway. So I began a fresh game, after over 200h. I estimate that more than 50h of my life was spend just racing across terrain scanning for bauxite and boring sample-holes. Stress on the boring. It didn't even spark much emergent gameplay, unlike the hunt for metals. I'm not enjoying this new playthrough as much though... I like what I'd accomplished in the prior game. Vintage Story really stresses the effort needed to accomplish things, and this amplifies the value of achievements... but also has been killing my interest to re-do it, especially when aspects of the current world make results feel worse. It would be nice if there was something to be done to make this effort seem progressive... rather than searching a map which ultimately feels devoid of bauxite because of the way random numbers turned out. Alternative materials, a longer process, sifting bauxite bits from conglomerate gravel... something. Sad tuba noises.