Mac Mcleod

Also, there shouldn't be just one perfect top suit. Just like you balance movement, healing, and movement, and armor tier now - you can balance armor (and weapons) for particular kinds of drifters. There is a reason there were so many types of polearms, swords, maces, flails, spears. They had particular strength in particular situations. Likewise, wearing certain metal armors may not be the best thing when it's -13C outside.

It's lovely but I hope you have it properly gated and perhaps even have flags for each type of armor so server operators can disable suits on an individual basis. The greeks were not in greek armor for 3 weeks and then on to full field plate. Perhaps server operators could set a year that each armor type would be available. For example, the first year could be primitive wood armor and leather armor only. Then the second game year, copper armors opens up but not copper plate mail. Then the third game year, bronze chain and copper plate become available but not bronze scale and plate yet. Maybe in the 5th year, you are up to steel chain.. the 6th year steel plate mail (steel plates attached to a leather and chain under garment) and so on through... The 10th game year, full steel field plate (not plates on a chain and leather undergarment) becomes available. You could have reasonable "rushed" default settings (year 1 to year 3 before everything is available). By turning off a bunch of armor types, a server could basically top out at 1100 technology for armor. You could also add some kind of research chain to complete to open up certain armor types.

I thought if it had an insulating face it sealed it. Interesting.

I finally undersand why it looks like it does. Because of the nickel. I always think of it as "Mithril". I think it looks so much better than steel. Just found my first one on TOPS today. 8 meteoric iron blocks. Got 4 of them. The others will make 7 meteoric iron ingots.

Meteoric iron is generally iron–nickel alloy, not steel in the conventional sense. Meteoric iron: Mostly iron (Fe) with significant nickel (Ni), commonly around 5–20% nickel, plus smaller amounts of cobalt and other elements. Steel: Iron alloyed primarily with carbon, generally up to about 2.1% carbon for ordinary steels, with other alloying elements sometimes added. Meteorites can contain extremely low carbon, so chemically those are quite different from steel. Why meteoric iron was valuable for weapons Meteoric iron excels for making tools and blades. Some iron meteorites have a distinctive crystalline structure called the Widmanstätten pattern, produced by extremely slow cooling over millions of years inside an asteroid. Ancient metalworkers who worked meteoric iron were essentially starting with a naturally occurring metal alloy that was already relatively tough and workable. They could forge it, hammer it, and cold-work it, but they couldn't harden it through the conventional carbon-steel quenching process in the same way.

Thank you for your suggestions. Holding the spacebar down causes carpal tunnel and tendonitis after a couple years. And you don't recover from them unless you just stop using the mouse and keyboard for 6 months to two years. I burned out my right hand in Everquest back in 2000-2008. If I try to mouse, I'm in immediate pain. So I mouse with the left hand. I burned out my right hand in every way for jumping between 2009 and 2020. I have balls on the sides of three finger joints where the joint became inflamed and the synovial fluid leaked. I can take a few days break to reduce the symptoms. But the constant jumping to step up as I walk across a gentle slope that would be easy and natural to walk up puts me back in pain quickly. I use a lot of voice typing. I use macros to pan.

That seems like a very odd way to put it. The first two quenchings are for most purposes always beneficial on average. Maybe a bit less when considering the miscellaneous added costs. They probably put it this way because it's an RNG and they had bad luck. (and over a population of 1000 people trying this, 50 will fail the first time and 3 will fail twice on their first time). So they've lost 3,000 or 6,000 uses of the tool before they even get their first tool. In Theory, and on average, you gain 600 uses and lose 150 uses for a net gain. That doesn't sit so well with someone whose personal experience was they lost the entire steel ingot the first three times they tried to quench something. Even worse is if they are a new user just naively quenching to cool the piece down (not even trying to improve it's stats) and they lose the entire ingot at random. The handbook could stress that you can and should let your first set of tools cool down naturally to avoid this potential loss. I have read that one person lost their first FIVE items they tried to quench their FIRST steel item. I imagine they were not thinking of the lucky person who has quenched 100 times and never lost an item yet. ---- I was also happy to hear you had put in a PR on the issue picking up items. My buddy had that last night. He was placing lanterns in a cave and when it came time to leave he could pick some lanterns up with his stack of lanterns while other lanterns he had to throw stuff on the ground to open up a slot so he could pick the lantern up (which then went into the stack of items). Is a PR a request to schedule a fix or is it the actual fix to the code that may or may not go in the next release?

The reason why is that in real life the cracks develop on edges and you can't simply reheat the piece. It can be reused, or the cracked pieces can be cut off to make a smaller tool or blade. I don't have an issue with something being hard if it's based on reality. My issue was that in reality, there is almost no loss in steel when a quenching fails. But I also have experience running games to entertain others since 1976. The current system needs tuning to be more player friendly (and making it more realistic will do that). The total loss of an entire ingot is a really bad experience for many players. Oh, by the way folks, just let your first steel tools (when you are poor) cool down naturally. Don't even quench them once. They will cool down and never crack and you have a tools and weapons with default values. This will prevent you from losing them and having to replace the materials to make another one. Then on your second batch of steel or your last couple pieces of steel from your first batch, you can experiment with faster, more durable tools and the loss will be less catastrophic.

I like the idea Rainbow mentions of a durability debuff as an alternative to complete failure. It looks like they intend to eventually add oil quenching which lowers the risk of a crack. MkMoos, I researched quench cracking in real life and it usually ruins the piece but does not destroy material. You can cut away the cracked part (which happens often on edges) or you can use the ruined piece in a new worked. So simply changing the status to "ruined piece" that could then be chiseled down to bits or remelted in a bloomery would be closer to real life. Cracks from quenching on edges are a random challenge faced even by highly skilled blacksmiths. Optimal durability quenching is +37%. Anything past their results in a net loss. The critical point of failure is the 5% complete loss of the ingot for new players just breaking into steel when it is still precious to them and making it took them hours of real life. It's completely unrealistic (the piece should be ruined, not the steel lost). A middle ground (especially one that matches real life experience of real blacksmiths) would be less unlikely to lose new customers. Snap... in real life blacksmiths do not have entire steel items shatter to unrecoverable dust. The piece is simply ruined. You did leave out... Go out and chop down more trees, turn them into firewood, wait 20 minutes while more burns into charcoal, retrieve the charcoal (another 5 minutes of digging). If they allow resmelting steel bits, it's going to require a 1500 degree heat and that means bloomeries which means fireclay. Critically, new players won't quit if quenching is easier. There is a difference between "uncompromising" and "both unrealistic AND unfair that regularly drives players to fury and logging off." And a work item without enough steel bits to make the item can only be used for larger pieces (pretty much just steel plates only). You might be able to make it into a steel knife instead. If a falx requires 16 bits to make and it shatters to 14 bits, there is no way to make a falx from it- you just have 14 bits of steel that you could use in a steel plate, a spear, a knife. For context, this is my fifth play thru, I've done the steel route many times and I've made a couple dozen quenched items now. I have not rage quit over the a loss but I was able to upgrade 7 items before my first loss. I haven't lost a 2nd piece yet.

No, I'm not talking about moving the water. Just fill your bucket and you can fill a block shaped hole with water. It's just not considered a source block. It requires almost no work. All you have to do is flag water placed by a bucket as a "non-source" water block. Right now you can 1) place a source block. 2) place a block of water but it drains in about 1 second and won't act as a water source block for water source blocks next to it. I'm saying 2) place a block of water that will last a configurable time (from 3 game days up to "forever") which does not count as a water source block. It's much lighter processing than a single square of crops.

Actually I'm thinking, "Water placed with a bucket does not count as a source block". It's the smallest change. No load on the server. CPU's are very powerful tho so you could have.... Bucket water in a dirt, gravel, or sand hole vanishes after say 48 or 72 game hours. This is a scheduled event that only runs when loaded so it would be very light weight. We do this with every crop block now. Likewise bucket water in a stone or clay hole might last a month. When it rains, you could fill holes and half holes with "bucket water" which would vanish at the scheduled time. ---- I do like the idea that water source blocks would eventually fill a reservoir but that actually can take a lot of cpu depending on how you code it. So if you dig a trench from a lake, instead of just flowing in a distance 7 blocks, it would slowly fill the trench.

Somewhere between returning 1 steel bit and returning 20 steel bits is a more realistic loss that isn't so unpleasant. I'm sure you don't see it as game breaking if you got 3 bits back. And I imagine even new players would be less traumatized if they got 19 bits back. I think 17 would be a good number. You still lose the time and the charcoal/coal invested. That's a huge penalty. Time is the ultimate commodity. I think this is an area where a compromise can be found that is okay with most people (including the devs). I agree any auto-step option should be client side optional setting. It is autostepup and not autojump. Of course, players can autostepup 1/2 block up, and Elks autostep up to 2 blocks up. Regarding the crafting tool placement. I suggested this after looking at them and in most of the 'fixed' recipes there is no problem with moving the hammer / chisel / saw to a standard location. The current location is random and arbitrary from some fixed recipe set up years ago. Carcasses and coffin lids being broken is a holdover from old code. It's probably just an item property since you can place the carcasses. Picking up items. You have 88 <- these four "o" items can be picked up with a stack of the same item in my selected hotslot. O <- this same exact "o" item can't be picked up except with an empty hand. I'll look into the crafting to set the slab facing. I'm doing very short runs of a half dozen window panes in a greenhouse as well as stone slabs between them. Thanks for the suggestion.

What is the benefit you get from having a tool with 450 more uses at the cost of losing a tool with 3000 to 3500 uses? I'm trying to understand where you are coming from.

A switch that lets you (in single player) or server operators make it so you can move water with buckets but can't create water source blocks with them. Right now, there is a switch where you can't move water but that just makes the water vanish when placed. Even tho I use it, it bothers me that I can literally use one bucket of water to fill a 100x300x1 hole full of water, effectively creating a lake from a bucket. So I hope someday there is a switch that will turn that behavior off. Say a 3rd option on the current water behavior switch. It's the most significant unrealistic thing inherited from mine-craft.

You can do that but anything past two durability quenches results in a net loss of tool steel. The third durability quench averages a 500ish use loss for iron, a 650ish use loss for meteoric iron, and a 1.5ish use loss for steel (at a cost of time, fire clay, and extra charcoal). Quenching weapons for damage as much as possible makes sense tho but it's complicated. The mobs in VS have fixed hit points. 10 < needs 5+ to kill in 2 hits 12 < needs 6+ to kill in 2 hits 20 < needs 10+ to kill in 2 hits but 6.7+ to kill in 3 hits Hitting less IS THE SAME as higher durability. If you kill it in 2 hits instead of 3, you just increased the number of kills from 1000 hits from 333 kills to 500 kills. Having 6.2 vs 6.5 damage probably doesn't matter on most mobs. But if they had 63 hit points, you'd get them in 11 hits vs 9 hits. Which also means they are hitting you less (so less armor and shield durability lost) and might keep you from dying. Here are the drifter hit points. So 6.0 attacks will kill the 4th in 5 hits vs 6 hits (standard 5 point attacks). And that doing 7 points, still takes 5 hits. You need 7.5 to kill the 4th one in 4 hits. Some people say (and I haven't tested it) that they think it's best to go for damage and then if you make it, to do one last quench for durability. Also, I'm told (but haven't personally tested yet) that tempering a weapon reduces it's damage. But this doesn't matter IF you reach the threshhold value with tempering. Best to run some tests in a testing environment. I'm thinking about starting to do some videos on this but I'm dealing with a lot of medical issues right now (hopefully will be okay again by end of October so not life threatening just annoying).

By the odds, with average luck, two quenches is the sweet spot for durability.

I don't see how you lose the ENTIRE piece of steel. At least when it shatters you should be left with 15 to 17 steel bits you can reforge.

1) When you pick up an item, if you have a stack going and the item is in the center of a block, you can only pick it up with an open hotbar slot. i.e. you have 3 iron bloom. There is an iron bloom in the center of a ground storage square. You can not pick it up. But you can pick up ironblooms on the corners of the square. You can't even pick the item up with a partial stack of that item! The fix is- check if the person has a legal stack in their inventory and pick up the item. 2) When lighting torches, the last torch lit doesn't transfer to the stack of torches like all the others. 3) Regarding quenching, when an item shatters, you should be able to recover some steel bits from it. It's unrealistic that it completely poofs. 4) When placing slabs there's no indicator of how it will place. It's common with setups like this to have a "ghost" version of the slab showing you how it will place based on where you are pointing. This would prevent placing glass panes only to have to break them and place them again. This is especially annoying if you are placing glass in a window in a high tower and it falls outside onto the ground. 5) Many items have to be broken when they should really be easy to pick up ( small animal skeletons, coffin lid parts, etc.) 6) Recipe patterns that share items (like hammers, saws, chisels) are not organized to have common parts in common crafting grid locations. I.e. if there is a hammer, always make it the top left corner. If there is a saw, always have it in the middle crafting grid. 7) This is more of a feature request: Please please look into auto-populating the crafting grid from the handbook. This is a carpal tunnel issue. 8 ) And on that note: PLEASE implement auto-stepping up one block for players. This is a serious carpal tunnel issue. It's a common feature in other games. You should not have to jump 1000's of times to go up 1 block. I try to mitigate it by placing half slabs everywhere but I frequently log off due to physical real life pain from jumping. And you WILL cause your players to develop the same pain that I have with the current approach.

Right now there is no downside to living in hot climates. I understand it's lagging behind dealing with cold but I think it should be moved up in priority for future releases. I understand if you don't want to deal with thirst but overheating and heat exhaustion are real threats. Suitable clothing helps keep you cooler in hot climates.

So you could just call it "mixed fruit juices" and call it a day.

There should be an option that allows you to transport water to a hole (5 buckets fills a hole) but not create a new source block. It completely breaks immersion that you can create a huge lake given one bucket of water.

Yes, reeds should propagate in some way. For example, on some set day of the year (say the first day of spring), give reeds a small random chance to spread to a nearby valid square within 2 blocks.

Yes, there should be a configurable valuable for each of three block types instead of a single boolean on/off flag. And there should be some ongoing random checks (say 5 blocks per second) for blocks to slip in the area around the player. I.e. pick a random loaded x,y,z location and check if it would slip. If so, let it do so. Five blocks per second is a *really* small value and would not impact performance (the game is doing thousands of things per second). Right now animals cause some random slippage but the raw generation creates a LOT of terrain that's right on the edge of collapse when it should have already collapsed and created the mound of fallen dirt and gravel around the base. While they are at it, it would be nice to stop blocks from bouncing down the road indefinately. I've seen dirt blocks travel over 20 blocks on a road.

Nice suggestion. I think the Lore of the game is that Wolves and Bears were particularly affected by the Collapse (aka the Cataclysm) and are much larger and nastier than real world wolves and bears.

I agree with on on the relative rarity of animals that drop horns. On the other hand, recurve bows are cheap (10-12 rg?) and I've always bought mine since I started playing about 15 months ago.