Generalbonobo

I'm not entirely sure if this is the right subforum to post this at, but I'd like to give some general feedback after playing the game for several hours, this will mostly be things that I have gripes with in the game and might very well just be personal preferences. The game over all looks like it has a great deal of potential, especially since it seems to be a more in depth experience than say, Minecraft, which I suppose I'll be comparing this game too since it's the closet it can be compared to. However there are quite a few things that have been bothering me on my play through. The first thing that I've noticed is that animals in this game seem to have a substantial amount of health, or rather, take very little damage, especially from the starting flint spear. This makes killing animals in the game time consuming and tedious, and most importantly, very dangerous since it seems like most animals can kill you in roughly four hits. For example, a sheep can take roughly 8 to 10 hits to kill while it takes it about 4 to kill you, and a boar can take up to 12 hits while it definitely can kill you in four. Coupled with the fact that these animals often come in packs makes this even more difficult to hunt animals. There is also the problem of food, in that it seems the only ways to get food is by picking berries, killing animals, or farming, however in my experience, none of these are reliable sources of food. Berries can take an in game week just to replenish themselves, farming doesn't seem to work for me as the seeds mysteriously disappear after a minute of being in moist medium fertile soil for no reason (most likely a bug), and coupled with the issue of killing animals that I stated before, cooked meat doesn't restore enough hunger for how dangerous it is it get said meat. In the hours I've played, I've struggled to not die of starvation simply because the meat rots within a day, the berries dont regrow before I start to starve, and farming either doesnt work either because of a glitch or because it also takes too long to grow before I start starving again. The issue of starvation means that I spend every in game day hunting for more meat, which stops me from doing other things like gathering the resources I need. This actually leads to my next issue, in that it takes far too long and too much grind to get into the game. In games such as Minecraft, or even Conan Exiles, I can get tools and build a house within an hour. After four hours, I'm still living in a mud hut because I can't make wooden planks or make cobblestone to make a house due to requiring a pick, which you can't make until you've gathered everything you need for smelting, but even then you get so little copper from above ground that it takes a fair amount of grind, which is again interrupted by the food shortage, that makes it last even longer. As far as I can tell, ores also barely spawn underground, as when I started mining, I could barely find any ores, and caves seemed barren. Progression in general in this game seems to be very slow, due to a mixture of what I stated above, and I've seen a few posts here where people claim they've been stuck in the copper age anywhere from 8 hours to 20 hours, which I find very disconcerting and disheartening, and is indicative of the grind necessary in this game to progress. Some other minors points. You can't place markers on the map, nor does the map get marked where you died. Sleeping in beds doesnt set your spawn point to it which I understand is a design decision, although it makes exploring further from spawn discouraging as you cant set a spawn point in your base or in the direction you're exploring. Sleeping also doesn't progress you through the entirety of night which causes me to just stand around and wait for longer than is needed. Knapping and Clay forming is a cool concept but in practice is gets very tedious very quickly, especially when you're forming larger clay items such as anvils. Also I'm not sure if this is a glitch but you can't open your inventory while in the firepit menu. I do quite enjoy chopping trees down at the base rather than having to cut down each block like in minecraft, and being able to do things like stack fire wood in the physical game world, and holding torches in your off hand lights up areas around you. The Smelting system with the molds is also fun and more immersive. Overall I think this game is trying to be too hardcore to the point where it's unfun to play. I don't know if any of these complaints are bugs, design decisions or just me being new to the game, but I do see a great deal of potential for Vintage Story, and will definitely play it in the future again, but for now I feel like these points might need reworking as it feels like there is a lot of grind.