Maelstrom

That much firewood will murder multiple steel axes. I'm guessing a good half dozen from chopping the firewood alone, not to mention clear cutting the local forests. P.S. my comments should be taken in jest.

Dear God, WHY?! Why must you torture yourself?

Sure it possible.

I meant for non storm spawning mechanics

Would littering the floor with rocks also prevent spawning?

If that were the case we'd have a reality simulator and I doubt many people would be interested in that game. Even survival games have to give up on reality to some degree.

I'm not totally against more metrics to manage, so long as the added metric brings something meaningful to the game, such as the recently added air metric when swimming underwater. Currently, weight is a subset of inventory and water a subset of nutrition (water is existent in ALL food so one could argue the hunger bar incorporates thirst already). I am decidedly against a new metric/bar if it's just to simulate some aspect of reality (such as thirst to introduce a requirement to carry a liquid food item). I'd prefer something like a stamina/fatigue meter that as it increases the ability to do things physically declines, such as reduced damage in combat, slower walking and mining speeds, etc. Weight could be included in this meter where higher weight increases the speed of fatigue. This meter would also address another meter suggested - sleep. Sleeping, in addition to emptying the hunger bar would also reduce the fatigue bar, restoring the ability to mine quickly or do greater damage in combat.

A thirst bar, then a weight bar, then an illness bar, then a...

Those spikes do depressingly small damage. Not worth the bother, basically.

I know for certain bowls can be used. Don't know about jugs as I haven't used them yet.

I don't. Early game there's enough things to do that keep me inside while the moaning choir serenades me. Lighting up the homestead with lanterns prevents rifts spawning and allows nighttime navigation between buildings without drifter harassment, even on nights of apocalyptic level rift activity.

Hmmmm... sounds like faulty construction. Might I suggest suing the construction company? Joking aside, I got no clue.

Hmmmm.... There's three spawning conditions that come to mind - rift activity, caves and temporal storms. Obviously, the last overrides the prior two. In my experience, the first two have some interaction. In cases where I've settled close to open caves, I've had drifters wander out of the nearby cave during the night which seems more common when rift activity is higher (medium and above). I've also heard drifters in the cave from the previous night when going about chores near the cave as well. Lastly, there does seem to be a cap on drifter population. From my experience spending a night indoors on a medium rift activity night will create a larger mob of morning moaners than on a night of low rift activity, but it isn't a huge mob either. The mob doesn't seem to get appreciably larger with higher rift activity either. It seems to top out around 8 or 10 drifters.

Ouch. In my last world I traipsed about 3,000 blocks for the beautiful orange rock. Later went through a bugged translocator and found bauxite <500 blocks while walking back home.

Then leave soil instability off when you create a world. If you want to turn it off on your existing world, I'm sure there's a command you enter to turn it off.

In the 2 years since the last post in this forum spawning has changed dramatically, most notably the rift activity mechanic. The second best way to spawn proof an area is to light it sufficiently, best done with lanterns as torches provide almost insufficient light level for spawning purposes. I have a multi-building base that only produces 1 or 2 drifters on apocalyptic levels of activity and none below that. It only took about 10 lanterns to light the roughly 100 square block base sufficiently.

And ungodly amounts of sand

Well, make a mod then. I'll bet a mod based on this idea would become very popular.

So the angle of repose doesn't apply until someone walks on the dirt? If terraforming with soil instability on, consider using cob or packed dirt. Those two are not affected by gravity. Cob will eventually grow grass, but takes a lot longer than regular soil. Packed dirt will never grow grass.

No, they don't. The artificial terra preta is not exactly as good as natural terra preta.

Sounds like you've read "Brown Spots on the Wall" by Hu Flung Dung.

I'm not sure how VS manages chunks. I >think< (and likely wrong) that chunks in VS are broken up into subchunks for vertical management. I'm confident @Streetwind can give more accurate info though.

Hopefully some day we can do what chimps do with ant hills - stick a stick in it and have a renewable food source on the go in savannahs.

Also consider that VS chunks are 32 blocks making them 4 times bigger than that other block game.

No. The hunger mechanic essentially handles this at this time. Adding a thirst bar just for "reality" sake does not make a game more fun, but the opposite. Watch this for why...