Maelstrom

I can assure you it was aiming at you. I watched a drifter practically kill itself skipping stones off the rock wall I was standing on only for said projectile to bop the antagonist on da head.

I'm not the best at combat, but as @LadyWYT said; experience says a lot. I don't bother with armor less than gambeson. The copper armors take too much ore and provide insufficient protection (IMO). The leather armors have such low durability that it isn't worth it (at least when I experimented with leather armor way back in 1.16; leather may have changed since then). Both are just inferior to gambeson and given their costs aren't worth it until I have gambeson armor. After I have gambeson I don't bother with anything until at least iron chain, and usually steel.

Yes. The stable release announcements get their own thread. Notifications are put on the Discord even quicker than here.

Yeeeeeaaaahhhhhhhhh... them axles need to be stuck to a block or another axle. Took me quite the while to learn that, too.

That chomp might have been your armor getting demolished. Did you still have said armor AFTER this lupine encounter?

I am not aware of such. I've had drifters two blocks below me fail to land a rock because the rock bounces off the block I'm standing on. It comedically ricochets straight up and hits the drifter that threw it. Given that experience I would guess that the angles involved are the most important factor. I suppose you could mythbust science this and gradually nerd pole up until the drifter targeting you no longer hits you with a rock. Shouldn't be dangers since rocks only cause 1 pt damage.

I would suggest nerd-poling 20-25 blocks up and knap away (I use hay blocks coz they break quickly with an axe). You get to see a show of the drifters wandering around below you as you productively use your time unassailed by said drifter tourists. Personally, I knap up a dozen spears and hunt away. Especially in the early game coz that first temporal gear can be REALLY important.

1.18

In the winter yes. After the first winter, probably just cuz the ones I wore through the winter are just threads and need to be repaired anyway so I just repair it when I start having to defrost my monitor.

This!

Only if berry bushes aren't collected when exploring for resources. I usually stop collecting berry bushes after my first summer after acquiring over a stack of each bush type (although blueberry and white currants usually are about half the others). The lower production per tile is probably a much bigger downside than acquisition.

Grape Nuts. I ate that once. ONCE, because I thought I was eating gravel!

One thing that makes it a bit less tedious is to fill your inventory with non-firewood items as you chop firewood. The firewood piles up. Keep one hotbar slot for firewood and start placing firewood. the single hot bar slot will refill from the pile on the floor as you place more firewood. This will cut the time to fill a charcoal pit in half or more, depending on the size of your pit.

As @LadyWYT mentioned re-reading lore can uncover newer depths. I need to do that as the position I stated is one I created during my first discovery of the lore as I found it in game, which as we all know, takes a lot of time.

@ifoz I contend that Falx is not the savior of the human race. Until about a year ago the website indicated VS has Lovecraftian roots (now changed to eldritch). Lovecraft wrote about what happens when other dimensions intersect with earth. My thought is that some extra-dimensional event happened the caused the Rot (see Color out of Space by Lovecraft) to begin with. Falx, began researching/investigating and came across extra-dimensional knowledge (the Case of Charles Dexter Ward) leading him to create the various machines hinted at but also leading to changing everyone committed to his cause to drifters (see Breakdown and Confession in-game lore). Those humans that chose paths apart from Jonas survived and rebooted civilization. Seraphs? The very name implies an extra-dimensional being that has appeared to somehow fix things (see The Shunned House by Lovecraft) and the in-game script while the game is loading and closing indicate such when the script says, "return once again" and "alone once again."

Shouldn't be too hard to mod a spear quiver for anyone with the modding know-how.

I don't think you can escape out of character setup. Once a character is created though, there is no pause on game launch, which I what I think the OP meant.

The game automatically pauses during character setup. I believe that was implemented in 1.19 earlier this year.

To make a spear quiver AT LEAST as good as a backpack, it would need to hold 6 for a leather quiver, 5 for linen, 4 for a pelt (hunter pack). And even THAT would be pointless because that's how many slots there are for the items I listed. So to make it worth the while the quiver would have to hold at least one more than the numbers I provided, which seems a bit OP. That is why I suggested a quiver for the off hand instead of an backpack space.

Good to know. I was not aware of that.

Not really. By the time I'm ready to hit the road for such an extended trip I wouldn't do it to pan gravel. I would need a unique resource in the destination to warrant a trip of tens of thousands of blocks.

Honey quern FTW!

Why bother with fruit trees? Aesthetics. Personal preference. Different variety of fruit/alcohol. Probably a host of other reasons others could provide. If'n you don't want to go through the trouble of gathering fruit tree clippings, planting and etc. etc. Then don't. While I have gathered a great many fruit clippings across 2 or 3 worlds, I have yet to plant a single one. No worries. This game typically provides multiple paths to get what you need.

What I meant by goldilocks zone is that farming year round is possible (unlike the north) and not as restrictive (due to heat stress) as the south. There are still times in which plants will get heat stressed, but it's generally the most lenient zone to farm in.

That wasn't exactly my point. I was offering a suggestion to make a heat mechanic work without adding another health bar. I also added some additional incentive for not letting extreme heat conditions persist too long. Personally, I'd find what I described fun. But I'm a masochist that likes overcoming difficult challenges and adding additional consequences for freezing too long would be good imo. Currently freezing can be cheesed by poultices and putting up with the frosty screen. Adding a fainting mechanic for staying in the cold too long would force managing personal temperature more.