Maelstrom

Also setting a huge respawn range can seriously discourage dying, especially if keep inventory is disabled.

Tangential question about winters, specifically the option regarding harsh winters in world setup options. What makes a harsh winter, well... harsh?

If you haven't already discovered the lore in the game, gather bony soil from ruins and begin panning it for books and scrolls. Disclaimer: may require significant travel to gain sufficient supply. Out of 9 blocks of bony soil I've found one book so far.

The roadmap indicates that there's a story that is to be told. I hope that story is how the previous civilization shattered the world.

Sounds like you have a case of "The Monster Spawning Blues".

I wonder if hay bales would work...

I encourage you to experiment. I thought it might be possible to add a door as an easy option to enter the pit. Sadly, no. Doors on your charcoal pit only lead to less firewood.

That would make sense. I haven't tried seeing if boards can burn in world (apart from firepits). On a tangential note - I would LOVE to put a door and trap door on my charcoal pit so I don't have to constant unearth the pit to fill/empty or light the pit. Not realistic I know, but it's more a QOL thing.

Maybe build a fence or wall around the pit kilns to prevent their deaths? As for realism? Yeah, not very realistic, but then again; wild animals don't usually let you get close enough to chuck a rock at them either.

Are the drifters not zombie enough? There's already some mods that modify drifters that could fit what you are thinking of.

Plus providing natural beauty increases the horror of a shattered world. Read classic gothic horror (Frankenstein, Dracula) by the original authors and you'll see how they contrasted beauty against the monster to indirectly make the monster ugly.

What about NPCs that provide a hook? Something like a trader mentions, "A man that sold me some of my wares mentioned he saw some ruins in the mountains north of here." Whether you go or not, doesn't impact ANYTHING thereafter. Show up and there might be a looted ruin, might be some nasties and treasures or something in between.

Maybe change the loot tables for drifters that spawn during a storm to increase drop rate of rare items, or (preferably) introduce items that aren't on the regular drop table (metal nuggets perhaps?)

Roadmap says that steam is end game tech and procedurally generated dungeons are in the plan. Just don't know when that'll happen. Lost of work for 1.5 coders to do.

It would be nice if a rocker box would sift an entire block at a time. Maybe it takes the same amount of time as panning half a block (four layers?) but provides the results as if the entire block had been panned.

Consider that there's basically 1.5 people coding. I'm sure they aren't sure how most of the roadmap will function yet.

Might I suggest Satisfactory or Factorio?

Have you seen the maximum capacity of a single crucible? Consider that you can then have multiple crucibles heating simultaneously. Hope you have lots (and I mean LOTS) of molds ready.

Or find a plain that is littered with tall grass. Dropped my permanent home in the middle of a massive field of tall grass. Literally every single block in a hundred block radius has tall grass unless there's a tree, water, or reed on it. I wonder how long my iron scythe will take to break harvesting only grass and how much grass will I have on my hands when it does.

Welp... Just waiting for the next tier of tools that require steel (steampower anyone?) Although it would be nice if there was an intermediary step for steel that wasn't so onerous, like extend the burn time of charcoal, bricks don't break. Once steel becomes the next gatekeeper return to the current parameters.

Thanks. I haven't encountered my first locusts yet, let alone engage them in battle. Seems like the items should be harvest from their bodies rather than drop upon their violent disassembly (aka death).

I was bummed when I could not rescue a poor butterfly from a pond it had landed in. All it could do was fly on the surface of the pond. Absolutely LOVED that touch in the game. Still bummed a digital flutterby drowned though.

or clay and reed.

Consider that there's lore content in bony soil, which makes panning mid to late game worthwhile.

I would think the hard part would be in developing a robust goal system for the various critters oversimplified to food acquisition and seeking safety (flee from predators, including player, and finding its home). So what would the positive "food" be for drifters (safety is obviously low light level). Next level of complexity would be creating migration patterns for prey animals. Predators would then automatically pathfind to follow the migrating prey and dubiously need any additional coding. Migration could then be used to naturally re-introduce animals to areas where populations of animals are reduced due to hunting.