Maelstrom

Not just prevailing wisdom but actual game mechanics. At least they don't spawn on the same block as the seraph anymore. That's really fun to get your first storm and have a nightmare drifter one shot you from behind before you even know it popped into existence. By the time double headed drifters came about drifters had the courtesy to respect about 2-3 blocks of personal space and take a second or three to orient to their new dimension before bopping your noggin' back to spawn.

Given your intial post about how impossible food consumption seems to be compared to what your perception of reality was I wanted to get a reading of how realistic you expected animal feeding to be before providing an answer since the answer about animal fodder is even more ridiculously unrealistic than that for seraphim. To answer your request in total: animal need food for only two things, breeding (mechanics described by others) and fattening for slaughter. If you do not have either activities intended for the animal (here's the absurditly unrealistic thing) they do not need be fed at all and will not ever starve; even if enclosed in a stone enclosure with no possibility for foraging.

Apocalyptic level land wibble wobbles the likes even Tobias hasn't seen that makes the hardiest of sailors get sea sick!

How come everyone assumes I'm a dragon? Is it because I compassionately warn others about their dealings with dragons? I just thought it to be some wise advise; better than the "don't eat yellow snow" variety. Hmm... Maybe I'll have to research what it takes to be genetically transformed into a dragon, now.

Let's also consider the length of the month. 9 days is default, indicating that time is condensed. However, changing it to a more "realistic" 30 days still condenses time as the days are not actual 24 hours, but about 20 minutes. So none of this is very realistic. As others have noted, the realism label is in comparison to that other popular block game not a comparison to real life. If this (or any game) did not make unrealistic mechanics nobody would play the game for it becoming a Real Life Simulator. Why simulate real life for fun, when you can live real life for real? As for the goats? I'll refrain from answering until you indicate what level of realism you're expecting. Because if the eating thing makes you go bonkers, the answer your asking for will send you over the edge of the world.

As in mostly harmless? Said lit torch should not be extinquished. It should burn up the items in the inventory and finish by destroying the baskets, backpacks, etc. leaving the seraph as devoid of inventory as they are at 10 am May 1, year 0. Amateur! This game doesn't have enough grind! Farming should yield one crop a year and not planting before June should result in a real danger of winter time starvation. Same with animals. Birth should happen in spring once a year, no later than Jun 1. That first winter should be a real threat of repeated death to the point that multiple attempts at surviving that first winter result in rage quitting, deleting the world and trying again. And natural animals should not respawn. They should migrate from other areas, if those chunks aren't loaded, tough noogies. Figure out some other source of food, hopefully you'll survive that 1,000 block hike to forage for some 'shrooms.

In one of my first (maybe even my very first) long term worlds (I had a half dozen short term worlds I cut my teeth on which weren't intended for long term play) I got the depressing end of a featureless cave. No ores, no ruins, nothing but rock, water and darkness. Well, at the bottom of a deadend I hear some drifters bemoaning their loneliness and figure I'm close to another cave. So I start digging towards the moaning and find the only salt dome I've ever found.

Like TOBG water don't freeze if there is a block obstructing it's view of the starry sky. If you catch my meaning.

Some do. Some don't.

From how well Luke is portraying Lovecraft I'll argue that it's a mix of the two. Yes, those that delve into knowledge that should not be delved into are incredibly intelligent, but there's typically an aspect of someone on the other side providing information, but not in a Faustian bargain kind of way. It's more that humans are ants compared to the extra-dimensional being and they're imparting trivial information so insignificant to them that there's no need to strike a bargain. Then the problems begin because the expirementations (misspelling intentional) do not play well with our dimension. Jonas' story of developing the lens has al the earmarks of Lovecraft. Initial delvings are harmless as the poor sod becomes proficient with understanding such alien knowledge. As the person delves deeper the warnings begin but they are now (over)confident in their ability to control the consequences of the alien knowledge that they blunder on where angels aren't even fearing to tread but do not tread. The end game is that our world is impacted dramatically and it takes herculean efforts to repair the damage, IF it can be repaired. I agree that Tobias is of great concern because his attempts to meddle in alien knowledge was much more disastrous than Jonas' blunderings. BUT, Tobias would be completely blind to it if not for Jonas. And here is where VS departs from typical Lovecraft literature. The one that opens the gate to disaster does not stop and someone else discovers the results of their ill advised inquest to alien knowledge. BUT, we could also be in the middle of the Lovecraft story since the rot is not cleaned up with a nice bow. It will return unless something can repair what Jonas (and Tobias by extension) have started. The seraphim may be the ones to fix what Jonas started.

There's a difference between fright and horror. Horror can have fear associated with it, but that would be more from thinking through the implection of the horrifying event or scene. I will point you to two excellent horror films that have little if any blood and not very much screaming. Alien and Poltergeist. Neither are screaming slasher fear mongers, but the build a sense of dread in the way that Bram Stoker or Mary Shelley did in their classic horror works.

We know that before Jonas the earth was the same as ours. Then Jonas builds the lens and their earth goes sideways compared to ours. So where did Jonas get his knowledge to build something that our 21st century technology cannot do - peer into an alternate dimension?

Hens will spook if you are within 11 blocks of them. Spooked hens will not brood which will make hatching chicks take longer. Otherwise, proximity will not impact egg production.

Are we using African or European swallows?

Easily to prove him right or wrong. Take a reading. Move over 8 blocks and take another reading. Check to see if the reading are identical (including the per mille output) or not. If Tyron is right the per mille reading will be a wee bit different between those two readings.

@TFT Seems like you wrapped up the debate and put a nice pretty bow on it, to boot! That's a ton of lead!

I haven't processed that copper because most of it will become plates. I'll wait for that helve hammer thankyouverymuch. I've been making bronze tools as needed. Still using stone shovels, axes and knives. Heck I didn't make a falx until I had burned through three bronze pickaxes. That falx was decimated in a night of apocalyptic rift activity harvesting drifters. Soooooo. many. drifters. Never had apocalyptic rift activity for an entire night before.

I thoroughly enjoy winter in a temperate climate. It presents another challenge to deal with, especially that first summer. As others mentioned there's lots of things to do - spelunking, smithing/crafting, exploring far and wide. Some chores around home like animal husbandry or building that new building. And panning bony soil I've been collecting from summer explorations.

A straight chute is 2 ingots I think? Another for the chest. In my experience by the time I've got more than 1 trough, I have so much copper that a few ingots for chutes and ladd..err chests is more of a cost of time than material. In my current world I've got one trough, a pair o' piggu's and about 2 stacks of medium grade copper ore chunks to process. Haven't processed it due to storage issues while working on getting a helve hammer to pound out the plates for copious nail and strip production.

Order up!

How to prepare for a storm. Well, preparing a space big enough to fight a high level drifter is going to big enough to actually encourage drifters to spawn. I've found that facing a double headed drifter requires a good 10 blocks to toss some spears at it from at least a minimally safe distance. I could arguably build a 1x15 corridor to serve such purpose, but it also makes it darned likely I'll get a one-shot opportunity to return to spawn, too. I've found in 1.20+ that a 1x2 glass hut, two blocks high is sufficient to ride out a storm without violent interruption. 1x2 so that I'm not cooking my feet on the fire to keep me warm during those storms in the dead of wintery night.

There's Magic in VS I Tell You! There's the optional ritual of sticky items that keeps one from losing their s#%t when you decide against rage quitting. There's that certain item that instantly heals you and teleports you home when consumed (I believe there is a certain despised blackguard who has unknowingly invoked such culinary sorcery). There's magical blocks of soil that don't fall despite removing all methods of support. Once upon a time seraphim could hold near molten metal harmlessly yet catch fire from pit kilns. And then there's this one trader I found back in 1.17. Visiting this particular trader was... well, an adventure. A death defying adventure. Every. Single. Time. To even get to this trader's location I had to traipse about 2,500 blocks from my home, through wolf infested forests (yes, plural and this is 1.17 so no bears. But wolves chase you. And chase you and chase you some more. And just when you thought you had escaped they were still hot on your heels like white on rice! I once had a wolf chase me 1/3 of the way of that 2,500 block run, but I digress and that's probably a story for another time anyways.) After the wolves of unuasual aggression came a storm laden desert on the edge of a large lake to a translocator that takes one about 8,000 blocks farther south. Far enough south that flax will grow quite well year round. So I set about setting up a survival hut above the cursed translocator, said hut on the shores of a lake and said translocator was only about 30 blocks below sea level but routinely spawned sawblade locusts. But all of that isn't what made visiting this particular trader a death defying adventure. "WHAT?! Those sawblades weren't the dangerous part?" you might wonder. No. They weren't. They were merely an inconvenience compared to the death defying feats necessary to even speak with this trader. You see, this trader had somehow managed to parked his wagon over a deadly gaping murder hole. This hole was a good 8 blocks in diameter and somehow this trader managed to levitate his wagon in such a way that only one wheel had contact with the ground. Although, I suppose he may have originally parked all four wheels on ground; but it wasn't solid ground as the soil under three of the wheels had collapsed into the murder hole he now levitated above. But that's my speculation on the matter. To gain audience with such audacious capitalist one would hop; strike that. Leap across the gaping maw o' death parallel to the rim upon which he so expertly parallel parked, grab onto his ladder and climb to safety. While the fall into said murder hole wasn't an instant death from a sudden stop after a long fall (no, that particular murder hole was a very well concealed hole about 200 blocks from home that I often had to avoid visiting the subject of this particular travelog, but I digress yet again.) No, it would be death by beating. Unless one was prepared to beat a hasty retreat up the cliff face of said death maw or beat back the menacing horde that decided to ascend from the black abyssal depths below to make your acquaintance and send you home, thankyouverymuch. One particular visit I showed up to harvest my field of flax (256 plots in the field) which was a few short days from ripe. So I, *ahem* hopped over to the trader to see what I could sell him. Hmmm... cooked red meat. Shouldn't be hard as I saw plenty of rabbits a minute ago in the moat surrounding my flax farm. I think there were a couple of other things I could gather locally to make a couple quid off 'im. Leap back to safety, hunt said rabbits, collect some peat (iirc), cook said redmeat and then a temporal storm is approaching. Oooooh boy. Finish cooking the red meat just in time for the land to start going all wibbly wobbly in the timey wimey shenanigans (thank you Jonas, may you rot in the rust world forever!) I gulped a time or three and leaped as I get a nice good evening greeting in the back. Sweating and shaking from narrowly avoiding the deadly murder maw below I ascended the ladder to complete my capitalist endeavors, all the while getting beaned in the back from the locals. Fortunately, the trader was a kind soul and let me sleep off the sea billow rolling ground event going on outside. I'm still convinced that trader was a freaking wizard.

I once had a trader spawn over a gaping murder hole. The left wheels on the outermost blocks of said gaping maw o' death and the rest of the wagon hanging over an abyss of suicidal descent. Visiting said trader was... adventurous. Especially when drifters started spawning while I was buying and selling wares with said trader. Come to think of it, might have to make an addition to the humorous stories thread now.

I'm sure they do. The sepia map implementation in 1.19 was based on a mod introduced in 1.17 or 1.18. I believe Tyron likes (read wants to implement) the idea of moving containers that CarryOn implements but doesn't want the added invetnory from a "wearable" container.

I just throw a chute on top of the trough and load a chest with the food to be doled out (usually only 2 or 3 stacks of food). This takes a lot of the tedium off filling multiple troughs if you have a larger herd (like retaining 5 sows to create repetitive pigsplosions.)