Maelstrom

Stone and wood planks are locked behind copper tools (pick axe and saw respectively). Initial building blocks before copper tools? Dirt, cobble stone mined from ruins, logs and shingles your craft via clay forming. Addendum: You can craft cobble if you gather loose stones. Best place to find loose stones is in sand and gravel plains, break the big piles of stone boulder.

There's reasons for those changes. but those reasons don't make the game much more difficult which is my big beef with it. It's basically unplayable to me due to a low level of difficulty.

Cracked vessels can be purchased from the Treasure Hunter trader. They can also be sold to other traders (notably the Commodities trader) for a hefty profit if you mind the prices for purchase and sale.

Hail storms that cause damage already exists, as does being struck by lightning. Currently blizzards happen during snowfall with high wind. The snowfall will eventually create a wet modifier which makes taking damage from the cold occur quicker.

Placing stones to knap should still work, also placing a single charcoal. I haven't tested it extensively but haven't had spawns in the limited cases I've used it.

Given the theme of the game, additional sounds for the ambience makes sense. The mod for TOBG I mentioned is horror themed as well and has ambient sounds that are only that - sounds. At first I was on high alert for something to happen, but once I realized it was just sounds I liked it even more because it brought the world to life! I would LOVE to hear an occasional echo of a water drop dripping into a pool in the caves. That one sound alone would make cave diving MUCH more pleasurable.

More realistic inventory. Well, let's see here... 1 cubic meter of dirt (one block of dirt) weighs approximately 1 ton. Given that a human can carry roughly 250 pounds for a short distance and going with the MORE realistic (rather than very realistic like others have proposed). We'll assume that seraphs are superhuman instead of supernatural and increase their strength and endurance to an incredible degree but end up with... How many times do you want to run back and forth to carry just ONE BLOCK of high fertility soil to prepare that field for farming? Mind you carrying one block at a time is exceedingly unrealistic for a human but we'll assume it's feasible for a seraph. The bulk of a stack of sticks capable of being an axe handle is similarly not feasible, but seraphs are capable of carrying a could dozen stacks of this? The point being, that being anywhere in the universe of realistic of some things in game makes the game unfun to the point of unplayable.

I agree. I would love to see ambient sounds that are sporadic to increase the terror aspect of the game. There's a mod for TOBG that does this excellently and doing something similar would raise VS to a whole new level; however... Devs desire animal sounds to be associated with animals spawned in game.

Not sure if lifecycles would make much sense with the slow progression of time. I play on a server that started in April or May, that has little down time and it's only year 11 or 12. My single player worlds rarely go longer than 3-4 years (if that).

T-shirts and mugs with the VS logo and some kind of replica of Dave would be sweet. A desk pad with some of the concept art also an excellent possibility.

Chicken milk?

I once watched a streamer playing. He was digging for some surface copper and threw a rock into the distance. It "dinged" and the streamer commented "Ding?" but went back to clearing brush around the desired mining site. About 5 seconds later a ram comes charging out of the bush and head butts him into next week.

the basket trap has a chance of catching a baby. Capturing wild animals for breeding depends on the situation. Agro and run for longer distances, passive migration if they're relatively close by. I've even seen making animal runs with fences to assist in those two options. No comment on the basket trap as I haven't attempted that one yet.

Additionally, animals will naturally migrate towards a trough with food. You can chain troughs to lead them into an animal pen where you can have a more controlled animal husbandry program.

That was attempted with peppers in 1.15. It was bugged (seeds could not be planted) and the code deactivated.

Consider that Tyron recently hired an animator. Seems that these things are an important part of the to-do list.

Low temporal stability = personal temporal storm for spawning mechanics. Once had a sawblade spawn practically on top of me. Didn't know it was there until it took a chunk outa my hide followed by that wonderful buzzsaw warning. >.<

Trees that don't grow is strictly RNG. I've had saplings spring into full grown trees while away on an extended journey and I've had them spring into full growth, literally in front of me. Cold does keep trees from progressing to the next stage (seed --> sapling and sapling --> mature tree)

For clarification (hopefully @Streetwind shows up)... Density mode does NOT report on chunks. It reads the heat map for probability of ore generation in an area. When conducting density searches ignore the numbers UNLESS you want an indication of which adjective description is better - if you have two readings of decent the higher number points in the direction to continue searching. The first block you break in this mode is the one that determines the reading. You could conduct two searches with the first block broken being just 2 blocks apart and get a slightly different reading even if both are in the same chunk. Personally, I take a stack of ladders when exploring an ore reading. I'll dig a single block shaft down and place a single ladder every other block to preserve ladders. Since you can hang onto a ladder without an impact to mining speed, there's no reason to dig down MC style (which will use twice as much durability on your pick, btw). Hanging from a ladder also keeps from dropping into the middle of a mob of your friendly neighborhood drifters. In my experience ultra-high readings are practically a guarantee of ore to be found. For copper, bismuth, zinc and tin; you're likely to get multiple deposits within the single shaft and potentially making a maze of tunnels from mining out the different deposits. Bread crumbing back to the escape tunnel can help keep from getting lost.

@foebits Please don't take my comments that I prefer it that way. Was just pointing out a possible justification for it being the way it is. Hopefully it gets updated with the new nasty that's coming in 1.20.

Quantity is a quality all it's own. The number of drifters is in itself a danger mechanic. I don't know if Tyron will (or has plans to) change cave spawning different.

Probably only slightly less rare than the poor chap that had a trader spawn right next to a tree blocking the entrance within the trader claimed blocks.

I imagine temporal steel would not be used for tools, but other objects for crafting only.

Off topic and for those terraformers out there, partially pan sand to give some topography to beaches.

Only thing that could have made that better would be a lantern in the ruins.