Puzzlemaker

Thanks for the help everybody, I have been putting too many hours into this game and it has been ruining my life a little bit. Some more thoughts, as I make it further into the tech tree: The guidebook needs to make it clear that if you want more sticks, you need to make sheers. It says that sheers just help you gather sticks faster, but it doesn't really say it breaks branches in a zone, which lets you essentially reach further and collect more. I have more sticks then I know what to do with now. I built a permanent charcoal pit with a kiln door. I added glass to see when it was done, but there is no texture difference between an unlit charcoal pit and a lit charcoal pit. So there needs to be something added to make it clear that this is currently transforming into charcoal. The amount of coal/charcoal you need to progress late game tech is crazy. I cannot find a good coal seam, so I am relying on charcoal, and it's a very grindy, constant need. It was fun at first, but gathering yet MORE wood is getting old. Finding bauxite was an adventure, and I got lucky getting a teleporter that happened to teleport me close to bauxite. I can see this being really, really frustrating though. For stuff like bauxite, coal, and other required things, it would be nice if there was a way to purchase maps with locations of known deposits. Even if the known deposits are far away, it gives you an objective to reach for, and an adventure to plan for. Instead of wandering around aimlessly. All traders should have knowledge from their travels that you can pay them for. This would also give you a reason to seek out traders, and help you get used to longer expeditions for when you do the story missions. I did half of the first story dungeon (The RA) and I was completely unprepared and ended up cheating because I got stuck far away from home with no way to get back. Only time I cheated so far, I was about to rage quit the game permanently. Wish I knew to pack more healing items, needed more food, etc. I was not as prepared as I should have been. The default world settings don't have rivers or oceans, so there isn't much point to boats. Seems like you need to know how you want to set up your world BEFORE you start playing to get max enjoyment, which is... unfortunate. Stuff like better ruins need to be added beforehand as well. Standard's map generation should absolutely be looked at more. Many of the top mods should absolutely be rolled into the game, or at least features from them. Primitive survival has smokers, for instance, a glaring hole in the tech tree. Better Ruins looks cool, and Carry On makes so much sense. There is a ton of cooking stuff as well. I feel like a lot of players get into the game and add mods to make up for some holes they found, making the demand for official versions much lower. The controls are not consistent. Right click to put a pie in the oven, or place a torch in a sconce. Shift right click to place everything else. Putting coal into a forge requires you to shift right click, not right click, as just right clicking will take the item you are heating up out of the forge. Control does other stuff depending, and it's confusing. Some things require an empty hand, and I saw a mod that adds a key to empty your hand which... makes so much sense. Anyway, it can be infuriating sometimes to figure out the controls. The balance really feels balanced around multiplayer. The different classes are a cool touch, but when playing by yourself seeing things completely locked out for you is a bad feeling. Tailoring especially. I can see people specializing in certain things, but for singleplayer it doesn't seem to work as well. I chose commoner because I didn't really know what the gameplay would be like, and regret it since I am missing out of some different recipes. A way to change class or gain skills would be cool. There is, of course, a mod that does it as well, but there really should be a base game feature. Several things that are particularly grindy need to be looked at. I get the game has a lot of grind, but a lot of it is broken up with different steps. For example, making iron requires a whole flow chart. Beekeeping is annoying since it's like.. once step once you set it up: Build skeps and place them. Would be easier if you could make skeps from hay/straw instead of only reeds. Seriously vanilla beekeeping feels bad once you set it up, yet it's so important. Same problem with bloomeries - fun the first few times, then get's really tedious fast as you have to keep making more and more freaking fire bricks. You can't even use refractory bricks, it has to be firebricks for some reason. Charcoal is also really grindy. Not sure how you would address that, but gathering wood for charcoal gets real old, real fast. I mentioned this before, but the tech tree absolutely needs more granular steps. Some ideas: - Firepit -> Hearth -> Hearth and Flue - Clay oven -> Brick oven (Can be larger and have multiple things cook at once) - Pit kiln -> Brick Kiln (Permanent pit kiln, capable of making firebricks using coal or charcoal but damages it) -> Firebrick kiln (Brick kiln that can make firebricks without damage) -> Bloomery -> Stuckofen/Wolf-furnace (permanent multiblock structure, requires refractory bricks and mechanical power to run a bellows. Earliest type of blast furnace, but still designed to create blooms, not pig iron.) Also add in smokers, etc. Multiblock entities are... weird. They seem ad-hoc added in, and I suppose that they are a new addition. I feel fairly constrained while making them, as they require specific placements of blocks. I don't know how possible it would be, but I would love to see it become more like a "system" then a set of exact blueprints you need to follow. Speaking of systems, I feel like a lot of stuff would benefit from being remade into a system, instead of what we have now. When you pour molten metal, it changes color, so it's possible to have that in the game. I feel like instead of every single ceramic item being a completely different entity, there should be a ceramic version of everything (Ceramic brick, ceramic jug, etc) that is just colored based on features (What clay, how it was fired, etc.) This would simplify a lot, and let you expand the ceramic system without causing much trouble. Same thing with wood, and some metal products, etc. If that is how it already works under the hood, the recipe book should be updated to reflect that. Right now it's infurating to try and find the recipe you want since there are so many duplicates. More coherent systems in general would be nice. The boiler can only take firewood for some reason? Is it because everything else would be too hot and damage it, or is it just because it was never coded in? The oven can only take firewood as well, but can't take peat? Or charcoal? Getting rid of the one offs and merging as much stuff together would make the game feel more coherent. Right now it feels like a lot of stuff is very disconnected from each other. Which makes sense, a lot of these features were likely added before the later systems were put into place, but it would be nice if they went through the older stuff and updated it to be more compatible. Why raccoons? Or white tailed deer? Or redwoods? Every single species seems to be native european with a few exceptions. If we are doing stuff from the americas, why not add some crops like potatoes, tomatoes, hot peppers, squash, beans, peanuts, corn, chayote, cocoa, or avocados? Beans would be neat since they could introduce a crop that does nitrogen fixation to some extent. Doing the three sisters in a garden would be cool. Adding american plants would be neat since the native americans were great horticulturalists. They had very few domesticatable animals (dogs, alpacas, llamas, some bird species, and guinea pigs) so they went all in on plants, which is why so many plants from the americas are consumed worldwide now. Anyway, hope this is helpful. Any devs that end up reading this, sorry for the massive walls of text, you made a great game, and I hope this helps you.

Yes, I did catch those darn chickens. Eventually. They kept eating my grains without triggering the trap Now I am trying to make them make babies, which seems to take forever... As for the room context clues, I agree to some extent, but it would be nice to give me more information. Such as if you are getting colder or warmer, without having to open the menu and look if your temp is going up or down. . Just like... if the room you are in is warm after you lit the fire, or if the wind is still blowing in. That sort of thing. Also, evidently there is some story stuff, but I have no idea how to start it? All I have found are traders and occasionally a horrifying nest of monsters. Is it just more exploration? Trying not to spoil myself.

Figured I would give an update. First, thanks LadyWYT for the response - very helpful! In winter now, and in the iron age. Started adding mods. Smithing+ seems really balanced - you get a broken toolhead after your tool breaks that you can repair. Seems like it fits really well into the game, reduces grind, but adds cool gameplay. Using one broken tool to repair a second one feels very right and scrappy. Should absolutely be rolled into the game proper. Didn't get any "Saving metal bits" mods, since those seem like it would just be overpowered a little. Would be nice to have an official version of it later. Like a chisel only using half an ingot, or something. The HUD is missing a lot of data - I downloaded a mod to show more stuff, like the room info, etc. Kind of frustrating right now. Let me know if my room is warm or not! Added a mod to have axles go through a tile and stay insulated. Seems like a feature that's missing, unless it's for balance reasons? Even just a simple wooden block that lets you pass an axle through a wall would be nice. There needs to be some information about brown coal and bloomeries - spent awhile trying to add brown coal to a bloomery, but it doesn't burn hot enough so it wouldn't let me. Finally had to look it up. There does seem to be a weird gap between "Primitive" and "Advanced" tech. There is no firepit upgrade that I can see, nor is there an upgrade for the pit kiln until very late in the game. Some new stuff needs to be added to smooth it out a bit. Upgrading a firepit with bricks to make it burn more efficiently would be nice. Maybe even a later version made out of metal plates that is even more efficient. An actual kiln that burns better would also be nice. Sheers are amazing, and they got rid of my stick problem. There is something about how sheers don't increase the stick drop rate, just make it easier to collect sticks, which is why I didn't think they were needed, but either that has been changed, or because it hits an area it's just really good at collecting sticks. I can't catch chickens in the trap, they are wiley little fellow but I will get chicken friends. mark my words.

I also found it was easier to make thatch from grass. At first I tried using tule, but eventually switched to grass when I realized that was easier.

Absolutely love the game, having a blast so far. Wanted to put down some of my thoughts on things I noticed as a completely new player. No mods at the time of writing. I currently just got to the copper age and made my first anvil. I also tried to avoid looking anything up unless I was absolutely stuck, so this was without any guides but the in-game ones. Many of these are things I ended up having to search online for answers. I didn't end up using the tutorial. I looked through the guides and started messing around. Activated the tutorial, but since I was already past the starting point I ended up just ignoring it. I didn't see a way to skip the starter tutorial to go to the next one, so hopefully I didn't miss anything important. STICKS. Why does so much stuff require sticks. The only way to get them is to go find pine trees that have branches low down and harvest all the branches, and it's a constant chore to have to do. Just let me break down firewood more. Especially for stuff like pit kilns, since requiring 8 sticks per pit kiln is frustrating when you have a ton of wood ready to use that you aren't allowed to. For things like wattle fences as well, since I made my starting house out of wattle and daub, which was pretty fun, except for the STICKS. Even if there was a way to collect sticks more easily from branches, that would be nice. Fishing! I spent a lot of time looking through the recipes to figure out how to fish besides using a spear. Eventually googled it, and was a little disappointed. Grinding. I also spent a lot of time looking through recipes to figure out how to grind grain early on. Grinding grain using a metate is stone age tech, and I wanted to make flatbread or something, but couldn't. Eventually looked it up, and was disappointed that you need an anvil to grind grain. Seems kind of silly. If it needs to be balanced, make it "Coarse flour" that can only be used as a flatbread or something. The recipes showing various alternatives go very slowly, and can make it confusing as to what is required. Faster flipping and/or make it clear like "Any cured hide" or "Any wood" would be nice. Or a way to flip through it. Also, label the "repair" recipe. Recipes don't need to show every single variation. I want to see the recipe for stone stairs, but have to scroll through the billion stone variants until I get to the stairs section. It's annoying. Makes it hard to find recipes. Recipes also need to have a way to filter for your current tech level (Unless there is and I missed something). Really easy to miss recipes that you can build since there are so many of them. The recipe for daub is weird. I wanted to make daub out of granite sand and red clay, but it wouldn't let me. Spent awhile trying to figure it out, until I realized that particular combination doesn't work. Each combination of stuff gives a different color, but that one wasn't covered. If there isn't a color for a specific combo, it should just choose the closest or something. Cobblestone confused me. I figured that cobblestone was a later-age tech, but realized it only required clay, not mortar. Seems a bit weird you can build stone structures out of cobblestone right when you are starting out. ESPECIALLY since dry stone blocks exist, which should be the earlier version of cobblestone until you get mortar. Pit kilns can't be tiled. I figured that it would be easier and more efficient to make a large pit kiln, but it told me I couldn't. Primitive kilns. If you ever watched the youtube channel primitive technology, he has made some primitive re-usable kilns. I actually made bricks in a pit kiln, and was excited to make a real kiln, only to realize the beehive kiln is waaay in the future. Let me stack up bricks into a basic re-usable kiln please. Same with ovens, just a more efficient way to cook food that's not a firepit would be nice. Doesn't even have to be able to do bread. Food recipes are very constrictive, in a weird way. Why not a more generic system that lets you mix and match? Let me make berry glazed steak. I saw there was a way to lay tools against a wall according to a guide, but couldn't figure out how it worked. Primitive storage is annoying. Reed chests are so small :(. This may be balanced, but still, would be nice to have SOME options. I ended up using a nearby trader's chests as storage. Wait I just saw the sticklayer recipe on the wiki, could I use that as a basic shelf!? If so, that would have been SO HELPFUL. I keep missing recipes that would be super useful. The first time I did anything on the anvil, I missed up didn't see a voxel unfinished until I split of all the voxels. Then I had to use an entire ingot to add one voxel. Felt bad, and I looked online if there was any way to fix it, and the answer was "mods". If you start a recipe with an ingot but make no changes to the ingot, you should still be able to add that ingot to another piece in progress. I spent a good few minutes frustrated about it until I looked it up. Tool repair. Knapping is fun, but I got tired of it eventually. Once I got metal, I figured there was a way to repair your tools as one of the bonuses to encourage you to make a copper knife or something. I couldn't figure out how. Looked it up, and the answer was "mods". When a tool breaks, you lose all the metal, and there is no way to repair items. So that's a bit frustrating. There should be a way to get back some of the metal from a broken tool, and/or a way to repair tools. Look up peening, it's an age-old way of re-sharpening stuff that's worn down. There is a chimney item, but I didn't realize it was only decorative. Spent awhile crafting it so my place wouldn't fill with smoke. Was annoyed when I didn't need it. Made a chimney anyway. Maybe make smoke a thing, or make it clear what is just decorative. Is there any way to see how much warmer it is in your house? I am proud of it, but I have no idea if it would actually help in winter. Thatch roof with wattle and daub walls, built against a cave. Let me turn grain into more seeds or something. I need flax! Why are flax seeds so rare?! I have enough food, just let me make more seeds! Grains ARE seeds so why are they two different items!? You end up with more hides then you can preserve. Especially rabbit hides, since they don't drop fat. Feels bad to just let it go to waste. Why isn't there another way to preserve hides in the primitive era, like smoking them or something? Anyway, sorry for the wall of text, I have been REALLY enjoying the game so far. Good luck with development, and I hope this help!