Silent Shadow

My opinion is that there is not a best one, even based on how I play (so I didn't vote). Almost all of the armors I use in the game are "best" for different situations and times, but there is no armor that excels in all areas. Even after having taken another look at chain mail, I don't think it is so useless now but more like a more protective gambeson. Chain mail mostly preserves mobility and hunger rates of gambeson so if you wanted a bit more protection at the cost of slightly worse stat penalties, this is your option. Gambeson/leather is definitely cheaper, but an iron or steel chain mail could be used underground for mining if not cave delving. Really you should ask what armors people prefer using (if any) for the early game (improvised or wood lamellar), surface traveling (exploring or on runs to traders), cave delving/mining, and everyday use (working at home or in their farms/ranches).

Well I guess that is the end of chainmail as anything but an ingredient for platemail/scalemail. I wonder if they will do anything to make chainmail worth it.

Farming should be hard enough that people feel the need to either build a farm or move around as a nomad. Right now farming is in a good place as the amount of food it provides for a given input is proportional to the amount of work put in to the farm (fences, irrigation, roads, glasshouses, etc.) Living as a nomad is fine for exploring early on. Progression is good too, since you have to play as a hunter gatherer until you get enough seeds to have a farm that can feed you. Once you do start, there are crops (onions mostly, but also rice and pumpkins) that do not need a fence to protect against rabbits so you can live off those while you are getting a fenced field up and running. Later on you can make glass houses and can irrigate your fields so you have a longer growing period and no longer need to water crops anymore. As for the daily work associated with it you still have watering, fertilizing, and you have to monitor the temperature to see if further planting is possible.

The handbook is fine. I think you guys just need to look at it more, specifically the guides section of the handbook. Making torches is talked about in the starter guide and panning is talked about in the progression guide. None of these guides are long either so just spend a minute or two to read them. The devs made it so that you can look at most recipes from an ingredient (shift + h with cursor over item in question) by using the hand book, so look at the materials you have this way and you will quickly find out what there is to make.

What is best will depend on the criteria used to judge the armor. I think the devs did well in balancing the pros of the armor with drawbacks: Steel plate offers the best protection, even against the most dangerous enemies you are nearly invulnerable and it can take quite a few hits before breaking, the downside is the large amount of difficult to produce steel required to make a set and the stat reductions. Linen/leather armor have little stat reductions and are easy to get material for so they make good everyday wear for the surface. These armors will not help much against more dangerous enemies though thanks to the low armor tier. Wood lamellar is probably the best early game armor thanks to requiring no metal to produce, just the gathering of common materials and some time. Brigandine is a pretty good compromise between material/time invested and protection/durability. Not as quite as good as platemail, but way cheaper to make. Using up Chainmail and then rolling it into scalemail/platemail makes the most of metal and leads to better armors than brigandine, but chainmail is quite inferior to brigandine. Improvised armor requires little to make, but it only covers your torso and it can only take a few hits before breaking. On some of the harder difficulties, there is still a good chance of being one-shot by wolves and tainted or worse drifters. Scalemail gets more durability than platemail for the lower grade metals, but the opposite is true for Iron and better metals. Platemail is always more protective for a given metal. Lamellar armors are very quick and easy to make since you can cast all the parts at once while plates and chainmail must be forged individually, but it is vastly inferior to every other metal armor except maybe chainmail which is only a bit better. You can also not make iron/steel versions, similar to spears. I like this arrangement as there isn't really a best armor overall.

I don't think people hate him because he is faster.

Is it really a big deal? Their uses are rather different so just store them in different chests.

No, but it can act that way. Fences can be stepped over from thick enough snow and thus not contain animals nor drifters (or you).

If you do find copper bits (or another mineral you want), make sure to mark the map exactly over the cluster. There is always an ore deposit right below it you can come back later for once you get a pickaxe.

3) Keep in mind that the number of ore deposits depends on the ore density map and the base spawn chance (tries per chunk). Height does not factor into ore deposits spawning at all nor their average thickness, this means that taller worlds will have a lower density of ore when you take the stone volume into account.

If I had to guess, I would say they did not go far enough with the bonus/malus magnitudes, especially with the bonuses, most have barely more effect than a commoner. Take the hunter: His ranged bonus basically amounts to marginal improvement over the commoner, especially against the most common drifters: The hunter's melee debuff basically amounts to needing one or two extra hits than a commoner does. With a sword this is barely noticeable and with a spear you can throw to deal final damage or use the reach of the thrust to whittle them down to that point. The real downside to -15% is that you will have to make more melee weapons as the hunter can kill much fewer drifters than a commoner can with the same sword, and while that hurts more with the less ore malus it is quite surmountable and is offset by his ranged focus or using the right metal (black bronze sword or tin bronze spear) for common drifters. Keep in mind that spears also benefit from the ranged bonus but only lose 1 point of durability, so there is still plenty of metal efficiency for the hunter to have. You also don't need good armor as a ranged build so you can skip making a metal suit and instead wear leather armor (which is faster for you to get thanks to your greater drops) or linen armor. Ore is quite plentiful so you just have to mine a bit more (~17.6% more, or mining ~7 times for a commoner's 6 times) and you'll be fine on metal (thank goodness it isn't 15% of smelted metal is lost). The hunter's extra walk speed is negligible in my experience especially if it does not affect sprinting (you save ~5 secs for each minute everyone else spends to walk the same distance). You might get some use out of it if all you do is wander around, but the things I spend the most time on (mining, farming, crafting, sorting chests, harvesting, etc.), I am typically limited by how fast I can click and move my mouse, not by how fast I can move. In combat, there is nothing that can outrun you (except in survival mode) so extra speed doesn't really help. So why do people like the Hunter most after the commoner? Because he is basically a commoner already who gets the crude bow and arrows. When it comes to ranged weapons, the bow and arrows (crude or regular) are only better than spears when slots are the deciding factor and in the early game you have precious few slots. A crude bow and arrows only need two slots, require no hard to replace resources (just flint and sticks), do decent damage (~2.5 hp per shot after hunter bonuses so about 5 to kill a wolf and 7-8 to kill an adult sheep), and its a ranged weapon meaning you can run and gun with little care to ammo and you get more some more meat/hides and flax from your kills. The tailor is not as well liked because the clothes are made from resources harder to produce than sticks, fiber, and flint; clothes are not as useful early game, and the problem they fix (the cold) can be negated in a few easy ways already (work in enclosed rooms, be by a fire, buy clothes from a trader, work underground, move closer to equator) and also because his penalties are worse than the hunter's. Why do people like the commoner? Because in a game where you have to do a variety of tasks to progress, most classes have multiple downsides that are always on in exchange for an advantage in one part of the game and commoner playing people do not view that as a worthy trade. The blackguard is a good example; he has pretty good bonuses and is the best at stretching metal, but his bonuses are mostly only applicable to fighting while his negatives are active throughout more parts of the game (even if they can be fairly easy to negate, food is the most plentiful resource in the game). Classes are not really going to be worthwhile until the player specializes for a narrow part of the game (so multiplayer division of labor, or single player experience like nomad lifestyle or cave explorer), the bonuses rise to become worth the penalties active for most of the game, or you get a unique benefit to push the bonus/malus balance close to commoner (like the crude bow/arrows for hunter, tailor's clothes are nice but not worth the bad bonus/malus trade).

You're talking like I am recommending the players start with a fully furnished base and a set of all the steel tools, weapons, and armors and more or less skip the entire game's progression. Except for the commoner (which is just a suggestion that could be changed), everyone is still going to need to pan for, or explore for, their initial copper bits or find traders that will sell them a pickaxe & hammer and buy clay. They are still going to want to make stone knives so they can harvest reeds for skeps and hand baskets to expand their inventory (cause a single backpack or two sacks ain't gonna cut it) as well as harvest animals for meat and hides, they still need to make a stone ax for firewood to smelt the metal, cook meals, and fire the crucible & casting molds (or use peat you cut with a stone shovel you made), and once they get an pick and hammer they are pretty much at the place you would normally be in playing the game as it is now. Everyone will still go through the stone age early game, they just a have one to a few fancy tools/items until they reach the metal age, at which point, it ceases to be the specific advantage they had over other classes in the early game. At no point will any of the classes miss out on making a farm, a cellar, a forge/workshop, a cementation furnace, bloomeries, a kitchen/bedroom, etc. They will still have to explore to find resources, they will still need to mine for ores/minerals, some classes will even still have to make stone weapons because they don't start with one or when their starting weapon breaks or is lost before reaching the metal age. You wouldn't get new items upon respawning so they cannot be farmed. I would also argue that starting items makes each class feel more unique right off the bat and encourage a little diversity in the early game which is more or less the same every time you play it right now. There would also be more tension in the early game as you risk losing decent/good items you cannot easily replace at that time. Those starting items will not last forever or even very long, material wise or advantage wise. You say that you enjoy the feeling of earning an item for the first time or getting one as a rare drop, but it is not like you would be getting the items for free; you are making a choice to embrace an opportunity cost for each class (some benefits of which are unavailable to be changed by the game settings, which most players seem not to do anyway). The starting items are also just one or two weapons/tools or some intermediate items that you will be making very many of throughout the play through so you should have a feeling of accomplishment for acquiring the capability to make it. You could still do that, there is nothing preventing you from picking any class and dumping the items if you want. I personally think that most of the early activities are just chores to get out of the way so I can enjoy the parts of the game that are more interesting to me, such as finding a place I want to settle in, exploring the surface and underground, building a nice home, figuring out how I want to layout my farm/base to maximize productivity and minimize time spent working, figuring out what crops to plant first, etc. Knapping and clay forming in the game were interesting the first couple times, but they are not nearly complicated enough industries to garner much interest as there isn't any decision to be made with them beyond 'I need this so I will make it.' If I were "gathering enough materials to build a castle with a dragon on a tower or a huge farm with nothing but amaranth or whatever" I would probably want to focus my efforts on gathering the materials or building rather than sitting down knapping 5 flint sets of tools a day or panning enough copper so I can start my goal proper. Don't get me wrong, I find parts of the stone age early game interesting, but it is not a challenge for me anymore and I would bet that many experienced players would feel the same. With some starting items the early game could be shaken up a bit and reduce some of the more tedious parts I have heard complaints about, such as knapping 5+ sets of tools a day or searching/panning for enough copper nuggets to start metalworking, without scrapping the stone age phase. Different classes should lead to different playstyles or else there is no reason to have multiple classes, and not all settings can be tweaked by the world creation settings.

I found that low fertility soil, low moisture, and low shrubbery rating would prevent crops and even grass from respawning. When I moved to a more verdant area I only had to wait a few in-game months for the crops to spawn. I would check the soil quality and the climate (via /wgen pos climate) of the area you are in and move to a better area if any factors listed above are low.

If you dig straight down from any bits you find on the surface you are guaranteed to find that mineral or ore 2-5 blocks below. These mineral/ore bits can only spawn if the top most rock layer can host the mineral/ore, so as long as you stay in that region you are likely to find more. I think that the frequency of these "shallow deposits" is tied to the ore density map created at world gen.

You can see the three lowest pictures above as proof. You can also recreate it in creative mode.

I think it really depends on the crop. Some crops like cabbage need to be unharvested left for over a year to get the seeds for the next generation. Others like squash will just grow and grow until they are huge and apparently tasteless. Some plants like the Tomato will rot on the vine and so should be picked when ripe. I am not a farmer or even a gardener though so I don't really know.

They just do it on their own for whatever reason or at least that is what the wiki says, I have not dug through the code so I cannot really confirm it.

And now I present proof that wild crops do spawn after world gen. If you want to replicate this, I highly recommend using /wgen pos climate to find a spot with high shrub and rainfall. Some barren, almost desert places do not even regrow grass after several in game years. All hail the magic conch wiki!

A rabbit ignoring some tasty flax. A rabbit going straight for freshly planted carrots and eating them. Now we know for sure.

I think I have seen it happen since I had some pop up in an area I settled in and traveled through frequently, but I have no proof beyond certainty that I had scoured that area clean. Wild crops are not eaten by wild animals and some crops are not eaten by wild animals at all. Again per the wiki: It is only most of the crops that you plant that get chewed on by rabbits. I am also confident in most of the wiki's articles, as everything I have tested has matched the wiki.

(Pushes glasses up face) Actually, according to the wiki, crops will occasionally spawn after chunk generation.

Grenades and Caltrops are pretty old weapons so they should fit in around the medieval period of this game quite well with the way materials limit them. I would consider both to be primitive compared to the modern era and we are beyond that age. Both would be historically valid here and useful since there are currently no weapons for fighting groups, and Vintage Story could use some more late game content.

I would like to see an option for engaging groups of enemies such as caltrops and grenades. They would be a nice option for the swarms of drifters found in the caves.

I like peat because it requires no processing and is easy to find and harvest. There are a lot of processes in the game that work passively over time. There is always something else you can be doing than staring at the progress bar, but planning out your work will help you out a lot, especially when you consider winter and night time.

They can randomly spawn on occasion, but there is no spreading mechanism to my knowledge.