Jump to content

Silent Shadow

Vintarian
  • Posts

    211
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    8

Everything posted by Silent Shadow

  1. Well, temper your expectations a bit. The blasting bombs are not that good for mining unless your tool speed is set very low or you are mining quartz.
  2. If I had to guess I would say it is your RAM. I started a new world and Vintage Story was using up about 2GB on its own. After running around a little it took up 3GB, so I can imagine it taking more with a more explored world. If you have other programs running I can see you running low on RAM and the computer would have to save to the HDD/SSD which takes a lot longer to do than for RAM. The lag spikes are probably from the game trying to generate new land or updating the weather history. New land should be generated while exploring but your main area would still need weather updates. I would recommend closing any other programs you have running or upgrading your RAM to 16GB. 16GB of RAM is pretty cheap nowadays, you could probably get it for less than $50. Just do your homework first as they are not all compatible.
  3. Silent Shadow

    Class survey

    I feel the opposite, food is so easy to get in this game that hunger is not an issue unless you are brand new and -15% ore is really not that debilitating for a class optimized for bows & arrows with leather/linen armor (if they even want armor with their ranged build). Their other damage debuffs are not a problem as that is not their focus, nor severe enough that it is not an option for them. I bet the real reason commoner is so popular is because there is no big reason to be specialized in this game. The path for advancement is the same for every character and the bonus/malus each character gets is not big enough to make any of them objectively better than the rest. If not defaulting to commoner, I would bet that most players select the class for what job they would want to do in multiplayer (if they can get a bonus for it) or if they want to focus on a narrow part of the game in single player such as nomadic exploration or underground exploring/exploitation. If the Devs want to encourage people to pick different classes then the only way I see that happening is to make the game harder in multiple ways and to extend the magnitude of the class bonuses and maluses to dial back some of those challenges. This would encourage players to stick to an area or playstyle they excel in until they can remedy their shortcomings with technology or better gear but their bonuses would incentivize them to maintain their playstyle to a degree. An example would be to make mining much slower so that players would try to get the best equipment (steel/iron pickaxe or invest into making explosives) so mining could happen quicker or they could select a class well suited for mining that was naturally faster. This miner class would be best at mining early on, and later on his/her speed could be matched but not the efficiency. The problem is that the Devs have kinda shot themselves in the foot with how customizable they made the world settings since most classes' drawbacks can just be negated (although most players said they played with minimal changes in the multiplayer survey). Items locked to specific classes are fine in my opinion, but they should be shortcuts to or inferior copies of later tools and gear. The hunter's unique bow and arrows is a good example and the tailor is good too since you can get similar clothes from a trader but only after a lot of searching and gears. The problem in multiplayer is that one person can just make enough unique items for everyone, so their unique item should be class locked or there should be group drawbacks inherent in the class, but the only ones I can think of is increased hunger rate (everyone needs food), reduced temperature thresholds (so they might need to live further away from the group or spend more time in doors not collecting resources), and maybe global reduced resource production speed/amounts. The commoner class should become the default class for learning the game so new players can experience everything without too much trouble, but not really offer any reason to continue playing it once they have mastered the basics. Players seem to favor one aspect of the game or another so I would expect them to naturally choose something to specialize in once the bonuses are worth it. Alternatively, just have everyone start as a commoner and then specialize into another class they want. This would solve the server issue of people not knowing what the server's class makeup is until after they have created their character (and class). Honestly though, I don't think this game really needs classes. An experience system granting more efficiency might be more suited so what you like/have to do gets easier and that just becomes your "specialization". Just please do not lock stuff behind level requirements, the material requirements already work well for pacing.
  4. Kinda, there is a display case in the game that can hold items similar to the shelf that might be able to hold minerals and seashells. You can test it in creative mode by typing /gamemode 2 in the chat (t). /gamemode 1 puts you back into survival mode.
  5. What are you having trouble with making a copper anvil? All you got to do is: Make a clay anvil mold Fire the mold Heat 900 units of copper (180 nuggets) in a crucible Once nuggets are melted, pour into the mold Wait. Wolves can be scary but they aren't too bad once you learn the trick, which is, fight them in water or on ice with a spear. A 1 block deep pond is usually good enough as you move faster in water than they do. You can also just run away since you are faster (at least outside of dense forests and sans jumping). Sorry you got laughed at, but don't give up. The game can be very satisfying to conquer.
  6. Silent Shadow

    Class survey

    Try it sometime, you may find it is not that hard or even easier (the extra health really helps in the early game).
  7. Silent Shadow

    Class survey

    While your explanation makes some sense would it not make more sense to pick a different class than commoner for the unique benefits and then use the world creation settings to negate the negatives that come with the class? Things like attack damage or the ability to make unique items are not available from the world creation settings so why not choose those things via classes? I understand why a blackguard may not be picked for a peaceful run but why not the others? I have found salt that way too, but the key words here are "a couple of times." If you are specifically looking for some mineral you are better off searching more vertically in a likely area than to horizontally search for more areas. You will probably find some extra ores and goodies this way too.
  8. Silent Shadow

    Class survey

    I dunno about playstyles, none of these are really that exclusive that you couldn't make the most of any of them and I have not seen any strategies built around one class. It would seem that people just pick commoner when playing solo because they do not feel any pressure to excel in any one thing or they do not want to deal with a malus. Blackguard just deals with the hardest part of the game the best in my opinion and he gets the best efficiency out of metal, which while easy to procure, takes the most time to gather and process of any industry. Since Blackguard needs less metal overall compared to the other classes, s/he has more time to do whatever. If you want to build big impressive structures in survival you will probably be spending a lot of time underground getting materials to make it and blackguard is great for that. The extra health makes surviving in forests a lot easier (can you really spot wolves in dense cover before they notice you?) which will be useful no matter what you are doing. Blackguard can excel at a lot of tasks and do fine in the others. That is not entirely true, but close. You can use the temporal gears drifters drop to cut delivery trips in half, you can use the flax they drop in the early game to make yourself some bags for more inventory space, and as for the spoiler, well... Combat is pretty boring on its own but I would say it is never the main focus of the game (seems everyone assumes I really enjoy it when I talk about it); it serves to make a dangerous place more perilous and it puts some stress on the player's time and resources in a place that is nearly devoid of replacements for either, similar to a horror survival game (I doubt anyone plays those for the sake of combat; monsters are just here to set the mood and give you a reason to invest in equipment and supplies). As for going underground there are lots of reasons to go deep (60 blocks or more): Some resources can only be found in decent amounts if you include the deep depths, the prime examples being cassiterite and salt domes. Best place to find artifacts. Most ores can also be found at low depths so by going deep you can exploit the Ultra high scarcity found by propick. Many ores can only be found at the bountiful grade in volcanic rocks that exist at the bottom. This is a nice way to spend the winter when you are more prepared as you can go get that high quality ore in the earth's warmth instead of traveling to several shallow mines in the cold. The challenge, and it is cool to see a magma chamber for the first few times. I was surprised to see so few people picked Blackguard and was kinda hoping to hear why people don't care for it. So far only you have really said anything about it but most say they don't see anything being better than commoner.
  9. Silent Shadow

    Class survey

    People just do not grasp the advantage of the Blackguard. I like the black guard the most because it is the most suited for exploring the most challenging environments (for me anyway) of the underground and dense forests and is also the most material efficient of all the classes while doing it. Metal is probably the most valuable, but costly, material to produce in the game and you never stop needing it. Metal needs ore to be mined from usually dangerous areas, the most infrastructure built (basic workshop, mines, and a lot more for iron and steel), charcoal or coal in large quantities, and requires active player participation in most of its processes. The black guard has the best traits with regard to the metal industry as black guards can mine faster, most of their weapons and armor last longer, and they are the most suited for the underground where most ores/minerals are mined. Mining faster is a nice bonus to minimize the time spent underground but a bigger advantage a Blackguard has is how efficient he is with metal weapons and armor. Black guards add 10% armor hp and since you can use nearly destroyed chainmail in the creation of full hp plate or scale mail, you get effectively 60 to 420 extra hp depending on the armors used/made (chain mail into scale or plate works best), which works out to quite a few more attacks blocked before breaking, especially with high end armors like plate mail which can knock the incoming damage down a lot. As far as I am aware, tool durability is only decremented by the number of actions done or blocks/items affected (an exception is the heavy hit function in forging), so each attack with a sword/spear decrements its health by one. Since the Blackguard has a 20% damage buff he can reach some break points for some weapons and save metal with fewer hits. ***I made the following assumptions: Damage values are not rounded up nor is there damage variance or "crits", and drifters have no damage reduction nor armor (that I could find). If not in the in-game handbook, I used what the wiki said. I also have not tested these numbers as I am lazy.*** I did not include Gold, Silver, or meteoric iron due to their rarity and unlikeliness to be used as a weapon, but they have the same damage values as Bismuth Bronze and Steel respectively. You can find the numbers in the in-game handbook. You can determine three things when looking at these graphs; that Blackguards can kill the weaker drifters faster than a commoner with tin bronze weapons, he can kill the three most dangerous drifters faster than a commoner with any melee weapon, and he since he kills with fewer hits the blackguard's weapons (the ones with reductions) will last longer in his hands than in a Commoner's. Looking at how long the melee weapons last for a blackguard it gets real good. Against plain drifters, Tin Bronze spears and Tin/Black Bronze swords will last 33.33% longer for a black guard than a commoner (Equivalent Durability Modifier = 1 / (1 - reduction %)). Against deep drifters (another common drifter), the same weapons will last 25% longer for a black guard. Against the more rare and dangerous Drifters (Tainted, Corrupt, Nightmare) Black Bronze, Iron, and Steel weapons will last around 16.7% to 25% longer. It is unfortunate though that steel and iron weapons do not get an durability advantage against the most common drifters. The Hunter does not reach many breakpoints with spears with only a 10% boost. With most metal spears, he is no better at killing drifters than a commoner, but this is not to say that the hunter is bad, just overrated. Since thrown spears do roughly 1.5 times as much damage as swords you might think that they would have an advantage in DPS and damage per metal invested against swords, but this is not true for common classes or Hunter thrown spears vs Blackguard swords. They do cost 1 hp per throw and do roughly twice the damage of a sword blow, but swords have roughly 2.25 times the durability of spears, so swords have a higher damage per metal investment ratio. For DPS, I found that I could swing a sword two times faster than accurately throw a spear at a nearby drifter, as I had to aim to get the throwing window small enough to ensure an accurate shot (though someone more experienced than me may be able to do better) which basically means spears did twice the damage but took twice as long per attack compared to swords, for roughly equal DPS (experience with each weapon will probably determine which is best for you). Hunter does kill a bit faster with arrows, but he gets only a minimal benefit for durability thanks to how bows and arrows break [edit: still true]. While the percent reductions are not good for most of the drifters you will be facing, you have to remember that it is only the bow that loses durability, meaning only sticks and string are used (and easily replaced). Arrows can usually be recovered with good rates [edit: This is only true for missed shots which seem to never break. About a third of shots that hit a creature tend to break, which really cuts down their efficiency for a Hunter to around 8.5+1 drifters per ingot invested. A sword can easily reach over a 100 drifters per ingot invested for a Commoner] and they are also manufactured at 9 arrow heads per ingot and thus are a very metal efficient option [edit: They are the worst option I am aware of. Bows and arrows are "the best" only if number of slots and sustainability (no picking up ammo/spears) are a priority. They really need some love to be worthwhile.] (if rather bottle necked by low feather availability). Bows and arrows do have a bit less DPS than swords (less attack speed) and spears (less damage per shot) for any class though this is usually not an issue for ranged combat. The underground environment typically has the following characteristics: Low light, which means your sight is going to be limited by how far your light projects. Assuming the tunnel or cave you are in is greater than your light radius, you will only be able to effectively shoot the targets illuminated by your light source. This mostly negates thrown spears' and bows' greatest advantage of range. Since you are pretty much limited to melee anyway by space or light, being a Blackguard will be an easier time. Restricted maneuverability: it is much harder to kite underground thanks to the inherent vertical features/hazards and small spaces so you are much more likely to be hit and recovering arrows and spears will be much harder. Since blackguards have the most health (+5) and armor that lasts longer, they can survive longer in those situations. Limited Inventory: Slots are at a premium when going underground for ores/minerals or equipment like ladders, torches, food, pickaxes, medicine, artifacts, or what have you. A single sword occupies only one slot and performs well with minimal space so a Blackguard makes more sense to use. A Hunter will need to throw two bronze spears to down a drifter and 4-6 for the most dangerous of them, which means you need at least 5 spears to kill one or two drifters by quickly throwing spears at them. It can be done, but since spears do not stack, you have to allot 5 slots on spears or hope you can recover your spears in the confines of the underground. Bows are better than spears for the hunter in this regard, but at the cost of DPS. Temporal Instability: Your character's time will be limited by their temporal stability so having to spend less time mining means more extraction or exploring is possible for Blackguards. Given how easy it is to get food in the game I do not feel the extra hunger of a Blackguard is that bad, even with winters or in the early game. Once you get a farm going and a simple cellar food problems are more or less solved for a Blackguard (it is only wild foods that get the item drop rate malus). If you spend your time huddling in a dirt shelter at night panning then you may run out of food, but I usually keep exploring at night to get a jump on the limited time you have until winter comes anyway (great time to pan then). Thank you for coming to my Ted-Talk. Sorry for any bad grammar or disjointed arguments my tired eyes missed.
  10. If you do not want your stuff to spoil when not playing then do not harvest it, leave it on the bush, crop, or animal until you need it as is done in real life. You can still do the preservation for the long lasting foods too.
  11. I usually start by doing some pretty spaced out samples until I find the ore I want. The propick only samples the local block so I usually do a grid survey once I get to the main ore body. All my propick samples are recorded on the map according to the ore and concentration. I usually shorten it to the metal's chemical symbol and concentration, so a Hematite ore concentration of 0.56 and a Galena ore with a minuscule concentration would be listed as Fe.56 Pb(m). Purple is a good color for the map marker dots since it is quick to type and it is visible in all weather conditions.
  12. The merchant's guild prevents them from operating in each others' market so they have to open their own market to survive.
  13. That is because traders are distributed around the map at rather similar intervals, so you are at any time going to be at most a minute or two from a trader. As far as I can tell, the only "strategy" for finding artifacts is just to try to explore as many caves as possible. If the generation code for artifacts does not factor in depth, then a world with little height might decrease the area to search through.
  14. Keep in mind that you can roll damaged sets of armor into the next tier for full durability (1% Hp chainmail into 100% Hp scalemail, for example). You can also save your nearly broken bronze tools to sell to traders for some free gears. Best way to stretch your metal out.
  15. Hey it is free meat and hides spawning in your walls! Just enclose the skeps individually with fences or enclose groups of them and it shouldn't be a problem.
  16. The underground is about the same temperature year round so mining side steps the issues with the cold. If you made your workshops count as enclosed room you can craft then too. You can also repair your clothes for more protection from the cold and buy even better ones from the merchants so you can continue working outside. Usually I save up a bunch of work to do in the form of refining building materials (like polished stone) or saving up fire wood to convert to charcoal. I also work on building up my base since it is close to a fire I can quickly warm up at and any nearby water is frozen. If you establish a mine with some good ores you can spend the winter mining it out.
  17. I would say that the game focuses on extraction and building. Take from the environment as you can and use what you get to further your capabilities so you can take more from the environment and thus build more, and on and on. Combat right now is just an obstacle to overcome or a hazard to be wary of. The main problem with the game is that it stops giving you reasons to build up your capabilities. Once you get a farm going and build a cellar with some pots, you have solved the problem of winter. Once you get bronze weapons and armor you have mostly solved the problem of enemies underground. Iron makes you further protected, but you don't really need it and steel is even worse with its meager return on investment. Since you no longer need to build up anything, why bother exploring for more resources? Once you get rid of the problems of winter and enemies, you have basically won the game and doing anything else is going to be intrinsically driven. I think the game's options at this point are to either make everything harder, or to add new challenges to overcome. They could make the player's time more valuable by placing more demands upon it so that a big part of the game would be switching to more investment heavy, but low upkeep, processes and materials. For example a copper tool could lose work speed quickly and thus need to be sharpened often to restore its speed (durability is not affected) but an iron or steel tool would need infrequent sharpening. There could also be better ovens/furnaces for better fuel efficiency, establishing mines via "temporal stabilizers" or something so fewer drifters will interfere while mining, introducing glass blowing with molds to facilitate mass production of containers for food and the like, more machines that can produce power or do work on items (slitting mill? Lathe?), building a fish pond for easy protein (no hides though), establishing a sawmill for faster/more plank production, etc. This way players gain more time to do whatever when they upgrade their stuff and they can feel the momentum building every time they do. Item upkeep could be another reason to progress. If items break down overtime the player would want to shift to making items that could be made in batches or have more durability, similar to how tools work now. One reason glassware became much cheaper than pottery is because it could be mass produced with molds and pottery cannot, so if pots "wore out" or had a chance to break when handling (perhaps worse in the dark?) it would be good to invest in capital heavy glassware for quick and easy replacements. If buildings also wore out or were damaged by storms, there would be an incentive to make it out of more durable materials like stone blocks or setup a system where weaker materials could be made quickly and easily to replace the damaged parts (this would need a change in the way rooms work so that players would not just live in a carved out cave.) I can see how a lot of people would not care for these options and would probably just see it as pointless grinding though. As for new challenges I have heard a few suggestions like setting up new dungeons or areas to explore but I feel that would not add much to the game as it would just be a place you go once to see or for bragging rights or you go there to raid for plunder and then never return. People also clamor for better combat but this game has been focusing on crafting for the most part and seeing them switch focus to combat would just make the game be like many of the other survival games on steam like Rust, ARC, or Conan. I think the challenge the game should build up to is rebuilding civilization from the current ruins it is in. Gather surviving people you find in camps or ruins, build a small village, set them up in their assigned tasks like farming, crafting, or guarding. You could setup production chains to outfit them and feed them. Fallout 4 had an interesting, if severely underdeveloped, idea of building settlements to support you in the wasteland, but this game is setup to execute it far better. Since the game is about building and surviving I think that a complete functioning settlement would be the ideal end of the game. I can see how this might be harder to code, but it would truly set Vintage Story apart from other survival crafting games.
  18. Makes sense, looks like 1/8 plus 0 to 1/8 (average 1/16) so an average 3/16 of the wood gets converted into charcoal (6 from 32), but that can vary between 1/8 and 1/4 of the wood. That more or less matches what the wiki says which is 5.5 charcoal per 32 firewood.
  19. If they did drop something, it would have to be somewhat worthless on its own since it could be easily farmed or the drop rate would have to be very low. Even now you can leave a nest after killing the residents and come back later to find new ones hanging out there.
  20. I think people have wanted birds (beyond chickens) and fish as additional resources. Birds would offer a limited amount of feathers to find when exploring/gathering which would help to use bows and the flint arrows in the early game. Birds could also serve as another pest to nerf crops a bit. Fish would spice up the water biomes quite a bit, and fishing could be an alternative source of protein. For a minimum investment (some sticks and twine) you could get fish meat (but no bones or hides) which would not last as long as regular meat and its production would be limited by the player's time spent fishing unlike how animals and crops can grow on their own. I think a bear would be pretty cool addition, it would be the rare saw blade locust of the surface but would have a LOT of meat, bones, and hides. You might even stumble across them sleeping in caves during winter.
  21. Google translate did not do too well, which is understandable when translating from Russian to English. Are you saying that items like chairs could be made from a block by chiseling it out? Or that small items could be worked on and then assembled, such as multiple small tiles making up a slab? Sounds like carpentry to me, which would be pretty cool.
  22. Supposedly in real life Elm wood was the "most desired" by early 1700s American Colonists for making charcoal. No idea why, but I wonder if the type of wood affects the percentage converted in the game.
  23. I would put a layer of fences on the cobblestone wall just in case the raccoons are spawning on it or getting access to it. You might need to just have each skep have its own fence skirt to safeguard them, though you could place 4+ together and surround them with fences and flowers.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.