Silent Shadow

If you have an ingot, you are better off just forging it into the tool you want than remelting and casting.

I think it would be cool if sharpening were part of the crafting process. You take the tool from the mold/forge and put a finished edge on the tool. Durability should still decrease with use but there could be a separate property of tools: sharpness. Having a sharper tool/weapon would have a higher attack damage or harvest speed, but the sharpness level would fall with use and every time you sharpened it, the durability would be decreased. Players would have to decide between maximizing tool speed and weapon damage, or maximizing the tool's lifespan albeit at slower speeds.

Recycling should be a thing, but the majority of the metal should not be recoverable, as it would reduce the amount of mining the players needs to do as well as all the supporting activities done to support mining.

Right now, I would say temporal storms only have an impact on the early phase of hard difficulty games. On Wilderness Survival mode, where creatures have 50% extra damage and the player has a 125% default hunger rate, temporal storms become much harder to ignore. If you want to skip it, you have to spend lot of food that may not be easy to gather in the early game. If you want to keep exploring, you have to be careful where you go and you may not be able to harvest all the resources you find. You can kill the high level drifters for the flax fibers and gears but at the risk of being killed and losing your stuff. Later in the game when those resources are easier to get by other methods, temporal storms become more of a tax on the player's time.

Just so you know, this also includes the cross hairs when not in your inventory or a container. You can look at a block in range and press shift + h and it will bring up the handbook entry on it.

I have never tried it, but I think it can work. Flowers can be planted in planters and there is nothing saying bees need to be outside; the wiki just says bees need to be able to path to the flowers. Flowers do not grow (except horsetail, kinda) so I doubt they need sunlight.

Give it a go, but I would ensure to build it in an enclosed room.

There is a limit to the maximum number of each type of drifter, and a set world height range each can spawn in. When you are in the range of (55% to 85%), (35% to 55%), (20% to 35%), (10% to 20%) world height, there can be 18, 15, 21, or 18 drifters alive respectively. Since dead ones do not count, the game can keep spawning fresh ones while you are trying to grind through the rest, and so you can end up with an endless horde. On the surface, the maximum you can have is ten, and you can typically out maneuver them easily. The surface drifters also cannot spawn in during the day, and they and the deep variants are much more likely to flee when receiving damage than the tainted and worse drifters. Basically the deeper spawning drifters stay on you more and in greater numbers. Since people typically try to have a decent metal weapon when descending that deep, people tend to encounter these groups then and not before on the surface with a basic weapon.

The easiest solution for dealing with the underground mobs is to corral them into a fence lined, one block deep pit so that more cannot spawn. You could also light all areas within 15 blocks (drifters aggro range) to light level 8 to prevent the game spawning drifters in range of you, but this is pretty hard during a mob fight. Running away is also an option.

8 hours ago, Rinklestein said:

Most people in the topic think it could use some improvements is all I'm going to say.

Not really, more like half at best, and the improvements they want are already part of the handbook.

Awareness seems to be the bigger issue.

I find it funny that "erasing" the writing will give you back the material to be reused.

4 hours ago, PhotriusPyrelus said:

Do people do that?

People do not do that because it would take around a couple IRL hours to accomplish and the game will force you to stop and fulfill your character's needs, not because people do not think they will need the wood (and they might depending on their goals). I can reasonably make 5 axes per min, so 63 would take 12.6 minutes. It takes roughly 2 seconds per log cut so 6300 seconds (105 minutes) to exhaust all ax durability, perhaps double if you take the time to get rid of the leaves by hand. So around 2 hours to get that job done, ignoring the time for inter-tree travel, de-branching, and drifter interference. Even with a tin bronze axe it would still take over an IRL hour. The limiting factor for timber is not tool durability so it doesn't matter in this regard (I could more than fill all 4 leather backpacks (24 slots) or all 4 linen sacks (20 slots) with what I could chop down with a single tin bronze axe), but it is a different story for mining.

5 hours ago, PhotriusPyrelus said:

Even if a you wanted to do what you suppose an unbreakable tool would allow you to, you're still very limited by inventory space.

With a single tin bronze pickaxe I could mine 450 blocks in about 15 minutes for around 600 stones and/or ore chunks. 600 stones/chunks will take up 10-12 slots. Aside from the hot bar, you can get 40 slots for mining products but only 24 for anything else. All you need is 80 flax fibers and 1600 bronze units to make the mining bags, which is easy to acquire for anyone in the bronze age. You basically have room for 4-5 bronze pickaxes worth of stuff. You could also pack 2 iron pickaxes instead and save 2 to 3 slots thanks to it having ~2.22 times the durability of bronze. A steel pick could do the work of about five and half bronze ones and save 3 or 4 slots, not to mention the speed gains. With those free slots you can bring in more medicine or supplies so you can mine longer (more room for crocks) or safer (ladders and fences) which is good for winter, or on harder difficulties with higher hunger rates. This is why durability matters for pickaxes unless your metal needs are quite restrained, and is one of the interesting ways durability adds depth to the game.

Players also do not need to make a calculation beyond reacting their experience, which will show as more slots/ore per trip for higher durability pickaxes.

5 hours ago, PhotriusPyrelus said:

Does a tool with unlimited durability let you go for longer?

Yep, you would only need one slot to max your inventory. For other tools like axes, maybe not unless you went on a long expedition.

5 hours ago, PhotriusPyrelus said:

You'll pick up several different kinds of each ore (especially if you have to mine in different stone types) which will take up their own inventory slots, unless you bring a hammer to crush them which is an 8th inventory slot.

Don't do this, it is more space efficient to keep it as a chunk and absorb the extra slot than to break chunks into nuggets. A full stack of medium grade ore chunks breaks up into 2 full stacks of nuggets and rich breaks up into 2.5 stacks. Even poor grade chunks break up at a ratio of 1 stack into 1.5 stacks. 10 broken stacks of poor grade chunks will become 15 stacks of nuggets, so just hold the rare crystallized chunk and accept that maybe two or three slots won't be totally filled.

5 hours ago, PhotriusPyrelus said:

That said, that there are plenty of metals already in-game which cannot be mined with copper.  You're not breaking quartz or iron (or anthracite, or borax, or black coal, or some other presently-lacking-a-function metals) with a copper pick.

You are right, I did not know that bronze or even iron was required to mine some ores and minerals in the game.

6 hours ago, PhotriusPyrelus said:

And why would anyone upgrade to steel when steel is apparently such a pain to process and the tool is just going to break?

It is not so much that people do not value the various capability increases from iron, but the fact that steel is effectively the end of the game. If people played for a longer time beyond when they reached the cementation furnace then I bet we would see steel tools more often (if you already built the cementation furnace, why not just load it up every now and then?). Would you make any tools at the end of the game knowing you would not use them? Maybe some neat ones like a sword or even a set of armor, but you are not expecting to use them often.

Steel tools do break, but they also last much longer than the other tools, weapons, and armor. Steel durability is over 100% more than iron for many items like swords, so it lasts more than twice as long, while also being faster. If durability were not a factor then the devs would have to push the properties of metals up and up to make them worth the cost of upgrading to more complex facilities.

6 hours ago, PhotriusPyrelus said:

mistakes which force you to replace them become much more significant (and punishing).

Why? It is not hard to replace 4 or 5 tools, as we have seen with the current needs from the effects of tool durability. In fact, I would say that is probably the least terrible thing about dying. Armor is kept by the player upon death so the amount of metal you lose is much less than a trip to the mine can bring, especially with extra slots saved by needing only one tool. If anything it should be less punishing, because you don't have to worry about tools (and thus metal) going to waste and you will be losing fewer tools (why bring replacements for tools that do not break?). With infinite durability, you could have a pool of metal to make replacements with because you are not constantly replacing broken tools.

You might be thinking of the loss of more unique tools as seen in minecraft with enchanted tools whose individual characteristics may be hard to replicate, but there is no such tool in Vintage Story that can be crafted by players. Each tool (for a given metal) is made with identical stats and once you set up the infrastructure to make it, there is not much more work required to keep making more of them, even for steel.

I would not compare netherite from Minecraft to Steel in Vintage Story as the jump from Iron to steel is currently over 100% more durability and for much less work (more concentrated ore) than required to get the lessor 30% durability jump from diamond to netherite (with only a performance bonus of +1 damage for tools and weapons and no work speed bonus). Not that it matters, as steel (and netherite) are at the end of the end game so why bother getting it? Those items are an achievement, not a tool to be typically used over time.

6 hours ago, PhotriusPyrelus said:

Again, if I spend all my time planting and harvesting trees, I will outstrip the whole server's demand for wood pretty quickly.

I doubt that, not only because you would have to spend hours to provide enough for just you, but you would also have to break to gather more stones and get food. Keep in mind all the firewood needed for each person; firewood to fire the containers needed for their food storage/cooking, the firewood needed for cooking each meal, the firewood needed to make charcoal (at a 3/16 conversion ratio for firewood to charcoal) for everyone's tools (and their replacements, not to mention armor), their houses, and their profession (farming, barrels, mechanics, ranching, etc.). It quickly adds up and that's before vanity projects and moving the wood to where it would be useful. In a more capitalist group, nobody would trade with you for more wood once you satisfy their immediate needs so that wood would just sit until they used up their supply (better spend some time getting, or give up more valuable stuff for, containers to store the wood or else enjoy chopping it again), so I highly doubt you would continue chopping in favor of getting food to eat or better equipment. Invisible hand theory and all that.

But let's say you do. Would you not say that is a reason for wood items to have limited uses or a potential for reliable damage to wood buildings? So that saturation is never permanent and people have a reason to specialize into all tasks? If there were more items with durability, then there would be more of an economy in multiplayer don't you think?

7 hours ago, PhotriusPyrelus said:

And isn't that kind of the whole point of these kinds of sandbox games: to build sandcastles (not literally sandcastles)?

That is the goal of sandbox games, of which I am not sure the survival game Vintage Story falls into (unless in creative mode). The point of survival games like Vintage Story is to make use of scarce resources and time to satisfy the needs of your character so he doesn't die, as well as to progress to a state where survival is not a question anymore. Vintage Story has added a lot of decor items and mechanics, but the focus remains on survival. Once you can survive with minimal effort most people either start a new game or build a vanity project and this is no different in multiplayer.

Just let it die man. While I agree, I would rather political stuff be kept out of here.

As they are now, temporal storms have potential to be a free money event. The drifters spawned have a decent chance of dropping rusty and temporal gears and they can still be trapped in fence lined pits and then ground down with flint spears or better weapons later.

Just now, Omega Haxors said:

Maybe not the best thing to be referencing a terrorist movement with your title. Just saying

Don't you think that's a bit far? It's more like a meme than a terrorist movement.

Well they were annoying on the harder difficulties, due to the large food cost of sleeping through them.

You can run past mountains and cave delve to find the various rock layers. Bauxite is a sedimentary rock and so is almost always on top. You would probably see it in bit or gravel form before the propick would pick it up. Usually I find it on the mini-map before I see it thanks to its distinct orange color.

Rock types persist over quite a ways, so distance is the real enemy here. I have found that rock types do tend to change faster in the east/west direction than north/south though so give that a try.

8 hours ago, PhotriusPyrelus said:

18 hours ago, Silent Shadow said:

Now if your pickax never broke, you could go once, mine everything, never come back, and thus never have to do anything else. How boring would that be?

Strongly disagree.  You'd have to come back regularly for food or to drop off your haul; inventory space is limited, and whatever food you bring (and mining is hungry business) is either going to spoil with haste or in a crock that takes up space even after it's empty, limiting how much "Rock and stone!" you can bring home.  You're also ignoring the copious amount of scouting you'd need to do before hand to know where all that metal is, and if you know generally how much metal you've scouted (or even just how much you want) you can just, like, I dunno, bring more picks?

Perhaps I was unclear, but the problem is that if items never broke, you would probably never need to do more than one mining trip for an ore as the items would never break. If you don't need to go under ground any more, why would you need metal armor? Leather armor and Gambeson are more than adequate for the surface. You are also only going to be scouting once anyways.

You could bring more picks, but then if you overestimated the amount of mining you had to do, you have to chose between dumping picks or leaving ore behind. If you didn't bring enough, then you are leaving ore in the mine. There is no real indication of how much ore is there until you see it or are so close as to get a propick read on it.

 In either situation, you have to do more of the game as I said in my earlier post. Tool durability forces you out of one activity and into other parts of the game that you might otherwise ignore if given the chance.

8 hours ago, PhotriusPyrelus said:

require you to have higher tier tools to break different materials.  I'm not sure if Vintage Story does this (even if it doesn't now, it could in the future).  I know you need higher tier tools for higher tier metals, I just don't know about deeper stones

Vintage Story does in one regard, namely the metal working requirements for iron and steel. You need an iron anvil to refine blister steel, and you need a bronze anvil for iron blooms. I am pretty sure there are no rocks that you cannot break with a copper pickaxe.

9 hours ago, PhotriusPyrelus said:

Second, I think breaking speed is being drastically underrated and underappreciated

Don't get me wrong, it is nice to have, but unless you plan on removing the top layer of soil from a continent or clearing a forest, it is not that important. Steel is roughly 25% faster than iron, but most players do not bother with making most tools out of steel. The jump from copper to bronze is not that great either so I imagine most people would just stick with copper unless they found tin on accident or if they wanted to do a long term project.

I don't think work speed or damage are strong or universal enough impetus to get the better tools.

9 hours ago, PhotriusPyrelus said:

I don't understand why - if I was on a multiplayer server - I would wait around for 'the potter' to get online to make me a thing I want instead of just finding some clay and doing it myself. [...] As it stands right now, any player can get a hunk of clay and make a bowl (or any other clay product). 

This is true, but it is not very convenient to do. You have to gather the clay and some fuel, form the object, and then fire it for a day or so. You can also save yourself the time and just buy it from the potter who spends his time making clay objects en mass and has an inventory ready to be purchased (or just give him your order and do something else while he works on it). Once you have the clay object though, you never need to buy it again from the potter, so his industry would die out if no new players joined the server and bought from him. This is why people think there should be a chance to break pottery (among other items) on use.

8 hours ago, Rinklestein said:

I were to recommend this game to a friend I would see them becoming frustrated very quickly with having to read a dictionary.

How? The starter guide is like a 1 minute read. Same with the progression guide. S/he can also look at the wiki guide online, and if that is not enough, there are let's plays s/he can watch the first 5 minutes of to see what to do.

If your friend cannot devote more than 10 minutes to figure out the basics of a game then Vintage Story probably is not for him/her, nor most games really.

8 hours ago, Rinklestein said:

You can have loads of information available in a game, but it needs to be delivered in a nuanced and user friendly way.

It is.

There is an intro guide that mentions everything important for a beginner to do/learn and each industry has its own guide in the book and the game makes sure the player is aware of it. If you want the recipe for an item you can look it up and see what is needed. If you want to know what you can make with an item, the handbook will tell you everything it is an ingredient for.

I would say the game strikes a good balance between hand holding and letting you figure it out on your own.

8 hours ago, Rinklestein said:

And yeah divvying up the guide book into stages of development even would be great. If you opened it up and immediately saw pottery age tech that would be good enough.
 

It already does that, in the progression guide and it has links to the items/industries in question. Did you even read it?

8 hours ago, Rinklestein said:

And if it could merge things that clutter up the guidebook like the 6 variations of each block type into a single readable entry page (like thatch blocks and roofs together) and reference that would be a great improvement.

If you are looking for a specific thing then this really is not a problem as you can just narrow the search by typing some more letters in. If you are just looking around the handbook, then why would you want things abstracted away? If you are looking at an item entry and looking at what it can be made into or from, the game already joins the variations into a single slot and cycles through the variations (see tools, most stone items, etc.)

8 hours ago, Rinklestein said:

Clicking on straw grass shows absolutely everything that can be made with the item and not all of it is relevant especially with the majority being these decorative blocks that serve the same purpose with minor aesthetic and shapely differences, nevermind that each sprite for the block from the guidebook isn't immediately recognizable to a new player, and they would have to click each individual entry to get an idea of what everything even is or what is being offered.

There are ten entries for dry grass, it is not that many. Most items are similar, and even for sticks where there are 42 things under "ingredient for" they are laid out so the player can easily look at each entry by just mousing over, where they can see the rotating 3D model and a tool tip without needing to click.

The handbook is fine and is much better than having to alt-tab to the wiki and clicking on links trying to find basic item recipes. Players just need to spend a minute and use it. 

You can replace the water block with a dirt block to get rid of the water. Buckets do not remove water blocks, they just duplicate them.

23 hours ago, PhotriusPyrelus said:

And let's nip the 'realism' argument in the bud right here; I'm not terribly interested in it, but if you were going to say that consider this: real tools last for years (decades, even) - even with consistent use - if you're not leaving them out in the elements to rust and rot.

Real tools also break all the time, all it can take is you pushing it a little too hard trying to finish up a task, trying to brute force the task instead of trying a different approach, or just using the tool for something it was not intended, like debranching a tree with a knife. Is it really too much to think a tool put togather by a person without a smith background (I didn't see any folding, tempering, or quality control on those metal tools, let alone maintenance) can break by someone using it all the time? Weapons are constantly abused in fights so I don't see a problem with them breaking at all.

I do wish we could recycle parts of broken tools though, you would have to choose between saving it or chucking it to make the most of the limited inventory space.

23 hours ago, PhotriusPyrelus said:

What I am interested in are game-design arguments.  What does it add to the game?

As the others have said, it adds a new avenue for improvement/comparison, namely in that better grades of tools/armor/weapons will last longer before breaking, meaning you don't need to make as many nor pack as many for a job.

Durability also helps reinforce the difference between the materials and makes some more valuable.

I think it is fine in some games, it drives you to try out other items or methods and so exposes you to more of the game . In other games it really is just a tax on the players time, but I do not think that is the case for Vintage Story. If you want to get metal in the game you have to go mine it. Sounds easy right? But the metal is rarely near your home so you need to travel there. Once there you have to dig for it and if your pickaxes break you have to leave and return with more. You are probably in the wilderness so there is a chance of animals attacking you, or you finding some goodies on the way. You also have to eat more food now, so you have to spend more time farming/hunting/foraging or make a bigger farm/ranch. When you go back you have to clear it of drifters that spawned in there before you can mine the ore, and you may have to come back multiple times thanks to a limited inventory. You could make fewer trips but you will need pickaxes that last longer so you have to build better infrastructure to make them (bloomeries, cementation furnace, etc.). 

Now if your pickax never broke, you could go once, mine everything, never come back, and thus never have to do anything else. How boring would that be?

There is also the idea that more attention is given to the industry that produces the item. How much knapping would you do if your stone tools never broke? Maybe do it 8 times a game?

A lot of depth (haha) could be added to the game with the addition of some simple water mechanics.

Currently water only does six things (that I can think of):

• Water flows destroy grass stalks growing on grass blocks (but does not spawn dry grass to pick up)
• Irrigate nearby farm blocks.
• Carry items along its flow at a rate depending the item's weight.
• Floats or sinks items depending on their density.
• Severely lowers the light passing through.
• Extinguish torches (and maybe fires?).

I like these interactions for the immersion they offer, but there could be more for players to interact with.

I think the following additions should be easy to program in and would add some more complexity for players to explore:

• Have some blocks be water permeable. Have water occupy the same space as, and be able to flow through, the small/open blocks like grates, fences, crops (currently they block water), leaves, trapdoors, etc. This would add more to the immersion of the world and make building underwater look way better.
• Have some blocks be able to toggle this property. It would be neat if the "water permeable" property of some blocks could be toggled. This could be something like a floodgate for players to control the flow of water, or desert quicksand that players could normally walk over when dry, but after getting wet (say from the rare rains) they would sink into if not careful. You could also make dirt tiles (not grassy tiles) become mud tiles and behave like gravel and sand until drying out.
• Make it so water that the player places with the bucket evaporates after some time. This way players can still have a quenching tub in their smithy or to irrigate fields for a limited time, but natural water sources are much more valuable and have to be built around for projects like permanent field irrigation. Players could build wells as a construction (like how the cementation furnace or pit kiln are recognized.) if they wanted a permanent source of water.
• Have some crops interact differently with water, mainly being able to be harvested simply by flooding (rice or cranberries) while other crops (rye, spelt, most vegetables, etc.) be destroyed or damaged (similar to heat damage) if flooded.

With the concept of mechanical power in the game, there should be a water powered alternative to wind power that is not innately always better than windmills. Windmills should have the advantage of being able to be built in most places and have power year round, with the disadvantages of having variable power levels and requiring flax sails to build. Watermills should produce more power that is reliable and require no flax to build (still need the mechanical parts though so planks, resin, fat, and the tools), with the disadvantages of freezing in winter (no power in cold winters), and only being able to be built in a few areas. Here is how watermills should be implemented in the game.

First of all, hydro power would only be harnessable under a specific circumstance, and that is from water flowing from a high natural water block to the top of a lower natural water block (called a stream from here on out). Players can build ditches and aqueducts to enable flow from high natural water blocks to lower ones, but any water they place will not complete the stream, so they must find these height differences in the world. The availability of the high and low natural water blocks can be limited by the world generator to balance the availability of exploitable hydro power in the world. This helps maintain the balancing of water wheels since players cannot just build them where ever, but where they do, they can provide a lot more power than a single windmill can. I would also highly recommend having the water players place evaporate after a while to make this more feel more "natural" to them.

Secondly, extractable power would depend on the height difference from the high natural water block and the water wheel, which must be in the "stream" established above. Each block of the stream has a power value and a mass multiple that is updated as the water changes. Starting from the top natural water block, a power value starts at zero with a split multiple of 1.0, and these are passed on to the next block in the stream. If the next block is below, then power is incremented by a power step (the gain that 1 block of water would gain from a single block drop) multiplied by the split multiplier. The value is then passed to the next block. A waterwheel in a stream block extracts a percentage of the power (66.7% in the example below) and that percentage becomes rotational power along its shaft. The rest (33%) is retained in the stream and is passed along to the next block. The power value updates end with the low natural water block.

If the stream splits, then the power value and mass multiplier of the block are divided by the number of block the water splits into. These values are then passed along to blocks that only make up a stream. This is to prevent players from splitting streams early and effectively multiplying the power they can extract from a single natural water block. Power values are not tracked for non stream falls to limit the number of calculations for performance.

Joining streams should simply add the mass multiples of the streams to together to a max of 1.0 and add the power values of each stream to the joining block. This means that streams can be split up and rejoined, allowing some interesting power distribution designs, with no penalties. If multiple natural water block sources are joined, their power is added to a single stream but the mass is not, meaning that power will have been lost for additional height drops. This is mainly to avoid complications in having more mass of water than a single block can occupy such as overflows or backing up the flow path as these results may confuse the player and would be difficult to program.

The current (haha) graphics for flowing water could be redone to make the flow of "stream" water more consistent with reality, such making the split streams thinner to reflect the smaller amount of water flowing in them.

I think this may also provide the framework for adding rivers, brooks, and actual streams into the game at a later date capable of driving water wheels.

The devs should set the {base power gained per block height constant} and the frequency of the {high natural water blocks spawn rate} such that water wheels can only be built sparingly compared to wind mills, but produce more power on average.

I have found a work around for now, if somewhat complicated and with some drawbacks.

There is a command in the game that affects how time in the game scales with real life time: /time calanderspeedmul [number] (0.5 is default, bigger numbers speed game time up)

So you use the number (multiple of real life time) of 2 and then double time for a month, and halve various rates (tool speed, hunger rate, food spoilage rate, sapling growth rate, etc.) you can have crops grow at what feels like twice the speed as usual. You could flip this around (use 0.25) and halve/double the rates respectively if you want crops to feel like they are taking longer to grow.

The downsides are that time based processes such as charcoal burning, random animal/plant spawns, and the day/night cycle are also affected and cannot be adjusted.

You are right, but you are probably using up metal to make that happen at a reasonable time (you are limited by temporal stability).

Swords are the most metal efficient way to kill nightmare drifters in less than 15 hits.  A commoner can kill around 41 nightmare drifters before breaking a tin bronze sword and about 85 n-drifters for an iron sword. You are at best getting 41 flax fiber (not twine) per tin bronze ingot and 85 flax fibers per iron ingot. Using metal armor or knives to harvest will drag this down further.

There are also the issues of not dying from the nightmare drifters and the corrupt drifters dragging down the flax return.

This is a decent way to grind rusty gears though (pun intended) especially if you sell the tin bronze sword after killing the most you can.

I think it would be fine if they just left it. Flax is pretty limited in the early game and there is plenty there (linen sacks, better bed, trader gears, bucket, etc.) to keep it scarce until you can get 40+ seeds and find the time to till, fence, and plant a field a few times with it. Later on once the farm is in full swing you more or less drown in flax, so having a new industry for it (tailor) and having to process it would work well to dial back the late game. If they can add automated powered looms too then all the better.

4 hours ago, Fredrik Blomquist said:

Still think making fabric more complicated to craft would be nice. If you make your farm larger you can still produce lots of flax.

The current bottle neck is the number of seeds you can gather, I wonder if they will change that.

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.