Ceridith

The notion that there's no accountability for Maltiez is ridiculous. There have been consequences publicly communicated, and likely some we don't even know about as they're internal to Anego. It's really concerning how much a minority of the community is getting themselves whipped up into trying to get someone fired over what amounts to a lapse in judgement that at worst caused inconvenience to people trying to troubleshoot mod compatibility. It's not right what Maltiez did, but I don't think it warrants termination. A lot of people calling for his termination probably aren't even considering the harm it will do to the game, they just want revenge. It's irrational.

Well I'm late to the party on this one. So Maltiez put anti-cheat code into some of his mods to purposefully crash the game client if certain heuristics were met, with the intention to disallow use of a certain client hack alongside his mods. Should he have done that? No. At least, not without clearly communicating that his mod would do so. Do I think it's worthy of the claims that he put malware into his mods? Also no, absolutely not, it's a complete over-exaggeration of reality. At worst he stepped into a grey area with his actions of not disclosing that his mods would purposefully not work along with perceived cheating mods. While not good, it's hardly worth the uproar that a very vocal minority are getting themselves worked into. The code simply crashed the game client, which isn't much different than if anyone tries to use any other two or more incompatible mods that result in game crashing. Some of you are acting like he was intentionally corrupting people's systems, which is just nonsense.

It would be nice if we could get some POI distribution and density sliders for worldgen parameters to specify if we want more or less ruins, dungeons, special natural features, etc. I've noticed this seeming to happen a lot more often on fresh world starts as well, which seems to be even more of an issue with bear agro being tweaked for the worse in my opinion. I don't mind aggressive wildlife being able to spawn on the first day in the general area, but loading into a fresh world literally two blocks away from a bear that immediately agros is just nonsense.

This has me wondering if there were any published mods abusing this before it was fixed.

Short of a miracle, I don't see rivers making it into 1.22 at this point. We're already into release candidates, which should mean the version is feature complete but going through bug fixes and balancing. As for when 1.22 stable releases, that depends on how quickly the majority of bugs can be found and fixed to a point where the game is considered stable. With how things look to be going I would guess another week or two, but that's just my perspective of someone who has been playing through the 1.22 pre and rc releases.

It's in the 1.22 RC5 patch notes, yes. And I was noticing similar behavior of bears agroing from fairly far away, even from behind hills and thick forest, so it's nice to see it toned down. I've only had a little bit of time on RC5 so I've yet to see exactly how the bear changes play out or if there's any lingering odd behavior. Pacing seems much quicker in the early game for me as well for surface bits. I'm not sure if I've just been extremely lucky, but in the playthrough I started in RC4 I was able to find enough copper and tin bits on the surface to completely skip the copper age right into tin bronze. I've also noticed the grain changes making it much easier to gather enough flax fibers to make bags in the early game before even being able to grow flax -- though that's also in part due to the crop nutrition issues slowing farming down in RC4. As for edible uncooked grain, I found it pretty useful in the very early game to survive as wild berry bushes don't seem quite as reliable for nutrition with the changes, but that could have also been related to RC bugs as it looks like the RC5 notes have some additional berry bush fixes. That's not to say I'm complaining about apparent increased abundance, while certain things seem easier to find others seem as difficult if not a little more difficult so it balances out. It's rather removed a lot of the earlier game frustration about being unable to find certain resources like tin if you're unlucky.

We can all rest a little bit easier now.

Bears have been getting a bit too over tuned to the point where it's becoming a realism versus gameplay issue. Are bears really deadly and fast in real life? Yes, of course. Does it feel unfair to have a stealth torpedo of furry inescapable death appear out of seemingly nowhere to chase you down and maul your character to death? Also very much yes. Wolves will at least announce their presence in an area with their howls, which gives fair warning to players about their general direction and to have their guard up. Bears are basically silent even with the 'footstep sounds' that were recently added in 1.22, which are hard to hear over ingame music. If you're close enough to hear a bear's footsteps you're essentially within agro range and more than likely about to be attacked so it's not much of a warning as you can't outrun them. Which speaking of bear agro range, it feels like it was made further in the 1.22 pre/rc, or in the very least bears seem much more aggressive than they used to be and will attack unprovoked from much further away.

I like the intention of the changes, but I feel like they still need tweaking. Specifically, the fertilizer and soil requirements. I understand the intention to prevent berry bushes from trivializing earlier game food scarcity, but the inability to transplant bushes and having to rely on the new clipping mechanic to propagate bushes addresses the issue. I don't think medium fertility soil should be a minimum requirement, but low fertility soil should at least slow clipping growth unless fertilized as a compromise. I feel that the curve for how much fertilizer is needed to maintain berry yield could use some tweaking as well, with high fertility soil able to maintain a normal berry yield without additional fertilizer indefinitely, and balance around that. Additionally, I think that the better nutrients a grown bush has, the cooldown for taking clippings should be reduced.

Just because you would enjoy the extra challenge doesn't mean the majority of players will as well. The cave-in, soil instability, and fire from lightning mechanics are disabled by default for a reason. They're extra challenge mechanics that end up feeling more obnoxious than they do challenging for most players. Making rot beasts kill livestock and break structures would fall squarely into the same category of niche enjoyment of an otherwise obnoxious challenge mechanic. If this were ever forced into the game I would immediately disable temporal storms completely and never look back. And I say that as someone who regularly plays with cave-ins turned on. I fully understand that it's something many players would get frustrated with, and while I enjoy that particular extra challenge I don't want all players to be forced into dealing with it unless they have an interest in it.

It's that it feels like an over correction. Preventing digging up and relocating mature bushes and time gating trimmings to propagate bushes does enough to balance out the issues berry bushes had. Requiring fertilizer and reducing the fertility of soil blocks trimmings mature on feels punitive. It pushes into into the territory where many players are feeling like cultivating berry bushes isn't worth the trouble. And then there's also that it's just kind of backwards from a realism stand point. Many berry bushes grow like weeds in real life and have no problem thriving even in what would effectively be low fertility soil. I have a black currant bush in my backyard IRL that I have to aggressively prune back every summer, I have never once fertilized it yet am always swamped with berries.

The changes to prevent berry bushes from being completely uprooted and replanted is a good thing, this made gathering food trivial during the first year's summer and fall seasons if the player simply relocated every bush they came across during the spring season. The addition of traits rewards players who want to go out of their way to min/max cultivation is a welcome change as well. I'm in agreement with others however, that the fertilization requirement goes a bit too far. That's not to say that soil fertility and fertilizer shouldn't have any impact. Planting a clipping on higher fertility soil should allow it to mature faster, as should optionally adding fertilizer. Higher soil fertility and fertilizer should also have a chance to increase berry yield as well, and in my opinion should also somewhat reduce the cooldown for taking subsequent clippings. But most importantly, this should be an optional choice players make to increase berry production beyond baseline, rather than something they're forced to do to maintain a regular amount of berries. The main issue was the ease of relocating and hoarding berry bushes, making it too quick and easy to make a large berry farm. I'd say the inability to uproot and replant bushes and instead having to be time-gated by the clipping system, along with the incentive to be picky about what bushes to take clippings from, addresses this issue well enough.

Doesn't work, unfortunately. I dug through the crafting recipes and the grass shirt has the exact same recipe as haybales, so it looks like it's superseding it. I changed the grass shirt recipe in upperbody.json to be a 3x3 grid recipe of G_G,GGG,GGG with 1 dry grass per grid, and haybales were craftable again.

For a particular story location... Were I to have full design control of the temporally related mechanics, I wouldn't make it a binary effect, but modular. The more or less temporally stable an area is, the more or less portals are likely to appear, how many and how powerful of rust beasts can come through, the chance that unique flora, fauna, or other temporal related resources are likely to appear, etc. Temporal storms should act like a negative modifier against stability for their duration, where already unstable areas are made much worse, neutral areas become unstable, and stable areas are weakened. The more powerful the storms become, the stronger the negative modifier to stability applied, to the point where particularly stable areas could still become somewhat unstable during stronger storms. I would also add ways for players to impact temporal stability by building devices that impact the area around them, either for better or worse. Another possibility is for future story locations that reduce the intensity of storms, or make the world overall more stable, once they're progressed through. But that's my own personal thoughts of what I would like to see out of a temporal mechanics overhaul.

This kind of threads into the whole issue of temporal instability being a half-baked mechanic which could use an overhaul as well. Currently above ground temporally unstable locations seem arbitrarily scattered about with no rhyme or reason, with the only impact being that your sanity drains more or less quickly while in them. It would be interesting to see temporally unstable areas have more uniqueness to them, but also some incentive to visit them as currently they come off as more of a nuisance area to be avoided. The stability of an area should also have an impact with temporal storms as well, in that areas that are already temporally unstable should become extremely dangerous to be in during a storm. Conversely, there should be areas which are more temporally stable which are less effected by temporal storms. Most importantly, this should be presented as an optional trade off for players. Do they make a base in a neutral location and deal with the occasional temporal storm? Do they specifically seek out a temporally stable location to mitigate the impact of storms on their base, at the opportunity cost of limiting where they can settle? Or, do they decide to brave a temporally unstable area with higher risk but with possible higher reward of unique temporal related resources?