Zaph42nd

For me Minecraft and Vintage Story appeal to very different niches, in some ways the whole VS vs MC debate reminds me a lot of how Terraria historically has been compared to Minecraft, both different games and sharing only perhaps surface-level traits. That said, I find myself preferring VS for its survival and challenge, MC for its breadth of mods and sandbox feel, leading me to flip-flop between the games from time to time depending on my mood and what I'm actually going for gameplay wise (that isn't to say VS can't be a sandbox for large-scale builds, just that its "thesis" is very much focused on survival gameplay first whereas MC markets itself as a sandbox)

I think aside from aesthetics, waterwheels have the distinct advantage of being effective at any height and don't have a major de-buff for close-distance between each other (where windmills are less effective if clustered). Not a major thing for most people but I find it allows me to build in more places which feels nice. I think when rivers do eventually get implemented, waterwheels will definitely be significantly more common

Interesting but I'm not sure if it makes the most sense with the sort of tension Vintage Story pushes (in my mind, that is struggling to survive till you eventually get set up and stable). That said, I'd think temporal storms could include more ambient horror elements since currently it includes: increased rust monster spawns, more drain on the temporal stability meter, and visual and sound changes. That could be expanded for other effects like doors knocking, more creepy ambient sounds, etc... But admittedly, I've never been a huge fan of temporal storms since they feel a bit disjointed from everything else in the game

Fair, I should've probably prefaced, for TOPS my experience mainly has been exploring bases and spawn, not really playing on the server. Learned more in theory from singleplayer and the handbook but certain multi-blocks (for the longest time I didn't know that you didn't need a pit for charcoal making), TOPS showed me those in a tangible way which was useful (albeit I think you can do the same thing by exploring other servers or watching videos)

Definitely like the idea of visual aids for multi-block structures, one other idea akin to this would be tutorial worlds. I know Minecraft was mentioned previously but one of the features its console editions had that I really liked were pre-generated worlds which had structures already built out. Perhaps something similar could be added to Vintage Story which has all multi-blocks built so that you can get a sense on structure dimensions

Vintage Story starts difficult but I suppose the word is uncompromising; however, I think a lot of players seem to come from Minecraft which is fundamentally a different game. My recommendation (and many others certainly) to new players is and always will be, don't neglect the tutorial toast and do use the guidebook since that's where the game lays itself out. Combine that with a good eye, using the map, and much of the game should start to "come-together" if that makes sense. As for non-standard advice, TOPS (official public server) can provide you with some game-knowledge too (spawn and exploring bases can give you insight on some of the lesser-explained mechanics like rooms, cellars, etc...), unless the world spawn had changed since I last played it used to contain some semi-tutorial structures.

Regarding monster spawns, for the most part my issues are that the current light-levels for spawns maybe could use some tweaking and I'd also, much like many others, like to see changes to combat to make monsters more worth fighting (as it stands, boxing yourself in during temporal storms or avoiding monsters all together is more worthwhile than fighting). As it stands, the current spawns really discourage playing with dimly-lit bases and make cellars a bit tedious, lowering the spawn threshold (e.g. light levels of 5 or below for drifters and other rust creatures) helps but currently no option in-game to tweak that (this I think would be a good option to world-creation settings or server-operator commands, it'd also be nice to increase spawn rates in some instances too). I'd also be interested to see temporal storms either majorly reworked or altered in some way as currently they feel a little unfinished mechanically speaking (e.g. there's no effective way to decrease intensity, though a story-progression based tool could be good for this perhaps). Same goes for temporal rifts, they prove more annoying than mechanically satisfying for me at least since while I like that you need to work around their locations when building bases, the amount of control over them players have is limited at best.

For the most part it is, the only time you need to log-in as others have stated in on initial installation or updates, though once logged in once, you don't need to re log-in. Mainly I suspect log-in is there for multiplayer and game-authentication purposes, otherwise it's not really too intrusive

Highly recommend making meals with crocks, usually I cook up a couple crocks of each major food group, then mix/match for optimized food-sources since sealed crocks in cellars last anywhere from 3 in-game months to over an in-game year or more. Cheese and wine are not bad options for dairy and fruit, but I'd say sealed crocks still beat out most options in versatility and storage longevity. Other options to consider are charred bread for grains (lower satiety but good for keeping once winter hits) and pies (just a good year-round food and easy to get most food-groups in a single pie)

Sticking with the same world but moving north or south by a couple thousand blocks is a fun diversion, temperature differences means your base has to adjust especially in arctic conditions (greenhouse matters a lot more). As for other ideas, I'd suggest looking into building up infrastructure (roads, canals, markers, etc...) and maybe think about dappling in automation, usually those are good late-game tasks since material costs get exponentially higher with time. As far as my goals in longer-worlds, I've actually started looking into making steel tools for every tool-type which means even niche tools (though this is something I've only done on one world so far) since the steel-making process takes substantial time and resources. Far as mods go, rivers is nice but works best on new worlds, I'd recommend also getting a mod like shipwright which expands boat-options since the default boat works best on oceans (which do spawn very rarely in normal worlds, albeit they aren't as wide or vast as you can achieve in modded world-gen) or large-lakes

Not sure on bones for repair but agree bear-hide armor is a bit weak as it stands since the cost to get it is pretty high, hides and pelts are good for repair since they are semi-common compared to bear-skins but I digress. Armor rework may fix this, at least assuming bear-hide armor takes the role of either an under-garment or over-garment to existing armor (this makes it more valuable for getting extra warmth from armor that may otherwise not be a great fit for winter or simply add additional buffs for getting an already somewhat difficult armor-set).

Definitely agree on both points, I wish we could also adjust spawn-rates in world-settings by default, currently the passive/aggressive/off just doesn't really feel right, would be good to just be able to set light-level limits for rust-monsters (possibly a sub-setting on temporal or story-content?). Chase-radius reductions would be good for bears/wolves, I've always felt that chases were way too long and territorial behaviors weren't well expressed... Namely I feel like bears/wolves and other territorial creatures should have a capped distance from their spawn where they chase the player (in essence creating a territorial space which you can either plan to sneak around or fight for) but suspect that'd be somewhat difficult to implement. Far as deeds go, the idea is neat but I wonder if perhaps could utilize Jonas-tech to prevent hostile spawns rather than deeds or trader-interactions. Maybe as a reward for story-content to incentivize exploring the story further? It'd also fit nicely with the other Jonas-tech in game already (translocators) which behave akin to admin/server-owner commands. In the interim, land-claim systems could be expanded further to also include spawn behavior reductions. Far as passive-settings, I'm not against the current approach but it does feel a little bit odd especially for mobs that normally behave hostile, but then again I rarely play with passive mobs enabled since it feels like it detracts from some of the survival challenges the game presents

Have noticed the other change is being able to utilize Game-Mode (Sonoma feature) automatically which allows CPU/GPU prioritization, although I'm not sure if that really brings much performance or stability changes. I have also noticed fewer issues with resolution scaling and window management too. But Vintage Story I've always had some performance hiccups on my Mac, nothing game-breaking aside from minor stuttering every couple of hours (which I suspect has to do with rendering or chunk-loading), mods definitely seem to have the greatest negative impact to my performance in game though irregardless of ARM64 build.

For snow shovels I've mainly used them for cosmetics rather than actual utility since rarely do you need snow-blocks and if you already invested in a decent shovel, it'll do just as well. Still, agree with others that it's not bad for edge-cases or if you want more cosmetic-flare to either your builds (placing/propping against blocks looks very nice and making paths look a bit more used is nice I suppose). Far as buffing goes, would be good if durability was increased somewhat, although with how rarely it gets used, not sure what the ideal durability actually is

Regarding hostile mob spawns, my recommendation is to try out Low Light Spawns which allows you to configure a specific light level other than 7 for monster spawns (default for the mod is 5, I lower to 3 which means almost no surface drifters or other rust monsters). For bears, wolves, and other animals, I believe there are probably some mods to make them not attack unless provoked (e.g. you attack first) but not sure on exacts (in-game you can only set aggressive, passive, off for behaviors but I've never tweaked these). So to answer the question, mods help you tweak settings further as do some other edits to spawning behaviors, the game feels a lot more enjoyable to me with rust monsters requiring very low-light conditions (e.g. those found in caves or story structures) and disabling temporal storms (this can be done easily in settings upon world creation) but ymmv depending on how difficult or easy you want the game. As for default options (no mods), I suggest playing around with world-settings from one of the presets as it allows fine-control over a lot of (but not all) mechanics