Steel General

So, since it might not be general knowledge... Knapping is complicated. Hitting rocks together can give you tiny chips and big flakes, and those can be useful tools, but you're never going to get a fine point like that, a serrated edge we typically see on stone points, or the flutes that allow attaching the point to a shaft. To get such fine details a knapper would use an antler to leverage small chips loose, very much in the crowbar action the OP described. It's also used to score the stone, to prepare flats that predetermine the shape of a break before it is struck. Antler, because it's both harder and tougher than the stone. Most bones can't do it. Those stones that are hard enough aren't tough enough and will shatter in this usage. Every knapper I've ever watched work uses antler. Maybe something else could substitute, if they had to, even if it needed frequent replacement. (Apologies for dragging this so far away from picking - in my defense, it is the same mechanical action upon the same substance )

So I think most objections are settled with two points: 1) The antler is only needed for advanced knapping - we would add primitive stone tools, maybe just 'edge' and 'hammer', which would be a slow-to-use but very high durability knife, maybe also axe. You could even craft them immersively: throw rocks at other rocks on the ground 2) There should be antlers on the ground where deer can spawn from day one. Also, arguably, a bone could substitute for the antler, maybe even a chunk of coral. That is true, but I think much of it stems less from an informed and considered opinion of this game and more from preconceptions of what games should be. I mean, I am often frustrated by this game, but I expect frustration to be part of the experience - if it wasn't, I'd probably play something else. I'm sure that tolerance of frustration varies among people (it varies among person at times, so, surely). One key to making progress fun is that the next step shouldn't be obvious - all the skills we must gain and demonstrate could just be a gauntlet of achievement stations, but knowing after each achievement that you just have to step over to the next station would be less fun than not even knowing what it will look like when you find it, much less where to find it. Every player, though, has some expectation of how far apart the dots should be, and exceeding that is going to make the game unplayable until that expectation is adjusted. I see nothing wrong with an early game that consists mostly of struggling to survive for months - getting dropped into the wilderness with nothing but clothes and making it through the first winter without dying ought be something to brag about. What I'm describing so far isn't even going to significantly throw off my first day of play (aside from throwing rocks at other rocks), and that makes me think that what I suggest here isn't all that significant. It would significantly change the first month, but not in a grindy frustrating chore sense, just in a difficulty sense, which, to me, is the kind of difficulty to add.

I don't think it's a problem to have to wait for the deer to grow antlers - it's not like there's nothing to do. That's not a year, just a couple seasons. Also, while a player can choose to go the easy route and just wait for antlers on the ground, it's really not so hard to set up a trap and run the deer into it. That said, I have no problem with having occasional antlers on the ground from day one - preferably in areas where deer spawn, though. I wasn't suggesting that antlers would drop from urns, though they could sure be a foraging urn drop. Rather, all the drops urns already have are fine ways to skip that part of the progression - they are already ways to skip parts of the progression. The flaw in the thinking is in "decent early progress" - your standard is set by what has already been, but you should consider it with fresh perspective: new players have no notion of what the early game should be, so the real measure is whether or not it brings them joy. If we took the copper age out and trivialized the bronze age so a player could just get right into iron, that would be less joy, but only those who have known what we have now would know that it's less joy - to the new player it's just the game, and the iron age is a joy. If we had started thus and someone suggested ballooning the bronze age and even requiring a brief copper age, that might seem like it ruins the "decent early progress", but we would quickly find joy in the new milestones. The whole game is stepping stones, with no finish line. Take joy in the steps. (Someday we'll have a finish line, and achieving the final step will be a pile of extra joy, but that doesn't mean the other steps are just obstacles, grinds, and chores.) Spears aren't the only way to kill a deer, but we should have wooden javelins, just like australopithecus used to make. I did indeed forget that firewood is required for a firepit. This is a flaw and should be remedied - peat, a pile of sticks, the base of a healthy tree, and many more options should be fine ways to start a firepit. As proof that this is not intended design, I point out that after making the firepit the firewood can be immediately removed and replaced with peat, a pile of sticks, a bunch more grass, etc. There is definitely no reason for cooking to be gated behind axes. I'm sure I can think of other things are only gated behind knapping because the game starts with knapping, and other, still-more-primitive alternatives to knapping with which the game could begin instead (that are not just stupid grindy chores).

I agree with pretty well all the criticism I've read here of the new logo. To be specific about one detail: there is so much clutter that you can't tell the clock is part of the tree, rather than just sitting in front of it. The simplicity of the old logo made it seem clear that the clock and the tree were miraculously joined - the new logo looks like a player found and abused a tree. I well understand the need for art consistency, and the new style is not a dealbreaker for me, but I definitely prefer less whimsy in my grit.

Personally, I think we should strive for the 'has antler' milestone before we can do complicated knapping - that until we get one and assemble a knapping kit (antler, hammerstone, small rawhide, at least) we are limited to very crude stonework that cannot make a usable axe, much less nice points. No charcoal, no doors, no stone spears, until antler. I see no harm, and much good, from slowing the progression and making accumulation of resources difficult until we cleverly kill a deer with poor tools or wait until the antlers shed. It is nevertheless possible to skip ahead with urn loot, and that's fine too - as with pickaxes. Making progress is fun, and milestones are its measure - adding more near the beginning is at least as joyful as adding more near the end. (Note the difference between milestones and obstacles: milestones can be achieved in many ways and rewards for the achievement grow over time, whereas obstacles are only achievable by grinding the work in the way provided, and once achieved are irrelevant.)

I have often, in previous versions, surrounded my fruit trees with eight blueberry bushes, but I think that might stunt their growth by affecting where the fruit tree thinks it can grow a leaf block - certainly, the fruit trees without the bush ring grew much faster. It may be that crops would do the same thing, I dunno. Of course, once the tree has grown tall enough that there weren't going to be more leaf blocks near the bottom the berries can be put back with no problem. I've not played on the release candidates, so I don't know how soil nutrients might have changed, but I'd bet that using the nutrients in one block doesn't affect its neighbors. The problem with crops is that they need transparent blocks above them - the fruit tree's leaf blocks might count, but its branches surely won't.

For reference, you only have to cook six flint in the firepit - that's enough to make a bloomery, in which you can cook 24 flint with six charcoal.

At the bottom of your info panel, it says "Current Rift activity: Apocalyptic" - that should be a temporary condition that is supposed to be troublesome when it happens. If it's staying that way throughout your play then it's a bug.

I've had similar problems recently - was able to fix it for scrambled eggs by stacking the eggs together before redistributing them; I'm not sure if it was relevant, but they had different spoil times, and stacking them together gave them the same spoil time. However, I've also had it fail to recognize egg in soup as valid - it was just one bugged egg, others worked fine, and the bug vanished when I stacked that egg with the others. I think it might be a matter of grabbing the egg off the ground versus out of the nest.

If you play with stone instability, I'd guess the block of halite was unstable, something happened to update it, and it fell through the fence, the dirt, any cobblestone, and is now resting on top of the bedrock. I used to do the same, and I liked to set a slab of halite in my kitchen for the cookfires to be on, but unstable stone has made that a tricky proposition.

I think this was a Resident Evil game. Unpopular Opinion:

I had a game recently, 1.20.x, maybe 1.19.x, in which I nerd-poled on packed dirt, planted a lantern on top, sat down, and shortly had a shiver spawn on top of me. Its legs were off the pole to every side, and it... idled. It couldn't see me. After a while rolled up in a ball for a spasm - hanging in the air off one side of the tower - and I decided that was my best chance to knock it off so I hit it with a falx. It fell off, and it hit me back, but I did not fall for I was sitting. So no, nerd-poles aren't really safe anymore - they're just very likely to be.

I think the easiest solution, for both man and machine, would for the hives to spawn some of their bee particles among the flowers they identify as in their range.

I think the game already has an example of this behavior: hoeing dirt to become farmland is destroying a dirt block and creating a farmland block in that same location. If we can expand this mechanism, I think many interesting options would be thereby available - example, Roots: You find a block of "Dirt with Roots" - the appropriate tool is a shovel, and it takes as long as a block of dirt to break it, but no item is dropped (maybe a small chance of a piece of clay). Instead you now have, in that same location, a slightly shorter block called "Roots with Dirt", for which the appropriate tool is an axe, and it takes as long as a block of wood and drops no item (maybe a small chance for a stick), but creates in that same location a still-shorter block called "Rooty Dirt", for which axe or shovel are equally useful, and maybe at this point it drops a Barren Dirt. We could thus make undermining a valid way to fell trees, and also limit tree growth by the number of dirt blocks available to be converted into roots, so thin soil creates stunted trees. We might also need Gravel with Roots and Sand with Roots. Breaking a block of ore-bearing stone with either pick or bomb could create ore rubble that can be dug by hand or shovel but is much faster with a mining shovel, and which results in a few boulders laying around the area. I'm not sure anyone else would like that to be a more complicated process, but I wanted to come up with at least one more use for the mechanism (A side thought has occurred while writing this: can a block drop different items depending on what is used to break it? For example, breaking Rooty Dirt with a shovel could yield a dirt block while breaking it with an axe could yield sticks.)

It does work! If you have soil gravity on, use a block of cob.