Onsdag

Try removing the rot from the input slot. It looks like you filled up the barrel, saw that the input slot was still empty, and so tried adding another stack of 64. When you add rot into a barrel it will automatically disappear from the input slot and fill up that blueish-grey bar instead. Once the grey bar is filled up you can seal the barrel. Adding more rot to the barrel, as you have done (stack of 64 in the input slot), is not necessary and will show up as 2 stacks of 64 in the output section. See attached image.

So last summer I had an outdoor apiary (1.14.10). At some point over the winter all my skeps vanished. I don't know if raccoons got to them, or the bees died out over the harsh winter months, or what. I decided come Spring to build an indoor apiary (now updated to 1.15.3) in order to 1) keep raccoons out, and 2) keep them warm in case it was the cold weather that killed them off. So far it has been extremely successful. It is just now turning Fall and colder weather is moving in, so time will tell if I can keep them through the winter or not. The size of my apiary is 12x14, I have 41 skeps, 3 straw dummys, a stone pathway, and the rest of the ground is covered in flowers (100+). Incidentally, I had put an empty skep on the roof of my apiary just above the door to show that the building was an apiary and a swarm of bees moved in. They do not have a path to the flowers but yet the flowers within the apiary count towards the colony's needs. I have since added a bunch more skeps to the roof and plan on comparing how they do in the winter versus the indoor hives. Some things to help improve your beekeeping experience: Bees are loud! For your sanity try to keep them some distance away from your home or other areas you frequent. Keep a cooper's reed farm nearby. You will go through a ton of them rebuilding your skeps after a harvest. Try and replace your skeps as you harvest them. This gives them time to repopulate the empty skeps before you've completely harvested everything in your apiary. If you choose to harvest everything at once then keep a "nuc" (a full skep) nearby that you don't ever harvest to repopulate your apiary with. Nothing's worse than having to go out and find a new wild hive and wait the 7 days to get started again. Keep a few dummy's in your apiary. I have 3, but I may up it to 5 as I find they're not quite enough to keep the bees off me as consistently as I'd like. Have a plan for all that honey and beeswax. You'll quickly fill up barrels and chests full of the stuff, so be prepared to use them up by cooking and preserving your food. Also, keep an eye out for nearby merchants who will buy beeswax and/or candles - this'll help bring in a steady supply of rusty gears which can then be used to buy other things you need.

We see this happen on our server too (1.15.3 currently, but has also happened for 1.14.10). No mods; just vanilla. Best I can tell it usually happens soon after the animals give birth and/or reach maturity and there is a 'growth' explosion. Not all the animals can fit comfortably in the pens and it seems to pop some of them outside the enclosure.

I'll take your word for it. I did some calculations for wheat (yes, I realize wheat is not in the game) and it comes to about the same - enough "seed" to plant in one m^2 yields about .4 kg of wheat. I imagine the other grains would be comparable with rice and wheat. I don't know about the vegetables, and, like you, I don't want to bother going through each of them. Still, I do think there are issues with the pumpkin, which doesn't act like other crops. You don't get both "seed" and "food" from a pumpkin, you only get "food," and if you want "seed" you must turn the "food" into one "seed." In real life one pumpkin plant can easily produce several pumpkins, which yields tons of "food" plus tons of "seed." In the game however I found like 5 seed, and planting those seeds in tera preta resulted in 3 pumpkins. Granted, I had them in a single 7x7 greenhouse and so they didn't have the space they needed to properly grow. I learned from the mistake, turned the 3 pumpkins into 3 seed and planted them outdoors with a ton more space. Still, even with constant care, good soil, fertilizer, etc., each pumpkin plant yields anywhere from 0-3 pumpkins. Maybe it's just bad luck but I've had several plants not produce anything, or maybe only one pumpkin. And so after like 4 growing "seasons" my original 5 "seed" is now up to 7... and I haven't been able to use a single pumpkin for "food" yet because I have to always turn them into "seed" so I can try growing my inventory. This is frustrating and definitely not "realistic." And I do definitely agree with you that hunger/satiation should be looked at; that alone would probably fix many of my qualms with farming at the moment. That is it's a constant 'chore' to grow and preserve enough food to provide just for basic survival needs. It should also be noted that I'm playing on a multiplayer server, which makes things even more difficult because time is always progressing when someone is online, so food rots, crops suffer from lack of care, etc., so that by the time you log back in you're often back at square one. Maybe that's what the OP needs to do - play on a multiplayer server and see just how much more difficult and challenging the food situation becomes.

They are similar enough in color and design that I've often mixed them up. Especially after the update.

I don't know exactly how deep the snow can get. It is variable. If I were to hazard a guess, about the deepest I've seen it get is probably around 1/2 meter deep. Having said that though, up in the high mountains I've actually seen full 1 cubic meter sized snow blocks, though I don't know if they're a specific block in the game (much like glacial ice) or from actual snowfall.

If they're going to make growing crops more 'realistic' (which I'm fine with them taking longer) then they would need to make every aspect more 'realistic' as well. One cereal crop seed should produce more than just a couple grains of food. One pumpkin seed should not result in only one or two pumpkins... which then have to be sacrificed as food to be turned into a single seed. In its current state one vegetable seed results in only one seed and anywhere from 1-3 vegetable crops to be eaten. If we're talking 'realism' here then a single seed should (depending on food variety) result in scores if not hundreds of times return in food and/or seed value in a single harvest, not the current value of approximately a 1:1 ratio. Sure, make it so you only get one, maybe two, harvest(s) a year. But then we'll also have to have it so that one harvest provides enough food and seed to last us throughout the entire coming year and beyond. If you want to "create a more challenging survival experience" for yourself then don't be afraid to set self-imposed restrictions on yourself. Don't grow a garden, or only allow yourself one harvest of each crop type a year, and then try surviving on only what you can hunt or forage in the wild the rest of the time. Try playing with 30 day months and hard winters. See how "fun" and challenging that can become. As it is right now I find the farming aspect of the game something of a chore already... kinda like in real life except in different ways... and I have to spend almost my entire summer growing, cooking, and preserving food to survive the coming winter months. Playing with 30 day months and harsh winters, I've barely survived one winter, and I'm now about to head into my second winter, and I feel like I haven't "progressed" much in the game because I'm spending so much time just trying to simply "survive." But maybe I'm just playing the game wrong. Or maybe I'm just that inept. Your mileage may vary.

I can't seem to figure out any rhyme or reason to irrigation. Granted, I haven't done much actual testing. Still, my greenhouses are 7x7 with water in the center tile and it's always sporadic how much moisture each tile has. Generally the farther away the less it's watered, but blocks that are equidistance never seem to have the same values. Crops that are outdoors and being rained on never seem to get above 80% moisture levels. And man, do crops drain the moisture level fast! I have to regularly water all of my plants like twice a day just to make sure it's at a decent level.

You can only collect glacial ice, which you'll find on top of the highest mountains. It's cold up there, so make sure you go dressed warm. Also, going in the summer is best since it's warmer and you'll be able to spot the high mountains easier. Glacial ice doesn't melt, so you can make greenhouses with it. Unfortunately it doesn't reduce the surrounding temperatures so it is pointless using it in a food cellar (in fact I think it raises the temperature compared to stone or dirt).

Respectfully snipped by me. Thank you for the excellent post detailing the virtues of a Blackguard. It was very well written and thought out. And you're right, the Blackguard is an amazing class... for a very specific playstyle. However, for the vast majority of players the Blackguard simply doesn't suit their playstyle and what they want out of the game. The Blackguard is really only good at combat, and exploring deep underground where there is a constant threat of combat. But what % of players play the game for either of these reasons? As far as combat goes, it isn't exactly interesting or exciting. And the mobs don't exactly drop anything useful, so there is no incentive to go out of your way to hunt them. Furthermore, (Spoiler alert!) So combat for the sake of combat might not appeal to a lot of people. Also, unless you go deep underground, the only hostile mobs you will find on or near the surface are relatively easy to kill, making the Blackguard class a situationally useful class. As far as exploration goes, a Blackguard only excels at exploration deep underground. But what is the point of going deep underground? There's ores, gemstones, etc., but those can all be found using a pro pick and mining your own veins closer to the surface, without all of the risk of exploring a cave system. And the mining bonus is rather superfluous. As a commoner, finding and mining a single vein of iron has set me up with enough iron for the rest of the game. I'm already deep in the iron age and still have over 2 stacks of iron bloom ready to be hammered out when needed. All without the risk of plumbing the depths of a Drifter and mechanical infested cave system. You can potentially find ruins or translocators, but I have found those far more often near the surface. Exploring deep cave systems is extremely dangerous with little reward or profit that can't be done through easier and safer means, and is only a very minor part of the gameplay that VS has to offer. Most people play VS for other reasons than combat or exploring deep caves. And so, while the Blackguard is indeed a very fine fighter class, it is only really ever a one trick pony that will appeal to gamers with a very specific playstyle, such as yourself. As borne out by the poll, only about 6-7% of the respondents view the Blackguard as the best or their favorite class to play. Which means 93-94% of the respondents feel a different class better suits their playstyle.

Something that people have touched on is how 'useful' a class is depends in measure upon whether one is playing single player or multiplayer. Here is my opinion on the classes, and how they rate in terms of usefulness. Remember, this is just my opinion based upon my own experiences, which are limited. Commoner: No negatives, no bonuses. Single player or multiplayer, Commoner is arguably the 'best' class simply because it doesn't suffer any negatives. Sure, it doesn't have any bonuses either, but as can be seen by the poll the vast majority of players still would rather play this class than any other. 'Boring' it may be, but in a game as punishing as this game can be why gimp your character and make the game even harder? No thanks. Furthermore, this class shines in single player games and even multiplayer games where the player often needs to do everything for themselves. Having no negatives means you don't have to put in more work just to accomplish your goals. Hunter: 6 bonuses, 2 negatives. Bonuses include increased range damage and accuracy, increased animal drops and harvesting speed, 10% increased movement speed, exclusive ranged weapon craftables. Negatives include lower melee damage and ore drop rates. Arguably the other 'best' class in the game simply because its bonuses easily outweigh the negatives. Ranged combat in this game is serviceable at best, so that bonus isn't the greatest, but it's still something, and if you learn to fight well with a bow you don't need melee combat and so you'll never be affected by that negative, or if you do find yourself forced into melee combat -15% translates into only needing to hit them one or two more times. Big deal. Another bonus, the 10% extra animal loot is actually a pretty big deal, especially for multiplayer servers. More meat means more long term food storage and hearty meals to keep everyone well-fed. More animal hides means more pelts and leather, especially useful for crafting the best backpacks in the game, which is again super helpful. More bones means more fertilizer for crops, meaning even more long-term food. More feathers means more arrows for your bow meaning longer sustainability in combat. More fat equals more sealed crocks for long-term storage to get you through the brutally harsh winter months, not to mention the need for fat in mid to late game projects like windmills, etc. I cannot emphasize enough just how massively useful this one bonus alone is and makes this a great class. +25% animal harvest speed is only marginally useful; but even still, faster harvesting means more time you can spend doing other things. Which brings us to the speed buff. 10% movement speed is another extremely useful skill. The faster you move the more tasks you can accomplish in a given day. It also means better exploration in the wilderness, better combat maneuvering, more survivability as you can better run from enemies or run back to base when starving, freezing, etc. The only method of travel in the game right now is by foot, which means the movement speed buff literally affects everything you do for the better all the time. Enough said. Exclusive ranged craftables is meh, but since you'll be using bows and arrows anyways you might as well make use of the skill. The only real negative for the hunter is the -15% ore drop rate, which actually isn't that bad all things considered. Sure, it'll take more time to gather the resources to move into the different ages, but not by much. This malus becomes almost irrelevant when playing on a multiplayer server. Malefactor: A strange assortment of bonuses and negatives makes this a rather niche and situationally useful class. Admittedly I have never played one, but from the looks of it this class would only be useful on a multiplayer server, and only in the early game when you're trying to collect resources to get your base established. Better foraging only really helps yourself. Increased wild crop drop rate sounds good at first blush, until you realize there's only so many wild plants out there and you need to use them to establish your own farm, and this skill likely doesn't affect cultivated crops so is only really useful early game. The pilferer bonus is questionable. Does it only affect loot gathered from the cracked vessels found at ruins? If so that's not a very useful skill as those vessels generally only have loot that is useful early game. The increased rusty gear drop rate is laughable since you never hardly get those anyways, and they're only useful for trading with merchants, which is again only situationally useful. The chance to collect cracked vessels is laughable too since (sadly) there really is no use for them except to trade with merchants. And being only a 5% chance means you'll never even realistically get them. Again, laughable. The -20% animal seeking range can be nice, but the only animal you ever need to worry about is the wolf/hyena, which can be carefully avoided altogether. The negative lower health points isn't ideal, and can be either crippling or not a big deal depending on server settings and how much health you start out with. This, along with the combat debuffs means you'll probably going to be needing to avoid combat as much as possible. Overall this class doesn't really seem to bring anything to the table other than an early game multiplayer server explorer and collector of loot. Clockmaker: This is a class that I really wanted to like. Unfortunately it is arguably one of the worst classes in the game. It has 3 bonuses, only one of which is useful, and 3 negatives. They do increased damage to mechanicals, which are only ever found (usually deep) underground. Getting to them and fighting them is difficult (as they swarm in large numbers), and they don't drop anything, which makes this an ultimately useless "bonus." Even worse, all of your negative traits specifically gimp your combat effectiveness - lower health, less ranged and melee combat - and so you don't want to be fighting anything to begin with, so what's the point of doing more damage to mechanicals? Utterly useless "bonus." Another bonus, -1 temporal gear to fix translocators, is pretty much useless too. Firstly translocators are very difficult to find. I've put in well over 100 hours into this game and have only ever found one translocator. This means for all intents and purposes you'll never actually get to benefit from this "bonus," except for maybe once per game if you're lucky. Secondly, temporal gears are fairly easy to obtain (even with the exceptionally low drop rate), so it's not like you'll be hurting to save them up for when you do find the translocators. I haven't gone out of my way to farm temporal gears, or build drifter pits, or anything, but by the time I finally found a translocator I had about 15 gears saved up. Now if translocators were more common, or easier to find, then perhaps this might become a useful skill, but as it stands currently it's pointless. The 10% increased movement speed is the one single useful perk this class has going for it. I've already spoken of it above in the Hunter class, so I won't belabor it anymore here. And since the Hunter has much better perks besides the speed buff, and fewer disadvantages than the Clockmaker, then it is always a better choice to roll a Hunter rather than a Clockmaker. Blackguard: The blackguard has some decent perks, including quite a bit more HP, increased armor durability and melee damage, and the ability to craft a pretty decent sword once you hit the iron age. And increased mining speed will help you get to the iron age that much faster. However, the blackguard also suffers from some pretty nasty maluses including a whopping -30% hunger rate, less loot from foraging, breaking vessels, and harvesting wild crops. Taken together, this makes the blackguard more of a mid to late game class, while the early game will be significantly more challenging. It's also a better multiplayer class where it can truly shine supported by other players and classes, rather than a single player class. The other negative trait, -15% ranged damage, is irrelevant as you'll be spending your time in close combat where you truly shine. However, for me personally the blackguard is a mid to low tier class. Combat is pretty pointless in the game currently and combat is the only thing this class has going for it. That and I just find it too difficult of a pill to swallow having a constant -30% hunger debuff for the rest of the game. There are much better options available for me and my play style. Tailor: 2 bonuses and 5 (!) negatives makes the Tailor, in my opinion, the worst class in the game. The only thing the tailor has going for it is the ability to craft clothing. Now, to be fair, clothing is a very important thing to have, especially for the winter months, and the Tailor really is useful in this regard especially in a multiplayer setting. However, you can get by without a tailor by trading with the merchants for cold weather clothing and you can mend your own clothing without the need for a tailor. Otherwise, clothing is purely a cosmetic thing within the game anyways and therefore the ability to craft your own clothing isn't strictly necessary. The other bonus, a 10% increase in armor durability, is meh. Now, the Tailor is tied with the blackguard for the most negative traits at 5, but I believe comes out worse because the maluses are broad spectrum covering many different and important aspects of the game. They have -2 HP, making them weaker and more prone to dying; they have -10% loot from foraging, making it harder to gather food; -10% mining speed, making it more tedious to collect minerals and therefore slower to progress into other ages; -10% animal loot, which is actually a pretty big deal as outlined in the Hunter section as it makes gathering and preserving food, exploration, and advancement through the ages more time consuming and tedious; and -25% animal harvesting speed, which is only marginally detrimental. The only way I'd consider ever playing a Tailor is on a multiplayer server where I have the support of a large community to help overcome all the weaknesses he's been saddled with. And even still I'm not entirely sure it'd be worth it. Those are my thoughts and opinions on the classes as they currently are implemented in the game. Again though I'd like to reiterate the importance of taking a look at the classes with a single player environment versus a multiplayer environment. I'd like to see changes to the classes to make them interesting and viable in either setting. It's nice and fun to have a unique role within a community, but as currently implemented these roles are enforced by negative character traits - forcing players to rely on each other due to inherent weaknesses, rather than what that class can bring to the table, which more often than not hurts that class in the single player environment. Except the Hunter. the hunter is cool like that.

I'd like to know if there's an easier way to find them as well. I have well over 100 hours into this game so far and I've only ever found one translocator. It's in a temporally stable area, so in answer to your question, probably not. It's also near the surface, but the translocator it links to is about as deep as you can go underground. I don't think there's any way of finding them easier short of cheating and/or modding.

I've been getting things. However, the loot drops seem 'off' from what I was getting before (1.14.10). I don't seem to get nearly as many ores in particular, and the drop rates of everything else seems nerfed as well. But then again I've only panned about 20-25 blocks since updating to 1.15.3 so YMMV. But I at least do get stuff.

I suspect it has more to do with biomes (biomes aren't exactly in the game though...), microclimates, the way chunks are loaded, or simply just a bug. If you take a look at the screenshot in the OP you'll see there's areas of smooth transition where the snow gradually and seamlessly segues into no snow, and then not a few meters away there's areas where the snow coverage drastically changes like chunk errors in minecraft. It's not elevation related - in the second screenshot you'll see that the elevation is the same between the snow covered areas and clear areas. Neither is it exactly biome related for the very same reason. I don't think it's chunk loading issues, or at least not in the way described by others above, as I have travelled far away into virgin areas that haven't ever been explored before and seen this same issue crop up. I think it may be caused by a number of factors, though I couldn't pinpoint what exactly those are. Temperature and microclimates may have something to do with it. On my server, when it finally started turning Spring my base continued to be gripped by freezing temperatures and snow whereas my brother's base not 50 meters away the berry bushes started flowering and he was able to start growing crops 7+ days before I could. Elevation was virtually the same, biome was the same, rainfall amounts were identical, both locations were constantly updated by the server, etc., etc. However, my area was colder than his even though I was further south. Also, like I said previously, when traveling into completely new areas where the server had to populate new chunks I would witness firsthand what the OP shows: that is areas of smooth transition and areas of 'chunk errors'.

Be careful, creatures can also cross lakes when it freezes over in the winter time. My apiary was destroyed because of this and had to be rebuilt/relocated.

You can also find copper and tin nuggets (among many other treasures) by panning.

The problem I see is this game both actively encourages exploration while simultaneously punishing exploration. The game encourages exploration by: Being a survival game. By their very nature survival games require you to explore your surroundings, gather resources, and craft items to better increase your chances of survival. Being a 'civilization' game. Closely related to the above, Vintage Story touts itself as a game where you "Progress through the ages," from the stone age to copper, bronze, iron, and steel age. More than just simply survival, advancing your civilization often requires you to travel far and explore many different aspects of the game in order to "Progress through the ages." Having "Immensely large, immensely diverse procedural worlds." The default world size is 1 Million x 1 Million voxels or meters. Having such a mind-bogglingly huge and procedurally generated world encourages the exploration of said world. According to the VS homepage "Vintage Story utilizes a great deal of procedural technology to create immensely diverse landscapes, climate conditions, and geological features to always keep exploration fresh and exciting." By the very nature of this procedural generation you will need to explore far and wide to find certain minerals, plants, trees, animals, etc., not to mention looking for a place to settle down and call home that has the right aesthetics, weather conditions, resources, etc. The lore and storytelling. In Vintage Story you "Find yourself in a ruined world reclaimed by nature and permeated by unnerving temporal disturbances." For all intents and purposes you are in something of a post-apocalyptic world where civilization has been destroyed and "it is up to you to piece together who you are and what has happened from the little evidence that remains." The game encourages you to explore ancient ruins, lost civilizations, read journals, books, and just dig deeper in search of what has happened to this ancient world. Having traders. Some things may be hard to come across, and having a nearby trader can somewhat alleviate the problem of finding those resources. However, you will need to do a lot of exploring to find these traders. Being multiplayer. Whether you're part of a nomadic tribe (as in the OP), or you're somewhat of an introvert, or are just looking for a place apart from the rest of the world to claim as your own, or you're part of a larger clan dividing out community labors, or even a merchant looking to sell rare goods for a profit, multiplayer worlds tend to expand out and explore the world more than single player worlds. Weather. Different regions have differing climates and weather patterns. Looking to build a windmill? You'll need to do some searching to find a place with sufficient enough winds to consistently power it. Wanting to grow a killer garden? You'll be looking for areas with good rainfall and good soil qualities. Don't like thunderstorms and want to avoid the rain? Searching for the right weather conditions can take some time and travel. Seasons. Grass and foliage changing colors can make the landscape look completely different from season to season. It may be worth revisiting some areas just to take in the changes that the seasons bring. Exploring caves. You can find evidence of lost ruins, ancient civilizations, and even translocators in cave systems. Furthermore, it is often easier to find different minerals and ores in caves than by digging for them. This makes going out of your way to find caves a useful endeavor. Animal husbandry. If you're looking to get started in animal husbandry and beekeeping then you'll need to do a lot of exploration. Different animals spawn in different regions and climes. Farming. To first get started in farming you'll need to find and harvest the wild plants for their seed. Or find the seed from ancient ruins. This again necessitates exploration. Especially for the more rare and hard to find seeds/plants. All of these (and probably a bunch more not mentioned) game design elements actively encourage and reward the player for exploring the world around them and traveling to far off regions. And yet, at the very same time, the game actively discourages the players from exploring or traveling far distances by having: Hard to set respawn. In order to set your respawn you have to first obtain a temporal gear, which are difficult to get - the primary method is by fighting hostile mobs which can easily kill new players. And the drop rate is extremely low - whether from Drifters or from panning, it's going to take you a long time just to get one temporal gear. Not only that, but temporal gears also have other uses, such as repairing translocators (you need 3 gears for each translocator), and as an emergency way of restoring sanity (temporal stability). This means once you've established your respawn point then you're pretty much stuck within 1,000 blocks or less of that location. Is it possible to go out further? Sure, but the farther out you go the riskier it is and the harder it will be to retrieve your corpse should you die. Easy to die. Especially early in the game. From wolves, to rams, to falling down an unexpected pit or cliff, to Drifters, to freezing or starving - death is a constant threat. This means, coupled with the respawn problem above, that you're actively encouraged to quickly set up a home base or place of safety and stay near that location for the rest of the game. Limited inventory. At the very start of the game you only have your hotbar for inventory, and it'll take some work to get your first inventory space. Longer for anything decent. With limited inventory space comes more frequent trips back to base. This means it'll be a long time before you can comfortably start making extended trips into the wilderness to explore. Travel speed. For as ginormous as the world is, there is only one method of travel - by foot. This means you'll be walking everywhere. Sure, you can sprint for short distances, but that consumes hunger quickly. And with only walking available this means you're not going to be doing much exploring. If I remember correctly it takes about a full in-game day to travel about 1000 meters. There is one form of fast travel - temporal translocators - but these are locked behind actually finding them and also finding the rare resources required to repair them. Food availability and hunger issues. Wild grown foods is only a temporary and limited food source. Once you've harvested that food source it's either gone for good (vegetables) or takes some time to regrow (fruits). Hunting is a possibility, but comes with its own risks. Another thing to note is that food, especially early game food, has a limited shelf life. This means if you're out exploring then half of the time you're more worried about finding food then doing actual exploring. Otherwise you'll need to establish a base and work your way up to getting long-term food production going before you can comfortably start exploring without worrying about starving to death. Harsh winters. Winters are no joking matter. Food all but becomes impossible to procure. Nights are much, much longer - you only have about 8 hours of daylight - and so you're stuck indoors for 16 hours a day while Drifters roam. And then even during daylight hours you can only be outdoors for 3 hours at a time before you'll start to freeze to death. And since it's so atrociously cold outdoors then your hunger rate is greatly increased, meaning you'll burn through your winter reserves like it's nothing. During the winter you're pretty much stuck indoors at your base for all intents and purposes. And if your server/game is set to 30 day months like mine is then you're in it for the long haul. Which means you also have to spend most of the summer preparing for winter - growing your gardens, raising livestock, preserving your food for long-term usage, etc. There's just absolutely no way you're going to be doing any exploring for long periods of time. Multiplayer. While multiplayer may encourage exploration it also discourages it due to the progression of time. Everyone has to sleep in bed for time to progress, or you have to have some people log out if they don't have a bed. Since time is always progressing in multiplayer then if someone died then it's less likely they can get to their corpse before their items despawn. Nonintuitive game mechanics, poor documentation. Finding out how to do things within the game is not very intuitive and this game has a steep learning curve. Learning how things work or how to do something often requires players to go online to the wiki or watch youtube videos. This translates to spending less time actually exploring, enjoying, and discovering the game within the game itself, and more time in frustration trying to find information online. Temporal instability. Heaven forbid you should unwittingly build your base in a temporally unstable area, forcing you to leave your base regularly to regain sanity. Or up and relocate everything after you are already well established. Also, the deeper you go the higher the instability, which makes exploring caves extremely dangerous, annoying, and can only be done in short bursts before having to return to the surface. I'm sure some of these can be mitigated by changing the game settings or using mods, but then again doing so changes how the designers intended the default game to be experienced. Furthermore, one wouldn't know what game settings they like or want changed unless or until they have played the game for some time. For example, you could change your starting health to be much higher so you don't die as frequently early game, but how does that affect long-term gameplay? Would it make it too easy when everyone is kitted out with the best armors? How about temporal storms - should they be enabled or disabled? Well you really won't know unless you've experienced one in-game and decided whether it's for you or not. I like harsh winters, but then again with having 30 day months then harsh winters can be a bit too much and it's starting to kill the enjoyment for me. And again, the default game settings is arguably how the designer has chosen the game to be experienced and is optimized for that. And yet, as pointed out above, the game seems to be at odds with itself. It really wants to be an exploration game, with a huge massive world to explore, different procedurally built regions and an interesting backstory, but then at the same time it punishes the players for exploring and discourages them from going very far in order to discover such a wonderful and beautiful world.

As far as I know these are the things that affect hunger rate: Class. Blackguard has the 'Ravenous' trait, which increases hunger rate by +30% Armor. Wearing most armors will increase your hunger rate; up to +24% for Plate. Items held in off hand. Torches, lanterns, or other items held in the off hand increase hunger by +20% (probably why you're at 120%) Game/Server settings. The default "Standard" game mode is 100% hunger rate, "Exploration" mode is 50% hunger rate, "Wilderness Survival" is set to 125%, or you can customize your own game settings anywhere from 25% to 200%. Temperature. Exposure to extreme temperatures (definitely cold, not sure about heat) can increase your hunger rate up to +25%. From my testing your hunger rate begins to start increasing around 1C, and seems to slowly increase by about 3% per 1C drop in temperature thereafter, up to a cap of +25% at -8C. Mods. Outside of the scope of the base game. Variable. "What constitutes a room?" is an excellent question. One that I'd like the answer to myself. For the purposes of stabilizing your body temperature you don't even need a space completely enclosed. For example, going far enough into a cave you will start to warm up. From some testing standing underneath a 15x15 platform, with no walls, and otherwise completely exposed to the elements, is also good enough to start stabilizing your body temperature. Same goes for food storage (walls do help, but aren't strictly necessary). As long as there is enough coverage from the open sky temperatures can be mitigated and regulated. However, hunger rate doesn't seem to play by the same rules. As long as the outside temperature is low enough then you must stay indoors, and more specifically (insomuch as my testing has shown) within a completely enclosed room of no greater than 8x8x8 in order to maintain a 100% hunger rate. That is, of course, assuming there isn't something else affecting hunger.

Thanks for your comments. I actually don't think temperature would alter it too drastically. Just heat up the item as hot as it'll go before working on it. Usually it doesn't take long to craft the item in game and so temperature change would be minimal. The exception to this would be large projects that require multiple ingots, like the anvil, in which case it can and should require reheating the item multiple times and your hammer would wear out faster as well. As for the already useless heavy hammer strikes, I agree. At least in its current state. I would like to see a revamp of that skill, but my idea for it would likely require character progression to be implemented first. My idea is that at low levels of smithing the heavy hammer blow works much like it currently does - voxels are scattered randomly and is not very efficient for detailed work but can still be useful under the right circumstances. However, under the hands of a skilled blacksmith who has lots of experience they should be able to more efficiently direct the heavy hammer blow such that the metal (voxels) more often than not go where they are supposed to go, similar to how the helve hammer automatically hammers voxels into the right location.

I didn't know there was any limitation on room sizes, other than hearing that cellars couldn't be any larger than 7x7x7. But cellars aren't (or shouldn't be) the same thing as being in a room/house/indoors for purposes of being exposed to the weather and/or hunger rating. Interestingly enough though, after you mentioned room sizes, I did some testing and this indeed seems to be the problem (or at least part of it). My kitchen area is 6x9x3. Height isn't the problem as it's only 3 meters high, 4 if you include the water hole. From my testing on a creative world the maximum room size allowed to keep hunger rating normal is 8x8x8. You can, in fact, have a larger room than 8x8x8 (successfully tested up to 11x11x8) and depending on if you're standing in the middle of the room your hunger rating will normal (100%) or elevated (125%) if you're standing by the walls. 12x12x8 or larger rooms all bets are off - sometimes they are stabilized briefly, but mostly they are unreliable. As a side note, in doing all of this testing I discovered that cellars don't actually have a size limit (theoretically - only tested up to a 21x21x7 room). As long as the stored food is far enough away from the outside world and/or limit light coming in through doorways then you can have as large a cellar as you want. Which is actually kinda weird that your hunger rating is so buggy indoors. If the hunger rate is supposed to be directly tied to your temperature and exposure to the cold, then why is it that the game is able to perfectly detect whether body and food storage temperatures are being affected properly while indoors, but not hunger values? As for the water source... I'm just as confused now as ever. In my multiplayer world I've replaced the solid block above the water source with a trap door. This keeps my hunger rate at 100% regardless if the trap door is open or closed, and allows me to easily access the water for cooking. However, if I step into the water my hunger rate immediately shoots up to 125%, which is actually kinda annoying as that water source doubles for panning. I think it might somehow be associated with the room size issue since my kitchen is 6x9x3 and creative world testing shows weird anomalies with rooms greater than 8x8x8. However, in my creative world I can't replicate it, but in fact have other weird oddities with water. Such that the opposite effect is seen and standing in water actually stabilizes my hunger rating to 100% in rooms that are unstable. But not all water. The trap door seems to give water a stability opposite of what the room is. So if I'm currently at 125% hunger rating then stepping into a water source has no effect, but stepping into one with a trap door above it will drop my hunger to 100%. Whereas in my kitchen that is stable at 100%, when I step into the trap door water source raises it to 125%

Ok, while covering the water worked to consistently stop my hunger rating from jumping up I am finding it does still sporadically jump to 125% for no apparent reason. Usually opening and shutting a door will into the room/house will correct it.

In it's current state whenever you are doing blacksmithing the hammer loses durability based on how many clicks or strikes of the hammer you use. One strong blow which moves a handful of voxels is the same as one tiny precision strike that just moves one voxel which is the same as a misclick where nothing is moved. In any case you lose 1 durability on your hammer per click of the mouse. This makes it better to use strong blows whenever you can to move as much material around as possible (so long as it doesn't negatively create more work) before honing in on finer detail work. In reality doing heavy blows is going to wear out your tool more than a bunch of smaller blows. Furthermore, there are at least two other factors which are even more important to tool durability that are not currently implemented in the game (that I can tell). They are: Material Type Temperature In regards to material type, this may be implemented in the game, albeit slightly abstracted (i.e. an iron hammer has more durability than a copper one). However, what is not implemented and what I would like to see is that using a softer metal (e.g. copper) hammer on a harder metal (e.g. bronze, iron, steel) to create a pickaxe is going to reduce the durability of the hammer more than say an iron hammer on a copper or bronze pickaxe. In both cases you're using a hammer to create a pickaxe, but the type of material used matters and greatly affects the durability of the tool. The other one thing that greatly affects tool durability and the ability of the smith to craft something is the temperature of the metal. It is far easier (and less demanding on your hammer and body) to shape an ingot that is glowing yellow than one that is just red hot. The hotter the item you're crafting the easier it is to move the metal. So, my suggestion is to: Change mouse-click based durability loss to voxel based durability loss. A hammer strike which moves more metal is going to reduce durability similar to how a scythe loses durability based on how much grass is cut. Material type affects durability loss. Current item durability levels are good in representing that harder metals last longer, but that's only half of the equation. Also add a higher % chance to lose durability the harder the metal is that you're striking. Temperature is key. There is a reason why you see blacksmiths in real life returning items to the forge as they begin to cool too much - it makes it easier to work when the metal is hot. Therefore make it so the lower the item temperature the higher %chance to lose durability. Just a few thoughts I've had to make smithing a bit more enjoyable. I love the attention to detail of many aspects of blacksmithing - the change in color as temperature changes is a personal favorite! I just wish a few other aspects were also in line with such amazing attention to detail.

Don't know if it's related or not, but I've seen similar time issues on our server. Our server is being hosted locally (within the household). We are also running 30 day months. Haven't seen month-long skips in time, but I have noticed sometimes when we log back in time will have progressed hours/days, and sometimes not at all. It really seems hit or miss and not sure what's causing it.

TL:DR If you have a water source block anywhere inside your home your hunger rating is treated as if you were outdoors. So it's winter time now and I noticed that for some reason my hunger rating was almost always super high (125%) for no apparent reason while inside my home. I wasn't wearing any armor, had nothing in my offhand, and I'm a Commoner so not affected by Class debuffs. For the longest time I couldn't figure out what was affecting my hunger rating so atrociously. Opening and closing doors sometimes would, sometimes wouldn't drop it to 100%. The only thing I could think of was somehow my home was being treated as if I were outdoors, but this didn't make sense because I was warm while indoors whereas outside temperatures were regularly getting to -17C. After doing a lot of experimenting trying to find out what the problem was and how to correct it - tearing down walls, adding walls, replacing the roof and foundation, changing half slabs to full blocks, etc. - I finally discovered the source of the problem: water! You see, I built a home and have added a water source block in my kitchen area to help facilitate cooking. This one tiny water source inside my home somehow makes my home "outdoors" for purposes of calculating hunger rating, but not for temperature. Simply putting a solid block above the water source immediately returns my hunger value to a more normal and manageable 100%.