Galaxial

I've probably gotten really lucky then, because a lot of the things I need are just a short walk away from home. Perhaps in my next world I won't get so lucky and will ironically complain about the lack of them in my vicinity. This could be a better alternative solution, though I'd definitely give it a more expensive cost to "reroll" than one temporal gear. Farming enemies at the mantle is an incredibly efficient ( and surprisingly low-risk with the right setup ) way of getting said gears. Ruins providing clues and hints about the environment sounds like a great idea, I do like that very much. Environmental storytelling and cues are a technique of conveying information that I believe should be done more. I enjoy having to go down into the dangerous underground in order to find translocators, and having to build tunnels between different ones so I can get my elk through the network. Though we can already craft three different kinds of teleporting machines, so it'd make sense to be able to build a translocator too. Recycling Jonas tech has interesting potential. Maybe the Clockmaker could be more efficient in this, allowing them to specialize into Jonas tech?

Over my time playing Vintage Story I've repaired almost a dozen translocators. I remember the excitement of my first one, having a whole new area to explore with its own resources and terrain. Even if it didn't have something I needed, it was still nice to look around and investigate the foreign biomes, rocks, etc. Then came my second translocator, which brought me near a bauxite area, something useful for the cementation furnace I was going to build. Then came the third, and the fourth, and the fifth... They weren't as intriguing. They brought me to seemingly random areas with nothing of interest around. The wonder of a translocator quickly shifted into disappointment, and the previous excitement was just gone. I'd spend the materials to repair a translocator, mark it on my map, and never go to it again after seeing that it isn't worth going through. The problem is that translocators are completely random in their destination. Whether or not it brings you in even the general direction you want it to is up to RNG. That, and a lot of the resources you'll need across your playthrough are found within walking distance around you, so you won't really need to travel far for anything anyways. ( At least, such was the case for me. ) I have two proposals that would spice up world generation ( in my opinion ) and also provide more usefulness to translocators. 1. Congregated Generation Currently, ruins, both above and below ground, as well as ores generally generate wherever as long as loose conditions apply. This is especially apparent with surface ruins, which are sprinkled around the world randomly, sometimes with more around them. Instead, I'd lower the generation of these, but make them generate in large clusters rarely. For example, you could find a ruin here and there, and one of them could point you in a specific direction. You explore said direction far and wide enough, and you find an entire valley of ruins the size of a town or city. Or ores. Maybe you need chromite. You can find some around, but definitely not sustainably enough. However, look far enough ( and get lucky enough ) and you'll find a massive vein that'll satisfy your needs for a long time. 2. Smart Translocators Instead of being completely random, the translocators "aim" for a point of interest, teleporting you to their vicinity. These POIs would be the "clusters" mentioned in the first proposal. This would encourage players to explore the area around a newly repaired translocator exit, because now it'd be guaranteed that there's something interesting around. Translocators could even aim towards story locations, allowing you to make a network of them straight to them. This change could come with more expensive translocator repair to balance them. TLDR: Ore and ruin generation made more scarce, but they rarely generate in large clusters. Translocators aim for these clusters or story locations so exploration would be encouraged and translocators' usefulness wouldn't be determined by RNG.