Philtre

Unless you turned copper surface spawns down, you shouldn't have to go all that far from your base to find enough copper to get started. You'll need to do just as much exploring to find crop seeds, resin, and other basic resources, so just multitask. Later on, as the game progresses, you will continue to find copper by accident while looking for other resources (ores, limestone, ruins, translocators, etc.). So again, just multitask. And since you need quite a bit of infrastructure for later-game activities such as advanced metalworking, leatherworking, etc., you will need a well-developed base; being nomadic is quite difficult unless you are willing to stay in the stone age. I would say the motivation for base-building is *all the stuff you need to have in order to make all the other stuff*. One of the game's strengths is giving resource-processing an engaging level of complexity, beyond just collecting it in the first place.

As well as the reed baskets and clay storage vessels mentioned, you can also build tool racks for any surplus/intermittently-used tools, and there's a variety of items that can be stacked on the ground, including in particular most fuel types (firewood, peat, charcoal, etc). In a pinch, you can also use the fuel and input slots on (unlit) firepits to hold random items. In case you haven't figured this out yet, you will not be able to mine stone of any kind until you have a metal pickaxe. The solution to this is small bits of copper found loose on the surface. (Remember to mark the locations where you find such bits on your map.) Read the guides in the in-game handbook for more information.

Animations for fires and so forth play while paused, so I would guess that the other animations are supposed to keep playing too.

I think the game is supposed to be set in alternate-history Europe in the 1300's, so before contact with the Americas. I don't know the justification for having New World crops like cassava, peanuts, and sunflowers.... The main crop type I feel is missing is the European legumes. The only legumes we have are soybeans and peanuts, but the Medieval peasant diet would have included legumes as an important component, in particular broad beans, lima beans, lentils, chickpeas, or field peas, depending on region and era. Bread, beans, and beer were pretty much the poor person's staple foods.

Is there perhaps a block overhanging the tiles that have abnormally low moisture? I've found that tiles that don''t have potential exposure to rain seems to have lower moisture, regardless of whether it has recently rained...

Apparently there is a debug command that will do that but I have no idea how it works....

OK, quick check: all 3 parts of the wood lamellar set show up fine for me and don't require tailor class. (I didn't try to actually make any, but the recipes were there.)

I think the only tailor-specific armor is the colored gambesons (the regular gambeson is still available to all). I haven't looked at the wood lamellar in ages, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't a tailor-specific item previously. I'll try to remember to check if it still has a recipe next time I log in...

The handbook should show everything, unless something changed in today's patch... I was just looking at the tailor-class recipes in-game yesterday and contemplating turning on the "turn off class-exclusivity" option....

I'd settle for a way to reassign the default color to something other than black. It's really hard to see on most terrain....

Sheep can definitely be underweight to the point that they do not drop any fat, but I think the point where they definitely won't is "poor"; above that they should have at least a chance, IIRC. So it still might be a bug....

Did you notice what the animal body condition descriptor was (eg, "weight: good" or whatever it says)? If you started in a colder area, it might be possible for them to have the winter-underweight condition applied, since May is still pretty early in the year? (Nitpick: rams are male. Female sheep are ewes.)

That was my understanding of the situation, but Sparkle Kitti was mentioning seeing the rainfall value of an area change, so I wondered if it was a new mechanic, or a bug....

As far as I can figure out, that's not supposed to happen except during temporal storms (anything can happen during temporal storms - your only option for a safe-room is a space physically too small for drifters to spawn in, using vertical slabs or chiselling or what-have-you). So it seems that rifts are maybe a bit buggy? (Or I just don't understand the code...)

According to the patch notes, rifts should not spawn near "lit bases", but I have not been able to find out exactly what this requires. For now, perhaps try putting some lamps/lanterns/torches around the outside of your base. Even if there is a rift, drifters should not be able to spawn in places that are brightly lit, so at least make sure there are no dimly-lit places inside your base. (I think surface drifters require a light level of 9 or less to spawn, so if I counted right a lantern should protect about 8 blocks on every side, a torch 4, and an oil lamp only 2). You can also try making a small fenced area around your base with gates in different directions, so you can lure all the drifters to one side then leave out the other - hopefully after you have been out exploring/resource-gathering for a while, the drifters will have despawned.

Thanks! It's definitely helpful to have an example to follow, thanks for letting me (try to) adapt your code. I've never tried to write a mod before, wish me luck...

Rift activity I knew about, but rainfall changes is new to me. Is that a new mechanic or am I just insufficiently observant?

I absolutely love that this command exists.

The climates cycle between equatorial and arctic in the N-S direction, with the interval between cycles set by the options you selected at world gen (defaults to 50 thousand blocks, IIRC, so a looooong way). So if you spawn in a temperate region (the default) and head south, it will get warmer, then colder, then warmer again, then colder again, etc, until you hit the world border. Starting from a temperate spawn on standard settings, expect to walk for a couple of real-world hours before you hit an equatorial region.

So it looks like with the current update jam is back to using 0.2L of honey per portion, equivalent to one bowlful (two clicks of 0.1L each). I think you can also add fractional liters with a bucket now, but I forget the key combo....

Yes, temporal storms are even more of a pain now. You do have the option of turning them off, although I think that also disables rifts (?), and thus essentially disables surface drifters.

I think that as of 1.16, you now need to start sleeping before the storm actually starts.

For jam, fill two slots of the pot with honey and the other two with fruit/berries. The current recipe seems to require 1 litre of honey per piece of fruit, which I think is a bug. Each piece of honeycomb provides 0.2L of honey, so that's 5 honeycomb per berry or whatever, which is a much higher ratio than it was before the liquid rework. I would maybe hold off on making jam until it's been looked at, and in fact for now maybe just save your honey in comb form to be safe.

Wolves cannot be tamed, unless you have a mod. They would always run away after falling below a certain HP, like pretty much everything else. Opening the character info screen (C by default) shows the temperature, among other things. Music changes if you're in caves (or areas the game thinks are caves, such as if you wall yourself in with dirt), but I don't think there are other location-based effects. Rifts spawn and despawn periodically at random, and their probability is affected by the local rift activity value, which you can see in the aforementioned character menu (C key). I think being too near a rift affects your temporal stability, not the other way around. However, having very low stability causes effects similar to standing in a rift (or perhaps it's better thought of the other way around, standing in a rift causes similar effects to low temporal stability).

I assume the "Tweak: Avoid spawning rifts near lit bases" line is relevant here. It sound like you will want to light up the area around your base.