Bruno Willis

It'd be great to give further uses to the reed trap for mid and late game. I could imagine a tech tree for traps, with metal ones later which have higher chances to catch. I could also imagine a system where each type of trap looses effectiveness over time - simulating animals learning about the trap - and then regains effectiveness when unused, so you might want to keep several different sorts of traps and change between them occasionally (a system you'd intuit a bit from crop rotation). Reed traps: high chance to fail. Uses bate. Catches animals alive. Noose trap: high chance to fail, uses bate, catches animals alive 50% of the time. Made with flax twine and a stick, and set up by right clicking branchy leaves and then the ground within 3 blocks (using a springing branch as the power behind the trap). Clay trap: Same as the reed trap, with a slightly higher success rate. Made with an upside down planter, a stick. When we get to metals, a bunch of spring-powered mouse traps and bear traps with different chances to kill vs. capture, and different bateing needs would be fun. I'd love to see standard designs, and also weird looking designs, and some that look like they'd never work they're so crazy, and actually don't work very well. If traps loose effectiveness gradually as the animals learn the trap, it makes sense you might try your hand at a bunch of odder and odder systems (and it'd be fun to rock up to your friend's place with your patented, guaranteed to work, unique one of a kind trap to help them deal with their rat problem).

Yes, once you've found one and know what to look for, their entrances are easy to spot on a map or on a landscape, and you can often see one from the top of the last one you've looted.

From a gardening perspective, I'd really like to see multiple "best soil" end steps, rather than just the one. At the moment terra pretta is best for growing everything. It would be very satisfying if there were better soils for different plants. I imagine it could be fairly simplified while still being realistic(ish): Light, sandy, soil would help root crops provide larger yields, as long as the nutrients are high enough, but would dry fast and loose nutrients fast. Good for root crops, would need regular additions of compost to retain nutrient quality. Turns to loamy soil after the addition of 20 compost per block? Loamy soil would be the best all-round soil, with a reasonable water retention and good nutrients. Good for all plants, would need crop rotation and a fallow period to maintain quality. Cloggy, clay heavy soils would retain moisture well and hold nutrients longer, so need less maintenance while producing standard yields. Good for rice and wet-loving plants, bad for other grains. Turns to loamy soil after the addition of 20 compost per block? This sort of thing would need to come with a re-working of the hydration system, so that crops can be overwatered as well as dried out. I wonder if it would work with a further simplified version of the natural soil types? They seem to imply adding PH to the game, which would be really interesting, as something to be balanced long-term. I imagine plants would have a PH tolerance, and a preferred PH: they'd grow as long as the soil PH was within their limit, and they'd produce slightly better if the soil PH was at their preferred level. Seems like PH wouldn't change much over time except with deliberate tampering, so it'd be a good way to set up which garden is best for which specific crop.

I'd love it if sometimes they nocked on the door, like a human might, then stood back a bit and waited.

Think about how you remove slag when processing iron. I typically hold the mouse down and move the cursor so that I'm striking as fast as possible, in different, deliberate areas. I'd imagine that'd be the mechanic. Granted, I'm not sure how much value it would add. I'm sort of imagining it as something you could slowly realize "Oh, it mines faster if I hit the crack that forms" and then you do that.

I really agree with your take here, but I do think the o.p. is actually more inline with your take than not: This seems to be more about picking a detail of a too simple system and bringing it into focus by drawing on realism, rather than making a full mini-game of it (correct me if I'm wrong here). Thinking about it further I can imagine starting to mine a block, and a crack forming (like it does already) but in one of like 5 possible configurations. If you move your mouse and target where the crack forms, you mine the block faster and maybe spend a little less durability. Essentially, you get the same mining techniques as currently, + a small payoff for paying extra attention. I'd make the difference between mining without paying attention and mineing with care minimal, but add up over time. That way, if you care about it and enjoy the mechanic, it feels worthwhile, but if you don't care, you don't feel like you're being punished.

Yes, welcome! I would say turning cave ins on, and then using support beams is a really fun addition to mining. You end up with some pretty rickety, believable looking mines doing it that way (I only wish support beams stretched a bit further before needing two beams, so that aesthetics are not a resource sacrifice). There are already layers of cracked rock in the game, which are easier to mine, it's just rare that they lead to where you want to dig. They act more as a roof stability threat than a mining advantage. I think that adding extra granularity into the act of breaking blocks, while fun, would probably add a lot of extra time into the mining process. I'd lean more towards additional variation in the stone. I like how quartz layers can make an early mine impossible in a certain location, and cause you to look elsewhere, or look for a cave that cuts through that layer. I could imagine bands of harder stone (but still breakable with copper) cutting through the world, as well as more realistic cave systems (check out this thread:) I could imagine filling some cave systems up entirely with muddy gravel would add an interesting challenge/opportunity that would change the pace of mining.

I like how coloured tiles and pottery from beehive kilns are an aesthetic demonstration of advanced tech, but don't actually make you 'more powerful' I feel like what's really good about steel is not that it unlocks advanced tools and things, but that it gives you more time to make special, extra pretty items. You can scrounge and fight for beautiful things in earlier tech stages, but it becomes so much easier as you hit steel. Steel isn't about maximizing power, it's about settling in and thriving. It lets you relax.

I think you've hit the nail on the head with this post, and this is a really good question for us to keep in mind as we brainstorm. So to sum up so far, the ideas which seem to have some support are: Weather variation that can affect crops (Contentious). Birds and scarecrows to mess with but not wipe out crops Blight hitting monocrops Rats targeting stores, and rat catching methods. Kulze noted that we need to carefully balance risk to planted crops and risk to food stores, so that we don't add too much risk. LadyWYT has pointed out that the way to deal with weather disasters is to have good food stores, which can then be ruined if we add rodents targeting stores - punishing the solution to the first problem, which seems to suggest we can choose either weather disasters or rats, but not both. Crimeo has suggested some more minor weather variation like early frosts, which just prevent people from mathsing out and perfecting their planting schedual, but don't wipe out a crop, and I've added that it can be positive variation (mild autumn) as well as negative (early frost). LadyWYT noted that bad hail is rare enough that it could damage crops without being too much of an issue. Crimeo pointed out that turnips would be more resistant to weather disaster than grains. Cedric the Silent gave a very compelling argument for why rodents in stores could be fun gameplay. LadyWYT pointed out that it would be pretty annoying if rats actually altered your builds with rat-holes that needed to be re-filled. My favourite suggestions so far are: Minor weather variation (occasional late frosts, mild winters, rare heavy hail). Blight hitting monocrops (From what I can see, I think we all like this idea if implemented fairly). Rats which can be trapped or dealt with by cats, but don't damage builds.

I really agree with this take. I would say, I've started playing more and more often with tool durability set to 150%, and it seems to help make the bronze age more viable. I like a slower pace, and I think the main thing pushing people to iron is that resources for tin run out quickly (which I think is both good and realistic). I think making tools last slightly longer really helps here, and there's actually so much to do in the bronze age as long as you're not scrounging for ores the whole time (I think tools last such a short amount of time for gameplay reasons not realism). Then you sort of fall into iron on accident, just by casually prospecting and caving, which feels more rewarding than hunting hunting hunting for it.

I'd like to see drifters with rusty sword arms get longer reach to fit with their sick visual design. I think the current rust foes are great, but if we get a more fleshed out way to fight, it needs to be paired with more fleshed out foes. Ideas for alternate higher tier drifters: Alchemist drifters = drifters who lob bombs and give off a cloud of slightly damaging mist when killed (their chemical concoctions mixing). Lazarus drifters = drifters which "die" but don't de-spawn even when looted. Then they get back up again after a little bit. Have to be burned after being killed to get rid of them. And a few little ideas for all drifters to add a bit of extra fun and spice: Tempting: holding up a rusty gear or temporal gear, then backing away from the player. Has a chance to spawn in a higher tier drifter nearby if pursued. Leading: if there is a bell nearby, the drifter gestures to the player and walks towards the bell, then pauses looks around and does it again. Once its finished the gestures, it goes back to normal behavior. Occasionally put out torches. They walk up to torches and nock them onto the ground, then stamp on them until it's dark. Occasionally get up and start moving again after being killed (if they haven't been looted or burned).

I'd love this for the narrative it would add to my long-term game: "Remember that winter where it barely snowed and we ate strawberries all year round?" "Good times, good times." Or: "Oh shit that storm just wiped out most of our grain and shredded the windmill sails. How are we going to make it through winter?!" If that sort of thing happened every so often it would make a long-term world so much richer, and give some good survival challenge to the later game. I actually don't think it'd be terrible if disastrous weather had the chance to happen in your first year, so long as it was unlikely. Everyone always dies in their first playthrough, enough that they learn and make a new world. I don't think it would be a problem if occasionally that first world was lost to weather rather than bears camping spawn.

This would be fantastic for the new dynamic dungeons. I'd have each block have a chance 10% chance to break when walked on, a 20% chance each time it's jumped on, and a 80% chance if fallen on from a height, and if one breaks, it permanently increases the chance of any of its neighbors to break by like 10%.

Oh 100%. I've had rats chew through concrete to get into my hen house.

I really like these ideas, and don't have much to add. I'm not 100% on locusts, just because they're small, so they'd be hard to make interactable, and also, they'd strip the wild trees and bushes too, and we don't have a way for nature to recover yet Rats: I would love to see mechanics which gradually show the progression of time, and I think rats could be part of that. They could work by generateing rat-holes in the interior walls of rooms, rarely, after year 1. The holes would have a higher chance to generate in wood, wattle and daube, easily chewed blocks, with a small chance to generate in cobblestone, and no chance in natural stone. The holes would occasionally output a rat at night, which would then seek food placed out in the open (think on a table, on a shelf, etc.) If it ran into a storage vessel or food filled chest though it would add that storage to its list of targets, and come back to it the next night. I'd say storage vessels would be pretty hard for a rat to get into, but a chest with food in it would be no trouble, just gnaw a little hole in it. The rat would be a little animated creature with a hit-box, smaller than a racoon, but not too small. You'd be able to fill rat-holes with daube or mortar, but if the rat wasn't killed, the hole would re-open pretty quickly. Then of course, you'd need rat traps and rat-ona-stick barbeque as a minimum, with cats and dogs as a nice to have for later.