Bruno Willis

I'm really enjoying the Realistic Water mod https://mods.vintagestory.at/realisticwater for farm placement: it makes placing water sources impossible regardless of tech level, but makes canals, irrigation, flooding, all work really naturally. Water works more like water and less like blue Minecraft liquid. Edit: It really does change the game drastically, and I'd only use it on a new world, but I really do recommend it!

Let the game guide you onwards. Yeah, so often I make something I really like, and then get excited by another world and that's that.

It looks lovely (if a little spooky with those surroundings). I personally like uneven and wonky structures much more than symmetrical ones. I'm sure your dock will add a lot of purpose when you get it built. I personally love a good dry-dock too: they look great and they're not too much work.

Wow! Is that a sauna?!

The tower's still too much of a mess of scaffolding, but here's the tunnel (the bits that are visible).

Ever since I discovered this unspellable metal, I can't get enough! To be fair though, I haven't needed to make a single lantern this play-through, because I pull 1-2 lanterns from each of the new dungeons I've explored, and I've been exploring a lot of them. I've found more lanterns than torch holders, easily.

While we're at it, I'd love to be able to make fancy blocks by interlocking all those flint arrow-heads with a bit of gravel, maybe mortar if we're feeling mean? It'd just be a niche, pretty block for those who pan too much and don't throw anything away.

For what it's worth, I don't think you've been divisive at all. I get the feeling that there are a lot of people who care a lot about the game (yay!) jumping on anything that seems to go against their views. The recent controversy is important and I think there is room for nuance and opinion, but I for one don't care enough, or more, don't have the right expertise to ever really add much to the debate. I like V.S. though, and when there's a lot of negativity floating around I'm always keen to talk about the good things. It is hard to build good things, and very easy to break them (as anyone who's placed a tool-rack of new metal tools too close to their pit-kiln knows). Regardless of how you view the V.S. dev response to the recent drama, I imagine we all care about the game. For the sake of longevity it is really important that we can carve out and maintain spaces of positivity though this drama. We gotta keep having fun, as well as serious discussions, otherwise what's the point? To that end, I've been building a wonky wizard tower on top of a tall plateau, and it took me so so many deaths by falling on trips away, and desperate, slippery climbs on my way home (I have dirt instability on, with the sticky dirt mod) before I decided to dig a stair. It took less than an in-game day to dig, and immediately opened up the surroundings and changed which part of my tower base even feels like the front. I've recently added aesthetically leaning support beams and chiseled out some cave-like broken bits and put candles in them, they're the only bits with light, and now the tunnel is one of my favorite parts of my base. I love how practical considerations are so important in this game, and how a little bit of work here and there lets you make them beautiful.

I think this is a really good take. I feel like VS has a player base with higher than average initiative and practical skill (as a VS player myself) so we could look at this drama as an opportunity to figure out what we can each do with our particular skills to improve things, and then do that.

I love vintage story, even if it's sometimes very slow, because it makes me think about real world chores that can be fun too. You know, you're making a pie in VS and you realize you're hungry IRL and you could actually make a pie fairly easily in real life, so you make a pie. I've been playing less and getting into the garden more, because VS constantly reminds me about how cool gardening is. I like that.

I have had the same idea for some time now, and the good news is that a moder has too: https://mods.vintagestory.at/novelty does the job fairly well. I don't play without it. It makes mushroom gathering sort of relevant long-term, and it makes all the variety in fruit and berries really exciting too.

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.