Bruno Willis

I had a sort of similar experience, riding home on an elk after dark. I didn't have a light source on me, but once I got through the forest it was plains all the way home. It got too dark to really see, so I was using the mini-map to navigate, I thought I'd gotten through the forest, and suddenly I wasn't moving properly. I couldn't understand, the map said I was out of trouble, on the plains. I got off my elk and 'felt around' at the blocks around me. "aged firewood." "chains." I keep sticks on me at all times, and I had a bit of straw, so I made a torch, placed it and lit it by feel with a fire starter, (after a lot of sweat and fear and trouble) and found out I'd ridden down a steep hole into a ruined quarry. I don't know how my elk fit through some of the passages. I left my elk in the ruins, and carefully made my way up, fought drifters, and then found some bismuth. Great, I thought. I'll grab that while I'm here. I'd recently turned cave ins on, and was crushed to death by the ensuing rockfall. I found the mouth of the cave again later, found my gear and got my elk out. I'd ridden into the cave almost as soon as I'd ridden into the forest, but it had been too dark to notice.

I think you've hit the core of it here. Yes, absolutely. I think stone-age gameplay works so well because making flint tools never feels like a waisted resource, and making things like gardens and pottery just sets you up for later. The bronze age equivalent is barrels and leather and boats, which are all good, but it would be nice to see more. Thanks for the in-depth response

Do you think the bronze age and bronze armor needs more love? In reality, bronze is very resistant to corrosion especially compared to iron and steel. Iron and steel armor and tools and could be nerfed by having the rust-world and low stability damage them (rusting them), while bronze tools and armor would be resistant. Maybe that would make bronze feel like a more legitimate choice, until players are well into the iron age?

I really like this idea. There was a big gold rush around where I come from, and you can bike around the area now and find rusted out pounder machines and sluice pipes everywhere. It makes a really attractive industrial picture, and I really want to be able to crush stones into gravel using my pounder anyway (the problem I see is that you shouldn't then be able to pan it for copper arrowheads etc.) Possibly: Use a pounder to break up stones into 'jagged gravel' which can be used in all the same recipes as normal gravel, but jagged gravel of different stone types have different and very limited panning tables which get you ores occasionally, and muddy gravel occasionally, and maybe sand occasionally? (but sand would have the same issue with panning for man-made things, so probably not). The yield would be low enough that you'd want to make an industrial sluice system, which would need mechanics to make it look good - simulating a good water flow and making the sluice longer and longer to increase the yield.

I think in perma-frost areas there are pine-trees which have specially freeze-resistant sap, and if they don't, they explode in winter. It could be an opportunity to put a variation of larch tree in which almost always grows with leaking sap logs, if the temperature is low enough.

Hey, to get back to the original post, I think there is something to the idea of upping the challenge after a certain amount of time has passed. I've used this technique in a survival board game and it was really helpful for balance. The way I see it is, in the same way you enter the world in spring not winter, you would also enter the world during a good year or two. After two years have passed, random interesting environmental effects get unlocked (although I agree, the listed effects are mostly too extreme). They would be weighted so you'd never get more than one each year, and might go two years without seeing any (hence the relative calm of the first two years). As well as offering a challenge, I'd use these natural disasters to 'fix' odd terrain created by the player - flooding could be more like single dirt-block borders of bodies of water collapse and the water floods over, filling the void with gravel and muddy gravel, covered by a layer of water (obviously you wouldn't want this to fill massive cave systems so IDK). Sandstorms could flush new sand blocks across deserts, ideally gradually building dunes against the sides of walls and structures for that classic sand submerged city vibe. Earthquakes could cause un-supported tunneling to cave in, as if you had cave-ins turned on (or cause unstable blocks to cave in more easily if you do have cave-ins turned on). A weeklong rain could cause forest floor blocks to spawn tree saplings if they've been deforested and new reeds to grow if they've been cut out (essentially a renewal of the growing elements of the land). Maybe it could also cause a sort of flooding, using the mechanics of the flood fill command in world edit, which would limit the sorts of spaces which could be flooded to enclosed bowls in the landscape. When the rains end the flooding would go too. I think this sort of thing would add a whole lot to the game, including adding a whole lot of extra work for the devs, and it's pretty far down on my wish-list, but I do think the idea suits VS.

I don't use prospecting mods, and think it's great. No complaints about vanilla prospecting. And most people who use mods seem to use them not to fix prospecting, but to add some quality of life features on the side. By the way, every time you find ore, that's a success, not proof that prospecting doesn't work. The pro pick is a tool to help you find ores, not a "gold now" button.

I haven't found any which were harmless, to be fair, but they weren't doing too much to me. I did use a hotspring to save myself from hypothermia at one point (although I didn't jump in), and that felt good.

I think different pools have different temperatures, so you can find some which are safe to relax in, and some which will fry the animals you chase into them, and most are somewhere in between.

You're dead right, (not just dead) inconsistency is bad. I think you'd probably die almost instantly if you jumped into a pool of literally boiling water, but I also think you'd die instantly if you stepped inside a kiln. It would be nice to see a heat haze or some signal about how hot the hot-pool is, but I also think the furnaces and kilns could be much more punishing. Also, welcome to the forums! I wish you many near misses instead of deaths in future.

This interior is really nice! I love seeing support beams and subtle chiseled details, and wallpaper! I'd say a base is never finished, just sometimes abandoned.

Great idea. I'd suggest allowing players to make 'baskets' out of kelp (we do this in Aotearoa New Zealand by taking the broad leaves, cutting a mouth and pealing them open, then drying them open. They make stiff pouches). It'd be a nasty challenge diving for kelp in the frigid climate.

I'd like to second this - I'm relatively new to this game, and didn't have much trouble when I started. I found it harder than I expected, and instead of accepting the challenge and figuring it out for myself I did a cursory check online, listening to 1 guide while I played. The equivalent of asking a friend who'd played, then half listening to their answer. That's a player problem not a game problem - I wanted the reward before I'd done the work. I've not used any prospecting mods, and once I'd managed to use the pro-pick successfully, it made plenty of sense. Because it was difficult, once I hit ore it was hugely satisfying. I think its important when playing VS to go into things with an attitude of "this might work, let's find out" rather than: Nothing in life is certain. I think this game just doesn't suit a jump on, win win win, quit and forget sort of gameplay. While it would be nice if VS were even more popular, I think the game supports a slower, more thoughtful style.

Yes, or as a mechanism in a ruin, which could be repaired to make exploring the ruin safer or ignored if the parts are unavailable, leading to hard-mode exploration. Thanks! Yeah, the idea came more from thinking about what the past humans would have wanted than what current players might want. What I'm most interested in with this idea is the idea of fixing technology which is too advanced to make ourselves. I really think there could be an interesting voxel-based mini-game like knapping flint, but on the far opposite end of technological progression. It would be used to activate advanced and/or unique technology (and alternatively let you loot Jonas parts and ruin the tech).

The game tells me landcover scale "determines how much ocean will be between pieces of land" so when there is almost no ocean, setting it at 500% might mean you actually get oceans of a real size, just very very rarely? So when you have 40% landcover, having 500% landcover scale (read ocean scale) would try to distribute that 40% of the land really evenly across the world, leading to many smaller islands. I think what's happens is that by dropping landcover scale to 75% the world still has to have only 40% of the world as land, but the oceans aren't forced to be maximally large, so that 40% of land can end up being a bit larger and more interestingly shaped. It seems like it, although the saltwater vs freshwater boundaries are a bit weird at the moment - i.e. dead straight. Yes! I've been really wanting a good ocean travel world with decent continents, so I've been checking what anyone else had already tried. I hope people keep figuring out the vanilla world gen settings, because it genuinely looks so good and true to real geography now, but the controls are so unintuitive.

Make a strange mechanical core which lights up a huge space, increases the temperature of glasshouses significantly, allows you to grow crops underground, and then panic as your now crucial machine flickers and whines, begging for maintenance that you just don't have the parts for. Essentially this would be a costly multi-part Jonas tech orb that a seraph could make which would be able to light up huge amounts of space. If enclosed in a glasshouse it would add (up to) +10 to the farmland temperature, and enable crops to be grown underground within about 20 blocks or so of the synthetic sun. It would also produce a temporal instability zone, similar to a temporal rift, but much larger and much less potent (and invisible). But... As salvaged tech from an ancient era, the synthetic sun would be liable to break down. There would be a timer which would slowly tick down, lasting between 1 and 2 months. At the end of that time, the synthetic sun would start malfunctioning. The light would occasionally fade or flicker, the farmland temperature improvement would fall to +8, and the temporal instability zone would become a little more potent. At this point a seraph could get close enough to interact with it (well within the instability zone) and tinker with it. The synthetic sun would be hot, requiring them to use tongs and a wrench, and ideally play a voxel re-arranging mini-game to bring the synthetic sun back to full operating power. If left un-tinkered with for more than 14 days, the synthetic sun would become damaged. The light would be noticeably dimmer at all times, and would often brown out or flicker. The farmland temperature improvement would fall to +4 and the temporal instability zone would become as potent as a normal rift, but far larger. The fixing mechanic would be the same as before, just requiring a randomly chosen, specific Jonas part or temporal cog. Finally, if left damaged for more than 7 days, the synthetic sun would go critical. It would produce only a faint, pulsing red glow and no farmland temperature improvement. The temporal instability zone would double in size, meaning the whole area once lit up by the synthetic sun would be fully in the rustworld. The fixing mechanic would be the same as before, but it would require a a whole host of different Jonas parts. Imagine how useful this would be for living in a frozen wasteland or deep underground, and how fun it would be as a challenge, requiring maintenance and if you are lax, requiring you to go out and find more Jonas parts. It would make natural stories for a late-game world where the players are already good at finding Jonas parts, especially in multi-player. Of course the clockmaker would have to have a bonus to tinkering with and fixing these, or perhaps to how long their fix would last. It seems like the sort of technology the inventors of the past might have rigged up in the last moments to warm the depths and let them try to grow food.

Sure, it's nice, it does make good islands with plenty of ocean, but it could be better... And now it is! I have uncovered the actual best settings for continents: Landcover: 40% Landcover scale: 75% Landform scale: 120%. No other settings can get you better continents and seas. I think. In all seriousness, I like the 30 - 300, but it has produced quite small islands for me which made finding reeds hard, and would make elk sort of pointless. The 40, 75 set up makes large continents which might take between 1-2 in game days hard riding to cross, and each continent is separated by enough ocean that sailing is a viable travel option. Adding landform scale at 120 just makes elk travel more viable - sometimes - and gives each continent a different vibe, even if they've got the same stone type and temperature.

I've just fought and been murdered by the two headed drifter a few times, and I noticed through my blood and trumpet screaming, that I'd managed to hook loot out of the over-friendly drifter while desperately swinging my falx. I didn't kill them, but I ended up getting a temporal gear and a bunch of gears anyway. I think adding the auto-loot feature to the falx is a really interesting solution to the crazy high health of scarier drifters. The point isn't to kill them, it's to have tense moments and be rewarded for taking big risks. I can see myself ducking out into the temporal storms now, swiping the scary guys until they drop things, grabbing the glowing cogs and running back inside. That's much more interesting that having to kill everything, to me at least.

Welcome! I also haven't tried any of the class altering mods, so this comes purely from enjoying the base game: I feel like the malefactor already ticks of some of this forager class. Maybe adding some exclusive poison recipes to that class would make it more exciting, rather than adding a whole new class? On explorer, I think it's important to avoid making any class inherently and obviously better at exploring, since that's such an interesting part of the game which everyone should feel comfortable doing, using the variety of playstyles already out there. Also, malefactor already has a way to get extra loot from cracked vessels, in a way. I do think a merchant class of some sort would be very interesting though - I don't have any strong ideas about how it might be done, or whether it would disrupt the lore. I'd love to see a blacksmith class, who gets alternative, challenging smithing recipes, to make 2 knives or 2 chisels out of a single ingot for example. Actually, I think I just want those to be the normal smithing recipes. No more waste! Saying all that, this seems like a very contentious topic, with some people wanting the system to have more classes and differences and some wanting no classes at all, which suggests that the current system sits pretty nicely in the middle. Also, if you didn't know, you can totally turn off class specific recipes when making a new world (check the multiplayer tab on customized world gen). I believe you can do that through commands for an existing world too, as well as change classes (I'm sorry, I don't know what commands you'd use though).

A thought on net fishing: With the new sailing boats, I feel like a net fishing 'mini-game' would be excellent for VS. Here's the vision: You craft and fill two slots in the body of your sailing boat with an empty net, then head out to sea (specifically salt water). As you move across the water, gulls fly down and perch on the mast and gunwales, or take off from the boat and fly away. Suddenly, all the gulls take off at once and start circling the boat, screeching and divebombing the water. Looking over the side you can see a spot where the water glimmers oddly, so you ease the sails, get as close as you can, and toss out the net. After some time the water glimmer might move elsewhere, so you pull the net up. The two net slots are now filled with a full net. You can butcher the fish now, or head back to shore. What's actually happening is that boats with fishing nets would generate gull 'particles,' gaining more the closer the boat gets to a school of fish. A school of fish would work like a singe creature, with a twisting, fishy outer surface. When you got within sight range of the school, the gull particles would rise up and start a fishing animation, which would tell you that you're close. You would find the school of fish, get near it but not on top of it, and toss out the net (If you sailed right over the school, I think it would get spooked). The net would fill in a short amount of time, and could be pulled back in with a right-click. The full net would act like an animal carcass- you Alt right-click on it with a knife, and after a while it opens a storage slot, packed full of butchered fish. I would make the butchering time significantly longer than butchering a normal animal, and produce a semi random but large amount of fish. It'd be a different way to fish than in the other block game, and I think it would suit the size and type of boat we have better than fishing with a line. I think it would also add a lot to the feeling of sailing.

I'm immediately imagining underground garden chambers with broken skylights - 1 block wide shafts - that a player could fall down, onto rows of high fertility soil, gravel and rot. Honestly, that might already exist - I feel like I've seen maybe a 10th of the ruins in the game so far. I'd also love to see large fragments of sewer systems used for underground shelter, like the London underground was during the blitz.

For me, the ruins themselves are the reward. 1: A good looking ruin makes an area so much more interesting. 2: in real life ruins usually exist in places where people wanted to live, so they're usually a sign of a good location. I would like to see more ruins which signal or make a useful location: Ruined tunnel passes which generate cutting right through mountain ranges Ruined wind-mills which are good and tall and ready to be repaired Ruined towers which only generate on tall points like mountains and cliffs Ruined docks and dockyards which only generate on the coast (of course) Overgrown open cast mines/quarries Crumbling bridges over rivers It seems like the current ruins don't take much of the local terrain into consideration, so these sorts of ruins might require a different level of generation rules, but I think they would add a lot to the world. They would be opportunities in themselves, infrastructure, rather than requiring loot to be useful.

Falconry would be amazing! I think the best bet would be to have some larger, interesting, interactive birds, and then nests, or maybe 'perching branches,' to produce generic birds particles and sounds. Seeing as chickens are only kind of worth butchering, I don't think we need to worry too much about having full interactions and realism with even smaller birds. I just want to hear them and see movement in the sky.

I really like the idea of birds, especially sea and forest birds, from an aesthetic perspective rather than as a mob that you interact with necessarily. I love how bee-hives look and work. Would wild nests be an option? They could spawn naturally on trees and cliffs, have a chance to generate new ones near old ones every spring, and be able to be picked up and moved. Within a large range of the nest you would have large simple particles which would wheel about up high, then dip down to the nest block, or fly up out of it. The nest would also be the source of bird-sound, maybe forest birds if the nest is placed on a leaf block, or gull sounds if the nest is on stone or grassy soil. A seraph could fossick in nests by right clicking to gain a semi-random number of feathers and maybe an egg every now and then, causing the bird particles to dive-bomb the seraph. I get the feeling that particles, even sort of complex ones, are much lighter on lag than actual creatures.

I'd also love to be able to make salt pans along the coast. It could be something like laying stone slabs flat in the top layer of sea water and enclosing them on all but one side would make a salt pan (like how the game figures out you're making a charcoal pit). In the height of summer, or after enough days with a high outside temperature, a layer of salt could form on the central slab. I don't want to be a miner just to make my cheese.