Bruno Willis

With the new dungeons, clutter is more easily accessed. It looks great, but doesn't feels rare anymore. If Clutter were delicate and likely to break, it could be used all through ruins and still be precious. I've been looting dungeons for aged stone variants, which has caused me to A: have the most fun building I've had so far and B: burn through two pickaxes and a chisel on aesthetics in the very early game. I think both things are great for gameplay, but I've left behind an absolute mess in the looted ruins, (a worse sort of mess than before). I'm too early game to take any clutter, so it's just floating in defiance of time?/gravity. My looted dungeons look horrible now. To solve this, let's make clutter actually fragile: Have clutter disintegrate very quickly when mined without first gluing. (mine speed increased to something like that of haybales). Keep the slow mining speed once clutter is glued (to imply you are being very very careful with the repaired piece). Give clutter a high chance to disintegrate if walked on (10% for rust-foes, 20% for malefactors, 50% blackguards, 30% everyone else). Let clutter be affected by gravity, and be guaranteed to disintegrate if it falls (With something like a 60% chance to survive falls after it's been glued up). Have clutter disintegrate if hit with an attack? (I don't know how attacks interact with the environment so please correct me if that wouldn't work) That way when you enter a ruin and see the clutter you don't just gloss over it thinking, "I'll loot and clear this place out, and come back for the clutter later." You move cautiously around the ancient space, accidentally shattering old tables and rusted iron grates with the smallest touch, and when you see something special you make sure to glue it up quickly, before it gets destroyed on accident. That way you really value the clutter you glue up. It'd let you feel like an archeologist if you're careful, or a barbarian in a ceramics exhibit if you're not. Also, imagine how satisfying it would be to fight a shiver in a dungeon, being nocked onto a crate, which shatters under you. You swing wildly, miss, and destroy a rotten table with a single blow...

Sticky dirt. Lets you play with block sideways instability without the hillsides sliding off their bones when a rabbit walks past. Gives you wonderful moments when climbing and a clod of earth breaks free from under you and you've got a second to jump to safety or plumet down with it.

I like the idea of simulating the movement of large groups of animals like this: I think, unlike predator animals, you don't want prey animals to have the ability to keep spawning (I don't think you were suggesting they could, I'm just extrapolating from the dens discussion). Having a big group move into an area at the start of each spring seems like a really interesting way to encourage hunting in set areas, getting to know the tricks of the location etc. If animals are not re-spawning until the next spring, the player might choose to hold off on hunting until the summer or autumn when the animals get a bit of weight on them, in which case you'd be more incentivized to wipe out the bears and wolves before they whittle down the prey animal population. You'd feel more like you were competing for protein with the other predators, and for a wee while you'd feel pretty outmatched by the bears.

All of the above! I love this idea. Sounds like the sort of rust foe that might follow you up out of a dungeon and get you when you least expect it.

And here's a horrible idea: cave flooding during rain. Would it be crazy if caves with water flowing in them had the chance to gradually fill up during/after rainfall? They'd dry up again after a while. I'm imagining the game noticing when flowing water is under ground, and when that water stops flowing horizontally (becomes blocked), the game uses a temporary flood-fill command, layer by layer, to fill that part of the caves with pooled water. Maybe 1 layer of water for every day after rain starts, with the flooding starting at the end of the first day and ending 2 days after the last rainfall. Using the pre-existing flood fill mechanic means larger spaces can't get flooded out, only contained depressions. If it were flood-filling using a special type of water which knows it's going to dry up again, maybe it wouldn't be too complex? The flooding would also be restricted to areas underground which already have flowing waterfalls going into them, so it would be a risk you can notice as you go in, and wouldn't be overly widespread. Caves seem like a more controllable environment to attempt flooding mechanics than on river banks, and also offer more dramatic flooding because water is getting channeled and condensed, so it can rise really fast (this is one of the big risks of caving, I think, so it'd be exciting to see it in game). It'd also be amazing if water dripped from the ceilings of caves for a good while after rainfall.

With the addition of the new dungeons, I feel like the devs could replace most caves in hard stone regions with old mining cavities. Imagine a straight shaft dropping directly into a maze of obviously hand-dug branches, half flooded, full of cave-ins and rotten support beams. They would be empty of loot, just a replacement for the current caves in those regions, with the same possibility for cave ruins to generate attached (or maybe a slightly increased possibility of generating cave ruins?) To re-cap, that'd mean: - And in the hard stone regions where we wouldn't realistically see caves, instead we get abandoned mine shafts dropping straight into narrow, zig-zagging branches.

I've started a bunch of new worlds recently and run about them in survival, and as I got used to what the new berry bushes look like, I found it just as easy as before to get a good berry feed in the very early game, just with a bit more variation. I also feel like wild berry bushes in the same group have more variety in when they're going to ripen, which means it's now a lot easier to keep relying on wild berries and harvesting a handful here and there, even in places you've already harvested before.

This mod here: https://mods.vintagestory.at/realisticwater is going in a really interesting direction. I've been playing with various river mods, and all the explicit terrain gen mods just can't handle water mechanics. If any other terrain feature interrupts a generated river, you get horrible messy water or hollows carved through hills. By focusing on making water work more realistically, this mod maker has gotten closer to realistic rivers (in my opinion) without changing the terrain at all. By giving water properties which let it work more realistically, and allowing it to alter terrain over time, I think this would get us to rivers in a way which also supports soil instability, aqueducts, and damning rivers. Build realistic water before trying to make shapes that look like realistic rivers: that way the rivers will feel like rivers not just look like them.

If bear and wolf spawns were decoupled from fixed spawns in general, and then the individual animals had a new behavior which let them make dens which would then establish their long-term presence, that might get around many of the issues. What if certain structures like ruins and cave entrances had a tag attached to them which said "suitable for den", and then we moved to slightly reduced, randomized wolf and bear spawns. Then those individual animals would get a new behavior which asks them to find the nearest suitable den location and build a den there - lets use the bear dragging a kill home as an example. The game would change the tag to "den". Those mob-built dens would then become an anchor point for that randomly spawned predator, and could generate a new predator after 5-10 days there if the original dies but the den remains intact (yes, that's still farmable, but just worse than farming pigs). An additional way for the danger to grow over time might be that once a randomly spawned bear or wolf makes a den, it doesn't count towards the mob cap? anymore, which lets the game potentially spawn another wandering predator in the nearby area. This might be more realistic for bears, but less realistic for wolves (bears are solitary, wolves are not). Maybe wolf dens would have the ability to multiply by themselves every spring, where bear dens don't? With this change way we keep the chance for predators to just wander close to your base (which I agree is a good feature) but we also get this feeling of tracking threats to their homes and wiping them out for good (game progression not tied to tech tree or story). I also think the current spawn system simulates animals wandering into the area surprisingly well, so we get to keep that effect while adding the feeling that they can set up homes and become a worse issue if left to thrive. And of course this: I'd also like to keep the bears marking their territory with scratch marks: Maybe each bear spawns in with the ability to scratch logs 3 times total, and only starts doing that once its established a den. One of the things I like about tying resin logs to bear scratching is that it means every time you see a resin log you start thinking: "has a bear moved in here? Oh no." And you also start thinking: "Oh, the local brown bear's over there right now! I can sneak into her den and harvest all that resin that seeps out of her warning trees." I.e. this mechanic gives resin an established threat and reward system, which I think would be fun. Another thing we get from dens which is useful is that the game can then give out information about threats. Imagine talking to a trader, and the game flags the presence of a bear den near the trader. "You want to watch out newcomer. There's something dangerous in the woods over yonder" marks on map. Or "A nasty old bear's wandered close and set up a den around here." marks on map "Makes getting supplies in a challenge. You bring me its head and you can have some of my stock, free of charge... within reason." (discount with bear head).

Bears are mini-bosses without lairs, and without mechanisms which can be used by the devs to make them into deliberate challenges. Wolves sort of share this issue too. By tying predator spawns to dens, the devs could simultaneously make predators more realistic, and also make them more useful game tools. I've been thinking and posting about them a fair bit. This is how I'd make dens work: Structure: When caves are generated, cave mouths with horizontal floors are assigned a den status: 1:Empty 2:Bear den 3:Wolf den. (the numbers represent approximate likelihood). If a cave mouth is assigned as a den, the game adds a dirty floor to the cave and half covers it with animal skeletons. Rarely, it also generates the remains of a failed camp: cracked vessels, owl chests, soiled bedding and gnawed on human skeletons. Spawning: Each den would generate with a number of animal "beds": 0-2 for bear dens, or 1-8 for wolve dens. These would be 1 block sized dry grass and rubbish nests (not necessarily realistic) which each represent spawn potential. If there was ever no animal assigned to a "bed", the game would wait 1-5 days, then spawn an appropriate replacement animal there. That would mean a built-in grace period before predators spawn at the start of the game. It would also mean that players could clear dens by destroying the beds animals have built there. At the start of every spring, the game would generate 1 "bed" on the dirt floor of each cave that was assigned a den status, maxing out at the top of the spawn score (2 "beds" for a bear den, etc.). In that way, dens would re-generate gradually if cleared, or become worse problems if left unchecked. Behavior: Bears would doze in their beds briefly during the night, and hibernate there if the snow got too bad (tie hibernation to snow presence not season?) Bears would drag any large kills back to their beds to eat, finding the closest free space to leave the bones. This would lead to a growing spread of skeletons around a successful bear's den. A bear attacked while dragging a corpse back would drop the corpse and fight, giving players a way to distract bears and steal their kills. Once a bear had finished eating its meal, it would find the nearest un-scratched log block within reach, and scratch it (mark the log with obvious scratch marks). That behavior would could be interrupted if the bear saw any prey/threats to eat of course. Scratched pine or acacia logs would become resin leaking logs after 90 days or so. Wolves would doze in their "beds" during the day, or stay within 30 blocks of their beds as guards (meaning you're more likely to see wolves during the night and in winter, and bears during the day). How this could be used: Once predator spawns are tied to specific blocks and locations, the devs can use them as realistic guardians for ruins, to justify higher loot in some places (people were too scared to go near...) and to make getting that loot a challenge. The devs might add ruin variants which are set as bear or wolf dens, to give players a nasty surprise when they see a tempting looking tower ruin on the edge of a forest. They might also hide good cave ruins behind bear and wolf dens, implying that no-one has been able to get into that cave and loot those ruins. Gameplay benefits: Players would get an immersive way to reduce bear and wolf spawns. Instead of trapping them in holes, players would be encouraged to follow predators back to their dens, then kill the predator and clear out the den: a challenge with a good reward: no more spawns from there until next spring. Bears would stop feeling like semi-random murder machines, and take up their rightful position as mini-bosses who are potentially guarding valuable mundane loot. Cave mouths would feel more integrated with the surface of the world.

This is a great idea. I've found, Irl, animals make really useful paths, for creatures on 4 legs. Which mean the path is all there, but the foliage still smacks you in the face and chest, so you've got to break through that stuff to make it a human suitable path. That is in pretty dense bush though, so it might be easier in more open forests.

If the devs want to enable a trader play style, I think the idea of a provider and a consumer is a really important one to work on. At the moment I think the traders are confusing: do they make/find most of what they sell? It seems like they buy in at least some of it, which implies large, distant societies (as do the various trader banners). So maybe the player is best suited to being a finder of rare and special materials, were the traders are more sedentary, with established but boring trade partners elsewhere. I'd like to be the one bringing ebony to furniture traders who can't find it, because I've been brave enough to use translocators which no-one else will risk. On the other side though, It also seems like the traders which currently exist are ill-suited to dealing with, buying, selling, transporting, bulk supplies. But, buying cheep bulk supplies and then delivering them where they're needed would be a very rewarding and possibly profitable type of gameplay for the player. I think that'd ask for a different sort of trader structure: Hamlets. These would be little extended family unit, fortified farms, or charcoal burner camps, the sort of people who could reasonably be producers of bulk goods, and probably need a little bit of everything. That way the player could buy bulk grains from a tiny farming community, and then travel to all the other little hamlets, selling portions of that stock to each other community. Basically, the seraph would take on the risk of traveling in a very dangerous world so that all these little communities could get rid of their excess produce in exchange for a little bit of everyone else's specialized stuff. What if we used clusters like this: The game places down tiny hamlets across the world, very randomly and widely spread out. There are large empty areas and areas where they are a bit closer together. The hamlets have between 3 - 6 people living in them, usually at least one parent and one child to imply human continuity. They have basic concerns, are barely scraping by, but each can easily produce lots of one thing. Hamlets produce basic goods in bulk, and buy basic goods in small amounts, as well as occasionally requesting rarer things. Example hamlets: Farmers. Have a fortified farmhouse, surrounded by small fields. Produce plenty of grain and bread, and don't buy any of it. Will buy a small amount of any other hamlets trades, for fair prices. Grandmother wants to by lapiz. Pig farmers. Large walled yard and refurbished tower. They have domestic pigs in the yard. Sell meat (ideally salami) Will buy a small amount of any other hamlets trades, for fair prices. Daughter wants to buy a wolf pup. Wood-cutters. Wood-palisade and low wattle huts. Sell logs from the local trees in bulk, as well as firewood. Will buy a small amount of any other hamlets trades, for fair prices. Father wants 1 ebony support beam, to make a replacement wooden leg. Surrounding each hamlet the game generates maybe 3-4 traders, at good, varied distances. The traders work as normal, except that each trader will offer only the location of the hamlet, whereas the hamlet people offer the location of every trader that generated around them. Traders sell small, precious items, or things which a master of their craft can make. In areas which are far from a hamlet, the game generates a special ruin, something really exciting to come across, with some extra good loot. It then adds old growth and ups the bear and wolf spawns around that area. (ideally it generates a cluster of bear and wolf cave dens around the ruin, like traders around a hamlet, but wolves and bears don't have homes yet).

I think this would be fantastic for realism. I love the idea of generating using clusters so that one area would have a whole lot of traders, each within an easy walk of the other, and in that area the ruins are already mostly looted, and then in another area there are no traders for a good distance, but the ruins are better stocked. It seems like that'd be fine in terms of balance, because spawning without traders means you'll look to looting to solve issues instead of traders. As long as the traders know and can point the way to other traders within 1K of them, and traders cluster, as soon as you find one trader, you've found a bunch of them. It also seems like, regardless of the clustering system, the treasure hunter trader could still get its guaranteed spawn relatively close to you, because if any trader is going to be out in the middle of the treasure stocked wilderness, it'll be the treasure hunter. I think this idea of cluster generation for structures is seriously good. Maybe there could be an underlying structure generation pass, where a number of ruins generate, (approximately half of what currently spawns) and where some traders generate (approximately 1/4 of the current number), using the normal generation system. Then the game lays a checkerboard of clusters across the world and designates "Deep Wilderness" "Wilderness" and "Inhabited," which then determines where it generates a second round of clustered traders for "inhabited", and extra ruins for "wilderness" and "deep wilderness", with improved loot in "deep wilderness", as well as extra dense brush and old growth.

While we're talking about manure, I'd love to see bats and sea birds in the game, along with guano in big fly-swarmed piles in the places where they nest. That'd make the sea-side feel more sea-like, and caves feel more nasty and dangerous, and give us access to a very valuable fertilizer. Guano! Guano! Guano!

Fishing flies would be cool, but I think a down duvet would be a really cool way to add sleep duration to a bed when you want it (winter with long nights) and take it off again when you don't want it (short summer nights). At the moment I use a hay bed to sleep most of the time, and a real bed only in winter. I'd prefer to have one bed which lets me sleep 6 or so hours, and then put an extra feather duvet over it in winter to sleep 8 hours. It'd also add a good cozy feeling to winter if you had to go and pull your feather duvet out of storage and put it on your bed for winter.

The design on these outfits is just exceptional. I keep being blown away by how much love and work has gone into this game. Great to see them set up like this.

The benefit of the instrument sound vocals + written dialogue is that it should be rather easy to add and expand dialogue. I'd love to see more dialogue, and more of the recent world stories told through traders. Imagine running into one rare trader who's an elderly gossip, who can tell you about the nearest two traders: "Oh Thrift. Yes yes, she came here only eight years back, fleeing her hateful family she said. Except she had some very nice pieces to sell, right away. A matching set of plates and cups, heirloom, you know. Wonder where that came from, eh?" I wonder if when setting the personality, alongside giving the traders a bit of different dialogue, it could add something to their structures: if they're dreaming of living off the land, give them a small farm plot too, or a couple of goats. If they're the remnants of a ruined settlement, surround them with recently burned ruins, etc. That'd mean even if you saw the same trader structure, it'd have even more uniqueness (they already get different decorations for each trader type, which works great). I'd love it if each personality had some unique dialogue tree, which if negotiated cleverly could let you figure out a way to get discounts from the traders. You'd only need about 6 of those to get a really cool effect, like you're getting to know the trader and get on their good side. I'd also love it if traders would offer a loaf of bread or some basic snack if you reached them and were close to starving to death. Human compassion, you know. I would also like to be able to bring them wines and share a jug with them.

That's one shifty seraph! I think this would really be the more fun way to do this, but I heard the devs talking about putting bandits in the game in an interview, and I wouldn't want to be running around killing folk, so I'm trying to subtilty influence them to having bandits be people you can talk to. If I were to put thief-shifty traders in the game, I'd love to add dialogue that shows them being uninterested in the history of the things they're looting. I.e. "Place was a mess when I found it, mold everywhere. Burned the tapestries and bookshelves and things to keep warm, but I kept these little beauties... what'll you offer me for them" I wonder if there would be a way for these sorts of traders to scam players. Something like "I can offer you a special deal today though. Nomads dropped this off to me, they didn't know what they'd got their hands on..." shows metal scraps. "A rope and stick and this trick I'll teach you, and you could make one of the most powerful weapons, right out of our brutal history. Only 5 gears and I'll teach the trick to you, what-da-ya say?" It's not exactly a lie, but they're taking advantage of ignorance to get a good price. I think that'd be fun.

I really really recommend: Landcover: 40 Landcover scale: 145 Landform scale 120 (optional, makes each island feel quite different from last). This gives you a good mix of islands. I aimed for islands as large as I could get, while still being fun to navigate the world by boat. I did a bunch of testing, and these settings will probably spawn you on quite a small island, in a world which is mainly large islands with enough space between them that you can navigate fairly confidently between landmasses. Nothing is large enough to really feel like a continent though, but it's the best I've been able to do.

Oh I'd love to see nomad bands who have unique scrap tools and weapons as ceremonial/valuable equipment. It would be so cool to see a different sort of culture to the more typical (but still very unique and interesting) settled cultures currently in the game. I think it would be really good if humans almost never killed each other. Even the bandits would be going round threatening and extorting, rather than killing. What's the point in killing, unless you really really have to? The world is so empty, anyone you find is at worst, a resource, and at best, a close ally and friend. Having reputation would be a fantastic option. This seems like a really helpful scenario for players who want to be thugs, they can threaten and get their temporary benefit, without resorting to full-blown murder. I've been playing a bit of Disco Elysium recently, and the dialogue in that can be very fun: it's tied to a random role + a stat, (the stats are very weird), and it lets you do this sort of thing. At the moment, V.S. dialogue is essentially pick a path storytelling, which works great. I would love to see what it would be like with challenge rolls applied though. I think that might make conversations more fraught and fun, at the cost of needing a bit more work to fill out the possible outcomes of a successful or failed dialogue attempt, and it might feel a bit odd when it'd be the only thing like that in the game. Actually, scratch that, you are never sure your fruit tree cuttings will take, likewise, you're never sure your threat will take. Instead of stats, if V.S. wanted to add a challenge roll mechanic to dialogue, I would assign a stat point to each piece of clothing and gear that can be worn openly. Malefactor facemask: +1 skullduggery? Clockmaker's apron: +1 craft-talk. Blackguard's armor: +1 soldier's solidarity. Courtier's pantyhose: +1 flamboyance. This is sort of an alternative to the quite cool way the game currently recognizes your background and automatically opens up special lines of dialogue for you because of that. If we used challenge rolls and improvements to the chances of some challenges based on gear, we'd instead get to open up those dialogue options if we could pass a semi-risky check. It would give more fluidity to your character - have you changed? You've gravitated towards your same old equipment so no, or you're wearing noble's clothing now, and lots of bling... +4 Oldmoney, you don't look like a malefactor anymore. But it would make conversation a challenge rather than a natural, non-stressed way of telling the story. That's a design choice for the devs, I think, rather than a hard and fast one is better than the other decision.

Just because they don't say they're robbing you, doesn't mean they're not robbing you. Imagine giving them some food, expecting the clink of gears in return, but you get none, and the commander just does that laughter animation. What do you do? exit the conversation and fight them? They attack you if you havnen't given them enough. If you keep buying from them, and they keep not giving you anything, they're essentially robbing you anyway, and don't need to resort to violence. I really like this read of bandits. I think they'd be a much higher threat to traders than a seraph, although I imagine they might want to find your house and rob it, but I think that would be too far for a game like this one. Yeah, I was imagining how concerned I'd be meeting a well armed, small squad of soldiers asking about any settlements in the area. I'm not telling them! I imagine them as a looting party for some large and aggressive society far far away, but it would make more sense if they were just well armed, traveling traders.

I love the new trader houses. They seem well defended and well thought out, as well as very very cozy. What remains is an issue that I've felt since I first started playing: frequency of traders. Why are there so many, when I'm the only person they can trade with? Where do they get their food from? Did they grow up wanting to live alone and isolated, and then leave their parents and go out into the wild and just wait? For who? Me? Obviously, they're this frequent so that they can be found, but it feels quite odd. I think there are two parts to the solution for this, and both would be cool in their own right. It may be very unrealistic, but I thought I might as well throw it out there and see what sticks. Traders know each other: Each trader would know the location of a nearby trader with a different trade to them. If asked about other people like them, a trader would say "do you have any... (X very specific food)" If you brought it to them, they'd tell you that you should offer it to (name of nearest trader), as "it's their favorite food." They would mark the location of the new trader on your map. If you know the favorite food of a trader and bring them some when you visit, they give you slight discounts. That way, it becomes a method to find new traders, or a way to learn the favorite food of a trader you already know about. Half of the current trader generation locations are replaced with empty camp-sites. It might be built in a ruin, or be an empty, old camp-fire and a hidden stack of aged firewood, or any number of things. The camp sites would ideally be claimed, but still allow players to use the firewood and firepits (if possible?). During the spring, summer and autumn, there is a good chance a traveling group will generate in one of the camp sites. Once they've generated in, they move to the next closest camp sight or trader each day, tracking in a general direction until they've traveled maybe 6 stops, before disappearing (they'd only actually appear if the player generated the spot they're supposed to be in). Hopefully that would simulate them traveling across the map, without any need to have them actually walk. There would be a whole lot of different traveling groups, but each would have a commander/elder/spokesperson who would offer limited trades for food, a specific want, or the location of a distant trader, and a small group of unfriendly (not speaking much) companions. Groups: Most travelers would be stone-age nomads. Their elder would pay 1 gear for full, sealed crocks, and 2 gears for any metal object, of any metal variety. (not a good deal, but they're poor). The elders would share the locations of traders freely. Other less likely travelers: Refugees. Their spokesperson would pay 1 gear for any cooked food, any sort (an excellent deal, they're starving). and 2 gears for any metal weapon. They would share the location of a distant trader for 3 gears. They'd accept donations. If you could tell them the location of a certain hospitable story location, they would give you a piece of "precious" jewelry, like a crown or neckless, in thanks. Bronze-age nomads. Their elder would offer a bronze knife for 2 pies of any sort, and sell furs for gears. They would share the location of a distant trader for free if the player made a trade with them. Soldiers. Their commander would pay 2 gears for 64 grain (sad soldier rations). They would ask about the locations of any traders or story locations, and pay 2 gears per location given up. The soldiers would keep their spears leveled at the player, even during negotiations. If spoken to, they'd all say variations of "You're ordered to speak with the commander, then leave." Bandits. similarly aggressive body language as with the soldiers. Their commander would have obviously questionable dialogue, and would pay 3 gears for any food type, but not actually pay when the trade button was pressed, just take your offering. Would offer jewelry and ruins loot for gears. Would offer to pay 6 gears per location of traders or story location given up, but would ultimately not give away the gears. If the player made more than 3 transactions with them (remembering they rarely give what they say they'll give) then they'd just let the player go. Otherwise, after leaving the conversation, the bandits would attack the player.

I think that if root vegetables produced really abundantly if planted in quality soil, and grains cared less about soil quality, that'd be alright. In that situation, you're using your scythe to a few dozen rye plants, and then dipping into your kitchen garden and digging a couple of turnips up, and getting similar yields. This is coming from an interesting point MKMoose made in this thread:

I really share your goal with this suggestion, but I don't think we need to change so much to get there. I think the current nutrient system is a real strength which can be worked with. I particularly like your idea of separating out bulk, low maintenance plants, and cared for, garden plants. That feels really right to me. Here's an alternative way to get there: Add weeds, and tie weed growth to quality of soil and proximity to grass and weeds: the better the soil the faster weeds spread across it. The Closer grass is, the more likely a weed will generate in one of the garden plots. That would mean potentially any crop could be grown intensively on quality soil, but would require tilling. It would also mean bulk crops planted on lower quality soil would be more resistant to weeds, especially if you edged the outside of your bulk field with stone walls or paths (as a later game improvement). That's not a change in the plants themselves, nessisarily, just giving a sort of value to low fertility soils. They become good for set and forget farming. Tilling, as you suggest. As you suggest, make crops like cabbages really thrive (and possibly continuously produce) when kept in good quality soil. Do realistic hydration. We really need a way for rain to be enough, in a normal year, to keep gardens at a reasonable hydration level. I'd say that's a combination of making more hydration good up to a point, with reducing rates of return, and then eventually getting worse again (see diagram), and also adding more light rain potential in the early early mornings. It'd be good if a really rainy year could have some consequences too, but that's an added extra. The main thing is to allow realistic gardens. You don't need, or even want, water sources right up against your garden plots. Give animals food preferences - drawing on what you suggested, have animals prioritize specific foods. Hares would really go for cabbages and more delicate greens, but would ignore grains once they get past the first stage of growth. That way the only animals you're worried about grazing on your unfenced field of rye are deer and goats, which themselves are an asset, something good to hunt, if they come wandering close to your bulk fields. As you said, nitrogen fixing crops/plants would be a good addition. Manure... I really don't know. I've played with a mod which added it, and it was pretty over-involved, which maybe contributed to it being less fun. I think if it needed to be piled up, like bones can be, but when it reached max, it would turn into a full block of manure which could then be used, that might simulate letting the manure develop, without adding too much unintuitive gameplay. I don't think manure is quite as critical as you're suggesting though. Useful, but not the end of the world if you don't use it. I don't think diseases are the best idea, except maybe in glass houses? If we add diseases, farming will get more fun and more realistic, at the expense of the rest of the game? Saying that, I do really like the idea that rye grown in over-soggy soil might develop a psychodelic mold on the grain, which when eaten could have effects like the liberty cap, as a slightly inaccurate reference to the dancing plague of 1518 https://retrospectjournal.com/2025/03/30/dance-until-you-drop-the-dancing-plague-of-1518/ (I tried to make your quote hide so that people didn't need to read it twice, but now it's extra hidden and I don't know how to fix that, so... oops.)

Oh sick, yeah that's worth bringing up! Okay, here's an option: 1. the payer would fill a cooking pot with 2 slots of rye grain, and 2 slots of water, then leave it for 12 hours, after which it would become pumpernickel dough. 2. they would "seal" the cooking pot with a daub of clay, and put it in a hot, but not too hot, clay oven. 3. the tool tip would note the heat of the cooking pot, and it would stabilize at the good temperature, and stay that temp a long time (that'd be a special property of putting cooking pots in the clay oven, simulating extra thermal mass). Up to four cooking pots could go in the stove at one time. That seems hard enough to justify a good high nutrition value and long storage time, but interestingly enough, it doesn't even require metalworking to get to that stage, just patience and lots of grain.