Bruno Willis

I think new plants could be a way to let players choose 'hard mode': You have common plants available which are pretty easy to farm, have little depth (as now). Then you add in interesting plants, - plants that use 2 types of nutrients, plants which need trellises and get blown over in high wind, plants which die if they get too wet, plants which get diseases and need to be pruned and maintained regularly, plants which only give seeds if treated just right. The more complex plants would need to be worthwhile in some way, but the main purpose would be to let people who like to garden give themselves extra challenges, and then let them show off when they manage to grow a really difficult crop. It'd be really interesting if players could go down a gardening rabbit hole and forget they ever promised a bronze pickaxe to that guy in the valley over.

Violins. It's clear that chapter 3 will be primarily a violin concerto arch, and we'll need a lot of rosin for our bow strings.

Okay, crafting a coracle without a crafting grid: Right-click on dirt with a stick and get options like with clay shaping. one of the options would be a pile of sticks, one would be a wicker basket, and another would be the coracle! Picking the coracle would stick your stick upright in the ground and direct you with green lines to stick other sticks in the ground to make a circle. Once you'd done that you would be directed to 'weave' sticks around the circle to make a giant basket. When you'd reach the top of the upright sticks, you'd be directed to add more upright sticks into those, and repeat the weaving until you produce a big dome shaped basket. At this point, ideally, the unfinished coracle would have a collision box unlike the current sailing boats You'd then be directed to cover it with a number of oiled pelts or leather (or copper sheets?). Once done, you'd be directed to stitch them on with twine or linen thread, oil it all with a couple of lumps of fat or bee's wax, and you'd be done. The coracle would have a "climb under" option, which would let you sleep under it like a slightly less comfortable hay bed, a "store" option, which would allow you to access a limited number of gear slots on it: at least twice as much as can be carried by a raft, and it would have a "drag" option, which would let you flip it over and slowly drag it, to get it into and out of the water. In the water, you'd have a "climb in" option to row the thing, the same "store" option, and the same "drag" option.

I really like this idea. Say when you first turn the block into farmland, all its nutrients start at half full. It's got some, but it's also got somewhere to go. I think the goal of rewarding dedication to farm plots is really interesting. What if soil types were treated more like levels that can be 'leveled up' with good farming practice: If you leave barren farmland under mulch for a single winter, it would become low fertility soil -> Low fertility soil under mulch for 2 winters becomes medium fertility soil -> Medium fertility soil under mulch for 4 winters becomes high fertility soil. By the same token there could be a mechanic for making abused soil revert down a level - perhaps overuse of chemical fertilizers, or growing the same crop repeatedly on the same soil (build-up of specific pests and diseases in the soil). Terra Preta would still be something special you need to make, but maybe it would be by placing charcoal and bonemeal and compost on high fertility soil and then tilling it, instead of using a crafting grid.

and more stylish.

But I don't want to sit in the lake, spinning in circles cause I'm not a good rower... Actually, coracles would be amazing. I think you can tip them over to make them into temporary tents. They'd be pretty much perfect for nomadic lifestyle, and could be stone age, using oiled pelts and sticks and twine.

This is key. You can learn to avoid all the fights you don't think you can win, but when you come to the boss, it's all over. Your strategy fails. If they kept the ability to get thrown into those upper chambers though, that'd give the combat adverse playstyle options in the boss combat.

Be warned. They have mouths in many places.

I think the point with the weeds is not to completely shut down a crop, but to make it less efficient. I would balance it so that a garden which is hoed and planted might get weeds growing all through it if un-tended, and have a %80 yield. Yes, that's going to slow down a speed run which relies on mass farming, but it won't shut that playstyle down (and also the yield reduction could easily be altered until the balance is right). Say weeds have 4 growth stages. 1 Little = do no harm but give visual interest. 2 Medium = host crop gives %80 yield, and the weed is visually obvious. 3 Grown = host crop gives %60 yield, harvesting the crop leaves the weeds at growth stage 1. 4 Overgrown = the farmland reverts to a soil block, crop is treated like a wild growing crop, and the weeds are tall and impressive. The growth stages would be slow, so that after a year's growing without weeding, there would be weeds all through your garden at growth stage 2. In your second year, if you didn't bother A. weeding, or B. tilling out a new big field, you'd get into the weeds seriously and end up at harvest time with reverted farmland and wild crops. The weeds would be extensions of what already grows on fallow farmland: overgrown grass, abundant horsetail and flowers, so it wouldn't be all bad. If you were implementing weeds like this, you'd want to add mulch too, which would maintain moisture and prevent weed growth until it broke down. You'd also get the materials to make mulch by harvesting a weedy garden, so you could do one massive field to get your sails up, and use the weeds to make mulch for a more condensed and easily managed garden in your second year. It adds long term complexity, but I don't think it'd make that first crop push much more challenging.

No need to be mean! But this is a sticking point for me about the first story location in general - it feels like you're asked to play by different rules than the ones you've prepared for in the rest of the game, but it isn't to train you for how it's going to be going forward. Still, there are ways to deal with that horrible metal frog, and while that fight is not the most enjoyable, it is scary.

This is an excellent early game nomadic technique. If we had viable nomadic style transport at each of the tech levels, it would make travel much more fun. When rivers are added a travois would pair with a canoe which would have a similar carry capacity, but would require leather working for the canoe skin.

The other thing is, the longer you can remain mobile, the more likely you are to find a truly excellent place to settle down. Even if I plan on making it a temporary shelter, I often find myself investing more and more, and before long I'm dug in and the idea of moving is just too much. I think a system of tiered mobile homes would be fantastic: Yurts and maybe a storage option which allows you to haul a lot, but slows you to a crawl. -> Elk-drawn caravans which can be built and chiseled, and made to count as a room when not traveling and can carry a fair bit of your life with you -> houseboats working with the same rules, but larger and ocean-bound. That's allow you to set up an orchard in a high fruit tree spot, a mine and furnace where the iron ore is, and legitimately move between them depending on the season. In the mean time, you might explore for that perfect base spot. It'd also give travel much more viability, being able to take a mini-base with you where you can sleep in comfort and see your progress visually on your caravan.

I like croptweaks a lot, but it comes with increased crop spoilage speed, and seeds can spoil too, which I found stress inducing and made me unwilling to leave my base. I've just realized that the mod is configurable though, so I'll be going back to it, but giving crops and seeds a far lower spoilage rate. Apart from he spoilage rate issue, it feels like base game, fully fits into the difficulty and complexity level of the game. It's not too much or too little, and I think it would be a good adition to the base game, alongside a restrained addition of weeds, a good way for garden beds to revert to grassy dirt, and a subtle way to improve your seed stock.

It would be really nice if there was still a reason to collect mushrooms in your second year. There is a good mod to make crops go to seed you might be aware of: https://mods.vintagestory.at/zippyscroptweaks . I found it rewarding. Choosing to re-plant all your grain to get a proper grain harvest instead of eating any is a really fun cost-benefit choice, as is letting things go to seed rather than harvesting them for crops.

I'd prefer it if you had to write down your recipes in a recipe book in world. What a treasure that'd be to steal from another player.

Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I agree. We don't want ritual and superstition feeling like a viable method for players. I could imagine meeting an NPC who swears their cool looking charms and amulets keep the monsters away and make their crops grow bigger and more bountifully. They could even sell a few charms to the player... But I agree, you wouldn't want the charms to actually work. It would shift the tone in an unhelpful way for the base game.

This! That'd make cooking more of an art than a step by step science, in a really good way. If a player memorized a few useful combos, they'd actually be a better cook, and be able to take the same ingredients as anyone else and get something more satisfying out of it. It'd encourage specialization naturally rather than through classes.

I really like how the investment in terra pretta pays off in this game. You really only need a little bit, say 18 blocks or so, to produce way more food than you need in 1 year. It feels like you can do a year of intensive farming to fill up your cellar, and then the next year you can put in a crop and just go off adventuring. I think weeds might be a good way to do this without adding too much complexity, and I've found weeding can be really satisfying in other games (don't starve). I don't think you would want it to be so disruptive that it makes big farms pointless, rather it would just make them increasing inefficient, and make maintaining a high quality little garden a little more interesting. I also think a way to subtly improve your crops could help, but that one's been gone over many times already.

That seems like a feature not a bug

Playing a slightly faster running class really helps. Since I've started playing clockmaker, I've just been able to run run run and I'm usually alright. Sometimes I see wolves dozing in the sun and I jump over them. I like to hear them yap. I wouldn't do that to a bear though, cause they don't sound as cute.

My first experience with this, I thought the point might be to try and land on one of the ledges and end the fight early by running away. I tried that a lot, and died a lot. Has anyone managed? Is it even possible to be thrown into one of the upper tunnels?

I have a feeling the devs, and most of the player base, wouldn't be interested in seeing what that story was like. Because vintage story is realistic and uncompromising, I'd imagine there'd be a few moments of bloodlust, and a long long time of sandbox play in a lonely world with no NPCs to talk to. I certainly wouldn't want the devs to spend any real time worrying about that playstyle.

Grim. But it is fair to say that if a player does this sort of thing, there really should be repercussions. Word should get out and traders should refuse to trade, maybe send you on "quests" which are deathtraps, perhaps certain story locations might become closed to you, causing the whole storyline to be incompletable. I think that is a worthwhile addition, but hopefully not a particularly pressing one since people usually don't kill the NPCS. It's probably worth adding a bit of a Morrowind treatment as is, just to say "yes we saw that." Probably not worth producing much hidden content for though.

Sure. I'm still getting familiar with forum etiquette. A ritual isn't the same thing as building a machine though. A ritual would imply some sort of spiritual power being invoked, whereas a machine implies using what one knows about natural law and order to get something done. I will also note that what you've described here regarding the trial and error to figure things out, is the scientific method, which isn't really used for rituals. As already noted by @Teh Pizza Lady though, the solution to rifts already exists with the rift ward. Build the machine, and keep it powered, and it will stop rifts from opening within the protected area. It's basically a lightning rod, but for temporal anomalies instead of electrical charges. I'm not sure if this is right, but I was under the impression that torches discourage rift spawning. I don't know if that means rifts are less likely to spawn, or if creatures are less likely to emerge from them if a torch is nearby, but either way that implies fire might be a simple technology for shutting down rifts. I could imagine building a bonfire on the ground under a rift (dangerous, nauseating work) and then lighting it up and hoping to "burn out" the rift with the light and heat. Pouring those logs onto the fire, because you really don't want a rift in the middle of your courtyard. This idea only works if torches do actually have an effect on rift forming though. If torches have an effect on rift spawns, burning incense and candles might have a minute effect. Even if it were too small to be noticed or gamified, people might start associating all sorts of fire with stability and ritualize that.

Fair. Okay, for me it's more about wanting to take multiple paths and avoid combat where possible. I'm not so keen on the idea that you can only do story locations in plate armor. I love how many different ways you can play outside of story locations, and I would like to see some of that diversity supported in story locations. Not all play styles, not mining: I think the restrictions are there for a reason, but I think they're a bit tighter than they need to be. To reiterate: All of that is about keeping the current, lovely story locations, and just adding a few more options for how you might interact with them.