Bruno Willis

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.

I was also quite frustrated when I first entered the R.A. and realized my stack of rope ladders and my explosives were useless. Then I got to enjoying the location design and I didn't mind so much, but it still bothers me. For the most part, especially when it comes to player behavior towards NPCs, I agree with LadyWYT. The current land claim system enforces the tone of the game and moral character of the seraphs, and it does it well and fairly subtlety. The story of the game suggests that we are interested in communities recovering, have good intentions towards other people, and are unwilling to desecrate significant sites. But we are also survivors and adventurers. The current land claim system limits the sort of tools the game considers 'adventurer's equipment' to a very small pool, with torches being the only placeable tools of the lot. It does this because if we adventured in story locations like we do in caves and ruins, we'd ruin special places as well as our own gameplay experience. If land claims were to change, it would have to be in a way which preserves the tone and moral character of the game, and doesn't undercut the current story location design. It might be worth changing claims because claimed areas feel a bit artificial, and also stop player using tactics they've learned elsewhere when they encounter story locations. We discussed this a bit in the "Combat is too shallow for it to be so integral to the game." thread, so I'll just summarize a few of the ideas for changes we had, and their issues as I see them now: Placement and removal of a limited selection of items within claimed areas - rope ladders, beds, cookfires and pots, maybe explosives. Issues: allows construction of artificial barriers to cheese combat in a way which doesn't support mood. Might create three separate systems, free gameplay, partially claimed, and fully claimed (for npcs), instead of two. Having those items disappear in some way - either they time out, and slowly flicker out of existence like temporal storm rust-foe do. Issue: still allows barrier building, but keeps the story locations pristine. Rust foes break or pick up those items when they would interact with them. Issues: rust foe aren't that smart and don't exhibit the ability to break stuff out of claimed areas. Still, this would keep story locations mostly pristine and not allow barrier building. Making a noise or alteration sensing system, like a sleepy monster, which gradually wakes as things are placed or broken. It would punish placing items or breaking items in claimed zones by becoming a terrible threat, lowering stability massively, etc. Issues: very story location specific, also allows locations to be damaged and altered, and areas to be cheesed and mined, for possibly very unrewarding gameplay (run away, come back when its calm, mine another couple of pretty lights, then run away again...). Rework items to work in claimed areas within existing conditions, i.e. make the scrap bomb throwable. Issues: maybe bad people kill lots of NPCs :-( Class of portable items, as with #1, with bags/back packs, a portable stove, sleeping bag, bombs & traps? Smoke screens, noise makers, flares, caltrops? which can be placed in claimed areas, automatically broken if placed in a crucial location. Issues: as with #1, could be used to block foes from getting through corridors. Griefing with bombs and traps in player claimed areas. Automatically collect 'portable items' back into inventory when the owner walks too far way. Issues: it might have to happen as a seraph walks out of arm's reach of an item, otherwise it might feel odd, but a seraph's arm's reach is massive so... This seems like a very good solution to a lot of these issues. What I see as the best case scenario for changing claimed areas is making a class of portable items which explicitly say "can be used in claimed areas" on their handbook entry, which would do double duty by informing players that other items can't be used there. Making items which Devs want to be used in adventures usable without placement where possible (scrap bombs). Adding interesting extra items into the portable items category: portable stoves, smoke screens, caltrops etc. and having them automatically collect back into inventory if you go too far away, and also become temporally unstable and disappear if a rust-foe tries to get past them for long enough (Maybe a short delay of 2 seconds before they phase out). I'd love this change but I don't think it's the biggest priority. I do think it would give the devs a few more fun options for story location design, and would make claimed areas feel less jarringly different to the rest of gameplay.

You can preserve apple juice. You fill a jar with apple juice, heat it in a pan of water till it is hot, then seal the lid. It'll keep in a cellar for more than a year without fermenting. (that is, in real life)

I feel like this game could do with supporting very sub-optimal options. It would be really fun if hanging stick and string mobiles with a rust gear in the center could reduce the percentage of rift spawns in the area by like, 0.2%, so you'd have to turn your area into a crazy witch-warren of charms to actually see any effect. Some people would do it. I would hang a few around if they had random variation in their design. I also think blackguards should be able to eat pies whole, and some drifters will go away if you offer them a nice warm bowl of stew. The game wouldn't be worse for it.

I think the monsters would be more fun if they were rarer but more lore accurate, specifically being able to climb fences and clumsily open doors. That'd make them creepier and a categorically different threat to the wildlife. Saying that, I don't think the current versions of surface monsters are that nerfed from a lore perspective. If you think about the size of that other location, one death a year would be unsustainable. I'm doing risky things, but surface monsters still murder me way more than once per year and I'm a well equipped seraph. To ordinary folk the surface monsters are still a long term existential threat. I do wish the traders would take the threat seriously though. It feels like they've paid the rust monsters protection money at the moment. That idea to make rifts spawn more in unstable areas would be excellent: It'd also help players notice faster that they shouldn't be settling down in that spot. I think having a desperate measures option to keep out rifts and spawns makes the Jonas tech more exciting. "We're out of firewood and the horrors are almost through!" "We built the woodshed out of logs, didn't we? Get cutting."

I think this brings up a key issue with combat, which is that the current combat system and foes don't encourage people to build walls and towers and fortifications, our aesthetic sensibilities do. Sure, the walls are useful, but not any where near as useful as a pit and a dirt box. I think a good way to improve combat would be to design the foes we will experience at our bases to be best countered with fortifications. That would mean giving rust foes the ability to climb fences and open doors if they try for long enough, and some way to keep the center of a fortress free from foes in a storm. Maybe that means single use mid-game technology like these maybe? It'd be cool to, for instance, set up a bonfire in the center of a walled fort, and when the temporal storm sweeps in you all run inside the walls and light the bonfire. The huge light and heat from the bonfire would prevent spawns in a reasonable area, letting you all prepare in the open and try to barricade the doors before they're breached, or open the doors just before they're breached so that you can have controlled fights. (I like the idea of a bonfire because it is A- a heavy investment of basic materials B- very medieval rather than si-fi and C- could look and sound epic.) At present fortifications are as useful as handicrafts when a temporal storm sweeps in.

On a slightly different note, the auto loot feature on the falx is actually a big change to combat. I've gone from having to kill rot beasts to just targeting the tough ones and hitting them until I get a gear, then fleeing. It's made getting loot from combat more interesting and slightly less resource intensive.

For me it was shocking because it told me the story location gameplay would use different rules and techniques than the ones I had learned through normal gameplay. It sort of feels like you're playing two different games, normal and story mode. I love VS so much, it has replaced all others for me, but that moment when I realized I couldn't use many of the skills I'd learned outside the dungeon anymore was a very disappointing one. I know now, and I have a great time and really enjoy the story locations, but I think having such a tactics divide between the claimed and unclaimed locations feels off. Saying that, the tall and timey story location is an excellent example of adding extra rules that are unique to a story location. I think that works because it is adding options, rather than removing them, and because it feels in-world justified. It's interesting to imagine what the RA would be like if it was unclaimed, but every time you broke something or sprinted in armor, or did anything else particularly noisy, a light would blink on on the darkened figure in the center, and then slowly fade to black again. Get too many lights lit and things get temporally unstable, locusts pour from high spots, essentially the space becomes unbeatable and you have to retreat. It would make it more of a tense, heist like scenario where you're pausing after every loud noise, waiting to see if the thing in the center heard you. I am not sure if that would be better or worse, but it is a different way than just saying "only combat and placing story things now". I guess what I'm getting at is the whole "you cannot break things, this place is claimed by a higher power" feels interesting and ominous, but is literally a deus ex machina for the devs. It would be more interesting if they said "you shouldn't break things here, this place is claimed by a higher power" and then backed it up in world with interesting, brutal consequences. You get almost the same gameplay, but you get rid of that artificial divide between game modes.

This mod - bare bones as it is - totally transforms the way I play the game. Just being able to see grey outlines of mountains in the far distance makes everything feel really big and makes exploration way more exciting. Including this mod in the base game and improving on it would make these grand scale terrain generation options work, and in my opinion making big, realistic terrain will make exploration so much better.

I've talked about this before, but I think it shows it's value here well: adding a satisfaction saturation bar. Essentially, spices would be able to fill this bar up faster, drinking alcohol would too, and eating varied meals would fill this up very gradually. It'd give people a good reason to pursue those hard to make meals and drinks, and to go out on a mushroom cutting expedition even when they've got their vegi garden established. I think you'd also want to make filling all saturation bars a bit more impactful, and there are plenty of options for that. From slightly improving run speed, mining speed, etc, through to increasing the effectiveness of healing poultices, all the way to giving the world a rosy cheerful filter.

To jump back a bunch to this, I think the way the key story points are designed is a lot to blame to people not liking combat. At the moment, claimed areas are almost as restrictive as they can be. You can place torches in torch holders, and you can place story items in story item slots. I think opening that up just a little more would make a world of difference and open up the design space for story locations hugely. When I first prepared for the RA I gathered up a huge number of rope ladders and anti creature explosives, because I had gotten used to avoiding hard fights if I could, or taking fights on my own terms. I was so disappointed to find that I couldn't place any ladders, especially when the situation so clearly called for them. My immersion as an adventurer in a ruined land was totally broken. I also decided to hop down to the bottom of the pit and got stuck there for a long time, but that was on me. I know being able to mine blocks would totally break dungeon design, but dungeons can still be really interesting, risky and fun spaces to explore if you are avoiding detection, climbing, looking for interesting gaps to exploit. I could see VS designing key chapter points more like heists than boss battles, but it would require a change to how claiming works. Imagine if you could place some blocks in claimed areas, but the denizens would take them down again after a couple of hours or when they bumped into them (the alterations would disappear). Then the devs would be able to design maps where players would have to look around and spot holes to rope ladder up to, places where using a bomb might be a good way to kill a band of foes, and maybe even weak points in walls which a stone breaking bomb could open up a passage permanently (although this one would be the most challenging to work with). It looks like the Zelda games do a good job at making puzzle dungeons, and I really think VS suits puzzle dungeons so much better than combat dungeons. It should be able to do puzzle dungeons better than any other game. I want to be fixing things, turning ancient and gargantuan things on, use pully systems to drop tones of rock onto robotic horrors, not just stand around hitting things with lengths of bent metal. No matter how good the hitting mechanic is. (to be fair, I can see the devs are already designing 'turn things on' and 'fix broken machines' quests, but I think they're hamstrung by how restrictive the claiming system is)

I like the idea of passive "clutter" items for kitchens, like spices, jars of oil, sauces, dried herbs, etc. They'd all stack together in the way candles bunch up, and make your kitchen look used without adding any complexity to crafting recipes. Then when you cooked, the game would automatically check if there are spices, herbs, etc. within range of your cooking fire and add a benefit. I like this benefit:

The Scottish Highlanders could reliably catch bullets with their shields too, which were leather, wood and lots of little metal studs. A musket bullet would punch through easily if it struck straight on, but they held them at an angle which meant the bullets either ricocheted off the studs or burrowed into the wood.

This just isn't realistic sailing though. When you're sailing, you can usually sail in any direction except straight towards the wind. Imagine a clock- if the wind is blowing from 12:00, you can sail in directions from 2:00 all the way round to 10:00. You can get even closer to the wind with a modern sail. All you need to do to go upwind is to tack back and forth, zigzagging upwind. It's slower, but it's no big deal. (Edit: I just watched a video on valheim's sailing, and that's how it works there. Oops.) Whatever route they follow, this would be the best, simplest change. Along with making the flag on the top of the mast point away from the imagined wind direction instead of towards it. That drives my stability down every time I notice it.

I've had serious trouble finding any sedimentary stones before, and it's always been the translocators that have saved me. Find one, go through and make a ladder straight up. You'll get to know all the stone layers on your way up, and its much more fun to go transponder hunting than it is to wander the land endlessly. Every time I've needed to find a specific stone type, the translocators have led me right.

I think it would actually be really interesting if we kept the current dominant wind direction, and had sailing ships go significantly faster in that direction, then sail at the current speed across the wind, and then tacking upwind you'd go slower. It'd give some nice rhythm to sailing and travel, and you'd prefer certain routes because of the dominant wind. That'd let windmills stay as they are. Saying that, I hate that windmills don't take wind direction into consideration - those optimized windmills with rotors on all sides look so unnatural! I'd say, make wind direction mean something, and apply that across the board, but keep the world having a dominant wind direction so you can plan around it. Occasionally the wind might blow from one of the other directions, which would cause mills to halt (like they already do when the wind falls), and would allow you to sail in directions which would usually be a pain. Oh the pain. Yeah, that's happened to me too, but it taught me to always mark my park and I've been fine ever since.