Chrondeath

The idea that, with or without death, a plane crash turns into some kind of wreckage blocks that have to be salvaged, maybe with specialized equipment, to get back the plane or the expensive resources that went into its construction... maybe smoke rises from the wreckage to make it easier to pinpoint... the idea of emergent salvage expeditions amuses me

Require a runway to take off and land. Maybe an intentionally constructed one or maybe let long stretches of desert work; running into a bush at high speeds should kill you. Point is to require infrastructure at the departure and destination sites, making it more like a scenic and controllable translocator and less like a replacement for all other forms of transport. Additional idea: weight limits. Would require a whole weight system that doesn't currently exist, but makes sense from a "why do forms of travel other than air travel exist?" perspective.

I'm getting dumb ideas that might square the circle here, although they're probably too much effort (maybe as a mod): wandering traders taking commissions. I'm envisioning maybe a separation between traders who reside in a fixed location and traders who maybe use the old cart model and actually move between sites, although probably by teleporting and not actual movement, maybe requiring some kind of "cart parking spot" structure to avoid collisions. The non-moving traders would spawn with one of those and then you'd be able to build your own to let a wandering trader spawn at your base. The wandering ones would have higher prices because they're making their money (in theory, maybe also in practice) by doing the "buy low sell high across long distances" things. Maybe they have an eclectic set of marked-up things from other traders in the area. The commissions idea, then, is that you would make a request, ask a wandering trader to go visit some specific non-wandering trader that you had previously found, to buy or sell something specific, and the wandering trader would, for a fee / markup, go do that for you, giving you a timeframe in which they would be back. Maybe let them bypass the stock rotation, maybe not. That way, there's still reasons to make a big run out to the (stationary) traders and do the trades yourself, because you'll get a better price and you can move faster than the guy with the cart, but you'd be able to delegate the trip at a cost of time and gears. Feels to me like it would be thematic and balanced but there's probably issues I haven't thought of.

The old-school Privateer player in me kind of likes the idea of being able to make a profit by traveling between points, buying the things that one location produces and selling them to a different location that needs them. I'm not sure the traders are 100% set up to make that profitable, though, and it's kind of a superfluous activity to the rest of the game. I wish there was a little more...enforced variety in traders, like, prevent two "adjacent" (per the trader spawning grid pattern) traders from being the same type. I've found a lot fewer traders in 1.22, not sure if replacing the carts with compounds has made the spawning more likely to fail. Thematically it definitely felt like the traders in carts were supposed to be (at least cosplaying as) mobile; moving to compounds makes them more match what they actually are but mobility is kind of what I wish they had. Wouldn't actually make a lot of sense without larger settlements for them to move between though.

Were you smithing out in the open? I had an experience like this during my first time smithing in 1.22, and it turned out to be rain causing my work piece to cool immediately. With a roof over my forge / anvil, it feels like it's consistently about a minute(?) before it starts cooling at all (and then the temperature drops pretty fast once it starts cooling).

I don't think you got to the point where you actually explain what it is you're complaining about. What is it that you don't like about the existing traders?

Following from my stance of "there are behaviors that I like seeing incentivized and made meaningful"--Valheim and Vintage Story have a non-overlapping set of things that they do this well on, and I wish it was possible to combine some of their features. Vintage Story is better on food and seasons and crafting, Valheim is better on roofing and smoke and transportation infrastructure (via weight), and it has better-than-nothing mechanics for fluff / comfort items. I don't think it's weird to wish that there was more meaning than just aesthetics to replace my dirt hut's roof with thatch or to build a chimney.

Difficulty for the sake of difficulty is a mistake. The thing that makes VS attractive is how the difficulty adds meaning and incentivizes specific interesting behaviors--it is *more interesting* to build a windmill in VS because the windmill isn't decorative. All the starvation and winter mechanics are necessary because all the food preservation technology isn't meaningful without the pressure of food being necessary and with varying seasonal availability. I do not find that "avoid getting killed by wolves" stops being interesting just because it stops risking the loss of hours of progress. I think building a bedroom is *under*-incentivized--right now, there's no reason to sleep at all, and the meta play is to never sleep and maximize what you can get done before winter by finding tasks that you can do at night. It would be more interesting with something like Valheim's comfort system, although (a) that's a little too linear and (b) there isn't a stamina or xp system to tie a bonus to. I don't know that spawn-setting is the right mechanic for a bed, but I don't think "find a rare-drop magic item from the zombie equivalent" is a very compelling alternative either--what realistic world process is that incentivizing? Maybe if beds set spawn *once* per full night's sleep? Incentivizing both sleep and death avoidance? Hmm....

If keepinventory can exist as a world setting without destroying whatever masochistic ego effect it is you're getting from thinking of VS as THE HARDEST HARD THING EVER, so could bed spawning.

Now that I'm home and can check the handbook, the Hide Hat looks like the most efficient way to convert Large Hides to Small Hides if that's what you're looking to do, as it can be made with just one Large Hide and gives a Small Hide refund. The Rawhide Wrap and Rawhide Tunic can also refund you a Small Hide, but require additional large/huge hides to make the piece, so they wouldn't be worth it for pure conversion, only for if you also needed the clothing piece.

I don't remember what recipes it is, but I'm fairly sure that while I was looking through warm clothing for winter, some of the smaller recipes could be done with a large or huge hide and would give you a "refund" of a small hide along with the item. I suspect that's what it's referring to.

Is it raining and are you outside with the anvil uncovered? I had a very similar experience with ingots cooling down immediately and it turned out to be the rain.

It's not hard to get a stack of flint over time if you just pick it up any time you see it (also helps if you have igneous rocks or chert and lean on those for stone tools). Flint and vines are two things that I try to collect as I happen across them, and then I have a stockpile by the time I have to start using them.

How many harvests are there within two years....? If it doesn't hit the nutrients every time, is it chunking them pretty good when it does hit?

My understanding, though it's all secondhand information, is that the berry bush health checks are thresholds checking against total nutrition across all three types. The only specific threshold number I've heard is that Bountiful requires 240% total, which would suggest to reach that requires--long-term, at least--fertilizing all three nutrients (assuming the bushes can't go over 100% in any one nutrient). I don't know what the threshold between Struggling and Healthy is; I assume a pure-Bonemeal diet at least keeps them off Barren though.