Thorfinn

I'm not really the one to ask. Sounds fine to me, but I don't build furniture or do chiseling anyway. It's just a facet of the game that the engineer part of me doesn't enjoy. If it has no measurable game effect, it doesn't matter.

Realistic weight is somewhat problematic because dry sand comes in at around 1.5 TONS per block. Not per stack, per block. So realistically, a human would have to make 20-ish trips to haul a single block. While that might appeal to those of us who prefer to encourage use of local building materials and realistically-sized building projects, that would be a major turn-off for most people. Fate had the shaped inventory system. So did Diablo. I don't necessarily hate it, but I don't think it really works in a game like this. If, for example, felling trees resulted in logs rather than chunks of wood, maybe, but that's a major overhaul, one that I think most people would not like. Though that makes it a much better idea to build local worksites -- charcoal pits near the forests, smelting and smithing near the mines, clayforming and firing near the clay deposits (I can see carrying a few dozen bowls back home in a suitable pack, but not 30+ tons of clay), etc.

Can you fight wolves and black bears? With missile weapons, I mean? If so, you will be fine. Just remember to sprint all the time and keep your head on a swivel. Otherwise, practice on wildlife until you are comfortable with that. You can survive more mistakes against wildlife. Melee weapons are really tough to use on double-headed drifters. Those buggers hit so hard it takes mid- to late-game equipment to tank.

Of course that's true, but how much work are we really talking about? Climb up 30-50 ladder sections, place a half-dozen packed earth blocks (or even just one), climb back down, retrieve your ladders. Landmark visible from hundreds of blocks away, similar to lots of others out there that mapgen placed. Maybe put a regular dirt on top and plant one of those tree saplings you don't know what to do with. If you are so inclined, put a water source block on top of it, and it is unmistakable. Anyone willing to chisel a single block or live in more than a dirt hut is putting in more effort. Seems to me that's not the real concern.

[EDIT] TLDR: Trader in a wagon, fine. Trader in a cabin, double-plus ungood. Discuss. [/EDIT] DIsclosure -- I've never tried that other block game. I simply have not seen any of how it implements NPCs, so have no basis for understanding any of those prejudices. What I have seen is how VS implements NPCs -- traders. Can't every complaint about NPCs be lodged against traders, albeit to possibly a lesser extent? Don't they prevent you from building in your perfect spot? Don't they offer storage and a bed and a safe place for the night? I agree villages don't fit the game as intended. If it were, it would probably be on the roadmap. And rifts and storms being what they are, drifters spawning in anywhere sufficiently dark, villages don't make sense. Perimeter walls alone serve little purpose, which, oddly, is one of the common player complaints. "Why are they spawning in my [insert arbitrary unlighted location here]? Make them stop it!" Why would one expect to be able to loot a seraph's homestead when you can't loot the game's own prototype NPC? And, worse, what if traders or the Resonance Archives were in your ideal location? No, I just don't get it. Why are traders OK, but other seraphs are not?

True in all cases. I'm pretty sure I've personally seen all of those. The most reliable, safest way, is to create a drifter trap. Drop them into a pit with a pit kiln and you can sit back and just harvest the crispy critters. Back in the day, I've even had good luck with them dropping into a moat with a small hole into my house that a crawler can't get through and letting them fight each other trying to reach me. I'd guess at least half the time I could get a risk-free temporal gear on the first high rift activity night, provided there was a rift or two nearby. And that's feasible with just storms disabled. {EDIT] The best drifter trap I ever made was just a ring of dirt with flowing water positioned just on the inside of that ring, and flows just far enough to push them to the center, and sized so that no matter which direction they approach, they get pushed into the pit at the center, where you can deal with them as you like. Hint: If they are adjacent to a pit kiln, they start on fire. And, yes, that's potentially a day 1 build. It might even be possible to storm-proof it, or at least close enough. [/EDIT]

Never have understood that vibe in a gamer. With some games, sure, but with the terraform abilities in VS, you can eventually make any place in the right climate work. And there's always another "ideal" location for that build within a few hundred blocks anyway. That's the thing about the mapgen -- there are lots of essentially identical locations in the game. All you have to do is find them. I'm always astounded at the sheer number of points of interest in the game. Floating islands or spires, some with waterfalls, that you can see from hundreds of blocks away. Massive barrier mountain ranges. Lone mountains high enough for glacier ice. A redwood on a hill. Large lakes or open plains. Gravel or sand deserts. Pine tree forests you can see from afar. Some of the ruins. Used to be I didn't appreciate it all back when I played with a map. And they are a good measure of distance. If you can still see them, they are less than about 400 blocks. (Or less than your view distance if it is not set that high.) And if you find a place that's ideal other than lacking a landmark, there is no reason you cannot construct a spire based around a ladder. Indeed, you could dress that up to look like a "natural" mapgen feature, maybe poke in windows with light sources behind, and put your windmill atop it, also visible for hundreds of blocks. Truth. I'm not convinced villages fit the vibe of the game. Yes, there are small ruined villages in the game, but those are all pre-calamity. (Of course, any wood-based settlements should be long gone, which is why that new ruin with ancient wood or partially-ruined wooden crates and chests exposed to the elements make no sense to me. Under cover of stone, sure, but open to the sky, or maybe even a block or two to the side of cover, not so much.) I think widely separated seraphs with their own holds makes sense, though. Where else are the traders getting their goods?

Hope you don't mind if I find that just a tad humorous. There are 10^12 blocks in a standard world, and you absolutely have to have these couple hundred? Hope you don't think that way in real life. There are lots of people who have houses in prime locations that would be ideal for you to build on...

That's really nothing more than a tweak to the claims system. Start with Trader permissions, then revoke sleep in their beds or use their storage or do anything with their crops, make sure fire can't go from the non-protected world to the structures etc., and villages are just window dressing. Though adding the ability to trade with them would make sense and give a point to exploration. I don't get why so many cannot envision a system that works differently than that other block game. How many other systems where VS differs from that other game have to throat-punch them before they get the point? As for too common, that's normal for a mod. Everyone seems to think his mod's changes should be in your face all the time. Best practices should include a tunable scarcity parameter. Better Ruins did it with loot drops at least, though not for the frequency of the ruins itself. Or at least I didn't find it last time I looked a couple versions ago. Maybe not. I can see the occasional seraph holding, but storms mean none but the best or the most sound sleepers survive many of them.

You will be thrilled to know you can disable them, even in an active world. See @Mirveil's post just before yours. If you really have to have temporal gears, maybe edit it in as a rare trash panda drop? Seems appropriate.

Pretty sure I've replanted GCs. Fern trees are just decorations that drop firewood, at least for now.

Might be a long wait. Support for dotnet7 was just last fall. I've recently switched one of my machines to Linux, and as @EzioCoda says, its really easy to set up. And besides, going out of support is more or less the same as your car's manufacturer's warranty running out. Take care of it and you can expect at least a decade or two more use.

Unless seraphs are a short-lived species. Much as I like the idea, the details of that will get messy. "Let us choose our seraph's gender," and we are off to the races with a potential political war. Which we don't need. Doesn't really work in this game anyway. Since you only get one character, it would have to be something like a phoenix. Where one day, you wake up as a different seraph. All the effort you put into that one seraph is dust in the wind. I guess you could do it something like Dungeon Keeper, where you can take over the body of an NPC and play as that for a while, eventually giving you access to all classes, albeit one at a time. But that's not the family thing of Medieval Dynasty, either.

I don't know. We don't get to tell a trader wagon what kind of trader he is, or whether coons or wolves or deer spawn in a given location. We just learn to work around the challenges the RNG gives. Having been an employer most of my life, I want nothing to do with that for a pastime. If some hunter wants to move into my starter cabin, why not? I'm happy to trade honey or jam or a cord of firewood for meat and fat, or whatever. I'd be inclined to build another home nearby and hopefully attract a tanner. But if a potter moves in, that's fine, too. I'll just keep building until the guy I want moves in, and meanwhile, we are building up a prosperous little community. A charcoal maker moves into the house with the hog pen that was obviously intended to be for a swineherd? Fine. I can move the pigs, and now I can trade (say) seashells or cabbage stew for charcoal. No, I don't want to turn this into a trader sim. But it would be nice to have someone take over the tedious stuff -- milking the chickens and whatnot. That's the primary reason I start a new world. The mundane worklife part of the game interests me not at all, and generally by early winter, that's what the game has left to offer.

I generally play Wilderness, so no surface tin, but even when I play Standard, tin is hit or miss. Some worlds seem to have several, but most have none that I've been able to find. I even tweaked things to make surface tin bits glaringly obvious by giving it an invalid texture, to no avail. It's just not there.

I think it should be the other way around. You don't get to tell them what to do. You just create the home and workshop and whatnot and an appropriately-classed NPC (maybe) either moves in to fill that role or he does not. I'm thinking some kind of reputation-based system. If the "wrong" class moves into what to you is obviously supposed to be a foundry, if you evict him, word gets around. Figure out some way to work around whomever shows up, or be prepared to do without anyone, potentially for the rest of the game. [EDIT] Welcome, @AlohaSnackbar. There's a local radio talk show host who uses that term a lot as the situation merits. [/EDIT]

Welcome to the forum, @gamerdamer2. Pretty sure that's in the works. Mostly, it's just reskins. You can check out Wildcraft mod to see their vision for berries, herbs, etc. Wild Farming lets you grow plants that were before simply decoration.

It's a pretty small attraction distance, though, and they only eat so much. If you find a large herd of does, you can lead them away with the trough chain, as only one of the herd gets to eat at each stop, but it's still a pretty slow, tedious process. If you like cozy builder style, sure, why not, you are already committing to the long game anyway, which you are going to need to get more than 2nd gen or so. When I try to bring sheep home, I tend to lead the buck into a temporary enclosure with basic rock spears so I don't accidentally kill him before I get home. It's kind of like the process of eluding brown bears, enabling the over the shoulder cam, except you aren't trying to give him the slip. [EDIT] Doesn't an appropriately-baited basket trap catch the babies, though? Never actually tried, but that's the impression I got reading the entry in the Handbook. Granted, you have to let them grow to maturity, but if the herd is some distance away, that might be a better use of your time. [/EDIT]

I have no problems with shells -- from time to time, it's my source of limewater. I'd think it would be easy enough to just make a shell into a light source and keep the same graphic. [EDIT] As a mod, I'm saying. [/EDIT]

No caves in the area? Ultra-high isn't a guarantee, but it's pretty close. You don't need to test anywhere nearly as closely together -- it's reporting the average of the probabilities in the area around that spot. A vertical shaft will either hit it or it won't. Try another shaft 10 squares away or so in each direction. That high a chance will likely spawn multiple ore bodies, and you only need one. You could pop another shaft in the middle of each set of 4 and be guaranteed to hit one if it's there.

I think if the roof is "Layer of Sticks", that lets in enough light to reset the despawn timer.

Just load it, return to main menu. It will be the one most recently updated.

Welcome to the forums, @Anna Hoellrich The major problem with oil lamps is the fat is too precious to waste at that point in the game. Bur I could see a process like grinding (oil) shale in a quern, extracting it with water (barrel mechanism), and skimming off oil in a shell or bowl to make an oil lamp. Maybe forty shale rocks become four lamps?

How about instead you just build a fencepost and place a temporal gear on top? Or craft a stick and a temporal gear into a claim marker. The rest of the effects are the same you specify. Maybe 108 days, one full game year? Yeah, I'd like to see something like that as a mod first.

You probably should go caving with at least one full stack of packed earth. Knowing I'm going to pick up stuff while delving, I usually take 2 stacks, one of dirt, the other of packed dirt, so I can top up the packed dirt as needed, and suck up all the stones in the form of paths that I'm going to need anyway., Torches work for me, but, again bring at least 2 stacks. They need to be no more than 7 or 8 apart to completely spawn-proof the caves, which takes a crapton.