Thorfinn

Until you want to do the Resonance Archive, you can get by fine with flint spears and gambeson. You can even finish RA with nothing more. If you can resist the temptation to pick up everything...

So much depends on the specifics of the location you chose. You just want to figure out what kinds of blocks you can hide behind and be safe. Generally, if they are higher than you, you need to use a block to cover your chest, if they are below, you need one that covers your legs. Sometimes a slab is enough, particularly if you can force them to come at you at an angle instead of straight on. But that all depends on lateral distance, height difference, etc. By far, limiting them by angle is the easiest to fine tune. Place a straw dummy where you think you are going to want to stand, go to where you think the drifters are going to be, and see what kinds of blocks prevent you from hitting your dummy with rocks. Not perfect, no, since they are much, much different than you in throwing ability. But at least you get a starting point.

Kind of depends on what you want to do. Is this just something for nighttime rift activity or temporal storms. The two have quite different rules. 1. Yes 3. Rift or storm? I think the storms are scripted, in that if you kill them or they run off, they don't respawn until the next wave. Rifts, like @Maelstrom I think there is some kind of a cap, but it does not appear to be a hard cap. It is more consistent with a reduced percent chance of spawn based on number of drifters currently in range of that rift. If you are using it for something other than storms, you definitely want to base it in or near caverns that are easy walk-ups to the surface so you can get the "better" drifters. Pathing is not great, so a wide-open cave is better than a windy winding passage. You can use falling damage to help take out drifters, but you probably don't want to go nuts, either. By the time you are deep enough for a fall to kill a tainted drifter, you will be losing stability fast enough that you need those kills. Back when I did this kind of thing, I'd find a vertical cave and place myself at or near the bottom, maybe 20 or so deep, probably less, I don't remember. You are too deep if they go splat. Most drifters would be just one or two spear stabs from dead, and you get back all that sweet, sweet stability.

I don't use creative, so never encountered it, but I'd guess that the command to fix lighting issues works in reverse, too. Someone else remembers the command, I'm sure.

I assumed that to be the the case. I think it generally is. Definitely in my worlds. For an initial "base", my major criterion is that it has a very large shallow pond/lake where I can place a couple hundred blocks of medium fertility soil in the standard 8-around-1 pattern. Peat is a nice bonus. Copper/tin, it doesn't take more than a couple hours game time to mine out a seam and then the value of having a base there just went way down. I get making a base in some scenic landscape, but that's way down on my list of important qualities to look for in a starter home. It's all about getting seeds in the ground. If I didn't need a bucket for processing honey (what was the thought process behind honeycomb stacking to only 8, anyway?), I doubt I would bother with one in most games until I was going to make the jump from linen sacks to backpacks.

Meh. The kind of mountains that are grass-covered, with greater than a 1 meter soil depth, like the Appalacians, are gradual enough that to the extent they exist in the game, they are stable. What's falling down are steeper than the Rockies and Cascades and Sierra Nevadas, even the new kids on the block, the Himalayas. Even something as steep as a 1:1 slope is stable in the game. If we are going for realism, those kinds of slopes should be grass- and dirt-free. What is really under-represented are the vast swathes of the globe where the slope is under 5:1000. But that's kind of boring, and not so picturesque, so I'm good with the terrain as is. Though if I had my druthers, I'd prefer those really steep grades, 4:1 and up, for sure, to be dirt-free.

It's not like space is at a premium. Why not just lay down another couple rows of medium fertility and call it a day? If you don't have anything to plant on the one that's partially depleted, just leave it fallow.

As I understand it, macros currently support only keyboard commands. So placing a firepit, no, not that I know of. But you could, for example, have a key that set a waypoint to where you are standing and teleport home. A second hotkey could return you to your "town portal" location. You could set up a "panic" that issues /gm 2 somewhere convenient enough you might be able to hit it in the middle of a lethal fall, or with a bear in your grill. No, I don't use anything like that, but I could certainly see it a useful thing to do. But, yes, map markers are a great use of macros, assuming you are using map. When I do, I use Alt-A/S/D to mark peat, clay and fireclay respectively, using /waypoint addati gear ~0 ~0 ~0 true red Peat etc. I just find it easier to remove the pinned attribute than to scan the map until you find the one you want and click on Pinned. Certainly copper deposits get pinned. Quartz, no. Bees, yes. Something, no, Something!!!!, yes. Hostile Wildlife, no. Domestic Wildlife, no. Etc.

Interesting. Not my thing, but fun to see how others use game mechanics. I think it would be fun to see something that used a single hot water (so obviously you need to build on top of a geothermal spring) to drop down onto the block they are pushed into. Or even just making it a bit larger so one could use a pit kiln to do your killin' in the no mans land between where the two lower streams meet. Sure, they will run into the water to extinguish themselves, but then will be pushed right back onto the fire.

Oh, darn. I thought you were going to say, "Fling poo at them." I ask you, how many games let you do that?

Interesting. So 200 chunks in that other game would be 1600 blocks in this one? Spittin' distance of the 15xx of current max view distance. Not that you can realistically play at that distance, though that is probably because the textures are so much higher resolution. At least from what I've seen... Incidentally, in that other game, a chunk is 16x16x(top of world - mantle), right? Is VS the same? The chunk is the entire world height? I suppose it must be. If so, that seems to me to be a place mapgen could economize -- almost none of the terrain below the ground will ever be seen, so why generate it? Follow the caves that open onto the surface, I suppose, but beyond that? Might as well leave it, at least until there's a pro-pick of the block.

I've stopped caring even that much. So what if production is halved? I'm not doing anything else with the dirt, and half of something is better than all of nothing. If it freezes, so what? I get the seeds back. So even if I do happen to play long enough to plant next spring, taking the chance of getting a crop didn't cost me anything but a couple small fractions of a second. and at the very least, saved me the time and effort to have to clear the blocks that decided to grow grass.

That still works?

Yes. You can pivot in place, facing all directions, even move some. I think the limit is the distance you can open a chest from. 4-5 blocks, maybe, but it can allow you to go through a door and move stuff from one container to another in a different room. Can you move in immersive, or just mouse look?

I did not know that. I often slid it off to the side to be out of the way of other windows, but holding down ALT to get the mouse look back while also holding down CTRL and W to sprint was such a pain. He asked hopefully, "Or is there a way to toggle mouse look?"

Wait, what? There IS a food invincibility for eating food less than 100 SAT? Never noticed that before. So cranberries might be the power berry, because they last twice as long as other berries and because of their lower SAT, you end up with more food invincibilities per SAT? And flax grain is not only the best thing since sliced bread, it's actually better, because it lasts much longer and you end up with more hunger invulnerabilities per SAT? And you have a metric crapton of it sitting around anyway. This new learning amazes me, Sir Bedivere. (Not making fun of you. More of me, since I had never noticed this in hundreds of hours of play time.) Again, I don't think it helps much if your goal is to get your HP up, but once you get fruit capped, you might as well stretch the berries. Etc.

Huh. I just figured the crops had been rebalanced. Never noticed the moisture was different. Does explain why in early game before I have a bucket, and there are some crops outside the normal 75% range that I hand-water, and they mature so much faster. Guess I either need to get that mod (seem to recall it increased the adjacent to 100%, and I wasn't really interested in anything that made the base game easier) or start watering all of them, not waste time making a "proper" farm until second planting.

I never got that to work before, but I just tried it again, and sure enough. I must have held down right click too long and ate two berries or something. I usually just hold down right click while running until the satiation bar moves, and looks like that is quite often two berries. And since I couldn't get it to work, I never bothered to try it ever again. You are right. Feels a little cheaty for 1 berry to tide you over for a full day of sprinting (from start to just after midnight of day 1, in addition to your normal baskets, plus a stack of clay and a stack of peat.) I don't think it's probably worth it, unless you are playing Snowball or something. The food is all over the place, and at that stage in the game, getting my hit points up is a priority, so the first thing I craft after a knife is a torch to put in off-hand, and I take a short fall or a bit of drowning damage so I'm injured so as to burn through food faster. But that does explain why sometimes it seemed my bar would just flippin' stall out when I'd really prefer to keep boosting HP.

You can also just break the grass with something other than a knife or scythe, or use your knife twice, once to cut the grass, once to remove the "(Eaten)" grass. Keep in mind the point @Streetwind made -- until all the once-bare dirt blocks say "(Grassy)", there is a chance grass will spawn on them.

Did you issue a ticket to Anego? The "Need Help?" button on the banner? I've never had that issue, but I've always had outstanding support.

Been thinking about this, trying to come up with how I'd use it. What is gained by having non-sliding falling blocks that you couldn't accomplish with, say, packed earth, apart from being able to remove them safely from ground level? I don't think mountains shed dirt without you or some critter walking on it. I guess that could be worthwhile -- if a ram climbs your mountains and is caught in the slide, he will aggro.

My tech guy asked if you would give a few more details. What specifically about port forwarding? Or should I just tell him to do ask so I don't screw it up in the Telephone Game? I don't know a whole lot more about routers except that one Orbi sits next to my modem, and we have a couple mesh Orbis spread around the house that work by magic, I think.

I don't know that I'm understanding what you mean by "diagonally". Let's say a block falls one Z. It hits a lone flat block directly below. It then: Stops. No further movement, Can (but does not have to) slide one block in either the X or the Y, but not both, or, Can (but does not have to) slide one block in X and one block in Y. The most natural meaning of diagonal seems to be 3, but I don't think it does that anyway. Or it might. Landslides and avalanches seem pretty chaotic, so I just stay out of the way. But eliminating 2 is a major change in behavior, and completely eliminates the hazards of landslides and avalanches. Is that what you meant? Sandpiles work the same way they do in Terraria, where they can form cliff faces into outer space?

My problem has always been getting back out. Snow collapses, and ice is lousy to try to parkour. It just seems to be too much risk for too little reward. [EDIT] Sure, you can occasionally find somewhere you neither have to nerdpole to get out, or you can smooth things as you head down, but I don't believe I've ever run into that PLUS an agricultural trader. Though, to be fair, I've not really paid much attention to traders in snowball, as it did not occur to me that maybe that was an option. [/EDIT]

Maybe. I think generally I saw the opposite on my systems, though there were exceptions. For example, when exploring, by afternoon, in 1.18.6 my potato (i5/980 Strix) dropped to around 70s and 80s with everything High settings except 512 view distance. Now, I had 20-odd tabs open in Brave, and as it turns out, Avast running. When I then sat still for minute or two building a charcoal pit, it increased to somewhere around 100. I have not tested again, but when I last tried (yesterday afternoon), 18.8 was in the 80s and 90s while still exploring at a sprint at about noon, though I know that was with Brave closed and Avast inactive. It returned to 100+ when remaining relatively stationary. It's kind of hard to say exactly, because I think maybe the caverns and flowing water and such vary so widely from location to location, but are going to affect speed. (Just tested my 1.18.6 install half an hour ago, after seeing your question.) My 1.18.7 install played just a tad slower. It got back up to the same roughly 100 when clayforming at about noon, but while sprinting was in the 60s and 70s. Anecdotally, I think sand/gravel are faster than grassland, which is faster than lakes, but I don't know whether maybe that's just perception -- simply a function of there being less to look at in a gravel location. Or maybe less grass means less grass to animate. Or maybe the wind was less, so wasn't affecting water and treetops and grass as much. Shrug. [EDIT] Upshot is that I think the game is modeling way too much, and way too variable, to come up with a hard and fast number. If you have a waterfall somewhere in your rendered view, that is a hard hit to FPS. [/EDIT] [EDIT2] Incidentally, if you are getting lag spikes, it's probably worth the time to track down why. If you are vanilla, where are those coming from? [/EDIT2]