Lodeclaw

I'm having the same issue. Hopefully it isn't serious.

There are a lot of incomplete features in the game right now and the longer the team waits to flesh them out the harder I feel it's going to be, in my opinion.

I agree. Also I'd like to be able to hear the lore location music without having to enable ambient music generally.

I use it regularly while hunting, but you kind of have to plan ahead and approach from a direction that doesn't require any elevation change.

The nutrition system already does this by increasing your maximum HP.

I have noticed that if you copy world configuration and paste it into a text document there is a variable called "storyStructureDistScaling". At first glance it looks as though this should change the distance to lore locations, although I haven't tested it at all. I don't know if there's any way to alter this variable in a single-player world.

I haven't tested it myself but I've yet to see any reports about the story locations spawning in a way that makes them unplayable.

Chapter 2 is advertised as a long and aduous journey, which seems to be acurate. The biggest complaint doesn't seem to be the distance, but the lack of engagement involved in using the new boat to make that trek. In an ideal world the sailing and ocean features would be better fleshed out but these are the drawbacks of a game that's playable in the midst of development. For the time being, use Billy's speed boat mod to increase the rate of travel for your watercraft. Essentially I feel like using the boat is trading convenience for excitement. You're turning the Oregon Trail into the Lincoln Highway.

Does it happen if you turn off Occlusion culling?

Actually something like this would be a really great solution. Maybe at the bottom of the elevator you could find a map to another small story location where you can retrieve a unique part to fix/activate the elevator from the bottom. Players who don't want to brave the jumping puzzle would have a slightly alternate path through the chapter.

On that note, in theory it shouldn't be difficult to make a mod that alters the layout of the parkour section to make it less tedious for people who don't like deadly jumping puzzles in their survival games.

Well even if the last step of chapter 2 isn't very good at least I can go to the village and experience that.

That's disappointing to hear.

I have heard that there's a parkour section with bowtorn. I probably wouldn't attempt the story stuff without iron armor, although I'm not sure if armor helps with fall damage.

Yes, the author is currently reworking the new vanilla boat so we can turn the sail and catch the wind for more speed, etc. I don't know if there's an ETA on that but I'm looking forward to it.