Professor Dragon

Yes, but . . . Yes, it should be safe to do the the update. It's going from one stable version to another, and so that is fine. You can check out the "News" page against the latest release, and people post there if there are issues, and in general there have not been. Always take a backup anyway - it is good practice. Now, the "but." The base game should be fine, but mods may be a different story. You can see mods fail to take effect after an update. Usually it is no big deal, and as soon as the mod writer updates it, then it picks up where it left off and everything is fine. I wouldn't really anticipate anything major, as it is just going between point releases. Most of them will still work as if nothing has changed. It really depends on the mod though. You could always pick out "likely suspects" and then check the mod page for that mod - there will be a dump of posts if something broke.

Thanks Thorfinn. I just did some testing to confirm what "radius" means - and for the ProPick, it means a cube. ProPick detects for a cube around itself. With a default setting of "6 blocks", count six blocks away (the block you are on is "0") horizontally , vertically, or both horizontally and vertically, any sample in that region will return a hit. In this image: TARGET BLOCK (Chromite) is at 0,0 at the back left of the image. MINE SHAFT is six blocks away. So if the mineshaft is "0", you count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 is the target block. Every green Periodote block in the image is where a ProPick (6) can detect the target block. Every orange Bauxite block is where the ProPick is out of range of the target block. What this means in practice (explaining this to other people, not you ). HOW TO USE PROPICK 1) A ProPick with default setting of Node Search radius "6" will need shafts dug every 12 blocks. 2) Put down a shaft. This is block "0." Count 12 blocks away in any horizontal direction (NOT including the "0" block you are standing on) and sink the next shaft. 3) Vertically, take readings every 12 blocks. So if you take a reading at Level 1, the next reading will be Level 13, Level 25 and so on: 1, 13, 25, 37, 49, 61, 73, 85, 97, 109, 121, 133, 145, 157, 169 etc. EDIT: If coming up FROM the mantle, an optimised level dig pattern would be: L7, 19, 31, 43, (Probably stop there for Chromite), 55, 67, 79, 91, 103, 115, 127, 139 . . . L+12 4) Two stacks of rope ladders are an effective way to get down and up. 5) ProPick only detects readings from "rock". So other "similar to rock block types" won't give a reading. Obviously, there shouldn't be any if you are caving, but it is interesting. Don't try to ProPick a Ruin wall - it won't help. CAVING VS PROSPECTING I've been too much of a coward to go caving, because, that's where the monsters are. I saw a single corrupt shiver in a big dark cave, when doing these shafts, and bolted away. That is a natural response to monsters, is it not? Honestly, I'm amazed that you can find what you want caving. We obviously have totally different play styles. That's why I'm all about sinking nice controlled mineshafts. Prospecting should be a viable alternate way to play. But I'm getting the sense one needs to pluck up one's courage and brave the dark. SUGGESTION I wonder if the Handbook and Wiki should have the word "radius" defined more clearly, because it is clearly neither a sphere nor a taxi-cab radius, but just a straight cube. WRAPPING UP Interesting the different takes that you and LadyWYT have on the same information. Thorfinn - Well, yar, it might only spawn in a single measly block and that is giving you a reading. LadyWYT - But it can spawn in decent size veins, and then you're set for life! Rich, I say, rich! I'm not sure what to do with my Chromite search in this region. It might be time to pack it in, and go make a Beehive Kiln to have some nice pots. Then just do Prospecting more while doing other things and see if I hit another reading. Or come back to this one. Don't know. Anyway, thanks everyone. Professor Dragon.

PROGRESS REPORT Eight play sessions. 4th May - Back to the mines. 5th June - Five shafts now sunk surface to mantle. No Chromite Node readings found. The shafts were spaced 12 blocks apart around the highest reading, and with vertical Node readings 12 blocks apart. Each orange ladder in this image. (Shaft spacings are exact - ladder images above are not.) New steel pick for this mission now at 1628/2500. Some additional horizontal shafts and clean-up. The new two stacks of rope ladders have been working a lot better than the old ladders. At least I get them back. Fewer torches needed also. Intersected with one cave system. Explored it a little, but no ores seen. It was a bit high up, but still low enough for some corrupted mobs. I sealed it off and continued with the shaft. I can keep extending the drop shafts in a grid outwards, but I'd really have expected to have hit a vein by now, if there was anything here to find. And yet, there are readings all over the place of "Decent." That indicates that there likely should be some. Are there? I have no idea. I've decided to burn a lot of the "good part" of this year on this mining expedition, but when Summer rolls around, I'd like to be back at my base harvesting the fruit trees. So there is an opportunity cost, apart from the tool wear, hours spent placing shafts and running from the bear and wolves on the trip out of zone. Professor Dragon.

Oh yeah! But also the bear statue part - really, it's all gold. We've all had that experience! I feel that Vintage Story is almost the opposite of Minecraft. In Minecraft, you launch into building, and get your uber-tools much later. In Vintage Story, you need your uber-tools before you can get into building. I'm simplifying, of course. But take chiselling as an example. It is one of the standout features of Vintage Story, and yet in effect it is gated behind iron/steel tools. Yes, you can do some chiselling with a copper chisel - but it will wear out before you can do much. In a way, it would be good to separate out the chisel feature so that you can use it earlier (in practice). Maybe purchasable from Traders, or increase the copper durability massively.

Thanks. I hadn't properly considered using Temporal Gears for stability. It's a bit pricey, but thanks for that suggestion. Each reading shown is filtered for Chromite only. These are the only readings I have for Chromite. Maybe I should switch from regular ladders to rope ladders and just poke vertical shafts down at each reading from surface to mantle (???). As part of this same cluster, there are some Poor and Very Poor readings further out from the central blob. As best as I can work out from the Wiki, Chromite spawns from near the mantle to around 40 (ish)? And web searches show that people have luck around either the the mantle or L18 on a default world. Unfortunately for me, I plonked down my "main base" without realising it would now be in the middle of broken chunks after version updates. The red rectangles contain clearly broken chunks. This is why I've tried to travel out a bit. The region of of the Chromite cluster appears to be in a fairly unbroken section. But I take your point - if this doesn't "pan out," then I'll move east or west to a clearly new section. Thank you again, LadyWYT. Back to the mines! Professor Dragon.

CASE STUDY: RECOMMEND A COURSE OF ACTION IN THE SEARCH FOR CHROMITE Here's the example that is facing me, Professor Dragon, right now: "The Hunt for Chromite." REQUEST: If anyone would like to make suggestions or a course of action, I'll implement them in my world. AIM: Find Chromite. BACKGROUND: The world is 11 game years old, and I am a little way from world spawn. Game was created on v1.16.4 and has been updated to 1.21.1 Stable. Steel tools are available, as are most resources. Prospecting has been done haphazardly for several thousand blocks around my current main base in all directions. Denser along trade routes. ProPick Node setting is 6 blocks. Two Chromite readings have been found with Density mode. Reading 1 - In a mildly Temporally Unstable zone. Bauxite over Andesite. (Referred to as "Unstable") Reading 2 - In the most mountainous region found. Bauxite over Andesite. (Referred to as "Mountain") Nine game days were spent travelling to and prospecting at Reading 1 (Unstable) sinking shafts to mantle and triangulating readings. Best reading "Decent" at 1.71%%. Broken chunk borders were several chunks away and appeared out of range. It had three large caves nearby, but all three collapsed due to ground instability, and poking around in them didn't show anything but mobs. No other ores seen. Called a halt here due to Temporal Instability making mining and recovery hard, winter, and "over it." Spent three game days travelling to and prospecting Reading 2 (Mountains). I never found another reading for Chromite, even when taking a Density reading right next to the original reading spot, which was "Poor" at 0.76%% Called a halt here due to not repeating a single reading. World height also varied sharply from near limit to sea level at times. No broken chunks. POSSIBLE ACTIONS: 1) Dig at Reading 1 (Unstable) more. 2) Prospect more. 3) Other? COMMENTS: I'm willing to keep digging the Reading 1 (Unstable) area if suggested. I have given up on Reading 2 (Mountains) as a weird anomaly. I am holding off using an x-ray mod, to see what can be done with good ol' fashioned prospecting. The Temporal Instability is mild at ground, but severe at lower levels. Recovery is hard, as even though the surface is mildly positive, I effectively need to move out-of-zone to recover, and that takes a while both for the recovery and the travel. I have put down one main shaft at the main source, and then poked other shafts down around it, but there is only one that goes surface to mantle at the highest Density reading. ProPick Node readings at 6 - 12 block intervals have so far shown no ore (but some copper and odds and ends), but mostly nothing. I have tried some horizontal shafts at mantle, and +18 from mantle. Plus some miscellaneous. Nothing. Plus burnt the last of my iron ProPick taking readings - now onto a new shiny steel one. On the upside, Floyd the Artisan Trader runs a really nice line in decorated pots at reasonable prices, so it is worth the trip just for that. MAPS: Reading 1 (Unstable) map. Zoomed IN to maximum. Plots of ProPick readings for everything (not just Chromite). Zoomed OUT maximum. Suggestions are welcome. Really. I'd like that Chromite. Thanks, Professor Dragon.

Maybe try disabling authentication and seeing if that helps? Set this value to "false", restart Vintage Story and see if that changes anything: https://wiki.vintagestory.at/index.php/Server_Config // If true, every time a player joins the server verifies if that player is a valid, logged in, registered buyer of the game. "VerifyPlayerAuth": true, This is just a guess. You could always post a log set to the Issue Tracker and if the Devs. have time they may be able to say root cause. Professor Dragon. EDIT I suppose I should ask if this has been a previously working setup which has stopped OR if this is a brand new attempt at setting up Vintage Story.

Hello @ChiyannaD, Welcome to the forums. I don't have a lot of experience on hosting, but as it looks like you're keen to get on with things, I'll advise what I can. There is a good chance that pretty much ANY hosting option you choose will be fine, especially for only a few players. Hosting has come a long way, and Vintage Story is not like a First Person Shooter where every frame counts. You should look at the single player recommended system requirements here as a baseline: https://www.vintagestory.at/sysrequirements/ I'll assume you are looking here: https://suhosting.net/Vintage-Story The 100GB Storage is way more than ample. My own world with hundreds of thousands of blocks travelled (straight line, not circle) is under 10 GB. Seriously, I would not factor in traveling to the "edges of the world." Most people don't actually travel significant distances in practice. I'd hang a question mark over the 3 GB memory. It is below recommended specifications, HOWEVER they are providing a decent CPU, so maybe that will offset it (?). Still, it might be good enough for a few players, without heavy mod use. I'd probably want 6GB+ myself as a wild, not fact checked, guess. Network speed might be a factor, but I can't comment on that in your scenario. QUESTION: Does the host (whoever they may be), allow you to switch plans? If yes, then it really does not matter. You can choose a plan and then move it up or down as your needs become clear. If no, then either look for someone who does or slightly oversize your requirements. If anyone with experience with hosting can comment, that would be great. Thanks, Professor Dragon.

Play how you The progression is actually a strong point of this game. Moving up to Copper, Bronze and better tools gives you things to do at each point. Then you'll look at the Dairy meter and think about Dairy, or dying clothes, or building a better roof for your house, or getting windows . . . which means, glass, masses of straw, cloth etc etc. Each thing leads to new things. I'm ten years into this current world and still trying new things. Give yourself a goal such as "I want a red roof" and you'll unlock a lot of play just doing that. And yes, you will be doing a lot of the same things, such as making crocks or storage vessels, over again. But usually with a point eg "I want to travel a few thousand blocks over to a new type of forest and will need a small base over there." I agree that the world is a bit empty. Some people like it that way (Ask a Trader). But for other people, you know what? Fine - install a mod. That's okay. Play how you want to play. There's not a single person here who would argue against that. I believe that better villages/traders are on the roadmap as well, but that could be a while. I think that multi-player is a different beast. I haven't done much of it myself, but if I did I would want to be on a small server where there is a group of people bent on a similar purpose, such as "Build a village. I'll be resource provider, you be a base builder, you two go and check the tunnels." Progression is so hard in this game that you don't really want to have a "Preserve the trees!" person living next to a "Burn the world!" type. Professor Dragon.

Yes, a Multiplayer world will show what you saw, while a Single-player world will have an Edit button which shows the Seed. You will also get a button on the same page which lets you make a new world with the same seed - you could also ask your server manager if they can create a world for you. If you can run commands, this should do it: https://wiki.vintagestory.at/List_of_server_commands/info/en /info seed Here is my information for ident, seed and createdversion. And @idiomcritter is correct that you're not going to get an identical world created, like Minecraft. Professor Dragon.

If you're playing with the default days in the month of nine days, then I agree, it does feel like the seasons whip by a little fast. So I'd recommend if you were thinking of extending it, to consider two things: Play through a few in-game years first Extend the number of days in a month, but not to 30. Try 12 or 15. This will give you a better idea of what is required to survive winter, grow crops, raise animals etc. You are still a new player, and you're currently luxuriating in the "good times" weather. But the converse of longer months is that the winters do seem to go on, and they do slow down a lot of things such as travel, building and exploration. And I'm with you on preferring the "build and prosper" side of the game, over "combat." Professor Dragon.

Ooooh - YES! Except, with a minor qualification. Not "all" off or on. But "All that I currently have on" off or on. I usually have a bunch of mods, such as visible glass, that I leave off most of the time, but sometimes turn on. So I only want to temporally disable all mods for testing, and then re-enable those same ones. Not turn on ones that are in my list, but weren't currently active. And I'm going to be greedy and ask for more. Tie your mod list to each world, rather than have one global mod list. I'd like one world to be vanilla, my creative world to have a different list, test world another etc Maybe even: Mod "groups". Create a mod group name and add mods to that group. Name a collection of mods "Professor Dragon's test world mods" and another "My favourite experimental mods" or "Mostly vanilla" etc. But yeah, I'll take whatever can be had in this area. Professor Dragon.

First up - I applaud the concept. Big picture thinking - love it. You've obviously put some thought into how it would work and integrating it into the lore. I have some concerns though. The first is that this is a very specialised, very late game tech. that most players will never see nor need. This I think is the main issue that kills it in the current form. It feels similar to the problem with Terra Preta, which is "By the time you have it, you don't need it." The second is that I don't believe that Jonas parts are as reliable to get as would be needed. In my current world, which is currently 11 years old, I have never seen one. Admittedly, I have an anathema to monsters and caving, but I have trouble imagining that people have enough spare Jonas parts for the usual Rift Wards and other nice to have items you would get first. Next is producing Temporal Instability seems counter-intuitive. That is a high price to pay for warmth and light. If anything, I would have such an expensive mechanism produce a region of Temporal Stability, like a Rift Ward. My view is that this idea would actually be better presented in a Lore Book that you find - as a cautionary tale of some mad scheme in the past as a failed last ditch attempt. It is a nice piece of world building. Either that, or as a mod, because it has such a specialised use case. Then at least Creative world players could implement it for otherwise unlivable spots. They might still be better served by breaking up the effects into smaller mods though, such as a mod for boosting Greenhouses, a mod for warmth, a mod for stability and so on. Professor Dragon.

Weird. Nice troubleshooting with isolating it to multiple pit kilns, by the way. Do you have control over the mods, and can you disable them to confirm it is a mod issue? I'm assuming that you've logged out and back in again. But how about running away a distance and coming back? (Or trying a new pit kiln some distance away). Does running in a diagonal pattern change anything? (It shouldn't.) Does separating the pits by "a distance" help? Is it on the current version? Penny to a pound it is a mod issue, so that is the place to start. If you don't have control over the mods (and the mod co-ordinator for your server can't help), are you able to get logs and put them to the Vintage Story Issue Tracker? https://github.com/anegostudios/VintageStory-Issues/issues Professor Dragon.

Hello @hudson1 Welcome. The question is a "bit vague" - starting with what is a "mid laptop" and what you mean by "look better." Have you hit any specific problems? Are you running with mods? Anyway, my advice would be just to try adjusting some the graphics settings. You shouldn't need any mods for performance - out of the box is fine, then go to Settings, Graphics. My laptop is "quite old" but runs it well, although not at the highest settings. Start here: https://wiki.vintagestory.at/Framerate_and_Performance Also try checking around the Forums for similar posts, as someone may have a similar setup. Eg, first thread I came across with a Search: Or here: Professor Dragon.

https://wiki.vintagestory.at/Temporal_rift#Configuration Temporal rifts can be configured either during world generation, or afterwards using the World Configuration command /worldconfig temporalRifts [off|invisible|visible]. By default, they are set to visible. off: Disables temporal rifts. Drifters may still spawn in low-light conditions on the surface. invisible: Keeps temporal rifts, but disables their stability-drain effect on the player, and all visual and sound effects. This allows surface drifters to spawn but stops temporal rifts from showing up. visible: Shows temporal rifts and allows drifters to spawn near them. There are several mods to disable Drifters completely, but from their descriptions I don't think they've been updated to the current version, although there might be one out there. Example: https://mods.vintagestory.at/nodrifters Professor Dragon

I tell you what, some of the small changes in this update are causing me repeated moments of happiness. So much so that I thought I'd come back here and comment against this update, even though there are newer ones out there. Every time that I can use five buckets to work with dough or a barrel, or place three sticks on the ground in a pile is a delight. (Yes, simple pleasures.) Feature: Added dedicated piles for beeswax, cattails, papyrus, cloth, bones, sticks and flax fibers Tweak: Buckets now stack to 5 Feature: Ground storage tweaks Added several more piles, including: flax twine, leather, fat, windmill sails, pulp, thatch, and rods Thank you.

Huh. That sounds very similar to my situation where I trapped a boar, but predators ate all the sows. I kept a pit trap with a filled trough near the boar for years, and never had another pig spawn in that region. I'd given up on pigs near my base, when one day I found a whole new family which must have spawned in, trapped inadvertently in my clay mine. I fenced them off quick smart. Then wolves fell in the other side of the clay mine. Then on the next update, a family of deer fell in . . . All of the long distance travel and trapping attempts in an effort to get pigs near my base, and in the end doing nothing was the winning option. At this point, I'm just waiting for a family of goats to drop from the sky, to complete the set.

There are Vintage Story PvP servers? That's a thing?!? As if the base game wasn't tough enough.

Okay, that is off-topic, but it's a great idea! And a reverse switch to unstack items. For balance, you might want to make it a game rule that you couldn't USE any item from a stack which exceeded size - you'd still need to unpack the stack, like you do with a layer of sticks and sticks currently. Counterpoint - mods that let you exceed stack size, such as carrying four filled crock pots, are pretty common. And the second balance check would be that you couldn't exceed current trunk or crate space sizes. You could make an argument that you should be able to "condense stack" many items like sticks in fact. It would be like putting Christmas decorations away. Sure, you get a lot more in a box, but you can't immediately use them. (Wait . . . did I just reinvent crates?) Come to think of it, the Fruit Press recently had a glitch for honey which is almost basically that idea. You could fill it up with multiple input stacks of honeycomb and exceed the default output stack of beeswax. (I wasn't committed enough to the ideals of purity of gameplay to unbreak my one little reed basket into two. I consider it fair compensation for being attacked by an invisible wolf.) ___ Back to Echo Weaver's original post. I'd be inclined in the first instance just to go with one of the above cheese mods. They already exist, don't change game play too much and address the basic concern somewhat. Then I'd recommend checking in on the "Frequently Suggested" thread and chipping in there. Concern about dairy recipes and return for effort is a theme that keeps coming up. Right at the top, there is a strikeout through "Cheese" - I'm not sure what that's about, but you can search the thread and report back. Professor Dragon.

I can't really speak to coding mods - I'm more "search web until I find something". However, there are mods out there that make cheese more worthwhile, such as boosting satiety from them. https://mods.vintagestory.at/cheesemoredelicious https://mods.vintagestory.at/moredairysatiety Although I haven't tried either of those, they look pretty light weight, just touching the "Is cheese worth it?" side of things by boosting the food content value. No need to reinvent the wheel for that effect.

@Vratislav describes the current state of play correctly. Please see the Dev. comment here for what should happen: https://github.com/anegostudios/VintageStory-Issues/issues/7057 "Lake ice is melting fine in a test I just ran in 1.21.1 vanilla. A player needs to stay in the area for a day or two, for it to melt fully (that's issue #2319) but that is the current game design - it's intentional that ice takes a lot longer to melt than snow and some ice can remain in April/May for example. In future there will be a new system but right now this is intended behavior in 1.21" Note that there are a lot of duplicate issues regarding ice melting. So first of all make sure that (a) you're on the current version and (b) that the ice is behaving as above. That is, staying in the area for a while ticks over the melting process. If it does NOT behave this way, I'd recommend putting it through to the Issue Tracker with your logs. In the meantime, you could always try a mod: https://mods.vintagestory.at/waterweathersimulationredux "Forces lakes to fully freeze/melt based on temperature, since the base game does not do a good job at it sometimes." Professor Dragon.

See my next entry about the .json.

Tyron is secretly a geology teacher who is tricking people into learning about minerals through building a complex video game, requiring a huge staff and development as a cover. There is no other point.

You're welcome. Link to Issue Tracker here: https://github.com/anegostudios/VintageStory-Issues/issues