MKMoose

I'd be interested to know where that appears. Any paths in file contents should start from %appdata% or equivalent, any filesystem metadata should not be included when you upload the file (unless you upload the logs as a .zip or something of the sort, which may preserve some or all of it), and I haven't found any indication of embedded metadata in the log files (I would be very surprised if I did, because they're just text files). Under normal circumstances, according to everything I know, you don't have to sanitize the log files, or at least not for the purpose of your example. Feel free to elaborate on the deeper issues as well.

Every single person that I've seen playing the game simply took a moment to process why they can't pick the thing up, learning that picking things up generally requires an empty hotbar slot, and adjusting their habits accordingly with little to no effort. In fact, I've seen a few cases of people annoyed that an item got picked up while they were doing something else, and I think it was usually about eating or bandaging. It may be nice to prevent picking up anything until the next button press after starting a long action (e.g. eating, healing). I don't think that going all the way to either extreme (RMB always picks up / RMB only picks up with empty main hand) would be necessarily beneficial, because a lot of the time it's a relatively complex question that depends on whether the player is reasonably likely to want to pick up what they're aiming at depending on what they are holding. I don't think the current system is flawless, but I also don't think it has any major flaws. I think the relatively low popularity of PickupArtist and similar mods indicates that most people share a similar sentiment. I find it quite amusing that your highly knowledgeable self seems unaware that: the only information that should appear in the logs which could remotely reasonably warrant sanitization is basic device information (OS, GPU, CPU), merely describing the issue should allow to easily find it on GitHub and discover your separate identity, assuming you've actually reported it - I couldn't find anything, leading me to assume until proven otherwise that you haven't even posted it.

My intention was largely to suggest a general strategy that I've found reliable even as I was starting out, but running around like a maniac is an option as well. A bit more risky on higher difficulty or for classes other than a Blackguard, though. I think most of the work on temporal mechanics should focus on making them more immersive, more interesting in terms of visuals, sounds and feedback to player actions, and overall more fleshed out as an integral part of the world. That includes much more than just what Temporal Symphony does, although it would be a start. If any significant gameplay changes come out of it, then I'll be very interested, but I think other areas are at least equally deserving of improvements. Temporal stability and storms have been added in 1.12, if I recall correctly (rifts even earlier), with almost no meaningful changes since then besides new monsters. I'll quote myself on that from another post where I was admittedly kinda complaining, but it reflects the main things I'd like to see adjusted quite well: I'll mention that this is already an effect somewhat (though it's pretty weak), and you've said yourself elsewhere that storm strength affects the number of enemies. Both would be very easy to modify just by adjusting two numbers in the code for each, so I wouldn't mind to see some changes there. I do also quite like the idea to allow rare spawns in any storm even with only T0-T2 spawns (currently they only have a chance to replace T3 and T4 spawns), since then they become mini-bosses of sorts in low storm strength, and less experienced players aren't locked out of their loot behind more dangerous storms. I'm not sure if it makes much sense to add another early-game item to give more uses to a resource which tends to be obtainable in much larger quantities in mid and late game. Not that it's a bad idea, but I don't think it would solve the stated issue of scrap metal having limited uses. Making the scrap bomb better would be the first step for me, and I think any new uses for scrap metal should ideally also be consumable items which can be useful all the way into the endgame.,This would make the player choose between different consumables if they only have a limited amount of scrap, and make it more likely that different players with different playstyles will find their preferred use for it. Additionally, I was thinking to allow crafting a very limited supply of Jonas components out of metal parts, recycyled scrap metal and some other resources, which could be useful to largely solve the issue with Jonas components being random drops. Could require disassembling one component (or more) to turn it into another, to still require the player to actually find the required number of components in the first place instead of crafting them from "nothing". Something similar was mentioned in this thread.

This is a very reasonable suggestion, especially as a configurable option. Kicking due to inactivity is a common thing across various multiplayer games, while in singleplayer it could just pause instead of outright quitting.

This is a really difficult thing to balance for the vanilla experience, because while some people find storms too easy in various ways, you may also see complaints (especially from newer players) that the storms shouldn't cause enemies to spawn indoors at all, because a beginner with Stone-Age gear just isn't prepared to defeat a corrupt or nightmare monster that happens to materialize near them. Currently, there is no mechanic that would reduce indoor spawns, so you can still get jumped, especially in rooms that are on the larger side. There have been related suggestions to make the monsters announce themselves in some way (e.g. by first spawning a small rift, and only then having the monster come out of it), to give the player a heads-up when they spawn, which would at least help slightly with beginners dying suddenly where they thought they would be safe. I've recently argued that the main way to make storms more engaging (and potentially harder by extension) is to give the player more reason to go out into the storms. The incentives that we have currently are very weak, since storms aren't the primary source of any resources, so the player doesn't really have a good reason to leave their hiding spot. The advantage of this solution is that as long as the resources acquired from storms are not required for anything particularly important, then the less experienced or casual players won't be significantly disadvantaged if they choose to stay inside, especially during the heavier storms. There is also the option to give the player something unique to do indoors during storms, but outside activities are more conducive to increased difficulty and would also naturally allow the player to see storm effects in their full glory. I frankly have no idea how good most people are at fighting storms, but I can survive them quite easily with iron or better gear, as long as I stay either in a fenced-off enclosure (recently I've used a ~15x15 area just because that's what I happened to have) or near a small shelter with at least two exits and ideally with a bunch of windows as well (I've used my greenhouse a few times), to have more control over what I fight and when. The ability to hide for a moment to heal in relative safety is extremely valuable if you don't have good gear yet, but ideally you'll want to fight all the way through a storm to prevent enemies from accumulating. I tend to lose about 10-40 health per storm in total, though that depends heavily on the equipment I use, the type of storm and a lot of other random factors. Drifters aren't really a threat due to how slow they are and they mostly just deal some chip damage with their rocks unless I whiff an attack. Bowtorns aren't much worse unless multiple spawn at the same time, though it's often best to make sure no other enemies are nearby before chasing them. The real threat is T3+ shivers for me, although those can also be sort of cheesed quite easily sometimes since their hitbox is wider than one block.

Can only guess exact reasons, but the roadmap in the latest development update includes an "item heating overhaul", and the devs have shown some other work related to metalworking, among other things. Fingers crossed it's gonna include firepit improvements, because I do agree that they're long overdue.

From a game design perspective, this is just not how it works. If there are mechanics that are seen as cheesy or boring or whatnot, then it's the designer's job to incentivize more engaging gameplay. "Just don't do it" can be a solution to dissatisfaction with combat in some cases, but it doesn't change that the boring options exist, many people will use them, and the game has to be balanced with them in mind. You may have heard the quote generally attributed to Sid Meier: This especially applies to things like running backwards and pillaring up, because they're just the most efficient combat strategies currently available in many situations. Sure, I can avoid utilizing them, but I will always have it in the back of my head that I will probably have an easier time if I use them. Or if I get killed, I will always have it in the back of my head that I could have probably survived if I just used some of the more cheesy strategies. Cheesy, grindy and overall unfun solutions are often a symptom of a problem, and in the case of Vintage Story I would identify that problem with a simple observation: the game doesn't offer any other accessible and reliable methods to avoid taking damage during combat. Maybe shields are a thing, but they're implemented in an unconventional way, occasionally just don't work against melee attacks, are much less effective against high-damage attacks, and take up the offhand slot which also increases hunger rate, leaving them impractical in the eyes of most people. As for wolves and bears specifically, I really feel like it's mostly a dead horse at this point. The complaints stem primarily from how unnaturally aggressive they are and how they give almost no warning before attacking, and not necessarily from anything directly related to combat. Or if it relates to combat, then the complaint tends to be that they are too difficult to dodge and run away from. Bears are actually quite realistic or even too slow, and would probably be absolutely fine even if they were faster if they didn't aggro onto the player so easily and immediately get aggressive. Wolves are also much larger and much more dangerous than real-life wolves, from what I've seen, but that's a separate point. I'll also take the opportunity to introduce another of Sid Meier's influences on games, the definition that "a good game is a series of interesting decisions", which can be seen as a different way to say that a game has to provide the player with a sense of agency (or autonomy as described by models like self-determination theory). This can apply at any scale, from the most high-level decisions like world generation parameters, through long-term strategic choices like deciding which equipment to craft, and down to tiny reactive choices like whether I should step back to avoid getting hit by an enemy or risk a hit to attack the enemy myself. As it is currently implemented, combat offers very few interesting decisions, because meaningful equipment variety is unimpressive and most of the time the player only can perform two or three fairly shallow actions: free movement (completely unimpeded by anything most of the time), a point-and-click attack (falx or spear), optionally a ranged attack (bow or spear). This is why I was suggesting a shove action which would push away nearby enemies, because (if balanced well with weapon knockback) it would allow a choice at any moment during combat between an offensive and defensive action. That is also why I was suggesting to add more meaningful weapon choices that are more effective in different contexts, to shake up what for most people boils down to "falx for melee, bow for ranged" with almost no wiggle room.

From what I've seen, being below 0.25 stability can slightly increase the tier of monsters during storms as well, especially during low and medium storms. But I don't know exactly what proportion of spawns during storms come from the base spawning system, if any, making it difficult to properly estimate the impact. Either way, the effect probably will be rather minor, and it will not cause more double-headed drifters or deepsplit shivers to spawn as those come exclusively from the additional storm spawns.

There's a chance that it used to be different, but right now this is how it tends to spawn. Vintage Story doesn't really have biomes the same way that many other games do it, and instead a lot of things including tree generation depend on randomly generated maps for parameters like average yearly temperature, average rainfall levels, soil fertility (world parameter, not fertility of actual soil blocks) and forest coverage (also world parameter, not the actual amount of trees). Mediterranean cypress has very particular generation requirements, which makes it much less intuitive and unpredictable to find than other trees. If you're interested, these are the parameters for Mediterranean cypress as defined in assets/survival/worldgen/treegenproperties.json (assuming Floral Zones don't disrupt it in any way, because they might slightly modify the parameters directly or cause other trees to be chosen randomly instead of cypress): MinTemp: 8, MaxTemp: 22, MinRain: 30, MaxRain: 90, MinFert: 72, MaxFert: 130, MinForest: 28, MaxForest: 72, MinHeight: 0, MaxHeight: 0.8 And the takeaway from this is: temperature is in degrees Celsius, and 8-22 C is a pretty wide band (default temperate starting location tends to be around 5 C if I recall correctly, while tropics I think were around the 30 C range), and there's a few in-world indicators I can give you for it if you need, easiest being that you need to be somewhere around an area where redwood can appear (14-18 C), or you can go far enough south from the starting location that you start finding sunflower, amaranth or bald cypress (14/15+ C) and then you'll be certain that pretty much anywhere you go East or West can have the greenspire; alternatively you can also use /wgen pos climate to check the exact parameters at your location, if that doesn't break your immersion, rainfall levels are allowed in the [0, 255] interval, so the greenspire cypress requires 12-35% rainfall, meaning that rain has to be pretty uncommon but the area can't be completely dry, fertility is also [0, 255], so it requires a very narrow band of 28-51%, and a good rule of thumb here is that medium fertility soil is too fertile while sand or gravel are not fertile enough, so you need low fertility, forestation is again [0, 255], and again it has to be low but not near zero at 11-28%, typically easiest to find by following the edges of larger forests, height is in the [0, 1] interval and corresponds to the proportion of world height, so it just means it won't appear above Y = 204, which you probably don't have to worry about.

I don't know if that could qualify for the unpopular opinions thread, but I feel like this will change quite literally nothing for combat. It's only a significant consideration when crafting the weapon (and I'll gladly welcome more complex smithing, don't get me wrong), but I'd imagine that many people will just choose something that seems fine enough and think nothing of it afterwards. I feel like combat issues tend to revolve more around insufficient depth in combat itself, while equipment crafting is just the means to get the required gear in the first place. Even if extra variety or complexity in combat were the goal of the heat treatments, then completely new weapon types or other tools would probably have more impact than minor stat variations over existing ones. Realistically, a flanged mace would probably be most suitable, especially at the iron and steel tier. I do agree that some sort of a stunning weapon would be great, because it would lean into a currently very underutilized balance axis. As of now, every weapon has very similar knockback, and it could be beneficial to break that up and make certain weapons better either defensively (low damage, high stagger and knockback, useful against shivers) or offensively (high damage, doesn't push the enemy away, efficient but risky). Weapon choice would then be much more meaningful and case-by-case, instead of just comparing damage numbers. Roughly the same reasoning lies behind my suggestion for varied attack hitboxes, because a weapon with a small hitbox (especially the knife, probably the spear and the falx) might be very stong for single targets but forced to stay defensive if surrounded, whereas a weapon with a larger hitbox would be weaker against single targets but capable of controlling multiple enemies at the same time, again making for an actually interesting and meaningful weapon choice if balanced well. I think Tyron has said that they're adding iron spears and rebalancing the rest in some way in the nearest major update. Haven't seen further details as of now, though, and I don't remember whether he clarified whether that will also include meteoric iron and steel. Yeah, that's the one thing I don't get about the "but iron spears would be too strong when thrown" argument. Like, bruh, then just keep their ranged damage low enough to remain balanced. Or, as you suggest, add a different polearm that can't be thrown at all, which might be even better. Lances and pikes might be a somewhat odd fit for the game, since they were typically used for formation fighting and in cavalry charges. I could see one of them added, though, potentially with even greater reach than a spear (~4 m, maybe even ~4.5 m) and perhaps a short minimum range, as a situational but highly unique weapon used primarily to keep enemies at bay. Also, on the topic of polearms, I would personally love to have something like a poleaxe with a devastating anti-armor charge attack, requiring more deliberate placement but providing unmatched damage output against heavily armored targets. While it does creep a little into the "combat simulator" and "fantasy RPG" territory and is admittedly much less important than the more systemic improvements, I think that opening up some complex and specialized weapon choices would make for a satisfying reward for reaching iron and steel. Gating more complex weapons behind iron and steel would also naturally keep early-game combat experience much more streamlined. I have doubts about mounted combat, though, because it's a very niche feature that doesn't make me feel like it's worth the effort. Some games do it, and it often ends up cheesy and janky. I think I'd prefer any resources put into combat in the near future be directed at improving the core combat experience, whatever that might exactly entail for the devs.

Yeah, that seems consistent with the source code, appreciate it. Just checked, I probably just misremembered something with that stilt shiver. And I'm pretty sure that the other one is consistently referred to as "deepsplit" everywhere. Though "deepslit" admittedly rolls of the tongue better, I think "deepsplit" makes a lot of sense if you compare its appearance with other shivers. Name and spawner in the story location in the screenshot below, but for appearance comparison I'd recommend just jumping into creative and spawning a few shivers. Additional spawns for this area are implemented mainly in this method, if you're interested, and the JSON data is in assets/survival/config/mobextraspawns.json (alongside storm spawns), so I don't think a gearfoot can be found there. We have Vintage Story's bigfoot now, it seems. I would disagree that finding Jonas components underground is less optimal. Sure, combat may be more difficult (I don't know if I even agree with that, to be honest), but at least you can find more than two rare spawns per storm. Either way, while I can appreciate that they are supposed to be difficult to come by, it is also worth mentioning that: low drop rates tend to encourage tedious grinding and cheesing, people don't complain about the drop rates too much probably because a lot of Jonas components can be found in story locations to kickstart the collection process and sometimes provide all the components that the player may be looking for, and they just aren't particularly useful as of now, any consumable items risk being completely impractical with drop rates this low - the base return teleporter takes 8 Jonas components, not even counting the other resources, which would take 10 storms assuming the very optimistic 0.8 average, and assuming you only get the components you need, which would be a frankly somewhat absurd investment even if the reward was much better. While they aren't a priority as of now, I think they will have to be adjusted in some ways whenever more Jonas tech gets added.

Could you clarify which story location you mean? I've seen a stilt shiver in the first location of chapter 2, so I'd imagine it could be this one? I'm not sure how spawns are defined in story locations, but either way gearfoots don't seem to appear anywhere normally, which might warrant a bug report. The double-headed drifter, deepsplit shiver and the gearfoot bowtorn cannot spawn using the regular system, but rare spawns during storms don't include the gearfoot bowtorn: rareSpawns: { variants: [ { code: "drifter-double-headed", groupCode: "boss", chancePerStorm: 1 }, { code: "shiver-deepsplit", groupCode: "boss", chancePerStorm: 1 }] } Ah, I forgot to note that the limit of one of each rare spawn applies separately for each player (with a bunch of extra caveats that also might benefit from a bug report, but that's another matter). I've edited in a clarification. In multiplayer, spawning frequency seems to be effectively multiplied by the number of players, but the maximum count is evaluated separately when trying to spawn monsters for each player, which makes multiple rare spawns possible if the players are far enough away. The chancePerStorm property in the JSON for rare spawns above defines the maximum quantity of each per player. I'd be curious if you've also seen more than one double-headed drifter or deepsplit shiver when playing solo or when separated from other players (at minimum ~50 blocks apart) throughout the entire storm's duration.

Both storms and low stability do seem to increase the tier of spawned monsters. There are two separate spawning mechanisms: The base mechanism that works at all times and is responsible for spawns on the surface from rifts as well as for underground monsters (a bunch of spawn conditions are in this method, tier increase is in this method). Monster tier is only affected when below 0.25 stability, or during heavy storms (light and medium storms have practically no effect). It actually replaces a spawned monster with a monster of the same or higher tier, which allows them to partially circumvent their spawn conditions (e.g. normally only surface rotbeasts can spawn on the surface, and at low stability they can be replaced with higher-tier monsters that can't normally spawn at these Y levels, but all the conditions for the initial spawn like light level and proximity to rifts still apply). I'm not sure how much this mechanism matters during storms, frankly. The special system that causes extra spawns during storms while ignoring regular spawn conditions and is the only way for double-headed drifters and deepsplit shivers to spawn (mostly defined in this method). All tiers of monsters can spawn at any storm strength, and stronger storms only increase the chances to spawn T4 ones. Additionally, higher storm strength increases the maximum number of enemies that can be present at the same time, as mentioned by @LadyWYT. Additional rare spawns (double-headed drifters and deepsplit shivers) have a small chance to replace T3 and T4 spawns, and as far as I can tell at most one of each is allowed to appear during a single storm. Both of the maximum spawn counts apply per-player, not on the entire server. And keep in mind that this is mostly just me reading the code, and there's always a chance that I misread something, so I wouldn't mind to hear if any other experimental results confirm or contradict it. Other notes: there's actually at least three spawning systems and not two, because there's one for the second story location as well, which kinda makes me want to ask the devs some questions, it seems that it's only possible to get at most two rare spawns per storm, and they have a 40% chance to drop a Jonas part or sub-assembly, which yields a very optimistic average of 0.8 Jonas components per storm per player assuming each player gets both rare spawns (I've only had one in three storms so far, which makes storms seem like an extremely inefficient source of Jonas components - bellhead and stilt shivers that spawn deep underground can at least be fought at any time, which is more convenient than occasional storms), everything I've found while looking through the code suggests that gearfoot bowtorn cannot spawn at all as of now, so I'd be curious to know if any of you have seen one recently.

Tyron has said in an interview that while they're aware of the player sentiment around combat, they don't really have the time and experience that a proper combat rework would take and so it's a low priority for them, or something to that effect. The team that is developing Project Glint will be focusing on combat more, and VS might benefit from it by proxy in some capacity, but there's no telling when that might be and what it will exactly entail. I don't know whether there is any sort of consensus in the wider community, beyond the common sentiment that combat should be improved sooner or later. I have seen a whole bunch of different suggestions, and I do have to say that while some can be rather misguided, there's a lot of good ideas as well across these forums and elsewhere. A few areas for improvements that are more systemic in nature which I've seen brought up include: weapon hitboxes and animations - the current system is basically point-and-click in many ways, and it still manages to be janky at times, entity hitboxes - very simplistic at the moment, certain weakpoints would be cool, knockback and enemy i-frames - currently underdeveloped and in some cases more annoying than useful; stagger and slowdown effects would be often better than having enemies jump when hit, line of sight - could be especially important for hunting, status effects - could give more weight to injuries, make armor into something more than damage resistance, and increase variety of medical items, remove omnidirectional sprint (or at least make it slower when running backwards), add movement momentum - current movement allows all the freedom and has zero restrictions, which can be nice for creative building but isn't conducive to weighty and satisfying combat; could try making movement less responsive only as a sort of combat exhaustion mechanic, to have less effect on casual walking around but kick in after waving a weapon around for a while. Personally, I especially like Vermintide's combat system. It's relatively simple as it's built from a couple of basic mechanics that interact with each other in very natural ways and create a lot of depth when faced with the large variety of weapons and enemies. Granted, Vermintide is built with horde combat in mind, but I think there's a lot of things that could be adapted from it into VS to great benefit. I feel like the two tend to achieve roughly the same effect with little difference for the average player, though I do agree that exposing the information through weapons would likely be more accessible. Damage types can be better for some special interactions because they allow entities to define how they react to different weapon categories, e.g. disabling bowtorn's shooting by cutting their string things using slashing damage, or cracking a bell to weaken the effect of their ringing using a blunt attack. If I were to pitch a list of features beyond the low-level changes I've mentioned above, I would focus on opening up the number of options in a way that favors different weapons in different circumstances (i.e. depending on number of enemies, types of enemies) and opens up alternative problem-solving methods. It would probably go something like this: More varied attack speed, stagger/knockback strength and attack hitboxes - all three of these would open up the space for much greater variety of melee weapons with different strengths and weaknesses; there's too many ideas for changes to existing weapons and for new weapons to concisely list them all, but I would focus on a sword, axe, spear, mace, and falx. A shove action to push away an enemy (alternatively a more involved blocking mechanic, not just with a shield), and perhaps similar special secondary actions for two-handed weapons in place of the shove - greatly enhances moment-to-moment decision-making by permitting an offensive (attack) or defensive (shove) action at any given moment. Utility items that can be used in main hand as well as in off-hand (potentially replacing the aforementioned shove action when in off-hand), like shield bash, knife jab, wave a torch to scare off a threat, maybe throw a fistful of sand or quicklime for a stronger incapacitating effect - similarly to a shove action, greatly enhances the depth of different combat options and provides some ways to avoid combat in certain scenarios that don't just involve building a dirt wall. Additionally, rework the scrap bomb into an actual throwable and add a noisemaker device in a similar vein - same reasoning as the previous point. There's as always the suggestion to add crossbows, early firearms, and also better projectiles for the sling, though it's mostly separate from the discussion about melee combat. It may also be worth making a bunch changes to enemies and armor, but that is highly dependent on what other changes are made, e.g. damage types would encourage certain changes to armor, multi-hit weapons, shove action and stunning weapons may require enemies to be made more threatening, status effects and long-term injuries would require heavy balancing changes across the board.

This should work: /giveblock tapestry-north 1 { type: 'name1' } Where 'name1' should be replaced with the appropriate type, like 'tempstorm11' for your case. You can probably find the available types in %AppData%/VintageStory/assets/survival/blocktypes/cloth/tapestry.json or something like that, or I can get them for you a bit later if need be.

Correct. Average rainfall, shrub coverage and forest coverage as well as a few of the less important parameters are within the [0, 1] interval. That is, they are always at least 0 and not higher than 1, which can also be converted into a percentage by multiplying it by 100% to get the result you see when using the command. A value of zero means the lowest possible rainfall/shrubs/forestation, and a value of 1 means the maximum, and the game uses these values during world generation in various ways. Temperature is defined in degrees Celsius, with no additional conversions, so the minimum temperature of -2 as in the chicken example means that many degrees Celsius (and it refers to average yearly temperature). I think Minecraft uses a very similar system. No matter how far you go, animals are saved even when not active and rendered, so that everything remains the same once you get back. Prevents animals from disappearing after you put them in an enclosure or whatnot. Regarding the spawn limits, I don't know how large an area this concerns and I'd have to find it somewhere in the code to check. Chickens, for example, have a maximum quantity of just 4, so they can only spawn if there are fewer chickens than 4 in a given area. I'd have to check how large that area is, though it is small enough that it's probably not a significant consideration if your goal is to find a specific animal. The default area of the /entity countg command seems to be your entire rendered area, but you can also choose a lower range using something like /entity countg e[range=64]. The scenario of new spawns getting blocked by some hidden animals is very unlikely, though.

Welcome to the forums! You're correct in assuming that a lot of the climate information is created on world generation and cannot be modified normally. This includes rainfall, shrubs, forestation, average temperature, and a few other factors which are less important for animal spawning. With the exception of temperature, those values stay within the [0, 1] interval. If you find yourself wanting to exactly verify whether something can spawn somewhere, you can access these values for your current location using the command /wgen pos climate. For example, the spawn conditions related to climate defined for chickens are: minTemp: -2, minRain: 0.32, minShrubs: 0.5, which means that chickens will only spawn in areas that have: at least -2 C average yearly temperature (temperate climate or warmer), at least 0.32 average rainfall (some "uncommon" areas, all "common" or higher areas), at least 0.5 shrub coverage (pretty common shrubs). The Y level in spawn conditions appears in the [0, 2] range, which then gets interpreted as height in blocks. If I recall correctly, Y level of 0 is the bottom of the world, 1 refers to the sea level (Y = 110, in blocks), and 2 means the world height (256 blocks). For example the valais goat spawns in the Y range of [1.1, 1.5], which in block height would be the range between 125 and 183. If you wish to exactly verify whether you're at the correct height, you can find your current Y coordinate using the coordinate overlay, by default toggled with Shift + V. As a general rule, dry areas with limited vegetation have few animals, besides some exceptions like goats in elevated areas or hyenas in hot climates, and unfortunately you can't get more to spawn by planting trees. I will also mention that animals don't despawn randomly, and they have maximum quantities that can exist within a certain area. This might sometimes mean that you're not getting anything to spawn because it has already spawned a couple chunks away and is blocking other animals of its species from appearing nearby. It's unlikely to really matter, but it could potentially be the culprit in some odd cases.

Welcome to the forums! Quite frankly, I don't think you're missing any important information. Not that I could find anything important, that is, despite having also looked into the code, but maybe someone else will chime in. I could hazard a guess that you know more about the bloom's voxel generation than any other person that has posted in this thread. There's an issue on the tracker here, there's redram's posts in this thread, and maybe some other stuff. I haven't seen explicit confirmation on whether it's intentional or not.

For me, one of the first design assumptions was that special storm-sourced resources cannot be looted from monsters (unless very specifically designed for it), for a number of reasons: loot from monsters makes them into targets and not obstacles or threats, monsters appear near players and follow them, which means that the player can just wait in a meticulously prepared spot instead of having to properly face the storm and seek out the challenge, monsters, especially drifters as they are implemented currently, are highly cheeseable (mainly due to the previous point), which will only get worse the more valuable loot they can drop, monsters spawn all the way throughout the storm's duration, meaning that the entire storm's duration is a looting session; it diminishes the atmosphere and lore, and encourages grindy monster-killing sessions over short and thrilling harvesting runs, a focus on killing monsters places explicit emphasis on combat and reduces viability of alternative problem-solving methods and survival strategies. Expand the variety of Jonas tech, sure. Give more uses to temporal gears, sure. I've suggested some of that myself, and I don't see a reason to disagree with any of it. But I think this can easily also make storms worse in certain other regards if done carelessly without additional design changes, even if it somewhat improves momentary engagement during storms. MMO events are a pretty good analogue here and I genuinely don't know why you seem to be introducing them kind of as a bad thing. Systems like these have some of the most effective reward mechanisms, at least when implemented reasonably well. Their tedium, as far as I can tell, tends to come from mindless repetition of the same tasks regularly, which would worry me much more when implementing monster loot that tends to be most efficiently obtained through mob farms. The entire storm could then be seen as such a loot-gathering event. Rushing to harvest something at the start of the storm and then survive on the way back home doesn't have nearly the same risks, I would say. Side note: you seem to be largely focused on a bunch of generalized community suggestions and not on mine, which makes me mildly confused as to how I should even respond to some things. Like, yeah, sure, I also would prefer that it be implemented in a way that feels integral to the game world. I kind of take that as a given.

It is quite realistic, and it is implemented in the game. Lowering rotational speed increases torque, reducing the power loss caused by resistance. The standard strategy is to connect the rotor (or multiple of them) to a vertical axis through a large gear, then use another large gear at the bottom to bring everything back up to base speed. This primarily serves to connect multiple power sources and split power between multiple machines, but reduced power loss is an extra benefit. If you're transferring power along a very long distance, then you could gear down even further, but it's almost always unnecessary. Two hundred axles have the same resistance as a quern. Gear it down once, and it's 1000 axles for one regular-speed quern. It's only significant for power transfer over really long distances.

It really doesn't have to be fantasy, and doesn't have to revolve around any special abilities. Most of this kind of stuff can be easily explained either with some sort of Jonas tech which may or may not require new resources (e.g. a lightning-producing device which could be a nice addition to the combat system as a stunning weapon, exaggerated height could be influenced by something wearable like armor or mobility-enhancing boots or stilts or exoskeleton - imagine a full 3-piece set including the night vision device), or with alchemy or herbalism (due to seraphs' biology tolerating much stronger stimulants and other drugs). I feel like alchemy or herbalism is the better place for a brand new special resource, as processing it into more stable forms could naturally busy the player somewhat while the storm is still going outside. It could potentially also lean into the resource being consumable or perishable, requiring the player to obtain more of it at least once in a few storms to continue benefitting from it. And it doesn't even have to be magical or fantastical in any way - it may just be a strong chemical solvent, catalyst for certain reactions or something of the sort. Lastly, as I said before, whatever that special resource might be, I see no reason not to allow obtaining small amounts of it outside of storms. As long as storms remain the primary source, making them non-exclusive doesn't hurt the original goal of making storms more engaging, or may even benefit it by informing the player about the existence of such a resource and encouraging them to look out for it when a storm comes around. I maintain that this kind of misses the point of the recent discussion here, though it is admittedly very relevant to the original post. It's a fair effort to curb the number of complaints from new players getting suddenly attacked in their own home with no real way to fight back, and it's a good suggestion in its own right, even if it doesn't make the storms much more engaging for the players who just find them tedious or boring. Note for clarity: I see three main categories of suggestions related to temporal storms, all of which have their merits and could benefit the game in different ways: improve accessibility and reduce random punishment (this seems like the main focus of your suggestion related to more reliable safe rooms), improve player engagement and incentivize going out into storms in some capacity (this is the focus of the special resource suggestion), make the storms more immersive, more atmosopheric, visually more interesting, and adjust the potentially nauseating effects (generally these are the suggestions that don't focus on gameplay aspects).

I like this presentation. Ten blocks is definitely enough to keep a small room safe, or give enough buffer to maneuver around outside without getting jumped as much, but not so great that it can be cheesed to render storms utterly toothless. Or if nothing else, give the monsters a spawn animation(I think this has also been suggested before) and let them take a few seconds to crawl out of the walls/floor/ceiling. In that case, the inside is still dangerous, but the occasional monster unfortunate enough to spawn inside with the player can either be quickly killed while spawning, or softened up enough to be dispatched shortly after. Just for reference, by default no entities can spawn within 18 blocks blocks of the player, however, this minimum distance doesn't apply at low stability and doesn't affect spawns caused by rifts. If the player has less than 0.125 stability, rotbeasts are made to only spawn within 10 blocks of the player, except on the surface where they can only spawn anywhere within 20 blocks of rifts (or within 6 blocks of rifts if it's daytime). And on top of that, of course, storms use a separate spawning system. I think having the monsters announce themselves in one way or another is more important than minimum distance, because as long as they're silent then it doesn't matter much whether they spawn right by or a few blocks away. A small safe range would also be nice regardless, even just ~3 blocks, though 10 blocks seems somewhat excessive to me as it just makes it really easy to prevent all spawns within a reasonably sized house house. Keep in mind that allowing the player to do more regular activities in the safety of their home inevitably further reduces the incentive or need to interact with storms. A lot of suggestions that I've seen are quite fine, e.g. more involved ways to protect against storms would be beneficial (although be careful about imposing limitations on creative building), but most of them fundamentally fail to effectively address the one complaint about temporal storms that gets repeated ad infinitum here and elsewhere - they restrict player agency and give practically nothing in return. Even rare spawns during storms have almost nothing interesting about them, as the same loot and more can be obtained underground. There's plenty of ways to improve storms and make them more immersive, more atmospheric and so on, a few of which I have suggested myself. However, if making storms engaging or interesting is the goal (and it is for me at least), then no roundabout solution will have nearly the same effect as actually just incentivizing people to do something new or unique during storms.

[...] My guess would be "no", since to my knowledge the density reading is based off the location of the first block that was checked. Correct, the reading only depends on the first sample's position. The exact locations of the other readings don't matter, provided they are within the correct distance of each other.

Welcome to the forums! Four windmills are generally quite suitable for the quern and the pulverizer running at higher speed assuming you're only running one of them at a time, though you might bump it up slightly (not higher than eight) if you're worried about performance in low winds. For the helve, you're gonna be better off making a second helve if you want to process metals faster instead of making one helve run faster. The longer answer is that there is no specific required number of windmills, because there's a bunch of different factors that influence it. What I can give you is a few general notes: wind speed increases at higher altitudes, so placing your windmills higher will let them produce more torque (this is primarily why I can't recommend a single number), there's always a chance that you'll be interrupted when there's no wind at all, at which point no practical number of windmills is sufficient, personally I've never needed more than 4 windmills, though you may still find it to be insufficient for the quern or the pulverizer in low winds, especially if you place them at low altitude, you're generally not gonna need any more than 8 rotors for all typical applications, at least in singleplayer. The helve hammer is currently an exception relative to other machines in that its resistance increases with speed, at very high values approaching exponential growth - it's better to use multiple helves at regular speed instead of one faster helve. For two helves running at regular speed, 4 windmills should be fine, and I remember seeing a recommendation for three hammers with 8 full windmills. You can even have multiple hammers work on a single anvil - it looks kinda stupid, but doesn't require a new anvil for each new helve. I tend to set up the power train in such a way that helves are powered at default speed, while the quern and pulverizer are connected to the second large gear and run faster. You can also jump into a new world in creative mode to test out a few setups, if you're unsure. The command /weather setw <still/lightbreeze/mediumbreeze/strongbreeze/storm> (choose one, e.g. /weather setw lightbreeze ) can be used to adjust the wind speed to make testing easier.

Welcome to the forums! If it's fire clay you're looking for, then you can find it in bauxite gravel as well, so there is no need to search specifically for bauxite sand - there's a chance that the areas you've already found have some fire clay deposits as well. They should be quite easily noticeable as green-ish patches amidst the bauxite. Alternatively, if you're not having any luck with fire clay deposits in bauxite (or if you're in very cold climates which don't have fire clay), then you may also: create fire clay by combining blue or red clay with powdered calcined flint (often the go-to choice in the early game), find fire clay underlaying bituminous coal or anthracite deposits. You can also consult the page for fire clay in the handbook and navigate from there for additional details, but feel free to ask here as well if something's unclear. And for completeness, if you're still interested in finding bauxite sand regardless, the only pointer I have is that you will probably have more luck in hot climates where deserts are more common. Hot climates can be found by traveling ~20k+ blocks south, assuming default world settings.