MKMoose

I actually did the clever thing to calculate the fertilizer requirement (partially following what you've mentioned in another thread). It's so low that it's practically irrelevant. I genuinely don't know why it's even implemented as a requirement and not as an optional temporary yield increase or an upfront cost, both of which actually got a lot of support where I've seen them mentioned. Almost the entire reaction of the community would have been prevented with more intentional design, or at least better communication. A lot of community criticisms are actually still relevant, though, only the most controversial part is a dud. If I didn't get something wrong (I did initially, I was using a number from Pizza who was talking about a bush with traits), you'll get 3 bountiful harvests (1.5x yield) starting from 100% fertility, then 6 regular harvests in the 30-80% nutrient range, then 5 half-yield harvests in the 10-30% range, but those numbers will also reduce with time. Planted berries will naturally start at the appropriate level partway through. There's also bugs, though I'm gonna ignore them. I don't think I can stress enough how irrelevant that fertilizer requirement actually is except as an nagging psychological factor. Most people can feasibly plant berries, maybe fertilize them just a little, then harvest them ~10 times or more if fertilized (a couple of them on half yield, but it really doesn't matter much), then move on to a new world or drop the game altogether. There's almost no need to refertilize for most players. Berry spam is arguably even worse than it used to be in certain regards, because it's much cheaper to plant new berries instead of refertilizing old ones. Honestly, I need to cool off. This is frustrating me in brand new ways I didn't know were possible. Also, quoting Red Ram from Discord: It's kind of expected, but man. Couldn't have said so earlier, instead of introducing the berry bush rework like a big standalone feature?

I really feel like you could instead just force the berries to be planted at a minimum distance between each other instead of implementing such a complex system. Given the option to avoid maintenance, people will choose it every single time.

From Discord #devlog:

See, this is the one part of the discussion about berry bushes that I don't get. Several of the changes (mainly requirement to fertilize, as well as soil degradation on maturation) are clearly not aimed at just curbing replanting. As of now, we simply don't have any confirmation on the reasoning behind any of these changes. The vast majority of complaints that I've seen (and that I've personally made) is literally some variation of "some changes were expected and are welcome, but other changes go too far". They require all three nutrients in the same quantity for maximum yield, but you can sustain them at decent health with only one nutrient.

Motivation Being even roughly familiar with heat treatment methods, I’ve been quite disappointed with how the current implementation of quenching and tempering seems to be shaping up. I can agree with simplifying mechanics for the sake of fun gameplay, but to me this feels arbitrarily gamified, not simplified, and not even in a fun way. TLDR Make it both more fun and more realistic. Quenching should only be done once, except as a way of retrying. Tempering should always be done after quenching, and should only be done after quenching. Annealing should be done before quenching, or on its own when power isn't desired. Make the mechanic more skill-dependent. Miscellaneous improvements. Problems It's just tedious. Risks are completely insignificant at first, but after a couple iterations the player is basically asked how much they are willing to slog through for diminishing returns. Getting a high-power weapon, even without going into impractical extremes, easily requires quenching 10+ times in total and making at least one or two extra tool heads. It's described as a risk-reward tool improvement system, but in practice it easily becomes a matter of min-maxing against tolerance for tedium and randomness. An important element of risk-reward mechanics like this is that failure has to take away some options, so that a lost opportunity doesn't appear until at some later point. But in the current implementation it often ends up no longer having a significant risk-reward element, and instead it's random-cost. There is practically no skill expression. Choosing whether to temper or not mostly boils down to hyperoptimization in the best case scenario, while for high-power tools tempering is strictly harmful. Uncontrolled randomness is fundamentally unfitting for a delicate heat treatment process and tool improvement, especially combined with incremental gains rewarded for repetition. Whatever you do, you can go further, at the risk of having to do it all over again. If the workpiece shatters, it's just bad luck, and you couldn't do anything about it. I don't personally find fun in it, and I think that it just doesn't work well at all. Quenching for durability makes no sense, because durability buffs and shatter chance go against each other - if the shatter chance is higher than the relative durability increase, then quenching again is fundamentally an expected loss, and that threshold currently ends up being crossed very quickly, especially once you also consider time, effort, fuel and clay costs (not just raw metal). Consequently, increasing power is the only real use of quenching besides a cheap but small improvement to durability when power isn’t desired. Repeatedly quenched weapons are now by all reasonable metrics outright overpowered, and up to a certain point the added time and resource expenditure isn’t even so high as to be impractical. This also creates a massive jump over bronze and other early-game options - it's fairly easy despite the shatter chance (though quite tedious) to get an iron spear or falx with some 40-50% higher damage than a bronze equivalent. Whether that's intentional or not, it is a drastic change relative to the 1.21 balance. Last but not least, the current implementation is highly unrealistic. It's kind of inspired by reality, but it has several problems, most notably that heating up the metal sufficiently doesn't just destroy the effects of prior quenching and tempering as it should realistically. While I can understand a lot of simplifications for the sake of realism, in this case making the mechanic more realistic would arguably make it much simpler as well. Note: the numbers in different lists don't correspond to each other, they're just numbered for convenience. Primary goals Reduce the needless repetition. Even putting realism aside, where’s the fun in maximizing a single stat against tolerance for resource loss and tedium? This could be pretty much entirely addressed with the next point, and it's probably the most important goal here. Reverse all or most previously applied effects after heating above the lower critical temperature (~727C), as would happen realistically. This effect (austenitization) is why as a general rule quenching is only done once (except as a way of retrying after failed or unsatisfactory quenching). This also means that tempering is only done after quenching, because otherwise its effects (which are minimal on unquenched metal anyways) just get destroyed when heated up again. Make the effects of heat treatment less one-dimensional. The easiest way to amend this would be to just make tempering more realistic by giving it an increase to durability at the cost of power, and make quenching apply a reduction to durability, to create a push-pull dynamic of sorts. At the same time, throw the idea of quenching for durability out the window - quenching an item covered in clay is usually done while only covering part of it, especially the spine of blades, to harden the exposed edge while protecting the spine from becoming brittle, which has almost identical effect on the edge but reduces risk of cracking during quenching as well as preserves durability and flexibility of the spine. Make the effects of heat treatment (especially risk of shattering) more dependent on player skill, knowledge and preparation, and ideally extend that to the beneficial effects of quenching as well. Historically, it was critical to know how to quench to achieve optimal grain structure and maximum hardness while minimizing risk of cracking or warping (not outright shattering, though still in many cases rendering the workpiece largely unusable). This may include variable effects depending on closeness to "ideal" treatment, serving as a way to add space for skill expression and mastery of the exact parameters required to achieve the maximum benefits, as well as a level of uncertainty beyond pure randomness. Whatever is easy enough to implement and fits the game, as long as there are ways to control the effects in some capacity, ideally in a dynamic and engaging way and not just through increased complexity of the initial setup. Main suggestion While realism is not my main goal here, I think that staying close to reality could benefit a mechanic like this. The process that I'm aiming for would be very simple at a basic level, while retaining ample space for skill expression and risk-reward mechanics: for tools which benefit from damage or mining speed: anneal to reduce risk of quenching (optionally repeated for diminishing returns), then quench for a power buff at the cost of durability (retry if unsatisfactory), then temper (once or more) to mitigate the lost durability and balance out the desired proportion of durability to power, for tools which primarily benefit from durability: anneal to increase durability (optionally repeated for diminishing returns). Below is a handbook guide mock-up for this system (originally posted in a reply here), put in a spoiler box for clarity. Note that this is only an example, and the mechanics can be adjusted in many ways. Detailed mechanics A more specific description of the suggested heat treatment mechanics: Quenching - occurs when cooling quickly (in quenching medium) down from ~770 C or higher => greatly reduces durability but significantly increases power. Has a chance to shatter the workpiece (destroy it). Ideally, there could also be a chance to warp or crack the workpiece, as a middle-ground between no risks and outright shattering (would apply some debuffs and require requenching, welding or grinding to fix, though I'll save a more detailed description for later). May apply a chance to shatter or crack during usage to require at least one tempering, since quenched but untempered metal is brittle, and that's where shattering actually happens most easily. Effects and risks may vary depending on a lot of factors, potentially including (non-exhaustive): workpiece material - steel may have slightly different temperature thresholds and may be safer than iron, quenching speed (mostly dependent on quenching medium) - brine cools the metal faster so gives better hardness but is more risky, oil cools slower so doesn't give as much hardness but is safer, soak time (time between reaching quenching temperature and transfer to quenching medium) - quenching too fast without soaking for some time wouldn't apply the full effects and may increase risks, optimal temperature reached before quenching (~780-810 C) - the appropriate temperature range would have good results while retaining low risks; slightly higher temperature (close to overheating, probably ~850 C) could apply a greater power buff at a significantly greater risk of shattering or damaging the workpiece, differential quenching (covering the workpiece in clay) - reduces quenching risks and applies less severe durability reduction, but also applies a slightly lower power increase, interrupted quenching (removing the workpiece from the quenching medium partway through the process and allowing it to air cool the rest of the way; roughly what is nowadays known as martempering) - applies similar or slightly lower benefits, but is has reduced risk of cracking, normalization - described right below. Annealing (specifically normalization) - occurs when cooling slowly (in air) after heating to ~750-780 C (or just 750 C and higher) => increases durability and reduces quenching risks after each repetition. Only doing annealing is sufficient for tools which don't benefit from mining speed or damage bonuses (which roughly corresponds to tools which sustain repeated impact so shouldn't be quenched to avoid brittleness, like hammer or chisel). Effects could vary depending on the exact maximum temperature reached and on soak time, which is arguably especially important due to this mechanic being arguably the single most repetitive part of the system - the easiest way to do it would be to make the durability carry-over from previous iterations dependent on how well the player maintains the appropriate annealing temperature during soaking. Note: "normalization" is a relatively modern term, while "annealing" is a broader term which often also takes on a slightly different meaning from normalization. In the past normalization used to be referred to in a bunch of different ways like softening, thermal cycling, air-cooling, annealing - I think that just using the broad "annealing" term would be suitable. Tempering - occurs when cooling slowly (in air) after heating to ~150-650 C (~300-650 C would be suitable for gameplay purposes) => removes or heavily reduces durability debuffs and optionally slightly increases durability on top, as well as reduces power. If quenching applies a chance to shatter or crack during usage, then tempering removes it. Repeated tempering could be repeated to balance out power with durability to a favorable ratio, though diminishing quickly to the point of being mostly pointless after two or three repetitions. Effects may vary depending on the exact peak temperature that was reached. Mostly or entirely ineffective on tools that haven't been quenched yet or have been austenitized. Austenitization - occurs automatically when reaching ~720-750 C (after exceeding the lower critical temperature, often cited as 723 C or 727 C, but it's not consistent) => removes the power buff, greatly reduces or removes any effects on durability. Should likely occur over time or in multiple stages to make it less sudden, but ideally shouldn't overlap with the quenching temperature range for simplicity's sake. On a more technical level, durability loss or both effects may be extended up to ~780 C as a way of implementing diminishing annealing stackability and adding a layer of skill expression to soaking the tool near the lower bound of the annealing range. Note: this is again a modern term, and historically it wasn't really known as much of anything - just something like "heating to full red heat", a lot of the time. Overheating - occurs automatically when reaching ~850-900 C => removes all existing effects, both buffs and debuffs, and resets quenching risks. May apply additional penalties, since going above ~900 C is realistically very risky, though wasted prior effort could be considered enough of a penalty already, so it might be best to just let the player try again without additional problems. Should ideally be applied over time or in multiple stages at different temperature thresholds, so that the effects are not too sudden. Note on the power ceiling: after quenching, the metal has the highest hardness (roughly translating to power) that it can have, but is brittle. Different peak hardness could be achieved depending on a variety of factors during quenching. Technically, you could use the tool right away after quenching without tempering, but it will easily break on strong impact, so tempering is used to achieve a suitable balance between power and durability. Note on gameplay complexity: many of the mechanics can be quite easily adjusted if they are deemed too complicated. What I describe is roughly what I would consider to be a suitable implementation which takes into account a bunch of the most important realistic factors that I consider to be beneficial for gameplay, or at least not harmful. From this point, whatever is deemed unnecessary could be stripped out or simplified. Note on stacking: stackable effects should arguably follow a quickly diminishing geometric sequence or geometric series, to ensure that the effectiveness decreases quickly to disincentivize excessive repetition. This also doesn't require tracking the number of times that a workpiece has been treated. In some cases, adding an additional constant component would allow to further tailor the exact behavior (for example, making annealing affect shatter chance using a formula like after = 0.3 * before + 0.1 would mean that subsequent iterations make the shatter chance quickly drop with each iteration, but not all the way down to zero and instead to 0.1, so that some level of risk is always retained). Note on temperature thresholds: if temperatures are only decided by strict minimum and maximum thresholds, then the process becomes less reliant on skill and more on timing, and loses almost all uncertainty in favor of robotic precision. Adding some level of uncertainty or randomness, as well as soaking implemented through temperature averaging or whatnot, would incentivize the player to aim closer to the center of temperature bands and require more careful judgement instead of simply waiting until the temperature crosses a specific threshold. Skill expression Tyron has expressed concerns that these mechanics wouldn't be as interesting as the current system and wouldn't offer interesting choices to the player, as well as thought that it seems to "sacrifice gameplay for realism". While I find that debatable and somewhat reductive - I think that just reduced repetition and improved verisimilitude would make it more enjoyable for many people - I want to explicitly point out various additional factors which could make a more realistic system interesting, mainly through making heat treatment into a largely skill-dependent process, requiring experience and knowledge for optimal results: Temperature management. Requiring or incentivizing the player to soak the workpiece at the target temperature would take much more skill than just reaching that temperature. Combined with some manner of punishment for exceeding certain temperature thresholds, this creates a mini-game of sorts where the player has to carefully monitor the temperature and keep it near a suitable target level for at least a couple seconds, instead of just making a single, robotic comparison. Especially useful to make annealing more interesting. Variable annealing effects based on temperature. Requiring the player to maintain the correct temperature for a period of time (and rewarding it with greater durability) could be especially useful as a way of adding more interest to what is otherwise the most repetitive part of the system. Exceeding the optimal temperature range would only involve some wasted time and fuel, not material, but still add a lot of interest. Variable quenching effects based on several factors. Several components like soak time would be purely beneficial to the player, rewarding them for doing the process more optimally. Toeing closer to the upper edge of the quenching temperature range but before overheating could be a proper risk-reward mechanic - greater chance of shattering and risk of accidentally overheating, but higher power ceiling. Other components like quenching medium and differential quenching would have various kinds of tradeoffs - greater risk but greater power, lower risk but lower power, higher durability but lower power, additional cost but lower risk, this kind of stuff. The factors are also listed out in the "detailed mechanics" section. Variable tempering effects based on temperature. At low temperatures the reduction to hardness is not as great but the metal remains fairly brittle, and that transitions quite smoothly through the temperature range up to the upper bound where the metal becomes significantly softened, which could add a lot of additional depth to tempering after quenching. Concerns and questions Some potential issues that have been brought up by Tyron and others. Wouldn't the system have just one optimal path? => Not really, or at least not one universally optimal path. The point of optional factors which influence the results of heat treatment, frequently in the form of tradeoffs or push-pull relationships, is precisely to have multiple optimal paths (the tools which don't benefit from power may have just one optimal path, but it's not like the current system doesn't do the same). If a certain process is always optimal for a specific purpose, that seems more tedious than fun. => To some extent I see it like steel, a way of improving your iron tools at some sort of cost - no risks or choices necessary to make it interesting. Achieving additional benefits for voluntarily putting in additional effort is inherently quite rewarding. But at the same time, I aimed with this suggestion to provide a variety of options which require varied amount of time and effort to achieve different end results, which seems like a good way to avoid excessive tedium of always repeating the same process. Certain tools don't benefit from power, making quenching irrelevant for them. => This is almost the same as quenching without the use of clay right now. And arguably better for a number of reasons. I honestly just don't see any problem here, in large part for the reasons described in the two below points. Durability at no risk would be a must-have for tools that don't need power. => That's intentional, but limited with quickly diminishing returns. With that said, adding some risk to it is quite easy by making the durability carry-over from previous iterations dependent on how well the player maintains the appropriate annealing temperature during soaking (primarily by reducing the carry-over when too close to the upper end of that range). Exceeding the optimal temperature range would only involve some wasted time and fuel, not material, but still add a lot of interest. Durability at no risk would be uninteresting for tools that don't need power. => It's basically the same as the current mechanics, except it's actually worthwhile, doesn't have a random shatter chance, and matches reality very naturally. It's arguably also much more suitable for expendable tools like hammers and chisels which the player is expected to craft in high quantity anyways. And finally, a newer player can stick to annealing and get a neat buff for a bit of extra effort, without having to learn the ins and outs of quenching right out of the gate, whereas in the current system it's easier and more convenient to quench for power - kind of backwards if you ask me. Isn't this just a binary choice between power and durability? => No. It's a complex system of tradeoffs between power, durability, risk, resources and time. Depending on desired balance, some more complex processes may allow to get both significantly higher power and an effective durability increase (even accounting for material losses). The current system is arguably much worse in this regard - almost entirely a binary choice, because it's almost never worthwhile to quench one tool for both durability and power. This solution seems to sacrifice gameplay for the sake of realism. => My express intent was to make the system both more enjoyable and more realistic, so I'd need a clearer pointer to how it goes over the line. I think the current system achieves neither for the most part, and arguably doesn't even achieve its stated goal of "a high risk, high reward mechanic". I believe my suggestion achieves all three fairly well (or at least somewhat better), but if there are any specific ways in which it may be harmful to gameplay, I'm more than willing to hear and perhaps amend them. Keep in mind the above "skill expression and interest" section as well, which points to the ways in which I think that a more complex, realistic system could be much more fun as well. This system seems too complex for many players to enjoy. => The exact level of complexity could be tweaked, but I think that the process should be ultimately quite easy to understand - while the under-the-hood mechanics may be very complex, it's not nearly critical for the player to understand the real physical processes and minute details of all the different heat treatments. A newer player can be eased into the system with annealing giving an easy durability buff, without having to bother with quenching, while those seeking a more complex challenge would be rewarded appropriately. A well-written handbook guide and descriptive tooltips at every stage of the process can also go a long way. Possible additional features Judging temperature by color. A really cool change which I would love to see would be to remove the exact temperature readouts in the tooltips and require the player to judge the temperature of the workpiece by color as it has been done historically and still is done often, though that would likely be optional and probably easily circumvented with commands. It would be one of the more interesting ways to introduce more proper skill expression and mastery to heat treatment in place of robotic precision and plain mathematical comparisons, which would also make a skilled blacksmith a highly valuable member of any multiplayer server that decides to play this way. It might be fun, as an extra factor, to allow using a piece of magnetic metal to test whether the workpiece is magnetic, as this is also an indicator that the metal has exceeded a certain temperature threshold. Case-hardening of iron. If we were to aim for realism, it would be necessary to require case-hardening before quenching iron, since quenching is generally ineffective for wrought iron due to insufficient carbon content. Case-hardening would be done by placing the workpiece in a clay box packed with a carbon source, and heating up that box for an extended time to high temperatures. Wrought iron could still be annealed without case-hardening. Work hardening and annealing for bronze. It would be a simpler early-game heat treatment process to ease players into forging more gradually, and to avoid a too steep jump in terms of required and possible investment into a single tool between the metal tiers.

It might end up even more infuriating, because when I was checking out pre.4 animal behavior changes I found that rams will now chase you the same way that something like wolves or agitated boars would (at least that's what happened in that specific case, not sure whether that will be consistent or if it's even intentional), which may mean that it will be necessary to fence off rams and ewes separately. Animal behavior is honestly one of the rare aspects of the game that feels worse and worse every single time I interact with it. Even stuff like combat I can get used to, but having just chased three goats individually from almost a kilometer away into a pen (would be four if not for a sinkhole in the middle of shubbery), the animal behavior really gets on my nerves sometimes. Where are you getting reduced yields, though? I didn't mention that at all. Or maybe as part of "less efficient", but that's more about the general impression of the mechanic relative to other food sources, and doesn't have to translate to specific gameplay changes. The main point is that making the ripe time window much narrower (but different for different types of berries) would allow to significantly change up the balance in several ways. Even massive shrublands filled with thousands of berry bushes could stay balanced if the availability window is not too long, food preservation is not too easy, and a couple other miscellaneous conditions are met. As for fruit trees, I don't feel like there is a good way to truly prevent people from ignoring them as long as their benefits aren't in any fundamental way different from berries. Some differences like spoil time are already in the game, some differences like more varied satiety or different ratios of nutrition to satiety could be added at more or less dev effort, but ultimately one fruit isn't generally gonna be that much different from another fruit. Animal husbandry provides quite notable benefits in the form of convenient access to protein at home as well as a whole exclusive nutrition type, and yet many people don't bother largely because the upfront investment is much higher than farming soybeans, hunting or fishing.

As far as I can tell, they currently use all nutrients simultaneously in the same quantity, and their health seems to be based on the average between the nutrient levels.

Honestly, I don't see this almost at all. Some points on contrasting berries and fruit trees are quite valuable, but I cannot stress enough that investment, maintenance and reward should all be low for berries. Balancing berries as a high-maintenance source of food just seems antithetical to their actual role both in real life and in the game. The main reason why trees are often seen as not worthwhile is that berries have almost no practical downsides - even the short spoil time is largely circumvented by the ability to harvest a single bush multiple times in a year. This can be most simply adjusted just with a seasonal growth cycle, and at no point does it call for regular maintenance. The kind of fantasy that I would personally love to see for berries is to have them be very plentiful in nature, even covering certain areas almost like grass, but be less efficient and only available in a narrow time window dictated by a seasonal growth cycle (the realistic window is often about 2-4 weeks, though individual bushes can be staggered between each other, and they ripen gradually instead of all berries on a bush at once). This could create a neat dynamic where the player would be able to mark rare but rich berrying spots where berries can be easily and reliably gathered in quantity, and visit those spots with a couple baskets at an appropriate time of year depending on species. The main advantage of this approach is that this would: incentivize food diversity - it would be naturally beneficial to find patches of different species that produce fruit at different times of year, incentivize food preservation - if the time window for ripe fruit is very limited, then preserving it becomes crucial (and fruit trees which last longer would naturally gain value), promote a gathering gameplay style that doesn't necessarily favor replanting - a berrying spot or two within walking distance in the area would be a valuable resource worth marking on the map and returning to, arguably creating an incomparably better gameplay dynamic than having to collect scattered bushes from a large area and replant them close to home so that harvesting large numbers of them next time is remotely convenient.

I've seen plenty of people share this sentiment. I'd say that these kinds of mechanics is what VS is built on and modding thrives on. The problem with berries for me is that I see no reasonable argument for them to be relatively more complex than fruit trees and farming. They're the first food source that the player is likely to encounter and rely on, and that alone makes it borderline necessary from a game design perspective to keep them simple and intuitive. I'd argue that berries and perhaps a couple other gatherable sources of food (roots, tubers, bird eggs, flowers etc.) should be plentiful enough to feed the player easily as long as they locate and frequent a few locations with regenerating resources as long as they are available, and the primary advantage of farming and animal husbandry should lie in food security for winter and maximizing miscellaneous benefits like nutrition. The current balance kind of already does that, but only because berries are nearly the only gatherable food source, not because of clear balancing between farming and gathering. Most useful fruit take 20x longer to spoil than berries. Some of the Mediterranean and tropical ones take 7.5x as long as berries, and the rest is exactly as long as berries.

I have no problem with berry bushes operating like fruit trees, and I expected that change to happen eventually, but that's irrelevant to all the other changes. If they want to keep things balanced, then reduced nutrition is the primary lever, and there's no need for anything else. Additionally, a more intricate seasonal growth cycle would allow to better tailor fruit availability to different climates and limit them to specific windows at specific times of year, incentivizing fruit variety. But health and trait systems have no business in the most basic food source in the game. It literally seems like it's gonna be the most complex food source now.

Not gonna lie, I really don't like the new berry bushes. I think they're too complex for their own good. It's pretty much all the complexity of fruit trees, plus the nutrient and trait systems slapped on top. On the earliest food source that the player is likely to encounter and rely on in the early game. It's just inconsistent with everything else, and introduces excessive complexity too early. It's not a bad change, but it's a bad standalone change. I'd argue that fruit should be simple and low-maintenance but inefficient, ergo, they shouldn't use the fertility system at all unless only as a static modifier to yield based on the type of soil they're planted on which could maybe also be boosted with fertilizer. If they're unbalanced, then make them less efficient or make them spoil faster or something in that vein, but don't impose maintenance. At the same time, farming, animal husbandry and hunting would be much more suitable for more labor-intensive processes, creating more meaningful distinctions between nutritional categories. Fruit would be early-game, easy to max out, ineffective in meals. Vegetable and grain more labor-intensive but highly efficient and much easier to store for winter. Protein would be a short-term luxury, but difficult to preserve. Not that the current balance doesn't do that at all, but it could very feasibly lean even further into it.

New clothing is already in the game now, in quantity of exactly 177, currently non-craftable and missing all localization. A couple clothing sets are named after specific cultures, regions, as well as a couple slightly eccentric jobs, and the rest are mostly nondescript everyday clothes and accessories. Very cool.

I'm getting 854 results when searching for "cloth", and I don't know what I'm doing differently. Also, Elvas seems to be playing 1.22.0-pre.3, though it has some things over the public pre.3. I did find that search, though, and there is indeed a bunch of new stuff, some items closely matching the #devlog teaser, seemingly with no recipes as of now (there's just three extra recipes over the current public pre.3). There's also a bucket.

Your vertices. Seemingly used for stress testing. As found in game assets: // Eats all your vertices for breakfast code: "vertexeater", ... shape: { base: "block/stresstest", rotateY: 0 }, ...

I wasn't even aware of this. It doesn't seem to be caused by a clear mistake or bug, but it's inconsistent with other wrench-orientable blocks which can only have their actual orientation changed this way, so I kinda don't know what to think about it.

Clothing items use "clothes-*" codes, but the creative search also considers things like "Clothing category: Waist" or "Material: Cloth", so both the clothes and some other stuff is gonna show up regardless of whether they have "cloth" as part of the actual name. If it's actually 177 new clothing items, then that would be roughly 50% more than what we have currently not counting the village clothing, or 30% if counting the village. That's pretty impressive.

Nope, they don't spawn outside of the story structures (verified by searching for the block code in game assets). Only middle and bottom are obtainable in survival.

Okay, I kind of overlooked rushes. It's kind annoying to look for this kind of information sometimes, because the variety of fibrous plants is massive and different plants are slightly more or less suitable for specific purposes. I did make a suggestion of my own a while back to introduce rushes among other plants at one point, so I do quite like that idea. Though keep in mind that the preferred climate of rushes heavily overlaps with cattails (mainly due to just how common both are), and only a couple rushes could feasibly go somewhat colder than cattails. Some features like dog wool kind of feel like they go into the realm of niche and gimmicky to me. Wolves are also arguably a bit of a poor choice in the current balance, because they're supposed to be a threat and not a target (I would personally want them to be neither for the most part, to keep it more realistic, but that's another matter). It's not necessarily a bad idea, but I would probably be more interested in it if some goats as well as muskox weren't a perfectly fine source of wool in cold climates.

Addressing these two is pretty difficult, because while there's a whole lot of sources of fibers from both plants and animals which could substitute for reeds and flax, most of them similarly don't grow in colder climates. Cold climates just have a much lower variety of flora and fauna, and that's largely reflected in the game. I think the most historically significant alternatives for cold climates would lie in and hemp and maybe stinging nettle, as far as I can find. Some trees like willow, spruce and birch could maybe be used for a similar purposes, though I'd have to look into it more to be sure. It seems that the devs are looking into some fats and oils in 1.22, so I'd hope for this as well. It is easy enough to get a couple candles by panning bony soil in my experience, but using tallow instead would make a lot of sense as well (especially for Homo Sapiens where there's no bony soil). One thing I'm just not certain about is the relative balance with oil lamps, which are currently not that useful compared to candles but much more accessible. For jam specifically, I think it's fine that honey retains most of its uniqueness, because introducing an excess of alternatives to things could easily render bees obsolete. That said, there are options for some sort of syrups as an alternative to honey (presumably more accessible but more labor-intensive to obtain), as well as sugarcane for hotter climates. My guess is that a bunch will change in this area whenever herbalism and status effects are introduced, but it's very difficult to predict how far the devs will take it. This is probably the most intentional part of the balance of cold climates, but I feel like it also has the most potential to improve. Realistically, the most important sources of food in very cold regions include: land mammals like reindeer or beavers - animal variety and the hunting process itself could use a lot of improvements, but it's there and it's functional, marine mammals like seals or whales - not in the game, fishing - finally in the game in 1.22, we'll see if it's satisfactory, bird eggs - not in the game yet, besides chickens, though at least birds are on the roadmap, berries, seasonally (mostly wild berries, agriculture is very limited in those regions) - hopefully the 1.22 rework will do a lot of good here, various tubers, roots, grasses, herbs and algae (also mostly wild ones) - not really in the game yet, maybe herbalism will provide something here. This is a rather unimpressive 3/6. The biggest missing piece is arguably the most unique and maybe most important, that is marine mammals.

Because I don't want my helve to be hideously ugly. I don't play the game for pure efficiency, and neither do most people. Most players don't need to process a thousand iron ingots as fast as possible. It may also be worth mentioning that the helve hammer's resistance increases with speed, so it's generally not worth it to upgear a helve either way (especially if you're willing to use multiple hammers on a single anvil), because it takes more than five times the number of sails to achieve a processing rate equivalent to a couple base-speed helves, and also produces very inconsistent speed. As far as I remember, the recommended ratio to achieve high uptime without wasting too much power in high wind is about three full small rotors per helve, maybe less depending on where you place them, and increasing the output is often better done by just adding another helve or two. This also allows to enable and disable some of the helves using clutches to match the current wind speed better, which also reduces the effective optimal number of windmills per helve. Especially when running two helves at a time, I tend to only hit each bloom ~3-7 times to clear the biggest clusters of slag from the corners at a rate of ~5 per hit, and doing it on the same anvil as the helve is working. If you still care about efficiency, then spending less time on the blooms allows to easily squeeze in a toolhead or two or at least make chain out of plates with barely any reheating to process the output of a single bloomery. Granted, it's gonna be much more difficult if not impossible to do it without reheating in 1.22. You can move seven voxels each with the first two hits, and then it's diminishing returns. Same as for blooms - let the helve do what it can do for free, maybe help it a bit where it matters most, even on the same anvil. Sometimes productivity is about figuring out how to make the work more enjoyable and not strictly faster.

Kinda depends. Modern compound bows differ in much more than just ability to store energy, and the simplest advantage is higher efficiency. They typically use lighter arrows, which allows them to reach much greater velocity, and alongside let-off, stabilizers, sights as well as a couple other improvements it increases their accuracy, ease of use, and can more than double their effective range. Kinetic energy tends to be higher than traditional bows, though lower projectile mass can mean that the penetration ability isn't significantly improved. It may also be worth keeping in mind that hunting bows were generally lighter (~40-80 lb or so, modern ones still fall within this range) than those used in war or whatnot (typically ~100+ lb, sometimes upwards of ~150 lb). I'd be personally interested to eventually see in-game distinction between different draw weights, for a longbow at least. It could even be a nice way to differentiate classes in a more interesting way than blanket ranged changes. As far as I know, even after a hit through the heart, the animal typically still has enough strength for short flight, at least enough to cover some 10-20 m. That should apply to deer at least - other, especially smaller animals may be incapacitated on the spot more easily. As for aiming for the head or spine, that's typically not done simply due to how unreliable it tends to be, from what I've read, even though it can be very effective if it happens. It makes sense that they would just be much more difficult to hit than the heart or lungs, especially with an arrow and not a bullet.

Is cementation being interruptible even unrealistic, though? It would be certainly undesirable due to wasted fuel on subsequent reheating, but it's a long-term diffusion process, so I think that cooling and reheating wouldn't be significantly harmful to steel quality. Extensive information on the topic seems relatively scarce, though, on a quick search at least, possibly just because the process is now obsolete. For a blast furnace, I think a suitable compromise between realistic risks, intuitive implementation and multiplayer-friendly lenience would mainly involve two factors: make the furnace a bit unrealistically fast and make sure to leave enough leeway to avoid the need to respect strict timing - the main problem lies in that it should ideally be fast enough to match the output of multiple bloomeries smelting continuously, but not too fast, so as to leave enough time to pick up the casts once they cool and prepare new molds, while also keeping the amount of material in a single cast reasonably small to avoid the problem of having to make dozens of ingots when the player runs a couple short, create an intermediate between a batch and continuous process by adding some initial fuel cost to heat up the furnace before smelting and then some additional fuel cost to minimize damage during shutdown (and otherwise make the process batch-like) - this would incentivize but not require to cast multiple times in a row, instead of in individual batches. An electric arc furnace is a 19th-century invention favored mostly for its versatility, not scale. Early blast furnaces are medieval tech in Europe, earlier in China.While something like an EAF could be cool as an endgame Jonas tech gimmick, potentially for quick on-demand small-scale production or for lore and story purposes, I don't think there's much purpose to introducing it as a significant component of the mainline tech progression. Blast furnaces have been the ironmaking tech pretty much since they were invented, and to this day ever larger blast furnaces supply the world with the vast majority of cast iron for direct use and are the primary source of intermediate iron in steelmaking.

The pulverizer being locked away behind automation is arguably a perfectly fine limitation, so I'm not sure what the point of a manual pulverizer would be besides short-circuiting mechanical progression and rendering the mechanized pulverizer borderline useless except for easier crushing of large quantities of materials for refractory bricks, unless some other function gets aded to it. Additionally, this proposition includes a number of different components and issues which would cause inconsistency with preexisting features and introduce excess complexity where it's not necessary: Why should the rope be replaced regularly if there are no similar mechanics in the game? Why should the pulley be oiled regularly if all other mechanical parts in the game only use fat in the crafting process? Eye hook being crafted in the grid at temperatures at which the material [which material?] is workable has been deliberately made impossible in 1.22, because for the vast majority of items it never made much sense that they were usable at those temperatures. If anything, it would arguably be much better to allow to manually provide a small amount of power to mechanical components, presumably with the use of something like a treadwheel (doubly useful if it can be powered by both players and animals). Or if not that, then at the very least make the manual pulverizer just utilize the existing pulverizer frame instead of a completely separate construction. Alternatively, especially with herbalism on the horizon, I would expect to see something like mortar and pestle to allow grinding up some things in small quantities that don't make much sense in neither the comically large quern that we have in the game, nor in a large pulverizer (including sulfur, charcoal, potentially dyes like lapis lazuli). A large enough mortar could technically be used for butter churning as well, though doing it in a barrel would likely make more sense. An edge mill could also be a neat addition for making black powder, extracting oil from oil-bearing seeds (e.g. linseed oil from flax) and maybe some other stuff.

A bit of a mental shortcut, that's on me, I guess. Technically, it would be a multi-step process - the blast furnace unlocking cast iron and pig iron, then the finery forge allowing pig iron refinement and by extension actually forging the better tools. Although it might be acceptable for simplicty to allow processing pig iron directly on a regular forge and anvil, at least in initial implementation, which would mean that the blast furnace could actually be considered as the way to unlock improved iron in the same way that the bloomery unlocks iron even though it outputs blooms that have to be further processed. The blast furnace is a bit of a rabbit hole for me. I have some ideas on how deep I would want it to go in-game, but frankly I have no clue how deep most people would want it to go. The main quirk of it that seemingly very few people know is that a blast furnace is operated continuously, not in batches, and operating it is a whole skill and job in itself. A late-medieval blast furnace would run continuously for months, operated by a whole crew of people, casting something like 150-500 kg of iron at a time in ~8 hr intervals, requiring regularly adding new charge, draining slag, monitoring hearth temperature, adjusting the position of tuyeres that provide constant air input from water-powered bellows, rebuilding the sand bed between each cast. When something goes wrong, the whole hearth can solidify, rendering the furnace completely unusable, and that's just one of the possible failure modes. Furnace startup and shutdown are very delicate multi-step processes as well. Also, small note: I'm kinda inconsistent in my use of tenses, but blast furnaces have been improving ever since they were first introduced to Europe, so modern blast furnaces work on the same general principle to the medieval ones but are kind of unrecognizable in the specifics. Naturally, settling for something small and relatively safe would be preferable, which is mostly why I was very critical of the 12 m blast furnace idea, which was similar in size to those used at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, if I recall correctly. It is, of course, entirely possible to implement a simplified design that retains some parts of the realistic complexity while being more approachable and convenient, and a lot just depends on how far the devs would want to take it. Your notes on the bloomery do make me think of some potential improvements to a design I've had in my mind.

Not possible as far as I know. A much more useful command for that purpose is often /db prune, though I'm not certain about the details of its usage. The command handbook (accessible from the pause menu in creative mode) may be of use, if you're ever wondering about what a command does and what arguments it takes. Strongly recommend to make a backup before you try it and carefully check whether you're satisfied with the results afterwards.