MKMoose

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.

I don't know where you're getting the idea that it would only be collected during storms (granted, "unique" could mean "such that only one holder has it", but it's also "being the only one of its kind"). I even expressed a very similar concern in the next paragraph below the one you quoted: Whatever that resource may be, I'm calling it "unique" just because it would most likely be a supernatural item with rather fantastical applications, and I have nothing against allowing to collect small quantities of it in other ways. It would have to be very rare outside of storms, though, to avoid defeating the original purpose of the change. Maybe it could appear in a story location, maybe it could be purchased at a high price from a special NPC, whatever, really, it's beside the point. The point is to give the player a reason to brave the start of the storm (period of preparation and anticipation, encourages the player to come out of their hiding hole), then hurry back home with the loot (something of a thrilling survival test, like you've described with your dash towards the story location), and give an extra something to do during the storm when it's not possible to stay outside (actually process the resource). I was considering this as well for a different reason, but I don't think it would change much of anything. For most purposes it would just add a delay to rotbeast spawns, with little to no impact on how interesting or engaging the storms are. Having to run around to close the rifts would be a job and a half in itself, you'd inevitably miss a few, and you wouldn't get much done besides closing rifts. At that point I'd probably prefer to just sit in the house cooking or panning - at least I would actually get something done, instead of risking combat and draining my stability for zero benefit. Maybe it could work with a few tweaks, but I don't really see how it could improve storms in any way for the players who find them restrictive and tedious.

I'm not certain it makes much sense to discuss the whole stability mechanic by focusing on the very small part that is surface instability. Sure, there are also people who dislike the mechanic as a whole, but surface instability is separate in that it specifically has the problem of having nearly nothing beneficial for the game going for it. Both its gameplay purpose and the worldbuilding aspects are questionable, which cannot be said about the rest of the stability mechanic. To be frank, this is a matter of personal opinion. Enjoyment of mechanics is subjective, and in a large enough playerbase you will always find a diversity of opinions. That said, I think we can discuss a mechanic by analyzing the constraints it applies to the player, the incentives that it provides, the punishment and rewards that it offers in different circumstances, and everything else about their design, without getting bogged down in an opinionated back-and-forth that goes nowhere (though this is still nothing compared to something like the gapped ladder threads, to be fair). All the temporal mechanics are backed with reasonably strong arguments from the perspective of lore, worldbuilding and atmosphere, which increase the wiggle room for momentarily imposing limitations on the player and creating risk of punishment, and storms especially make liberal use of it. Some players don't mind it, like you, and some players find that it goes too far and becomes boring in spite of the intended effects. I will also note that the atmosphere and worldbuilding aren't really there for me as long as the storm begins in an instant and ends just as suddenly. All the temporal mechanics are risky from a design perspective, because they are universally hostile to the player and designed as obstacles without significant rewards, which is a combination that easily reduces player engagement. Underground instability is fine as part of the risk of mining or caving, which itself is necessary or at least useful to obtain a bunch of resources. Surface instability is annoying for reasons that I probably don't need to explain again. Now, temporal storms are exceptionally imposing and punishing, which might point to them offering some sort of a reward, and... it's just rotbeast loot, which, to add insult to injury, is pretty useless unless optimized for large quantities with a mob farm. What I would personally love to see are more upfront and everpresent temporal mechanics, with new and improved visual effects and sounds but removed direct tells in the UI and chat. Make them a big and interactive part of the world that the player actually has to keep in mind and deal with regularly (but without making them too threatening or imposing), with in-world ways to gauge stability and predict storms, and potentially limited means to exploit or counteract instability. I'm gonna twist this right around and say that it is indirectly an excellent argument for creating a short opportunity right as the storm starts to collect a unique resource. My thought was unironically some sort of nectar from a flower, because it could start growing as the storm is imminent and blossom right around the moment it hits, then wilt pretty quickly to remove the incentive to stay outside and keep collecting resources throughtout the entire storm's duration. This would make the player hurry before the storm to find a flower and collect the nectar quickly, then dash back home to process it into something in safety (possibly something that herbalism and brewing could help with, but it could also be used with Jonas parts somehow). Flowers appearing in random locations would make it much less cheeseable, and I'm thinking that they could even be deliberately made to only appear in chunks that are mostly unmodified by the player. There's plenty other options as well, if flowers sound a bit out there, but similar design constraints apply. One thing that is fun to look at on this topic is the importance of autonomy as described by self-determination theory. Offering extrinsic motivation (i.e. an opportunity to collect a resource) may reduce intrinsic motivation in players to busy themselves with their own tasks during the storm, however, the storm already greatly limits intrinsic motivation by reducing the options available to the player as they sit in a small hiding spot. I think that as long as the additional incentive offered by the storm is not excessively strong (that is, the unique resource isn't absolutely crucial in the game - that is a bit of a worry I have with potential new Jonas tech as well), then this extra option would go a long way to increase player engagement during storms.

I've looked through the code more thoroughly today, and I didn't find any spawn conditions (besides a collision check) being used during storms. In fact, it doesn't even test whether the player is in the way, so it could spawn something exactly on top of them. It's very rare simply because the game chooses a position randomly in a 15-block range and there's many more blocks to choose from as distance increases (e.g. a 5x5 area centered on the player is just 25 blocks, so the chance that something spawns within this area and not further away is less than 3%, assuming a completely flat area with no additional obstructions). Both light level and proximity to the player do impact spawning outside of storms. You can look it up or look into the code, but I can also describe it later if there's demand. Though it's admittedly a bit of a nitpick, I can say based on both personal experience and code that bowtorns can spawn in a room this size easily, almost as easily as drifters. Shivers are less common due to their horizontal hitbox size exceeding 0.8, which as far as I can tell causes the game to check for collisions in a 3x3 area (or at least 2x2, even if I misread something), and not 1x1 like for drifters and bowtorns. For bowtorns height is more of a limiting factor, but they still fit in 2.5 blocks, while the room in question looks like it's at least 4 blocks high not accounting for furniture. Both bowtorns and shivers are also less common on the whole.

Welcome to the forums! I'm not really aware of any specific strategies aimed at finding the more basic rock types other than traveling long distances and marking down whatever you might be interested in on the map for later reference. The TLDR is probably just that you have to travel around, preferably once you have an elk, and count on a bit of luck. There might be some tricks and obscure facts that I could find, but I know no method more reliable than exploration. Some people suggest using translocators to aid in this process, but in my experience finding and repairing them in the first place tends to take me more time and effort than just traveling the same distance. They're an option, either way. A typical recommendation might be to put the rock search on the back burner and just pay attention to rock types as you're traveling for other purposes, though I appreciate that it might not be the most enticing idea if you're looking for materials for the house. You can consider something that I do at least once in every long-term playthrough, though it can get tedious: travel to the tropics (~40k blocks south from the default spawn location, though you could turn back earlier once satisfied) to collect seeds for crops and trees that you don't have yet, which might just let you find rocks along the way. I'm not aware of of climate having any impact on this. It may be worth mentioning that geologic provinces which limit the rock types that can spawn in the area are very large, and so can be the actual patches of specific rock, so you'll be better off traveling long distances quickly instead of thoroughly analyzing a smaller area. You might also try moving along the edges between different rock types if you want, to try to maximize the variety of rocks that you see along a single path, though I'm not sure if it's worth the effort. In case you haven't done so already, looking into the four rock categories that the game uses (igneous, metamorphic, sedimentary, volcanic) will also help you search more effectively. As a sedimentary rock, shale (as well as chert, if something more red-brown is tolerable) will often be the topmost layer, and the most reliable way to find it is just exploration. However, when looking for some of the other dark rocks, the categories are a bit more impactful: slate - it is metamorphic and so tends to be rare (and makes for a nice black roof); often appears under sedimentary layers but may also happen to be the topmost layer, doesn't generally appear below basalt; it currently only generates as thin layers (at most 15 blocks thick), which may be noticeable as a black stripe on cliff faces, basalt - as the volcanic rock, it's perhaps the rarest strata in the game and it will always be the topmost layer (maybe barring some odd layering shenanigans); it can also be found throughout the world in deep caves near the mantle, which might be a fast but risky and expensive option that doesn't require traveling too far, though I can't really say how reliable it is.

A lot here depends on the exact implementation of the placeable bags. I would lean towards something that indirectly prevents the player from running freely with the inventory open (enhance immersion and improve IMM while at it), yet with little detriment to the time it takes to access the items in the bags. It may be still possible to open the bags freely while sitting (ideally also on an elk, on the sailboat, or other modes of transport where it makes sense). Side note: I absolutely hate minimaps (maps are mostly fine, just minimaps). They are a plague. A bandaid fix to poor design that should never be tolerated in anything that dares call itself a survival, an RPG, or anything of the sort, except maybe as an additional accessibilty option.

Can I just say that I've mentioned this idea both in this thread and in my first suggestion in these forums (which could use some rewriting, now that I look at it again)? I don't know if it's popular or not, but I think it would be a great change. Incomparably more immersive, largely solves a big issue with IMM, and it would arguably be beneficial to make the player stand in place when using the inventory to more naturally reduce the need for simultaneous inputs. Would probably take some getting used to for existing players, but I think it's worth it. I'm not certain how this could be implemented well, but I really felt the problem when leaving the first story location with 7 bracelets, 5 butterfly pins and a whole bunch of other clothing.

Double disagree -- the real challenge class is Commoner. Double that and give it to the next person. Commoner has no particular strengths, but they aren't a challenge class, kind of by definition. They are the baseline and a good starting point for the new or indecisive player. If need be, we could lean into that further by giving the commoner slightly reduced hunger rate or slightly improved cold resistance. I could get behind a diplomat as a new class, separate from the tailor, with the caveat that an excessive number of classes could be detrimental in the long term. It could fill a neat niche where few other classes could fit, focused on unconventional utility and interaction with NPCs. Could also be a vassal, a merchant, a guildsman, a courier, or anything of the sort, with potentially different traits that would make sense for each. The tailor is in a bit of a limbo until we get more developed weaving and sewing mechanics (if we ever get them, but at least weaving is on the roadmap). Before that, I feel like they really don't need much to be entirely viable, even if slightly suboptimal. Not that the suggestions are bad, bur I have to mention a few potential issues with the proposed changes: increased healing effectiveness goes against the tailor's reduced health; a recipe for better bandages at similar cost could be nice, though, increased trade value, when not implemented carefully, could make the tailor into the "can you run to the trader and buy/sell this for me" class; I wouldn't mind to see some clothes be made more profitable to craft and sell, though, upgrading armor could have quite large benefits, making the tailor into the server's armorer; relatively large systems also probably shouldn't be locked behind a class (tailor already has by far the most significant class-exclusive items).

The position of the sun currently depends on the latitude, and polar regions have realistic polar nights and days. If we were to do the same for longitude, then we would presumably choose the distance between poles (by default it's 100k blocks) or something close to it to indicate the "length of the equator", and travelling that length would change the time of day by 24 hours, landing back in the same time zone. While it's a fine suggestion for the sake of realism and it should be fairly simple to implement, there are two potential issues: if multiple people are in different time zones, then sleeping would be practically impossible in a satisfactory way as the night for one person would be the day for someone else, possibly making the feature more annoying than immersive in those cases, the impact of this change would likely be quite minimal, which makes it more difficult to justify it - at 100k blocks equator length, one time zone would be more than 4000 blocks wide, meaning multiple players would have to be at least some 10-20k blocks apart on the horizontal axis to notice a significant difference, making the feature practically irrelevant in singleplayer and unlikely to matter on small servers where people tend to stick together.

The short of it is that you were most likely just unlucky and there probably isn't anything you can really do about it. Prevailing wisdom suggests that temporal storms allow rotbeasts to spawn practically anywhere they please. According to the wiki, the only condition is that they have to physically fit in the space (and I think that checks out with the source code). I don't think you can fully prevent spawns without just cramming yourself into a space with at least one dimension smaller than the minimum required for spawning. I'm not sure whether the player counts as an obstruction as well. The required space, I think, is the collision box of the entity that the game is attmepting to spawn plus 0.1 in every direction except down (I can't look up the collision boxes for the rotbeasts at the moment, but if you're feeling adventurous then they should probably be in the JSON definitions, somewhere in %AppData%/VintageStory/assets).

I don't know how much you've looked into the actual halite generation, but there's a few things that you may want to know to make sure you're looking where salt can actually generate: halite rock cannot be detected by the prospecting pick's node search, whereas density search is only useful for salt domes and not the salt beds in deserts, salt domes can generate anywhere with a thick enough layer of sedimentary rock and they can be found using the prospecting pick's density search - if you want to find salt as soon as possible, you have to get a reasonable reading for halite (I don't think it's actually possible to find a "decent" reading, "poor" is actually good for halite) and mine horizontal tunnels at any depth below the lowest sedimentary layer in ~20 block intervals (or a bit more dense if you really need to, since the domes can have a diameter anywhere from 5 to 37 if I recall correctly); keep in mind that you can take density readings while deep underground to make sure that you're still in an area with a lot of halite - the reading accounts for the amount of sedimentary rock above you so you don't need to double-check it, dry lake salt beds should generate in dry, hot and flat areas (sandy deserts, specifically 0 to 0.3 rainfall and 15 to 40 average temperature), directly under the surface (just under sand/gravel), near the sea level (Y < 117, I think); I would actually need it confirmed that they can generate at all and I'm not certain about the exact generation requirements, though, as I have yet to see one myself.

See, I'm immediately pulling my hair out over this one (and a few other ones in here), because I feel like only a small part of it is unpopular. From what I've seen there's very few people who dislike temporal stability as a whole compared to the number of people who would yeet surface instability out the window the first chance they get. Dumping the two together ain't doing you favors. Also, though I can't claim to have seen them all, I actually don't recall any argument about stability customization that did not revolve around surface instability being inseparable from all other instability. There's no reason to put underground instability in the crossfire when it doesn't get nearly the same flack. Or in other words, focus on improving what doesn't work instead of panicking that the baby shouldn't be thrown out with the bathwater. Feel free to consider this my potentially unpopular opinion, which kind of gets more reinforced with each new game I pick up: long-time fans of various things tend to be too worried about it getting ruined with poorly thought out suggestions (which is largely but not entirely justified) to genuinely entertain the possibility of improving undercooked features that they've already grown accustomed to.

I feel like the large amounts of flax in recipes is a stand-in for the processing time that's presumably gonna be necessary once proper weaving is added. Currently, flax processing is practically instant, so some other way of time-gating linen isn't completely unreasonable. I love the contrast between these two. Also, I think that you should have to place down your bags to access the items inside. This is a cool idea. I'd say it should be a different item and not just a lantern with something else inside, but that's a minor detail.