jerjerje

If you want to try and repeat this experiment you could try this mod: https://mods.vintagestory.at/xray It is essentially an X-ray mod, that will find clay much easier than with particles. (Select the Sparse Grass Version of the clay, so you only get surface deposits) I tried three worlds with Standard settings and recorded how many blocks away the closest clay was. I got these distances: 171 blocks, 65 blocks and 214 blocks. Of course, you won't always find that closest clay deposit. But still, clay does seem to generate decently close on most seeds. That said, a large scale test would be nice to get more data points. There could be some rare outliers that don't generate clay close by that I would have missed. My test also didn't check how abundant clay is. Maybe it would be better to test how many clay deposits spawn in a certain radius around spawn instead.

This should also be remedied somewhat by having more endgame content. The roadmap lists, for example: "More ways to mechanize task with mechanical power" and "Early Steam power technology". When these are implemented, I would imagine that you will still have plenty to do at your base, even in the very late game. Of course, you could always finish the entire tech tree without doing any story quests. But there is little that the devs can do about that.

I heard about the elevator change before, but that really is a lot they changed. Guess we'll have to wait and see how future story chapters will be balanced. (Hopefully they won't require an entire update focused on rebalancing them)

There are real life reasons why titanium wouldn't work well for tools. As the game is trying to be at least somewhat realistic, these should be considered as well. Titanium is indeed a very strong metal, but people tend to underestimate just how strong steel is. To quote Wikipedia: "Commercially pure (99.2% pure) grades of titanium have ultimate tensile strength [...] equal to that of common, low-grade steel alloys". What we have in game would certainly be some form of "low-grade" steel, so titanium would likely be comparable. (A major reason we use titanium in the real world is due to its low weight, compared to steel.) Now to be clear, this quote is regarding tensile strength. Tensile strength measures how much you can pull something apart, before breaking. This isn't particularly relevant for something like tools. In this case, you would want to measure how resistant titanium is to shock wave or compression stress. Sadly, finding good data on this is rather difficult, unless you want to search through scientific studies on this. If someone wants to do that, please let me know what you find. I am in no way an expert on the topic, so I might be misinterpreting this. But from my understanding, titanium would at best be on a similar level to steel. Almost definitely not better. If the devs ever want to add another tool tier, it should likely be some form of "high-grade" steel. But personally, I would say that another tool/armor tier is not really needed. At least not how the game is right now. As for future story locations, I don't think that they have to keep getting harder and harder. More detail in the spoiler: As for the distances, I would not assume, that you would have to travel anything near 100k blocks for future chapters. With default settings both the equator and the North Pole are only 50k blocks away. But I wouldn't assume that future story chapters would even go that far out, either. We will definitely still have to travel for future chapters, but I would assume at absolute most 20k blocks for one chapter. But even that might be a stretch. Slight spoiler for end of story chapter two:

The handbook is already one of the best in game guides I have seen. And it has already seen some improvements, since I started playing. Still, there are many ways to improve it further. I am making this post as a collective overview of improvements I have seen suggested by others, and improvement ideas I have had myself. I will link to other forum posts, when I have found other posts also suggesting these things. 1. Problem: You frequently have to search the same entries again and again. Solution 1: A way to bookmark pages so, that they can be easily opened again, without having to search. Solution 2: When closing the handbook it could remember the previous page it was on and reopen that. These two solutions have slightly different use cases. I believe both would be worthwhile additions. Similar things have been suggested here and here. 2. Problem: It can be difficult to find out what variants are allowed for a crafting recipe. For example, I remember looking at the Mining Bag recipe and wondering what plates I can use for it. The only way to find this out, is by checking what plates are shown. Moving my mouse away from the recipe. Wait until plates change. Check what plates there are now. Repeat, until you are confident that only bronze plates and better are usable. This is annoying. Solution: When right-clicking a variable item slot, it should show a small popup with all possible items. Hovering over the items in the popup would then give you the item name, etc. Left-clicking them would take you to their respective handbook page, as usual. Left-clicking outside the popup would close it. Here is a mockup done by @Descruff on their forum post about this issue here. Their solution was slightly different from what I suggest. See their post here 3. Problem: Sometimes there are so many uncraftable items of a type, that it can be difficult to find what you need. For example, before my first winter, I wanted to use the handbook to find some clothes I could make. So I tried to search for “Max Warmth” to find all clothing items that give warmth. This gives you a list of many clothing items, where 99% are uncraftable. This is not helpful. I quickly gave up and used the wikis Prepare for Winter Guide to find the fur clothes. Even now that I have played the game for over 200 hours, I still don't have a good idea of what craftable clothing items exist. Solution: Filters A way to filter the search to only show items with certain properties would be useful. I would suggest one filter for craftable items, one filter for tradable items and one filter for unobtainable items (i.e.: decorative items from story locations, that otherwise clutter search results). There may be other filter categories that could be beneficial, but I would suggest these three at minimum. (Some other filters could be “Edible”, “Creature”, etc.) I would suggest these filters to be toggleable independently and have three states: On, Ban, Ignored. (Ignored would be the default value) If “Craftable” and “Tradable” are both on, it would show items that are obtainable through crafting AND trading. If “Craftable” is set to on and “Tradable” is set to ignored, it would show all items with a crafting recipe, ignoring if the item can be traded. But if “Craftable” is on and “Tradable” is set to Ban, then it would hide all items that can be traded, even if that item has a crafting recipe. I believe this system sounds more complicated than it is. It should be relatively intuitive to use. (Sidenote: I would also suggest the current “Guides” and “Blocks and Items” Tabs to use the same "On, Ban, Ignored" system, for consistency. The “Everything” Button would just reset all filter to Ignored. 4. Problem: Comparing multiple items with each other can be very tedious. For example comparing pickaxe mining speeds currently requires searching for “pickaxe”, opening one items page, remembering the value you want to compare, then going back and opening the page for a different item, repeat until you have compared all relevant items. This doesn’t have to require this much clicking. Solution: When hovering over an entry in the search list, it should show a brief item description, similar to when you are hovering over it in your inventory. Here is a quick mockup to show what I mean: This would allow players to quickly get the basic stats of an item and allow for easier comparison of different items stats. For example, comparing how good various clothes are, or comparing different tool stats, or comparing how much different poultices heal, etc. 5. Problem: Finding what stone types certain ore can spawn in is very hard to do in the handbook. There is a way to see something similar on the handbook page for the stone types: But usually the player wants to know the inverse of this: In what stone types does a certain ore spawn? Not what ores can spawn in this stone. Solution: On the page for the nuggets, show which stone types the corresponding ore can generate in. Additionally, it would be useful to also show the highest ore grade (Poor, Medium, Rich, Bountiful) that can occur per rock type. This information is already technically accessible via the handbook, it is just very tedious to gather it. 6. Problem: Many features of the handbook are never explained. Solution: Add a guide that gives tips on how to use the handbook. This should include quick descriptions for the bookmarks, filters and right-clicking to see all variants in recipes (should these be added), but even some features already in vanilla could be better explained, such as: Pressing “H”, while hovering over an item, opens the corresponding entry. Pressing “Shift+H” opens the entry for the block you are looking at. You can search for the descriptions and stats of items too (For example, searching “storage slots” gives all basket/backpack variants and all storage containers (chests, storage vessels, etc.)). These features are very useful, and I only learned about these from other community members. It would be nice if the game actually explained all of these.

Well, the temperature does also change with the time of day and season. That can cause the spoilage rates to change over time. I believe open doors and open trapdoors also affect the spoilage rate.

The outside temperature also influences the spoilage rate in cellars. For example, in winter the spoilage rate will be much lower. There are also (small) temperature differences, even among small distances. (Even only travelling east to west). These differences are only slight, but they might cause the differences you see in the spoilage rate. Going higher significantly affects temperature, so keep that in mind too. If you want to test this, you could use the command: /wgen pos climate This gives you an output like this: Temperature: 18,5°C, Year avg: 3,5°C, Avg. Rainfall: 53%, Geologic Activity: 10%, Fertility: 37%, Forest: 0%, Shrub: 39%, Sealevel dist: 43%, Season: Summer, Hemisphere: North The important value here is the "Year avg". This is the average temperature at that spot. Go to your cellars and see how this differs between them. I would assume the cellars with lower perish rate are in slightly colder areas. I'm not sure if this is what's causing the difference, but it's worth testing.

Though you do also get a much faster option for traveling after completing the first story dungeon. That also helps a lot

I think you're underestimating just how far you can run in one day. You shouldn't really need to put food into any outposts. I just took a couple of sealed crocks with me and started running. I only made an "outpost", when it got dark, and that was just a 2x2 soil hut. Just enough to sleep through the night. I think I only needed to do that once, before reaching the archives, but that will depend on how long your time of day in the current season is. I would suggest some better gear than that. I went for the strongest armor: Steel Plate Armor. That definitely wasn't needed, though. Some iron armor should be more than strong enough. You can always bring a temporal gear to set your spawn, so you don't have to run all the way there again, should you die.

Waterwheels have literally already been teased in the discord for the next big update

Update Version 2.0.0 Added 5 normal tuning cylinders: Night to Day Nostalgic Roots Building Creating Added 11 new Story Cylinders that can only be obtained from NPCs in exchange for one Unattuned Tuning Cylinder. Eidolon Battle The Resonance Archives Substitute For An Epitaph Windy Village Chilly Village Nadiyas Melody of Spring Nadiyas Summer Solstice Celebration Nadiyas Anthem of Fall Nadiyas Wintry Composition Devastation Tenacious

As long as you harvest the trees wild without cutting them down, you can have all the fruit you need in your second year. I mean, all the berry items do show multiple berries at once, so I always interpreted it as a handful of berries. Not one singular berry. Still, I get, that it seems a little strange to have the same satiety for both. I quite like that idea. If fruit trees required some pruning in spring to get a large harvest, I think that would alleviate the issues I have with fruit trees. This would require the player to visit each tree more than once a year, and would thereby give more of an incentive to actually try to plant the trees close to your base.

It's interesting how much our opinions on fruit trees differ. I feel that they are too powerful for how much work you put into them. Yes, each piece of fruit gives the same satiety as a berry item, but their main benefit is storage time. If you want fruit nutrition in winter, then you either pre-cook many crocks worth of jam (requires also getting bees) or porridge (but porridge would need to be sealed to last the entire winter, so requires either fat or bee wax), or you just harvest a few fruit trees that you found in the wild. With a cellar, fruits will last well over an entire year! That is where I currently see the main benefit of fruit trees (though some fruits don't last very long either). Even small Fruit trees produce a lot of fruit every year. Finding a few smaller fruit trees is enough to harvest enough fruit for an entire year. In my world, I easily found enough fruit trees before the second winter, that I never had to bother with berries again. Also, berry bushes have to be harvested multiple times a year, while fruit trees only need one harvest. So, I would argue, that fruit trees also require less maintenance than berry bushes. The only downside fruit trees have, is that they cannot be moved without a very large time investment. But, since you only need to visit each fruit tree once a year, I don't mind a little travelling for that. I do agree on the point, that planting your own fruit tree is not really rewarding. But not because the fruits are not good enough. It's just easier to collect the fruit from wild trees. (Unless you plan to keep playing on one world for a very long time). I really don't think fruit trees need a buff. I would even suggest a (slight) nerf (i.e.: dropping less fruit per harvest, somewhat shorter spoilage times).

I didn't know they were still working on Nadiya. I figured that would be finished with 1.21, since that was specifically about improving the second story chapter. Thanks!

I was recently looking through the soundtrack for the game and I noticed that, specifically on the bandcamp version, the OST features four additional tracks for Nadiya. As far as I can tell, these have not yet been implemented into the game, despite them being added to the soundtrack back in September. The tracks do not show up at all in the music folder in the game files, and I definitely haven't heard them in game either. So my suggestion would be to actually implement these tracks for the next release.