I've been playing this game for over 200 hours now, and I wanted to comment on my experience with the game (I only made the forum account now, though). Before I get into the complaining, I should mention, that I very much enjoy this game a lot! Vintage Story has quickly become one of my top three games. I wouldn't have played it this long if I didn't like it. I just don't think it was nearly as hard the description "uncompromising wilderness survival" had led me to believe.
My two main issues are:
1. The winter cold was too easy to overcome.
2. Acquiring enough food felt too easy
Next I will elaborate on these points in more detail. For context, I was playing on default settings in version 1.20.?.
1. The cold
The cold doesn't feel like much of a threat.
For my first winter, I had prepared a set of fur hide clothing. Since I didn't want to waste any durability, I decided to only start wearing the clothes when I started needing them. I never used the fur hide clothing AT ALL during that winter. I could easily stay outside during the winter for quite some time being fully naked (or rather wearing my 0% durability starter clothes, which should be equivalent to being naked). I was holding a torch in my offhand for the slight warmth boost. I spend most the winter close to my base building and whenever I got too cold I just went back inside. But I was still able to stay in negative temperatures for quite some time. Winter clothes are more relevant, when travelling during winter, but even then I got by with the occasional campfire.
I had used the fur hide clothes a little in the second and third winter, but even then I never actually had to repair them (or make a second set), because I barely ever needed them.
My suggestion for improving the cold would be to make rooms cool down too. Players would need to occasionally warm up rooms with a fire pit, or the room would be below freezing in winter. How fast the room would be losing heat could depend on the size of the room and the material it's made of. This would add a bit more strategy to base design: Players could either collect a lot of firewood or build a single well isolated room.
2. The food
Getting enough food for winter felt too easy.
This is in part, since crops give a lot of food and also because most foods last very, very long. For my first winter, I already had more than enough Grain and Vegetable stored. A rather basic cellar will trivially allow both of these to last multiple years. I was lucky and found Halite quite quickly, so I was able to preserve a decent amount of Protein, too. I had trouble finding Goats/Sheep, so Dairy was still of the table. Since I didn't think ahead on preserving berries, I didn't have any Fruit nutrition available either. So for the next year I made plans to get bees, so I could have honey, jam and wax (for sealing pots of berry porridge). However, then I harvested one (1) fruit tree and instantly had enough Fruit for the winter. This was rather disappointing, as I had been making plans for keeping Fruit nutrition available, and suddenly these plans were useless. I was just given an instant solutions to this problem, without actually putting in any work. After that, I stopped preparing for winter. It simply didn't feel necessary to prepare anything. I was just planting whatever seeds fit the soil's nutrition and never put more thought into it (aside from when I needed flax).
For food, I feel like the main problem was the unrealistically long spoilage times. I think shorter spoilage times (below one year in a cellar) would do a lot to make food feel less trivial. Different crops should also have different spoilage times and nutrition values, to allow more complex decision-making.
I would love to hear your feelings on the topic. Were your experiences similar to mine? And most importantly: Do you think these things should be made harder/more complex?
And I know that there are settings and mods to make these things harder. That's not the point. My point is that a game that calls itself an "uncompromising wilderness survival" game, should (on default settings and without installing mods) be "uncompromising". And it just didn't feel like that for me.
I've been playing this game for over 200 hours now, and I wanted to comment on my experience with the game (I only made the forum account now, though). Before I get into the complaining, I should mention, that I very much enjoy this game a lot! Vintage Story has quickly become one of my top three games. I wouldn't have played it this long if I didn't like it. I just don't think it was nearly as hard the description "uncompromising wilderness survival" had led me to believe. My two main issues are: 1. The winter cold was too easy to overcome. 2. Acquiring enough food felt too easy Next I will elaborate on these points in more detail. For context, I was playing on default settings in version 1.20.?. 1. The cold The cold doesn't feel like much of a threat. For my first winter, I had prepared a set of fur hide clothing. Since I didn't want to waste any durability, I decided to only start wearing the clothes when I started needing them. I never used the fur hide clothing AT ALL during that winter. I could easily stay outside during the winter for quite some time being fully naked (or rather wearing my 0% durability starter clothes, which should be equivalent to being naked). I was holding a torch in my offhand for the slight warmth boost. I spend most the winter close to my base building and whenever I got too cold I just went back inside. But I was still able to stay in negative temperatures for quite some time. Winter clothes are more relevant, when travelling during winter, but even then I got by with the occasional campfire. I had used the fur hide clothes a little in the second and third winter, but even then I never actually had to repair them (or make a second set), because I barely ever needed them. My suggestion for improving the cold would be to make rooms cool down too. Players would need to occasionally warm up rooms with a fire pit, or the room would be below freezing in winter. How fast the room would be losing heat could depend on the size of the room and the material it's made of. This would add a bit more strategy to base design: Players could either collect a lot of firewood or build a single well isolated room. 2. The food Getting enough food for winter felt too easy. This is in part, since crops give a lot of food and also because most foods last very, very long. For my first winter, I already had more than enough Grain and Vegetable stored. A rather basic cellar will trivially allow both of these to last multiple years. I was lucky and found Halite quite quickly, so I was able to preserve a decent amount of Protein, too. I had trouble finding Goats/Sheep, so Dairy was still of the table. Since I didn't think ahead on preserving berries, I didn't have any Fruit nutrition available either. So for the next year I made plans to get bees, so I could have honey, jam and wax (for sealing pots of berry porridge). However, then I harvested one (1) fruit tree and instantly had enough Fruit for the winter. This was rather disappointing, as I had been making plans for keeping Fruit nutrition available, and suddenly these plans were useless. I was just given an instant solutions to this problem, without actually putting in any work. After that, I stopped preparing for winter. It simply didn't feel necessary to prepare anything. I was just planting whatever seeds fit the soil's nutrition and never put more thought into it (aside from when I needed flax). For food, I feel like the main problem was the unrealistically long spoilage times. I think shorter spoilage times (below one year in a cellar) would do a lot to make food feel less trivial. Different crops should also have different spoilage times and nutrition values, to allow more complex decision-making. I would love to hear your feelings on the topic. Were your experiences similar to mine? And most importantly: Do you think these things should be made harder/more complex? And I know that there are settings and mods to make these things harder. That's not the point. My point is that a game that calls itself an "uncompromising wilderness survival" game, should (on default settings and without installing mods) be "uncompromising". And it just didn't feel like that for me.