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I ran out of file attachment space on my account, so I uploaded everything to imgur instead. Elaboration on Sand Molding I had some conflicting thoughts about this mechanic. It's a fairly basic form of crafting so I figured it would be strange if you needed mid-game materials to utilize it properly, so I changed it up a little bit. Little Parts, in relation to "Complex Materials" I didn't go too much in detail into the main focus of the "complex mechanisms" part of the last post, and so I wanted to expand on those ideas a little bit more. Some parts require more work than just a simple casting, and so I tried to make it seem as real as possible with as little tools as possible. There were three primitive drills I could choose from, The brace, augur, and pump-drill. I went with the brace for drilling metal, and the augur for drilling wood. Carpentry, Rethought I gradually became more and more unhappy with the previous carpentry idea, so I decided to rework it entirely. It's still incredibly rough, however when trying to connect mechanics in gameplay, the style of crafting used in carpentry could familiarize the player with the style of crafting used when assembling more complex parts. An extra idea I didn't put into the drawing was the ability to make proper handles from the treadle lathe instead of using sticks, which could give tools more durability and an efficiency bonus. Making Fabric This video and this video were what I used to help me fabricate this idea. A detail that isn't in this post could be that, if you pick the tailor class, you would get extra special recipes when choosing on the warping reel. Occult Crafting , Occult Crafting Expanded This is an idea that diverges from the realistic age-based progression of the game, and taps more into its Lovecraftian world. The second link goes to an expanded version of the original picture that is probably lore-breaking, but was fun to come up with nonetheless. There was some small details in the game that stood out to me and I tried to spin them into something that could be mildly interesting. Miscellaneous idea for Caves I felt I had to include this idea because I had, sort of incidentally, linked it back to another post. I didn't think it was worthy of its own thread so I put it here. Me and a friend played around with some AI image generation and came up with some cool visualizations for what these environments might look like. Cave layer 3 Cave layer 4

This is reassuring! I had been worried that being so thorough left too little room for interpretation. I've sort of hung this thread out to dry, but in the mean time I've come up with a few more ideas. Firstly I'd suggest checking out this playlist, and this guy's channel in general. He was a great source of information when it came to trying to make the more advanced mechanics compatible with Vintage Story's antiquated methods of crafting. Crafting with Two Hands For items that require only two materials to craft, you can hold them in both hands and shift + right click to craft them. For example, the torch, which requires 2 dry grass and 1 stick, would be made by putting the 2 dry grass in the offhand and the stick in the mainhand, and then shift + right clicking. The firestarter requires the same materials, which could pose an issue if you're making a lot of torches at once, and don't want any firestarters. So, for making an item like the firestarter, you'd have the sticks in the offhand and the dry grass in the mainhand. Of course, there are probably some recipes I'm not considering which could cause conflict, but this could also be circumvented with some kind of UI, similar to the "select recipe" pop-up box that appears when knapping/clay forming/smithing. Mortar and Pestle The mortar and pestle would definitely have some overlap with the quern when it comes to recipes, however the quern, which can be automated, would differ from the mortar and pestle in that it cannot be used to process some materials into more advanced forms. The player places items or fluids into the mortar, and then grinds them together with the pestle. The shown example is for crafting horsetail poultice, in which you place 4 horsetails and use 0.25 liters of water to craft the poultice. After the recipe is assembled it is completed by holding right click with the pestle in the mainhand. Some more advanced recipes would include blasting powder and raw refractory bricks. The mortar and pestle would share recipes with the quern, but not crafting times. It is a much smaller set of instruments than the quern is, and so, if you wanted to make salt to cure meat, you could just grind the halite stones in a kitchen rather than needing to go to the quern. Weaving Reeds Currently, reeds are the most basic form of crafting different furniture items. Although it might be unnecessary, a system like this could justify the implementation of making more unique reed-based furniture. In the crafting interface, reeds are 8 voxels in length. Placing them along the x-axis on either the top of the bottom voxels of the grid will place it vertically, and placing them along the y-axis on either the left or the right will place the reeds horizontally. The reeds need to overlap to complete the steps. Since the reeds are 8 voxels in length, they can be too long for a recipe to be completed, and in this case they will need to be cut to shape by right-clicking with a knife. Sticks are also a primary implement in weaving the reeds, and in some recipes they will need to be placed after the recipe is complete. In the given examples, the grid of reeds is made first, and the sticks are put into place last before the item is complete. Brazing Brazing is a method of joining metal together by placing alloys of a lower temperature in an area that needs to be joined, while the metal that is being joined is of a higher temperature. In these cases, brass bits and copper plates are used, the brass bits serving as the joining material. The brazing kiln is formed out of clay with a grate, fuel is inserted in the bottom port and worked items are inserted in the top port. Placing a metal plate in the worked item slot will prompt the recipe creation. The example shown in the image is of a boiler used in distilling alcohol. The brazing kiln needs to be watched so that the metals don't fuse together. For reference, brass melts at 920 degrees celsius, while copper melts at 1084 degrees celsius. The fuel in the brazing kiln needs to get up to at least 920 degrees, but if different metals are being used such as zinc, cheaper fuels could be used. If the worked item gets too hot, the metals will fuse together and create a big mess. I had some second thoughts about making that necessary, as it doesn't really add anything and might just be unnecessarily annoying, especially since there aren't any consequences for overheating metals in any other instance, such as heating up copper in a forge to 1100 degrees, at which it should melt. Kiln Upgrade This is a design for a more advanced killed which can fire multiple items of pottery at once, or be used to collect liquid byproducts of charcoal burning. By default the base is 3x3, with room to fire 9 items, however this could be upscaled. The pottery kiln is made from clay bricks, and also makes use of some specialized items, such as an opening port, a clay brick door, clay brick grates, clay brick faucets and clay brick collectors. In the opening port, a campfire is made, which will start the burning process. Right clicking on the clay grates with firewood will place 4 firewood underneath each of them. Right clicking on the grates with a collector will instead attach the collector to the grate. When creating charcoal in the kiln, one stack of firewood needs to fill all the air blocks, and the campfire in the front port gets lit. A faucet needs to be placed on either of the bottom sides of the kiln to drain the pitch that will get produced. A bucket or barrel can be placed beneath it to collect it. For every stack of firewood 2 liters of pitch are made, which means there would need to be 5 stacks to fill a bucket and 10 to fill a barrel. Pitch serves as an alternative for resin, but it also used in some of its own recipes. When making torches, using pitch will make the torch burn brighter. Steel Case-Hardening Case-hardening is the process of increasing the carbon content of the surface of a piece of steel. It is used primarily in hardening smaller instruments like saws, files, drills, etc. Case-hardened steel is hard but brittle, which makes it unsuitable for making armor or larger tools. First, the carbon pack/paste is made by grinding together 6 charcoal, 4 salt, and 3 flour, and then adding a liter of water. This will give 4 items worth of paste. Iron items are placed into the forge, they are then right-clicked with the carbon paste to cover them, then they are wrapped in clay by right-clicking on them with a clay item. The forge is filled up to the top with 5 charcoal and are left to burn and cool completely. As opposed to forging this type of steel, the items to be hardened are made beforehand, and are case-hardened later. Soldering Soldering is used in the assembly of complex mechanisms, described in the later diagram. Before soldering can begin, fat is placed in a cooking pot and left to render out over a campfire for 6 hours. The resulting tallow will serve as a flux that will help the solder apply to the parent metal. The soldering bars need to be casted in a clay mold out of the silver solder or lead solder alloys. The soldering irons need to be heated in the forge before soldering begins. Firstly, the material is cleaned with water, then the tallow flux is applied. The part that needs to be soldered on is placed, and with the heated soldering iron in the main hand and a solder bar in the offhand, holding right click with solder the part to the base. Complex Mechanisms I want to preface this next idea by saying that there are some incomplete ideas stated here. I was unable to think of them in a game-friendly way, however they are still important steps. For this I would refer to the earlier playlist, which includes a pump drill, a simple vice, and mentions the idea of lathes existing in antiquity. In order to prompt the creation of a recipe, a scoring fluid is needed so that markings can be made on the metal. 2 beeswax, 1 resin, and 1 liter of pitch are mixed in a mortar and pestle, which is then heated over a campfire. This scoring fluid is then applied to a metal plate (usually bronze), which will prompt the creation of a recipe. I was unable to imagine what this style of crafting could be used for, other than the mechanism that powers the echo chamber, so I used that for an example. The recipe is displayed with holograms of the required parts. Hovering over a part with clay in the mainhand and right clicking will create a clay mold of that part. These dynamic parts could easily get confused but are unable to be made identical due to the nature of this crafting. I created a system of notation that follows the pattern of: {recipename}: Part {partnumber}{stepletter}. For example, Echo Chamber: Part 1A. In order to cast these parts out of metal, two sand molds would need to be made. In an empty sand mold, the part is placed on the bottom, and the mold is then packed with sand. Right-clicking on the mold will flip it over, and a clay shaft needs to be placed to create a funnel for the metal to pour into. The top mold is then packed with sand. The clay shaft is then removed, then the top sand mold is removed, and then the mold of the casting item is removed, and the top sand mold is put back in place. Molten metal (usually bronze) is then poured into the opening, and left to cool. When the finished part is taken out, the metal shaft will still be on the part, and it will need to be removed by putting the part in the offhand and holding a case-hardened steel saw in the main hand and right-clicking. For the example in the recipe, which is a gear, the teeth will need to be filed into the gear, which I had some conflicting thoughts about. In the playlist above, the guy makes a vice out of boards and used it to clamp down a bronze wheel, and files the teeth in that way. I was unsure if I wanted to make an entire mechanic for that, when it could easily be justified to make the teeth by holding the part in the offhand and the file in the mainhand. A vice in that style could also be used for other things, although I'm unsure what. Additionally, a drill would be required to drill a hole in the gear, and although I had an idea for it, I was unable to finish it because I almost always hit a dead end. There is an example of a pump drill that can bore into metal in the playlist, however I could not figure out how such a tool would be crafted while circumventing the crafting grid. This is a potter's wheel. Mechanical power is given into one of the bottom sides and transferred to the bottom large gear with angled gears. The potter's wheel functions by allowing the player to hold right click to create an item, without needing to place the voxels in a specific orientation, much like the duplicate layer function. Extra voxels are eliminated by holding left click. For some closing thoughts, I feel the carpentry crafting might become too confusing, as there's just so many limits with it. I feel a system similar to the system used in the complex mechanics crafting could be used in making specific parts for specific items. Boards are placed where the parts should go, and are then cut into shape using the various tools. Making it this way could also serve as an introduction to the much more complex system of casting parts when making mechanisms. I might make another version of it, since it felt to me that it lacked clarity in the first place.

I had considered a few ideas for aquatic creatures, however, with no rivers or oceans in the game (yet), it seemed pointless to try and include them because truly vast expanses of water are not all that common, mostly just being little ponds or very small lakes. I had always assumed that the threats that would come from large bodies of water would be mostly natural, things like drowning, hypothermia, riptide, and tropical storms. When factoring in the game's Lovecraftian influences, it gives a little more freedom to speculate. This creature would probably be more of an effect of temporal storms rather than an actual entity, however it would be neat that if you were out at sea on a boat or something it would come after you and maybe initiate some sort of boss fight. This is assuming that the "multi-block ships" on the roadmap are actually feasible, which I'm managing my expectations for. These guys serve a similar function to the Harbingers, except that instead of staying high in the sky passively, you can see their boats on the horizon before a storm, and when they get to shore they will disembark and drift towards the player, attacking slowly and vigorously with their sickle hands. The naming inspiration comes from the "Sea People" which are believed to be one of the factors responsible for the Bronze Age Collapse. Another drifter variant, they stay in murky cave water, or spawn in bodies of water at night or during a temporal storm. They have no damaging attacks but instead will grab the player and try to pull them underwater to drown them. They'd have high HP so they wouldn't be a complete pushover, but would also remain neutral unless the player jumped in the water or started fishing. I'm not a huge fan of monsters like this, that make very aqueous areas almost completely unlivable because they just end up getting everywhere. I'd probably limit their spawning to be just in subterranean bodies of water. These ideas below are really shallow, however I wanted to put them out there lest these MSpaint drawings start burning a hole in my recycling bin.

I would like to preface this post by replying to this excerpt in my last reply. I am aware the Vintage Story may not currently have the capacity for some complex AI. I have (once again) amended my idea for these manta-ray like creatures. Flying enemies are annoying, especially in a game where you are confined to the ground, and so I wanted to make these new creatures vulnerable even when you're on the ground, however the player still has to put themselves in danger, although not from the harbingers themselves. The harbingers will signal the coming of a temporal storm, which, instead of a notification in the text chat of a storm being imminent and the strength it is, they will appear on the horizon followed by a red cloud. The number of harbingers is an indicator for the strength of a temporal storm. If a player is in the "line of sight" of the eyeballs on the underside of a harbinger, they will be targeted by enemies that appear during a temporal storm. These eyes are their weak point, and can be attacked with projectiles from the ground, blinding them. If all harbingers are blinded, the player will no longer be hunted by enemies throughout the duration of the storm. This allows the player to counter the main negative effects of the temporal storm, being that you cannot leave your house to do other things because enemies are always attacking you. This would be applied on top of temporal storms being more of a "weather" event rather than a global event, which would allow players to evacuate to do other things until the storm wanes or passes over or whatever. In a multiplayer setting, temporal storms target individual players if they are far enough away, say some 3000 blocks apart, and the strength increases the more players are in one place, allowing for sort of co-op holdouts. Right now, temporal storms require the player to shelter in one place lest they get harassed by an endless swarm of constantly respawning drifters, some of which can one-shot unarmored players. Sometimes you aren't even safe indoors, as the spawning rules for drifters are pretty unclear. Instead of forcing a player to either log off of a multiplayer server for a few minutes or to have them sit around in singleplayer, making temporal storms similar to thunderstorms would allow players an option to either run away and occupy themselves, or wait it out. With the harbingers flying up in the sky, vulnerable to an attack on their underbelly, the player is given the opportunity to still allow themselves to be (mostly) safe, even if they are in the middle of a temporal storm. This puts choice in the player's hands. If a player could care less and would rather wait out the storm, that's their prerogative, however other types of players would take advantage of these opportunities to make the most of their time, say winter is fast approaching and every day counts, so a player would be pressured into making the most of their time without being completely unfairly swamped by enemies. Or maybe you just want to build during a storm so you go throw rocks at a harbinger so the bastards will leave you alone. These are just some redraws for the different types of drifters, excluding deep and nightmare, which I felt had no differentiating characteristics besides their color. Instead of drifters walking at the player and swinging madly and occasionally throwing rocks (again, I understand there are AI limitations currently), I would suggest to expand on their personality. Right now the drifters have two idling animations that have caught my attention-- one of them, the drifters will curl up into a ball and cry, and the other, they will look at their arms and then raise them into the sky (according to the wiki, I have only seen the first). The drifters, as they have appeared to me, are seemingly husks of what they once were, or who they once were. Instead of waddling around on short legs they should shamble and stumble around. Instead of swarming the player at night, they should spawn in fewer numbers, and hang back, staying away from light sources and throwing rocks at the player. It is incredibly scary to suddenly take damage from something out of the dark, and I think the rock throwing ability, maybe unintentionally, accomplishes this. They will attack the player with rocks until they get close, in which they will swing their arms violently and uncoordinated. Their priority should be to escape, hobbling away as they get cut to pieces by the player. In the day time, their bodies should evaporate, and leave behind nothing but scraps of cloth which the player can loot for a small chance at maybe finding some salvageable fabric. The different tiers of drifters would have different specializations. The corrupt drifters, with their large horns, would be specialized for melee combat, they would charge at the player in a manner similar to the stalker, a creature which also has large horns, as opposed to having ranged attacks. The double-headed drifters, whose design I have slightly altered from the original head split by an axe, would have high health but also be slow. The two turning gears in their chest holding the two individuals together serve as a mechanism to crush the player's head when they try to grab them. They are incredibly weak at range and can be whittled down by a spear, however if the player is in a situation with multiple enemies in a confined space, they could be forced to get very familiar with double-headed variants. The tainted drifter is an upgraded version of the surface drifter found underground. They are faster, although they still shamble around, and more aggressive. A completely separate idea that is definitely something for the far, FAR future I had that I will describe briefly was for the underground to be split into layers, separate from rock strata, that contain different biomes. Where you encounter the special drifter types and maybe other creepy crawlies the underground would stop being bare rock cave systems and turn into something more. The tainted and corrupt drifters, one bearing a sort of vined withered arm and the other having two large horns would be found in a rust-pigmented version of the surface, with reddish-orange cave moss and slick black water and maybe some other types of flora or fauna. At the depths where the double-headed drifter can be found the mechanical mantle would be revealed, with constant ticking and the grinding and turning of large mechanical machines, with speleothems of rusted axles and large spinning gears, and solid rock faces replaced by rusted grates leaking some oily black substance. To properly represent these areas, the default world height might have to be increased, which is already possible, but it could slow down the game considerably if the game is essentially generating a smaller version of the surface underground. This is likely a pipe dream that would be better represented in concept art or in a lore book than actually being in the game.

I personally think it would be better that, if you needed to repair armor, you had to place it on the anvil and hammer in new lamellar/chain/scales/plates. Just a few right clicks with the hammer, nothing too complex, but it would be more interactive.

I think a better solution would be to be able to always have a hotbar slot void so you can pick up whatever is on the ground. Maybe pressing X with an empty offhand will let you pick things up with your offhand instead of your mainhand. Or the ability to mark a hotbar slot as always empty so you can pick up items on the ground.

Thank you! For these ideas, I want to try avoiding using UIs, specifically the crafting grid, but with the exception of the "select recipe" UI. There is almost definitely a better way to do UI-less tool assembly, maybe using the offhand? But I want to try to keep everything within the voxel-style crafting that the devs have already made. Leatherworking You'll need to zoom in for this one... I used this video and this video as sources for this setup, however I did not follow them perfectly and omitted some steps I felt would be in excess. Most of the fundamentals of leatherworking are already in the game, but there is a way to improve it, and even maybe a method of crafting leather goods with the voxel system and an underused tool, the shears. Firstly, the scudding knife will need to be forged and, in trying to keep consistent with my previous posts, two branches will need to be hammered on either side of the worked item as handles. The fleshing bench/beam and the stretching frame are assembled as (hopefully legibly) demonstrated in the drawing. The shears are needed to cut leather into shape to make items. A preliminary step, used to store hides for preparation, is curing. Hides are animal flesh, and as such they can rot like meat can. Using salt on a hide will cure it, and then it can be stored on a shelf to further delay the rotting process. Once hide is needed, it needs to be placed down and splashed with a bowl of water to rinse the salt off. The only problem with this is that acquiring salt may be difficult in certain regions without halite rocks, so, if we ever get saltwater bodies, you could evaporate a bowl of saltwater to get some salt. Different sizes of hides will need larger vats to soak them in. Barrels, when placed side-by-side, will (ideally) connect seamlessly to create larger storage vessels. A 2x2 setup is needed to soak large and huge hides, while a 2x1 setup will do for medium hides, and a single barrel is enough for small hides. 8 animal hides will fit in their required setups, so if 4 barrels are setup, 32 small hides will fit, 16 medium hides will fit, and 8 large and huge animals hides can fit. Animal hides will need to be soaked in limewater, which ideally could be made by throwing lime powder into barrels of water, and having any excess precipitate out at the bottom if the mixture gets oversaturated. After soaking for 18 hours (kind of an arbitrary number I made up on the fly) the hides can be taken out and placed on the fleshing bench/beam. The scudding knife is held with two hands, and holding right click on a hide placed over the fleshing bench will slowly strip away the fur. The amount of time it takes should increase depending on the hide's size, going from around 2 seconds for small hides, 3 for medium, 6 for large, and 8 for huge hides. Once the keratinous content has been stripped, the hide is splashed with a bowl of water again to rinse off the limewater. Using a quern, oak logs are ground into oak bark, which are then thrown into barrels of water, and then sealed for 24 hours. Instead of pressing a button on a UI to seal a barrel, I would suggest being able to place 3 boards on top of a barrel to seal it, or craft a barrel lid which can be placed on top of one. For a 2x2 setup, multiple sets of boards or multiple lids will be needed to seal all the barrels, or maybe one big lid could be made. In-game there are currently two strengths of tannin that hides need to soak in before they are completed. I feel that this would be redundant, especially given the extra work needed to tan leather with this system. After soaking in the tannin for 15 days, the hides can be removed and placed onto the stretching frame. Although this is not represented in the drawing I would suggest that multiple small and medium hides should be able to be placed on one frame, 4 and 2, respectively, while only 1 huge or large hide will fit on a stretching frame. After placing the tanned hide, fat boiled over a campfire would need to be applied to the hide to lubricate it while it stretches so that it doesn't crack the grain. After stretching for 8 hours (another arbitrary number) the hide would become leather. Different sized hides will make larger pieces of leather, which, when placed, will be different sized rectangles when cutting into clothing. (the Z coordinate is factored out of these dimensions, as the leather is flat) Small hide would be 7x7, medium hide would be 9x9, large hide would be 12x12, and huge hide would be 16x16. Leather is cut in a process similar to knapping, any excess not connected to the main recipe would be instantly removed to save time, however for every 10 voxels of leather removed, you would get one scrap leather, which can be placed in a barrel of water for 10 days, removed and then heated to create glue. The two examples of recipes in the picture are very simple, a boot and 3 leather belts. When the boot is finished being cut out of the leather, you would need to fold over all the sides by like origami and they would magically stitch themselves together because it's already complex enough. I can't possibly foresee how a more complex item like a vest or a coat would need to be made. Maybe just a flat representation of the object on a leather hide? Maybe you'd need to make two and attach them together to make the clothing, I'm not sure. I've tried to stay within the bounds of mechanics currently in the game, as I want to make this seem as feasible as possible.

I know that several of these ideas are on the roadmap, and some are on the frequently suggested, however I wanted to try and visualize them. There are captions in the drawings for people too lazy to read, however I will try my best to explain everything in text. This might also not make any sense at all. Improved toolmaking Right now, knapping feels great to do, however dragging and dropping my toolheads that I used my blood sweat and tears to left-click on into the crafting grid with a twig is unsatisfying. So I drafted an idea to make it more immersive that involves knapping sticks into handles. For stone tools, the sticks are (x,y,z) 3x8x3 dimensionally, and need to be knapped with a stone just like toolheads. Upon completion, the toolhead is placed into the slot and hammered in with the stone. For the spear, the handle is longer than one stick, so you'll need to mend two together with dried grass. For metalworking, a new tool made of stone would be needed, the primitive hammer. Made of stone, it's only use is to hammer toolheads onto sticks, which no longer need to be knapped to fit the tools, because it's a video game. The metal hammers also do this function, however they are hard enough to smith, so there is still some gated progression. It would take a few bonks, and maybe even require to wait for the toolhead to cool down first before you can put it on the handle. Carpentry (deprecated) I rethought this idea Right now, carpentry is pretty lame. Because there is none! You drag and drop boards and tools into the crafting grid, so I wanted to try and come up with an idea to add proper carpentry. There is a new tool, the planer, which needs a forged blade, and, using the previous system, needs to assembled by placing the blade on an anvil, then a board, and then hammering a stick onto a marked voxel. The hammer and chisel will take out individual voxels of material (1x1x1), the saw will remove all material vertically, used for making large cuts, the knife can remove large amounts of material along a single axis, and the planer can remove large amounts of material on a face. Fluid holding items, like the barrel and bucket, would need to be sealed with a material like resin, or more historically, pitch, which was used in sealing the hulls of wooden ships. Pegs are hammered into holes, and are a means of adding material back onto a piece. They are cut individually from boards. There are so many recipes made with boards that I can't possibly forsee the possibilities with all of them, and blocks like the large wooden gear, which are 3x1x3, wouldn't even fit on the workbench, and would need to be assembled in pieces before being stuck together. Glassblowing This one is completely insane and isn't even on the roadmap, however I felt the need to try and cobble something together anyway. The blowpipe is casted from iron in a fired clay mold with a 1 voxel gap in the middle. The marver is a wooden table with brass plates on it, the jacks and shears need to be forged from iron because the temperatures are too hot for lesser metals. Soda lime is a mixture of soda ash and lime, and is necessary to start glassblowing, or else the furnace won't get hot enough, and the glass will be stiff and unworkable. Boron trioxide can be added to make heat-resistant glass for cookware, or maybe even an alchemy or potion brewing mechanic, if we ever get one. Lime is already in the game, but boron trioxide and soda ash are tricky, and would need to be acquired by pulverizing completely new minerals. The glass furnace has two ports, the main furnace which gets super hot, and the secondary port, called, no joke, the "glory hole". They'd be lined with differently-sized steel drums, which I couldn't think of an immersive way to craft, so you'd just place them in the crafting grid surrounded by stone/refractory bricks. The annealing kiln would be made from refractory bricks and have a metal door and would be needed to cool glass projects down slowly, so they don't break from drastic temperature changes. 5 chunks of glass and any additives (not dyes) would be placed in the large port of the glass furnace, and would need to be heated to ~800+ degrees celsius, before being moved to the marver. Right clicking on the marver would prompt a recipe select. Powdered dyes could be placed on the marver before moving the glass project, and the project would need to be rolled around in the dye to distribute the color. Selecting a recipe will prompt the character to blow into the blowpipe, beginning the crafting process. The blowpipe can hold up to 40 units of molten glass, however 5 chunks will only get you 20 units, so more can be added at any time. Molten glass starts off as a 5x5x5 voxel cube. Right clicking with the blowpipe while remaining at eye level will widen the piece by one voxel on the X and Z axis (6x5x6). Looking straight up or down and right clicking with the blowpipe will either lengthen or shorten the piece by one voxel, respectively (5x6x5, or 5x4x5). The jacks are held in the offhand, and a tool mode can be selected with shift + F. When selecting a tool mode, the player will need to place the blowpipe on the marver by right clicking on it. The workable piece will extend out from the marver in the direction closest to the player. The jacks have 4 tool modes: Pinch: Will pinch one line of voxels inward on a piece, decreasing the x and z values by on a selected line, while the rest of the piece is unaffected. Pull: Will pull out one voxel of molten glass, and allow it to be dragged along for more complex shape requirements. Once a voxel is filled while pulling, it will not be moved, so a player should be mindful. Incise: Using the jacks, the player will completely remove a face of the project, allowing for it to be widened. Used in the creation of bowls, cups, and glass panes. Widen: Inserting the jacks into an open face will extend a selected line out by one voxel along the x and z axis. Once a project is shaped, it will need to be cut with shears to remove it from the blowpipe. It will then need to be placed in the annealing kiln, which will allow for its temperature to drop slowly so it doesn't break. Once a piece is at around 300 celsius, it can be safely removed and left to cool outside the kiln. Glass panes are something you need a lot of, so all you need to do is cut open one face of a project and jam it into a clay mold. Up to 16 glass panes can be placed in the annealing kiln. Someone tell me if this made any sense at all. This video is a very good representation of glassblowing techniques. No obtuse commentary, although it features some tools and implements that I omitted to keep the system as simple as possible. Uhh.. woodchopping To finish off this post, something simple! To make a chopping block, hold shift and right click on a placed log 3 times, each time your character performing a heaving motion with the axe, and it will make a chopping block! Placing logs on the chopping block and right clicking once with the axe will cause the player to perform the same heaving axe motion, and split the wood into 4 firewood, instead of just 2, to compensate for the extra effort. I hope at least some of this made sense. I hope to update this thread with some more ideas I'm workshopping, like maybe textile manufacture, or underwater basket weaving.

Is there any raw stone in your basement? I'm not certain but they could be spawning on stone blocks, and not spawning anywhere else because it has a wood floor.

This is true and I'll need to workshop the idea more, but the very alien look of manta rays draws me to their design. I retconned the original concept because it seemed like a non-threat. The dreamsuckers show up on the horizon in a temporal storm, and if you're caught out they'll target you. The problem with this is that it's almost always a good idea to stay inside during a temporal storm, so it would just be completely avoidable unless they had some sort of a special drop. Maybe one of their eyeballs? This makes more sense. It's an interesting idea, all of these monsters just being in the head of the Seraph, so that would justify avoiding adding monsters capable of modifying the world. Like I had stated, the ability of the stalker to break blocks to get to the player isn't imperative to its design, it simply rushes to the player and I failed to realize that it could also just be lead around and used to grief other players. This seems unreasonable. I responded to your post and wanted to clarify, as those ideas have since had some time to marinate in my head and I've thought about them more. I don't see how you waiting 24 hours to finish your post and wanting to respond beforehand was at all offensive. Regardless, I don't particularly see how these enemies (or I suppose only the first four since you only read those ones) completely turn the balance of the game against the player. I tried to craft them to be all choice encounters, either by mistake or by intention-- the drifter will attack you if you have no light near you at night, the dreamsucker will engage if you choose to go out during a storm, the dregs (which I might just edit that post to remove entirely because I have since forsook the idea) will creep up on a sloppy spelunker, and the depraved are barely a threat at all, and it's completely the player's choice rather to kill them and loot them or help them. I was not aware of this. I will be more mindful of these restrictions if I have any future suggestions. This'll be redundant, but I want to make it clear that I agree that mobs that are able to grief are a bad idea. Also the stalker isn't intended to replace the surface drifters, they spawn in fewer numbers depending on the local area's rift activity. I just think it would work better as an enemy than a bunch of little guys that throw themselves at you and are more of just a nuisance than an actual threat. As long as you're holding a torch or a lantern or are near some light source, they stay in the dark and stalk the player-- hence the name. Replying to this to clear up a miscommunication-- the block destruction isn't imperative to the mob's design, because it rushes very fast at the player. Them destroying soft blocks like dirt and cobblestone (stuff that can be harvested with tier 1 tools) was an additional threat that they would pose, because it meant that they would be able to get to you very quickly without having to circumvent terrain. The stalker can charge at the player regardless without needing to break blocks. I'm fairly optimistic that VS' combat will be more dynamic in the future than it is now. Even now there's more possibilities since all the weapons have a sort of "delayed attack", which, if expanded upon, could facilitate the need for certain weapons in certain scenarios, or even certain PVP special abilities like a parry. (This might be a pipe dream, not sure if VS will ever become a pvp-focused game). Something like a siege engine you need to assemble might be cool, a trebuchet or ballista to take down big baddies or fight other players, and it fits with the sort of early medieval time period the game seems to be set in.

I already addressed this and changed the concept on the monster I believe you're talking about in the post above yours. I don't understand this. I know what you mean but I don't get what you're trying to say. Wouldn't the problem of getting rekt when you first spawn happen even if none of these were implemented anyways? If you spawn during a storm the drifters that spawn are strong enough to kill you, and they're very numerous. Also if you join a server at nighttime you get a light that follows you around anyways. I didn't intend for any of these monsters to spawn in high quantities, and really the only main threat is drifter (renamed to the stalker) that'll only attack you if you're caught without a light at nighttime. For my idea for the stalker, I meant that it would plough through soft blocks like dirt to get to the player if they try to pillar up away from them. Also the thing about the temporal gears is purely player experience, I've gotten all the way through my first year without ever getting a temporal gear, although that might just be because I never usually bother with killing drifters, because the chance of getting anything is so low. I also don't understand what you mean by "late game equipment". I figured vintage story was going to stop at the steel age and some steam power and that's it, nothing too fancy. As far as I'm concerned a steel broadsword is the greatest weapon there'll ever be. The stalker isn't meant to be invincible, it should just be an obstacle until you get some good armor and weapons and you can kill it with minimal difficulty. I don't see how MC creepers are relevant, and it's not like block destruction is imperative to the mob's design anyways. The stalkers don't explode, they chase down the player and bust down blocks in their path. The depraved aren't designed to be strong. They're frail, insane humans who wander around. Not really a "monster". They're weak and vulnerable to being killed because you should want to help them so they'll be a part of your community. I was never a fan of the "dregs" idea in the first place. Just felt I needed to add a mob underground. Also it doesn't destroy blocks, it just grows towards the light and hurts you if you step on it. I hope you read the rest, as it seems you only read the first post and didn't go any further.

I decided to redraw a few of the dudes I made in previous posts, as well as present a few new ideas. Dybbuk-- "They condemned this world to ruin. Don't forget who you are." / "They dug the graves of man, for whatever had we done to them?" Riftcaller-- "The harbingers of the end of the world. The high-pitched tone from their eldritch bell collapses the barrier which separates our world and theirs." A dybbuk (di-behk) is, from Jewish folklore, a disembodied human spirit that has been corrupted by sin and seeks refuge in the body of another human. These beings are the antithesis of what the player represents-- the player is a Seraph working to rebuild a world that has been ruined by a previous cataclysm, the dybbuks were once seraphs who condemned the world to be destroyed, or had actively participated in it's destruction. This all hinges on the idea that the people who once inhabited the world weren't also seraphs. (I haven't figured out all the lore yet) I haven't quite figured out a role for these enemies, however an idea I had is that they begin appearing during temporal storms after a player has established a settlement (if such a feature is ever to be implemented, although definitely not any time soon), and actively target any NPCs or animals living there, or maybe even loot or destroy blocks. An alternative, more uncouth idea was that they would approach the player once at the end of every month and challenge them to a duel in a rust-world themed arena with gears for walls, and I never really got past that stage of brainstorming. The riftcaller idea is as it was described above, except this time instead of a lantern it's a bright seafoam green temporal gear necklace, and also they're not as short. Stormcallers- "The riders of the apocalypse, the beating of their immense wings can be heard before a storm hits. The eyes on their underside stare daggers at anything beneath them, giving their mechanical vassals a target for which to eliminate." This is a rework of my previous "dreamsuckers" idea, and shortly after making my initial post I realized that those were just really big Minecraft phantoms, and nobody likes that. So I decided to go further with the reference of manta rays, and incorporated small minions that would head for any targets the stormcaller spots. To prevent them from being too annoying by overwhelming players, I would make it so when one of the stormlings gets hit, they'd fall to the ground and have to scoot along with their little rear appendage. Like a poster pointed out, these are just phantoms with extra steps, need to rethink this idea some more. These are some redraws and redesigns (and a rename) of previous creatures I posted in this thread. Stalkers-- "Lumbering beasts draped in cloth, their singular orifice consumes anything that they force down it. They wait in the darkness, and prey on those caught out without a light in the night." The design of these surface drifter replacements is still mostly the same. If the player is caught out at night in the darkness they will rush at them and try to kill them. They spawn in fewer numbers, although the amount increases in areas of high local rift activity. They're very strong, so you would need some good equipment to kill them head-on, however, and this is probably a long-shot in terms of the current AI development, when they charge at you, you could bait them into bumping into a tree, momentarily stunning them. A good player could use this to kill one early and reap the rewards, whatever they may be. Twisted Wildlife-- "The fabric of the known frays at the edges. It seems that one day all that was once pure will become tainted by an infinite scourge." Unfortunately I could only come up with two ideas for creatures of this caliber. I wanted to base them off of things that our ancestors conceptualized and once feared, because they couldn't know if they were real or not. Unfortunately there weren't many that matched the aesthetic of Vintage Story while also being wild animals in the game. At first I was apprehensive about including enemies like this, but I eventually fell for the idea of a world slowly turning against you, as I felt it fit with the theme of overcoming the odds the game is trying to communicate. About their mechanics, I would delay their spawning by maybe an in-game year, so that players have some time to prepare for them to begin appearing. After heavy temporal storms have passed, there would be a chance for a twisted wildlife to spawn if the population of a specified creature in a chunk is high enough (in the case of the varg, wolves, and for the wendigo, deer, if they ever get implemented). Other than that, not much special about them. Just beefed up normal critters, although maybe they could have special drops? A varg's tooth that could be knapped to create a super powerful knife or spear, and the head of a wendigo to be worn as a helmet.

I saw this, and I'm hoping it means that the player is able to create villages and not that villages will spawn randomly dotted throughout the world. If you are playing as a seraph you should be the one to create something from nothing. I'll have to check this out, I like the idea of traders gathering in small locations rather than just scattering around the world, makes the whole stock replenishment timer make more sense.

This is a fine idea but the problem with this is that a crafty player could easily acquire items they aren't supposed to have yet in the early game with little-to-no effort. Even if the merchants become hostile they can always just pillar up above them to a place the AI can't get to and mine from safety, or kite the NPC around while slowly whittling down their little wagon. I personally am hoping they eventually get rid of the traders, or at least make them actually move around the world because their little carts have wheels on them. I think having other people present in the world sort of kills the lonely vibe of the game.

I noticed I hadn't come up for any monsters relating to the temporal stability mechanic. I'm not sure what it's supposed to be interpreted as, but I've always just assumed it's like a sanity meter. Clockmaker's Hands-- "These idle hands have become the devil's playthings, and now they seek that which fuels his domain-- fire. They prey on weakened minds, creeping out from the night to snuff out all light with their wicked fingers." These creeping, spindly hands will begin harassing the player once they drop below 50% temporal stability. When night falls, they will reach towards any source of light and attempt to extinguish it. They can be chased away into the dark, and they won't return again for a short period of time. If a player is holding a light source, the hands will creep up from a direction the player isn't looking, and if they don't turn around their light will get extinguished, which can potentially leave someone stranded in the dark. Automata-- "Insanity made corporeal." These fellas show up when a player is in the Rust World, and are incredibly tough. They will endlessly pursue the player if they spot one, attacking with bites from their mechanical jaws, and flailing their arms of rusted steel. They will continue to spawn for a short period of time even after the player increases their temporal stability, so as to not be in the Rust World anymore. They drop gears and temporal gears and maybe some other exclusive goodies when they are slain.

This is an interesting idea, however I think werewolves don't fit the aesthetic that Vintage Story is going for with it's monsters. I'm not a big fan of traders in the first place, as I think they subtract from the lonely feeling of the game, however I think it would be neat if, during a temporal storm, they became abrasive and refused to sell you things, or even attacked you trying to get you away from their little wagons so you can't huddle up in there with them to stay safe.

I hate to reply to my own post when nobody else has actually commented, but I had some more ideas I'd like to share! Dredgers-- "From the midst of the most tumultuous storms come beings, draped in cloth, and from these beings dredges a liquid, black as the oil that lubricates their mechanical brethren. In their path follows famine, and then ruin." These enemies come during heavy temporal storms and will target all food sources, any plant they pass over will die, any soil they pass over will become ruined, and if they need to plough through livestock in their path they will make them shrivel up and become hollow, barely living husks. If a player attempts to fend them off, they should find themselves shriveling themselves, as the toxic liquid flings off of them with every blow, causing a decrease in maximum health. I'd implement an item that keeps them away, or give them a very recognizable audio cue so that players are able to fend them off. Riftcallers-- "These beings were the first things humans saw before an awful storm swept through an area. Their short stature would often spark ridicule, until they rang their bell, and a rip in the fabric of reality opened before them, from which emerged incomprehensible beings." These little guys would appear during a medium/heavy temporal storm are capable of calling forth rifts by ringing their bell. They hold bright lanterns so a player can pick them out from other enemies. They'd be fairly fragile but also capable of wreaking havoc by summoning more enemies when they spot a player. Timekeepers-- "The archivist in the wake of destruction, these tall beings survey the work of their more capable brethren with their one, unblinking eye. Their dizzying mechanical parts clang as they shamble around. They have recorded the fall of man, and their gaze is enough to drive one mad." These dudes would appear after a temporal storm has passed, and will shamble around in the direction the storm is moving (if temporal storms ever become like regional storms). They would stop moving if they spot a player, and stare at them as long as they are in line of sight, causing temporal stability to decrease faster the longer they look at a player. Hence their description, felling one would yield a high chance of acquiring one of the lore books, as well as maybe a few gears.

I am currently not a huge fan of the monsters in VS. Not only is there a low variety (excluding animals like wolves and bears), the drifters are just so unintimidating, they're puny little manlets that don't even reach up to waist height because of their horrible gamer necks. In this ruined world I think there should be creatures that are worthy of having ruined it in the first place, and so I propose new monsters + a potential replacement for the drifters. (disregard that I tried to make all the names start with D) Let's start with the new idea for drifters-- These new drifters would be huge, lumbering beasts that emerge from rifts when the sun goes down. They avoid light sources, so as long as a character is holding something like a torch or is huddled around a campfire or some other light source, they'll be safe, with the drifter just studying the player, with the faint sounds of cloth blowing in the wind and the occasional indescribable utterance. If a player ever wander into the darkness of the night, the drifter will immediately begin pursuing them and hit like a truck, knocking them around and doing huge damage and destroying any blocks in its path. These creatures should be killable with mid-late game gear, which should be around the time you acquire your first temporal gear anyways, so I'd give them at least an 80% of dropping one, if not a guaranteed drop. You could also make these enemies their own monster, but I think one big terrifying creature that stalks the player would be more fitting of the isolated feeling of vintage story than a bunch of little goobers waddling at you and throwing rocks. I have since rethought this idea, and renamed this new creature to the stalker. Dreamsuckers-- These massive manta-ray looking beasts signal the arrival of a temporal storm. They ride the chaos and suck the dreams out of anyone sleeping in the storm. Before the world was ruined they only appeared in the dreams of intellectuals with forbidden knowledge, until the end times arrived and even the most indebted serfs could draw them perfectly from their dreams. Instead of "an X temporal storm is approaching" signaling in chat that a temporal storm is approaching, while a player is sleeping you would see and hear the roars of these flying beasts in your dream, with the visions increasing in intensity as the storm gets closer. When one arrives, depending on the storm's intensity, one or multiple dream suckers could be flying high in sky, and if you get caught outside they'll swoop down and try to suck your brain out! If you try to strafe to their side to avoid the whip-like sucker tongue they'll beat their wings to the ground to damage players and knock them back. I'm not sure how they'd be defeated, maybe make their weakness being able to jump on them and deal damage that way? Although I'm not sure what'd they drop besides just more gears. Depraved-- "On the border between human and beast, these people have been trapped in the Rust World for an eternity, and wander the overworld. If there was some way to pull them out of their madness, they might be of use to you." These guys/gals would appear incredibly rarely and not respawn if they get killed, maybe wandering around ruins. They'd have different behaviors reflecting on who they were before they went mad, either being aggressive for a warrior, afraid for a merchant, or apathetic for a commoner or laborer. Using temporal gears, you could get their sanity back, and turn them into a helpful villager who could trade goods with you or maybe do chores for you. They could also be killed, and their corpse plundered. They are very vulnerable to any enemies nearby as they are unable to/ very bad at defending themselves. Dregs(retconned, this idea is stupid)-- "This incredibly dense fungus-like being has sank to the deepest depths of the world, and grows towards the light. It will consume everything in its path to get to what it seeks-- the blinding, pure light of a miner's lantern." These organisms would be not actively hostile to the player, however would be capable of injuring and crippling the player if they are holding a light source. Being within line of sight of a patch of dregs while holding a light source, or if a light source is in the line of sight of a patch of dregs, the dregs will grow towards that light source, slowly making a passageway impassable. In order to destroy them, you could use a sort of toxin (maybe something like salt? as in 'salting the earth') to reduce their numbers, but never destroy them, as they would still seep out from small cracks in the walls of a cave. I'd say limit the depth at which they can grow at, because without a limit a griefer could easily draw out dregs to the surface and just have them grow infinitely when the sun is out. This is probably my least favorite idea because it just doesn't feel like it would actually have an interesting effect on gameplay, rather it would just be a minor annoyance while mining, but I couldn't think of any cool cave creatures.