Lacrimarum

Quenching basins I think would be fine. When it comes to farms it's a separate topic, but I do think it's a bit lame that, for example, in a desert you can bring 8 buckets of water and grow crops for 3 years. I think that farmland, when drawing moisture from nearby blocks of water to recharge its moisture, should deplete the water in those blocks. If they are irrigated off the river that would be inconsequential as the flowing water from a natural source block would be infinite. The problem with this is that it makes farmland, which is essential, way too hard to maintain. I think maybe there could be a pump which would draw up water from a well (basically an underground pool of water source blocks that would spawn) to fill the area around farmlands. If it was a hand pump you'd do this manually say once a week if it doesn't rain, or you could also hook it up to a windmill gear system to make it just keep those blocks full. This would mean that to start out you would need a small pond, or to be at a riverside for your first base, but later on you'd just need to find a well. Yeah, this how I think it should work. And if the water spreads too thin, it should just dry up. Something like a quenching basin or an aesthetic reflecting pool would stay static. If you dumped a bucket of water onto an open plain it would just run out and almost instantly vanish. I don't think it would cause much lag problems because all naturally generated water would be infinite, only player-placed water would have a 'quantity' like this, and any perpetually flowing water would quickly spread out and dissipate into nothing.

I think the best way to do water wheels would be to make water source blocks immovable, but allow them to 'flow' into nearby air blocks if they aren't contained. You can also take infinite water out of a source block with a bucket and place it elsewhere, but that water which you place will be limited, not infinite - as it flows it will deplete. Generate flat rivers in 'steps' with fall lines dividing the different elevation sections from one another - where the river crosses the change in elevation, the source blocks from the higher level will flow over a slanted slope to form rapids or form a large waterfall if the drop in elevation is sharp and sudden. That way, to build a watermill you would have to either find the fall line and build by the river there, or build some kind of infrastructure like an aqueduct or canal to transport flowing water from a source block - most likely from a river section at a higher elevation. This would also make irrigation important - you would plant your farm by a river, and draw water off of the source blocks in the river to irrigate your crops. If a thirst bar was added, you would be able to dig a well to have a water source away from rivers - maybe add a dowsing mechanic that functions like prospecting to find wells. This would be even more crucial in the desert. Being able to move source blocks just defeats the entire purpose of seeking interesting, nice spots to build bases in survival imo and would make windmills pointless. This way a base by a river would build a watermill, whereas one up on a hill or near the coast would build a windmill. A place with falls and hills would be more valuable for a base, and a place on the lowest stretch of river with all of these would be even more valuable as the river would be navigable all the way to the sea.

This could be tied into animal behavior as well. Certain animals like wolves or big cats (if introduced) could stalk and attack wounded players. This could make predators less of a constant annoyance and more realistic. Once world generation is updated, any sort of bleeding wound (slash or puncture) could draw sharks in ocean or sea waters and piranhas in tropical fresh water.

This is another post about a way to create 'geolocked resources' - valuable resources which could only can be cultivated in specific spots and would necessitate the building of additional infrastructure to extract and transport those resources. It's a suggestion that's aimed at providing a reason to continue playing. When exploring the tropics, I covered incense-bearing trees, spices, and coffee. For temperate areas, I'm going to focus on a greatly expanded system for winemaking which will cause players to look at the lay of the land and the different soil profiles in a completely different way. Grape Vines In the real world, wine grapes are a very unique crop. They respond poorly to rich, fertile soil, often providing thin, unimpressive wines in great quantities. This means that they are often planted on soils which wouldn't be used to produce other crops, like sands, gravels, or slopes with thin clay soils over bedrock. One of the great things about Vintage Story is that it already tracks the temperature of each block and uses this to determine heat stress in crops to determine reduced yields. Because of this, I think that a very rich, immersive system for winegrowing could be implemented fairly easily. The central crop for this system would be the grape vine. These would be trained on a trellis made of sticks and boards, and could be stacked two high, with a similar mechanic to bushes. However, they would bear fruit as a fruit tree does, going through stages of flowering, fruit set, and ripening. They could be planted on gravel, sand, or clay, which would introduce an incentive to maintain these otherwise extraction-focused resources. There would be no need to manage nutrients as we do in farmland - heavy fertilizing is typically not beneficial to wine grapes. This land could be worked with a hoe in order to create a vineyard row before installing the trellising and planting the vine. Vine cuttings could be gained by using shears on the second level of trellising, removing its ability to yield grapes for one year but providing you with a number of cuttings with which to expand your vineyard. There would be seven different grape varieties with different levels of heat and cold tolerance and preferred growing conditions. Depending on the level of heat stress which the vine endures, the final yield would be affected. What's more, each grape harvested will also have a quality level which determines both the value of a given wine and it's ability to age in a cellar, increasing the quality level by a given percentage each year until it reaches the end of its shelf life. Here are the different grape varieties. They would receive +1 quality for being planted on their bonus soil type. Pinot Noir and Riesling would have narrower temperature tolerances and lower yields, but would be rewarded with an additional +1 quality. As the grape vines grow, they will pick up conditions based on temperature and moisture variations. The temperature tolerances would have to be tinkered with, and my values are really just there to show where they would stand relative to one another. Growing Conditions As the year passed, each grape vine would pick up conditions, similar to how a crop would, and yields/quality would be reduced or increased depending on which conditions had been picked up during the growing season. This would cause differences not only from vintage to vintage, but also from site to site, as temperature and rainfall would vary with elevation and latitude. Acidity In the real world, acidity is very important for both red and white wines, and is largely determined by the temperature of the grapes throughout the growing season. Lower temperatures lead to higher acidity, while warmer temperatures cause the fruits to metabolize acids and break them down. This could result in five different harvest conditions for both reds and whites: flabby, round, balanced, angular, or tart. Tannins Tannins are almost entirely a concern for red grapes in the real world and would only concern them in Vintage Story (this is why normal quality white grapes were given a wider temperature tolerance - they can't get extra quality from tannins and would be pointless without being given an edge through that means). While red grapes are less forgiving temperature wise, they have the ability to pick up an extra quality point in the right environs. The different harvest conditions would be jammy, plush, silky, robust, and green, and would only affect quality, not yield. Moisture Moisture is important in the real world for wine grapes. Too much can cause rot, too little can cause hydric stress. This parameter would effect all grapes equally, they would not have individual tolerances. Too much moisture would cause heavily reduced yields, while too little would slightly reduce yields and quality. There is a grey rot which affects the berries, caused by the fungus Botrytis cinerea. In most cases it is undesirable and causes grey rot, dramatically reducing yields. But for one grape in our seven, Riesling, if kept in check this fungus creates noble rot, producing concentrated Sélection de Grains Nobles or Trockenbeerenenauslese wines which are highly sought after in small quantities. In order to balance the extra quality points that Pinot Noir can pick up from clay soils and tannins, Riesling which reaches this point without rotting will receive 1/2 yields but a huge bonus to quality. The five conditions would be rotted, botrytized, concentrated, stressed, and coarse. Proper water balance will require carefully thought-out irrigation and not planting in areas with too much or too little rain. Calculations The way these would be calculated would be to add all of the quality bonuses, while the yield ones would be added one after another. For example, an angular, robust, stressed red would have it's base yield, lets say it's 100 for ease of calculation, be cut by 40% to 60, then by 25% to 45, not by 65% to 35. A tart, concentrated white wine would receive -50% yields and no quality bonus as the plus and minus cancel out. As to when these would trigger, it would be after the plant has spent a certain number of hours passed a given threshold, with the worst bonus earned overriding the others. For a Riesling, you would have to let the vine stay wet enough to trigger Botrytis (passed 2/3 between the midpoint and high tolerance for moisture), without exceeding the high tolerance for the number of hours required. To create a balanced Pinot Noir, it could never exceed the 2/3 point between the midpoint of its temperature tolerance range and the upper or lower limits. The end result is that planting a hillside vineyard would return different results for each row depending on elevation, just as it does famously in Burgundy, where the best grapes are produced on the middle of the slope on the Grand Crus, or in the Mosel where certain Grosses Lage yield the greatest wine. Vine Age Another aspect of real world viticulture which is very important is vine age. As a vine ages, it produces higher quality but lower quality of grapes once it has reached maturity. With every harvest, a year could be added to a vines age, with the following effects: Young Vines 0-1: -1Q 50% Yields Normal Vines 2-4: +0Q 100% Yields Old Vines 5-9: +1Q 75% Yields Ancient Vines 10+: +2Q 50% Yields Aging The big reason why quality is so important is that while a wine ages, it's quality level will increase by percentages, and the higher the quality the longer it will age. So to get the highest quality wine, you need to age it for the longest possible time. Wines must be aged in a cellar environment in order to gain quality. As to how wine will be aged, there would be three methods: Amphorae - Bulk wine storage. Created with clay and sealed with wax or fat. No additional bonus. Bottles - Individual wines, sealed with cork (can be created from oak logs, or harvested from a special cork oak in warmer regions. No additional bonuses. Oak Barrels - Made from many aged oak staves, similar to a longbow, and metal bands. Will hold wine for up to 2 years, and will increase the rate at which quality accrues during those two years (+0.2% per year instead of +0.1%). Wine aged in an oak barrel like this will gain the modifier 'Oaked', and will not be able to be oaked further. Because ageing runs by percentages, increasing the quality at a higher rate at the beginning of the aging process will have cumulative effects. Riesling and Sauvignon Blanc can only be oaked for one year, creating a used cask which can be used for an additional year for those grapes in the following vintage. Impact I think that wine's main impact wouldn't be to buff the player or anything like that. Throughout history the point of quality wine has been as a source of enjoyment, not a practical purpose. For this reason, I think that wine should mostly have its impact be felt on a developing village once that point of the roadmap has been met. It could be deposited within a central inventory and used to increase the luxury value of the town, which could increase the productivity/growth rate of the villager population. It could also be used as offerings in a temple building (perhaps on an altar block) for bonuses which correspond to the quality of the wine, or be used to trade with others looking to use wine for such purposes. The biggest impact of wine on the game would be to force the player to look at the landscape in new ways. Did clay spawn on a slope? Don't mine it out! Wait till you have the right grapes and plant them on those blocks, and what could have been a one-time burst of clay is now a goldmine vineyard. Is there a large gravel field near you? Get your bucket and irrigate it, plant the proper grapes, and grow them. Is one corner of you vineyard not performing well? Try a different grape type! Found a slope with ideal temperature profiles? Build terraces, fill them with the proper gravel, build channels for water if the area is dry, and create a large vineyard. Overall, it would give people a reason to creatively use terrain and to seek out certain combinations of soil/temperature.

I wanted to do a series of suggestion posts on the topic of geolocked resources. In my post on the oceans and rivers thread, I mentioned that this could be an important mechanic to implement in order to drive players to continue expanding once they have established a stable settlement. Certain resources only being able to be generated in certain environments would drive people to travel to obtain them, to build infrastructure to expedite said travel and transportation, and to build bases at the point of extraction. In a multiplayer setting, it would be the basis for organic trade and the development of trade routes. I want to do a different set of geolocked region for each temperature profile which combines realism with features which make gameplay more interesting and drive engagement once you've passed the 'survival' stage and are at a more comfortable position. The tropics would be divided into two territories: wet and dry tropics. In both of these cases, it would not be possible to move the sources of the resources in question. One of the things that makes exploration in Minecraft feel so pointless is the ability to pick up anything that you find, take it back to your base, and grow it. As to the purpose of these items, they would all be luxury resources that offer some sort of benefit to the player. Once villages are implemented, I think that it would be best to make their influences be felt on that level, as building a village is more of a late-game endeavor - they would affect an amenity stat which increased efficiency or attracted new villagers at a quicker rate. Incense in the Dry Tropics In the dry hot environments, the ones that I would implement would be in the form of incense-bearing trees. Each of these incenses would be able to be burned on an altar for some sort of benefit on the village level, or within a closed space for the player (reduced hunger, increased healing, spawnproofing, etc.). All of the trees would only spawn on limestone gravels at higher altitudes in a hot, dry environment. The trees would drop no seeds, but would spawn spots for resin on their logs which would bleed their respective incenses on a fairly regular basis. Patches of limestone gravels generated in hot, dry highlands would form thickets of these trees - never all types in one thicket, but each one in a chunk of just that tree. The three would be: Dracaena: Based on Dracaena cinnabari from the island of Socotra. It would provide a red resin which could be burned as incense, or used as a unique blood red varnish or dye. Myrrh: Based on Commiphora myrrha from the Horn of Africa. It would provide a golden resin which could be burned as incense, or used to create the most powerful healing poultices in the game. Frankincense: Based on Boswellia sacra from southern Arabia. It would provide a white resin which could be burned as an incense, or used to create the most powerful healing poultices in the game. Burning a certain quantity of all three in an enclosed space during a temporal storm could also prevent spawning within that space. This would be difficult to do, as the spawn rate for the resin would be long enough that you would need to gather a descent amount from each of the three incense-bearing thickets. This would end up with the cool mechanic of multiplayer cities scrambling to get enough resin to burn in their temples and be protected throughout the storm. It could also result in short pilgrimages from scattered bases to a central, safe temple location once a temporal storm is approaching. Spices in the Wet Tropics In the wet hot environments, a very special soil called laterite could form in patches at higher altitudes. These patches would spawn in clumps anywhere from two to four times larger than your typical clay or peat patch. These blocks, when broken, would drop laterite bricks which could be used for building, but the soil block itself would be unobtainable. On these clumps would grow four different plants - they could only be planted on laterite and would only naturally generate there: Nutmeg (Shrub): Would harvest nutmeg fruits. These would be opened with a hammer, yielding a whole seed. This could be cut with a knife, yielding a mace aril and a nutmeg seed. These could each be ground into mace or nutmeg, and used to season foods. The plant could be broken and moved like normal shrubs, but only placed one high on laterite. Allspice (Fruit Tree): This would function just like a normal fruit tree, and would produce allspice berries when harvested. These could be ground into allspice, and then used to season foods. Pepper (Vine): Would harvest peppercorns. These could be ground and then used to season foods. While the vine would grow on Allspice trees, it could be broken to receive cuttings. Those cuttings could be combined with a stick to create a trained vine seedling which could then be planted in laterite and would yield fruit as a berry bush would, just with a different appearance. Cinnamon (Tree): This would grow just like a lumber tree, but instead of yielding sticks it would yield cinnamon sticks and seedlings. The form of the tree would have lots of branchy leaves and very few wood, which could be cut into planks like normal wood. The goal would be to use shears to get as many sticks as possible before cutting down the tree. These sticks could be ground up and used to season food. The whole spices would have an extremely long shelf-life even without being stored in a cellar. Once ground, they would still last decently long. Seasoning food would be done in the crafting grid, and would give a bonus to the food item's saturation and the shelf life of the finished meal before you cook it. You could also add whole spices to the meal to sacrifice a bit of saturation for an extended shelf life. Different spices would go well with different food types, so a fully spiced dish would require multiple spices. Think allspice for meat, cinnamon for fruit, mace for fish (once fishing is in), nutmeg for grains, and pepper for vegetables. There could also be a drying process for freshly harvested spices similar to that used for bowstaves. Coffee in the High Elevation Tropics Once you got to the very high elevation tropics, you could have coffee spawn on laterite patches instead of spices. This would be a two-stacking bush like currants, and the fruit could be dried, ground, and brewed to create coffee, a special meal which increases your movement speed slightly. Whole dried coffee beans would have a very long shelf life.

I take a bunch of meat, add an equal amount of vegetables, then make stew. Put it in crocks and seal them with fat and they will last for over a year in the cellar. When it comes to the actual wolves themselves, I think that a lot of the proposed solutions deal with complex AI changes, which can be difficult to implement without a big budget. A better way, imo, to implement such changes might be for the player to have a debuff/buff on them which influences wolf behavior in simple ways. If a player has a low amount of health (<1/3), they will get the 'wounded' debuff which will make wolves behave in their currently aggressive fashion. If you recently injured a wolf to the point where it flees within, say, the last 24 hours, you will get a wolfslayer buff which makes them flee from you like rabbits do. Their normal behavior can be changed to only attack within a small radius and to make more noises to warn you away before you get close - no complex stalking behavior but a reduction to their aggression. If you do incite their ire, they will not follow you for very long if you choose to run. All of these behavior patterns more or less exist in other animals already, so this would just be tweaking which set of behavioral rules they follow depending on the player's status.

This is one of those things I'm really looking forward to if implemented - I love the element of sea travel, ports, and preparing for a voyage. The way I would do it is fairly simply. Bodies of waters can be one of five designations - lake, river, harbor, sea, or ocean. A map would generate with an outline of continents. Bodies of water between two arms of a continent or enfolded by a continent could be seas, with milder weather but still the risky storms and other events - kind of similar to a continental shelf. Once you got out to a point where land was a certain distance away in every direction, you would get to the ocean, which would be much more dangerous with large destructive storms and eldritch horrors in the deeps. When it came to the outline of the continent, this wouldn't just be a line where the land stopped. There would be smaller, sheltered bodies of water cut into the coastline - these would be harbors. Some would have rivers flowing into them, and rivers would be navigable a certain distance up their length. Other rivers would flow into the sea through deltas or large estuaries. There could be both freshwater lakes along the course of rivers and saltwater lakes which inland rivers emptied into - these would be a huge source of salt. All three of these water bodies inside the continental boundary would be safe - ships placed there would be not be damaged by the storms that you'd find on the ocean or seas. This is where you'd build your ports, and in the early game when resources on your continent or island were still abundant you'd stick to these bodies of water, in smaller ships like dugout canoes, rafts, or smaller sailing ships. Ships big enough to sail on the sea would be gated behind tech advancement, with ships capable of sailing across the open ocean being most difficult to build. I definitely think that ship building should be done like the Minecraft mod smallships does it - you can make a set number of premade ship types which each have different features - health/durability, storage, maneuverability, top speed. You can then cosmetically customize these with sails, flags, or figureheads. I think that the idea of a built structure becoming mobile is cool, but from what I understand it's a nightmare when it comes to coding things like hitboxes and collision. I think that focusing immediately on crossing the ocean is thinking about it the wrong way. Seafaring didn't start with crossing the ocean, it started as a way to transport goods. In rivers or lakes, and then in enclosed, calm seas like the Mediterranean. As time went on ships sailed in places like the English Channel or the Baltic Sea, going down the coast from city to city, without ever really focusing on conquering the vast ocean to the west. The original point to ships was to travel quickly and to transport a large quantity of goods with ease. That could easily be the initial point in Vintage Story as well. You could load up a ship and sail across the harbor to build a new base, and then use your ship to transport items between them. You could sail up a river until you reached waterfalls or rapids looking for minerals. If you established a base on the coast far away, maybe a seafaring ship could get you back and forth faster, and carrying more cargo, than you walking could. You'd build up the spawn continent, exhausting resources, prospecting for ore, etc. What originally sent the Europeans to exploring over the oceans in earnest was a crisis - the loss of Constantinople to a rival power threatened the primary land trade route to the east, so they started looking for alternate paths. The same dynamic could play out in old worlds - the spawn continent gets into some sort of resource crisis and needs to expand. You could also create new resources which are geographically locked to create a need to travel if you want to find them. They aren't necessary, but provide bonuses - spices for food, rare gems for jewelry, ingredients for brewing if a system like that is implemented, rare woods and stones for carving, tea. You could even introduce a plant that functions like grapes and produces fruit with a value which reflects something immutable like local climate and basement rock layer - something that's not planted on fertile farmland, but in sand, gravel, or clay. When it comes to continents, maybe start with a certain 'section' size that can be customized. Roll a dice for each side with a certain chance - 25%, 30%, 45%, that the next 'section' will be ocean or a continuation of the continent. Do the same for the surrounding sections to each continent section. Once you have a continent surrounded by seas, roll for the edges of the sea blocks as to whether the next section will be sea/ocean or the next continent - 40% it's ocean, 60% it's continent. Let these percentages be customizable when creating a world - higher percentages for continent rolls to generate sea makes smaller continents, smaller percentages for sea block rolls to create continents creates larger oceans. Generate the continent boundary to encompass a certain amount of land in the border sections - that's also customizable and would effect continent/sea size. In the 'pole' strips, you could have frozen seasonal landbridges that make north-south travel a bit more difficult. It also creates new incentives to build a base somewhere - before, it was just proximity to resources or centralized location. With water offering expedited transport of both you and your items, then building a base at an intersection of important waterways becomes very important. It gives you a reason to keep playing, and on multiplayer servers you could end up with a real economy with trade routes if geo-locked resources were implemented well.