DarkGold

Agree, there's definitely things I could do to make my life easier. This is a bit of temporary measure while I only have 1 iron trapdoor (I have so many other things to spend iron plates on at the moment), but it did make me think that it would be nice to be able to look through the door.

I see you've thought about this before! And I'm not the first to want a system where we can get information from traders remotely.

Yesterday I was listening to an interview with Tyron from October last year and I heard him discuss some thoughts on improvements to the trading system. https://youtu.be/5uvFrR9ZtV4?t=2677 44:37, Tyron said: This was exciting to me, since this aligned with one of the pieces of feedback I had when I first started playing the game. https://www.vintagestory.at/forums/topic/20317-v121-a-new-players-thoughts/?&_rid=941726#findComment-106624 I said: And in a reply... So I wanted to make the improvements to the trading system I was eager to see a little more visible, rather than another thought among many in a thread about my impressions as a new player in version 1.21. I know 1.23 is supposed to be focused on combat, and beyond that, work is focusing on chapter 3, so I'm not sure when the trading system is next likely to be a priority, but here are my thoughts for when that day eventually arrives... I'm a player who is already relatively invested in the trading part of the game and I use a spreadsheet to manage information about the traders in my game. It looks like this (but much longer): Explanation for various things in the image: I've got trader types color coded by the color of the map icons I'm using for that trader type. Names in pink are traders who are living with other traders (I found a group of 3 traders living together, marked their group in pink). Because I have several of the same types of traders on the map, I also record trader coordinates, so I can remember which trader is which and easily find them on the map. I have a second spreadsheet that has the trader info from the wiki and populates the drop down lists on this spreadsheet, and uses the drop down selection to retrieve the price range (PR) an item can sell at, so I can see at a glance where the current price sits compared to its range. I keep a bunch of the items I am interested in buying or selling listed, then when I visit a trader, I fill in the price ($) and number (#) of any of those items that trader is currently buying or selling. I also track how much money the trader currently has in their wallet (Wallet) and when their next delivery of stock (Delivery) is. I might clear the info out when the Delivery expires, or keep the Delivery and Wallet there for reference, if I am going to need to wait for the trader to save up more money before I try and sell to them again. Item color coding just makes it easier to pick circular trades or specific items (like temporal gears, things I can't make because of my class) out of a list. I'm not looking to completely replace my spreadsheet; it works for me. What I am looking to do is remotely check the info that I am filling in manually, so what is currently being bought and sold, Wallet, $, #, Delivery. I want to skip traveling to the trader to get this info IF I have invested in a way to get this info remotely. I want to earn the ability to skip the information gathering leg work, then am happy to still travel to make all the trades I want to make before Delivery changes. I see the travel problem as something that can be solved separately (because there are things like base return teleporters in the game and I see travel infrastructure as a separate system I could invest in that could compliment this system). I see 2 ways I could earn the ability to skip the information gathering leg work of traveling around and visiting traders in person: Do quests for traders to help them improve their bases. Then they will grant me this ability now that they have the working infrastructure and as thanks. Their factions could come into this (you could advance a factional relationship) or it could be a process for each individual base/trader. I could see this being something you could achieve without being further along than iron progression. If traders fundamentally lack the technology to communicate at distance, then we could use Jonas technology to craft items that would allow this, and gift those items to specific traders to gain this ability. We would have a piece of Jonas tech that we can use to contact any of the gifted items (and therefore the trader at the other end). There could even be some kind of combination of the 2; we could get a blueprint for the tech by sufficiently raising our standing with a trader/faction. This is my biggest desire for the trading system. All other desires are secondary to the earned ability to remotely check trader info, because I find the system relatively engaging and useful already, the information gathering is just a little tedious. One other thought I have had that relates to communicating at a distance, but I don't think is necessarily going to work for the trading system, is homing pigeons (or other birds that could be used to deliver information, like ravens). I don't think they serve the kind of instantaneous communication the player would be looking for, but they are something that relate to the communication problem that I thought was interesting. Maybe birds aren't even able to navigate in this world full of rifts?

I have built a little place to fire my charcoal next to my coke ovens. Something I like about my current set up is that I have a glass slab that lets me easily see when charcoal production is finished. I do have to break it every time I finish firing my charcoal to get in, but it's not terribly inconvenient. I was thinking it would be nice if there was a version of an iron door or trapdoor that could have a glass window in it, so that I would be able to look through the door, rather than a separate glass block. Apparently quartz glass can have a continuous use temperature limit of 900°C to 1,100°C, whereas charcoal kilns typically operate at 400°C to 600°C. So it seems plausible that an iron door could support both a glass window and function in a high temperature environment. We do have windowed iron doors, but they do not seal rooms (they use iron rods, not glass), so it's not possible to use them for charcoal making. Would a third iron door recipe that uses a glass slab be possible? Or a version of the iron trapdoor that uses a glass slab?

I generally like this solution, as long as stakes also stop monsters climbing, so players have a few options. They can choose between stakes + fences/walls or palisades. The addition of some metal spikes (that behave like stakes, stop climbing) that can sit on top of fences/walls later in the game would be nice too, so you could do something like build a glass wall around your base (with all that quartz you have lying around) and just top it with spikes.

I have heard the saying "If it's black, fight back; if it's brown, lie down". I've never seen either in real life, but my understanding is that an actual brown bear could be a real force to be reckoned with. A simple fence would do little to protect your bee hives from a hungry bear! So it's nice the game is a little more generous with how effective your fences are, rather than letting supernatural monsters or even hungry bears ignore them.

I was thinking about this. I have a couple of thoughts. First thought... when I was at a traders and a bear climbed over the stakes to attack me, I found that quite distressing. It felt immersion breaking and like the stakes were not behaving as expected. So regarding their need to be functional, I would like more functionality than currently exists. However, I do see the ability for players to abuse stakes if they did damage, for example. Make kill boxes, etc. What I expect from stakes is basically how I use fences right now; shivers can't climb them, you can't just jump over them. This is the functionality I would like to see implemented. Second thought... I would like to see the option for palisades and stakes in the game, but I think they would mostly be an alternative aesthetic choice to fences, because wattle fences are just so cheap. We assume a palisade would be made of logs, not sticks, and is therefore going to be more resource intensive than wattle fences, so less immediately useful for the player to build when they are trying to set up a defensive perimeter in the early game. They are also just less functional; being able to see through a fence is very useful, a palisade blocks your vision. So while I like the cosmetic option for players who want to build a thematic defensive encampment, I don't see the game actually encouraging the choice of palisades over fences for any other reason. My final impression is that monsters appear very unintelligent and incredibly hostile. Drifters will run at your door, but they can't figure out how to open it. They really want to kill you, but they just can't figure out how to get at you. They also seem to disperse when it's bright enough outside. Their priority goes from desperately trying and failing to murder you, to seeking less bright places to lurk? But if you happen to be somewhere they can attack you when it's bright outside, their bloodlust outweighs their discomfort and killing you becomes their number 1 priority again. So having a fence instead of a palisade seems less secure, but it's enough to deal with the low intelligence of your opponents. Palisades look sturdier, but we don't need to be stronger than the enemy, just smarter. Edit: If the game made monsters make choices based on line of sight and made them able to climb fences (only if they saw you were on the other side), then palisades could become more useful, as blocking line of sight would be a meaningful advantage they had that wooden fences didn't (stone fences block line of sight too). But then palisades wouldn't be much better than a 2 high wall of dirt blocks either. I guess nothing could spawn on top of them? There could be something done with enemy logic here I feel, but it seems unlikely the game will go that route. It seems like that road leads to stakes on top of fences/walls, like the equivalent of modern razor wire.

Depending on the game mode you are playing, the consequences of death can be more or less severe. Death has an interesting interaction with the system that lets you change your respawn point in the Standard game mode. Besides reducing your nutrition and making you drop what you are carrying on default settings, once you start changing your spawn point, dying will reduce the number of respawns you have at that new spawn point. This will become significant if you want to travel away from world spawn, and there are many reasons you may be motivated to do that.

This is also the case for me. I was surprised to find out they did nothing to stop temporal storms, which is what I expected them to do since, as you say, lighting is cheaper than rift wards, and that control of player-spaces is necessary far earlier in the game. I am not certain when they are more useful than lights. I thought perhaps underground, but if monsters can still spawn in darkness without a rift, then you would need light anyway, yes? I agree that rift wards being repurposed as a source of stability would be good. This would allow the player a tool to stay underground mining longer, rather than have to come up or spend a temporal gear to refresh their stability. Or settle unstable areas if they really wanted to pay the upkeep. This could have narrative purpose in later chapters (if you need to make a base near or explore a story location in an unstable area). These would be valid purposes that are not "negate the effects of a temporal storm within an area". I see people have discussed some possibilities here:

Agree, for the most part. Fire is temporary and comes at cost in the early game (you might feed it fuel, regularly maintain torches), or requires some investment to get an ineffective (when it comes to preventing spawns) permanent light source (fat or beeswax, oil lamps and candles). As soon as one invests metal (torch holders or lanterns), the cost is paid in perpetuity. I think the challenge with removing perpetual light sources is that maintaining torches simply isn't that fun for the player, at least at the frequency it is currently required, and it is not intuitive that light sources would last longer (their fuel reserves are not large). So making them last several months would seem strange, but making them last less time would be frustrating. I think a temporal gear powered light source would be less strange to last in perpetuity though. If lanterns were to remain waterproof, and last a long but finite amount of time before needing refueling, I could see a perpetual tier of light above them being added, but it sounds like many people already struggle to invest in lanterns, so adding yet another tier might not be fun, even if it made more sense? It would also be a problem for game modes like Homo Sapiens to put perpetual light behind temporal gears. I agree, it would be thematically satisfying if monsters were scared of fire, but because players need to be able to make torches easily to be able to see anything in the dark, they must be very accessible. However, an extremely accessible deterrent would make it very easy to use to ignore the monster threat. It would change the game from one where combat is relatively necessary on occasion to one where you would just place torches instead of fight anything that isn't a boss (more than one is already encouraged to do this). This is the major issue I see with making fire a more thematic deterrent. One is already carrying a light source when one is most likely to encounter monsters (at night or underground). I agree, fire is the easiest way to solve the player-owned spaces problem, else it would be limited to too late in the game if it relied on any more advanced tech. I can see "rooms" either having a far too restrictive definition, or else players just filling mines with doors to make everything a room. I can't see a better way than light to solve the problem in the early game.

I'd like to explain why I find the current system satisfying, not overly expensive, and not immersion breaking. I found it really enjoyable to go from having a little 6x6 (4x4 inside) building that was only lit by a torch, to gradually increasing the size of my base as I found candles by panning bony soil and crafting copper lanterns. I started playing in 1.21, where the 1.22 small lanterns were basically the best light source available. Copper is pretty plentiful, and candles were rare, but it felt really satisfying every time I was able to make a lantern and replace the torches I was using and expand the footprint of my base. Going from replacing torches every day to now having a permanent source of light that was even more powerful felt like great progress. I happened to have a treasure hunter and commodities trader on the next island over. This made trade very viable; I could sell longbows to the treasure hunter for 4 or more gears, and sell cracked vessels for a profit to the commodities trader that I'd bought from the treasure hunter. This made it very rewarding to save up a couple of trades worth of profit, then head to a furniture trader and buy a lantern with my hard earned gears. This meant I had a more reliable source of lanterns than waiting for a candle to drop from panning. It took me in-game years to actually find a bee hive and start making my own candles. I find the idea of rifts not spawning in high enough levels of artificial light to be reasonable. Light pushing back darkness, civilization pushing back wilderness, is very thematic. Artificial light being something that interferes with rifts spawning seems plausible given what little we know about rifts. The lore of the game involving alchemy (which has concepts like opposed elements) further bolsters the potential of light to interact with the supernatural. I don't light up a radius of 500 blocks, I merely keep my base light. My base started out small and grew over time, but from the very start it included fences, to prevent wolves and bears attacking me if I stepped outside. After winter and snow, the fences became 2 high because snow drifts would let bears jump a 1 high fence. After being shot often enough by bowtorn who just happened to be standing somewhere they could clear 2 fences, the fences became 3 high. Now I am very safe inside my compound (outside temporal storms), and everything I need is inside it. It did not require much more materials or planning to make this happen. I understand not everyone loves the aesthetic of fences, but the cost of making wattle fences is low, you can still see through them, and the idea of having a somewhat fortified base seems very in keeping with the themes of the game and what we see with traders. I understand deciding to set monsters to passive as a desired play style, but as the standard setting, I think encouraging the player to be thoughtful about how they build a defensive base makes sense for the game?

My experience has been that monsters never spawn in my base, except during temporal storms, but I believe that is because I have placed big lanterns within at least 12 block of each other, and my base is not enormous (so lighting it all isn't hard). Pictures attached of my base (blue stars on map are the radius of the lightning rod on my windmill roof). I would like it if powered rift wards kept an area safe from a temporal storm, but besides that, I have very little problem with the existing system, because the 3 high fences and lights keep me safe when I am at base at all other times. This set up was working for me before the 1.22 lantern update, where large lanterns became even better. I also always run around in leather armor, since there is no down side to wearing it (besides style), unless I am preparing to actually fight something (in which case I gear up to the best armor I have). That's also done a lot to keep me safe, since the leather basically prevents me from getting killed in 1 hit, and after taking 1 surprise hit, I can run away.

The silver bit was definitely hard to distinguish from the quartz bits. I figured gold (being a more distinct color) might be a little easier to spot though. Nonetheless, I certainly pay a lot more attention to the quartz bits I see on the surface now, since finding silver on the surface. Edit: According to this image I found on Reddit, no, gold bits are not much easier to spot. Alas.

Congratulations on your progress! I've still not set out on my chapter 2 journey, between breaks from the game and adventures searching for pentlandite and cinnabar (both finally discovered this week). Finding gold is now at the top of my to do list too. I had the same question about the elk and teleporting: The answers I received were very helpful. I also read somewhere (I forget where) that using the 2nd mode of the prospecting pick (checking the immediate radius) on quartz veins you find (especially on or near the surface, since you don't have to dig to find the vein first) can be helpful for finding gold and silver. Edit: So far I've only found silver by luck; I happened to see silver bits on the surface (like how one might see copper bits on the surface) amongst an area of quartz bits. It's only happened to me once, so I can't recommend it as a reliable strategy, but maybe also keep an eye out for areas with quartz bits on the surface and see if there is anything else mixed in amongst them?

I had a problem similar to this a while ago, but my hens weren't eating at all. Your issue sounds different, as your hens are eating, but you could try killing, recreating your birds and resetting their generation using creative mode like I did and see if that works? Good luck!

I've also found soybeans to be extremely good, both raw and preserved, if you can find them. There was some discussion around travel rations in this thread too, though pemmican and hardtack come up on the forums many times independently.

I like the idea of having clocks and thermometers in game, but as a player, I need the information a clock and a thermometer provide very early in the game (to know when and where to plant things). I imagine a clock would need at least bronze technology to make, and mercury was apparently historically extracted from cinnabar. I have yet to find cinnabar in my game, despite actively looking for it, and I have long since made steel. I think not having this information available to the player early in the game could be detrimental to the farming experience, and it seems like it would be difficult to acquire it early due to the technology and resources required. Relying on traders to get these tools sooner would not be reliable under the current trader system, as players would need to find the correct trader, which might take some time, and when found, they may not have the tools in stock. Changing the way trader stock works could help solve this, but unless Treasure Hunters stocked these tools (doesn't seem likely, seems more likely a different trader would have them), the first issue of finding the trader in a timely manner would still be a challenge. If the easiest way to get the tools early game is to trade for them, it would disincentivize crafting them too, so making them very accessible via trader, in order to solve their early game accessibility, doesn't seem like a good solution for the game overall. I'm not sure how the game could both balance having this information available to the player when they need it in the early game, and still have these tools be useful.

If I don't have a few temporal gears, I'm going to prioritise getting some before I prioritise setting up outposts that are a long way from world spawn. I like to do this by trading with Treasure Hunters. Some people like to do this by hunting drifters. If you've got lots of gravel near you, it's also easy to go out, grab a pile of gravel, then sit comfortably indoors panning it, if you have a bucket and can make yourself a little indoor water source to stand in. I'll chisel something nice to hold the water too.

Depends what my goals are in world and what my food supplies are like. If I had enough food to deal with the hunger penalty, and I needed warm clothes, I'd be out there hunting for pelts. Short trips where I can come back to base and warm up easy. After I have some warmer clothes, I'd be prospecting for the next major minerals I need. In my game, I've got steel, but I am looking for pentlandite (so I can make cupronickel) and cinnabar (so I can make even better warm clothes). If the prospecting by my base isn't great, I check what kind of rocks the minerals I'm looking for are likely to be found in, look for an area with lots of those rocks, and set up an outpost I can fill with necessities (shelter, bed, firewood, cooking pot, bowl, storage vessel full of food) out that way, and use it as a base of operations for prospecting.

I find the first time I make a journey quite compelling. It's quick trips back and forth that I think it would be difficult, even with mods, to make more compelling. Why? I've seen what there is to see on the way there. The goal of going back and forth is usually just to move resources, so I don't have a lot of inventory space to stop on the journey back and acquire more resources if my inventory is already full. I am also trying to minimize risk. It takes a lot of time to travel there and back, and I might have to do this several times. Cutting down this time is my goal. If I was journeying on a road, in a self driving wagon, and I could be crafting in the back of the wagon while I was moving, so I could accomplish 2 things at once, there might be a way to address point 3, but I assume most mods aren't addressing points 1 and 2? Curious if they are!

I didn't really consider that you could use the terminus teleporter multiple times without dying in between. That makes a lot of sense. I would still like it if the utility of base return teleporters was extended so I could do return visits to locations I had been to before without making the journey out there again with sufficient planning. Example We have three locations: Base, L1, L2. I place an anchor at Base, set my respawn point at base, tune a base return teleporter (BRT) to Base. I travel to L1 with 2 untuned BRTs and 2 anchors. I place an anchor at L1, tune a BRT to the L1 anchor. I travel to L2 with 1 untuned BRT, a BRT tuned to L1, and 1 anchor. I place an anchor at L2, tune a BRT to the L2 anchor. Now that I am at L2, I can either: Die, return to Base. Use my BRT tuned to L1. This is more options than if I could only die and return to base or die and return to L1 (if I chose to set my spawn point there instead), based on previous choices. I can have both choices available to me at the same time at a later moment, rather than locking in my choice ahead of time. This is good if I don't know what choice I will want to make at L1 or L2 when I leave Base. This also means I am safe to change my spawn point to locations I think might be really dangerous to get the benefit of up to 20 respawns (by default), rather than 1 temporal gear per respawn (via terminus teleporter), if I carry a Base tuned BRT with me.

The terminus teleporter requires you to die to get back to base. If you aren't using the setting that lets you keep items on death, this means you can't use this strategy to haul loot too and from base? Actually, let me confirm I understand. You would: set spawn at base, build terminus there. travel to destination. loot stuff? die, respawn at base. use terminus teleporter, back to destination. loot stuff, return to base with base teleporter. repeat 4 and 5, until looting is done? So you intentionally die to set a point, then can reuse the terminus teleporter without dying again, because the point persists?

In this discussion on long distance travel and story locations, the challenge of returning to base (for various reasons, but notably to haul loot) came up. The game currently grants a tool to return to base (the base return teleporter), but there's a choice to be made when using it at a story location currently; if you reset your spawn point at the story location (because you anticipate danger) you can't use your base return teleporter to get back to base anymore. 1 proposal came up in the discussion; have a different checkpoint system at story locations, so players don't have to change their respawn point there. This is one way to solve the problem. I have another proposal: a system like lodestones and compasses in Minecraft. It would be nice to be able to craft and construct base anchors in the world (similar to lodestones in Minecraft) and then tune a base return teleporter to a base anchor either during or after construction (similar to how compasses in Minecraft can be set to point to a lodestone). I think this still allows base return teleporters to be single use items, but allows for greater flexibility. Some problems I see: What happens if the base anchor is removed after the base return teleporter is tuned to it? I imagine it stops working (no longer has a set reference point to point to). This would mean you can't just have one base anchor you move (without consequence) and would mean tuning a base return teleporter would probably happen after construction, not during. Some clear benefits: I can tune a base return teleporter to an anchor at my base, bring that teleporter and an untuned base return teleporter and an anchor with me on a journey, place an anchor at my destination, use the untuned teleporter on the new anchor, and now I can go back to base with all my loot, then back to destination again after. This is still costing me lots of Jonas parts, and still requires lots of planning ahead. I don't see this messing with the lore, because we already have translocators that move the player independent from their spawn point. This would just mean base return teleporters are working more like translocators than terminus teleporters (looking at other fixed locations in the world rather than locations related to the seraph). Or base return teleporters may be able to do both; their untuned behavior may target the player's current spawn point, but their tuned behavior could target base anchors. --- That proposal aside, I would love the combat update to change the way I pursue Jonas parts to enable me to better hunt for parts I may be missing. Rather than the current wide drop pool, specific parts from specific enemies, or multiple smaller drop tables from specific sources, would be better for allowing the player to pursue constructing any given Jonas machine. I would hope that would mean parts for machines like base return teleporters are more accessible than parts for machines like terminus teleporters (since a single use machine would need to be recreated more often). Alternatively, the parts system could be reworked to be a little more generic, and then specific parts could be constructed with specific other materials (eg, maybe you need a high quality gem and a generic Jonas part to make a terminus teleporter part, but only glass and a generic Jonas part to make a base return teleporter part). This would be another way to make some machines easier to make while still making Jonas parts rare in general. Presumably all parts would still require cupronickel. --- I'd like to hear what others think. Do you agree? Do you have other ideas? Do you see flaws in the proposal? Do you love the current system? Please share

Another way roots and stumps are handled would be in a game like Valheim. Stumps have to be separately removed, but they aren't a bunch of blocks changing the terrain, just something left behind that shows a tree was once there, and take a little more time to remove (and grant a little more resource for the trouble) before you can replant a seed. I don't think the extra time would add too much to the Vintage Story experience, so keeping it streamlined might be more enjoyable for players, unless the stump could provide a unique resource, or the ability for a tree to grow back faster without replanting it from seed maybe? Something that has the stump contibute more than a time and tool durability sink to the game.

Hytale currently works like this. It does feel more realistic, but the downside is that as trees grow, their roots replace dirt. When you chop a tree down, you have to dig those roots out and replace them with dirt you've gathered from somewhere else before you can replant another tree in the same place. This can end up feeling tedious, and is more resource heavy than simply replanting a seed. For a game where you may be burning firewood more regularly for cooking, charcoal, and staying warm, and therefore farming trees more often, this could be an undesirable complication. Or it might be a good use for all the extra dirt people dig up when prospecting. Not inherently good or bad, just depends on what people like.