Rainbow Fresh

The culmination of increasing rift activity leading to a storm (with variations still, so it can still be fluctuating between "low" to "apocalyptic" but the upper ceiling increases and eventually the lowest becomes not calm?) sounds like a great idea.

His name... is DAVE! That aside, here is a consideration. I have learned just enough about the lore so far that concluding the current monsters being rotted/rusted? humans makes sense. That said, locusts are clearly man-made robots that also have gone rogue, and what the hell are bells supposed to be then? My point is - who says humans are the only thing affected? (If the lore DOES cover this already, let my find it out myself). You mentioned shivers and bowtorns being badly mangled and forced in unnatural shapes from their former selves. Well, what if e.g. fish would be affected the same way? Then you could have your horrific sea monsters. And even more terrifiying bears.

While the phrasing "penalty" is certainly rather negative in nature, you are correct there, think about it that way especially in the context of the two-handed system it proposed: If something is designed to be used with two hands, that's its default/max/100% state. Using it with only one hand gives you less. Therefor it would logically be a penalty. If we frame it like a buff it would be more like "everything gets strong if I dual wield it", in which case it would be weird that only chosen things can be dual wielded like that to get a buff. Atleast that's how I see it. This, however, could help selling the system to more people without raising complaints about debuffs again. In the end though I think it boils down to what is easier to balance - establish a baseline and just cut it as necessary to make a point, or create a baseline that is lower to account for the situtions where buffs apply to not get out of hand? While also an interesting concept, even I fear that leaning too far into utilizing the offhand is not the best idea aswell. Aside from the concerns about excessive off-hand utility turning into Minecraft 2.0 which, while not 100% accurate do stem from a genuine and truthful core, The offhand mechanically not integrated well enoug into gameplay to get extended use out of it so far. Think about how reasonably you can access the current hotbar slots and backpack slots, and how you can only access the offhand via manually dragging items there or by swapping them into the main hand first. Combine that with full containers only being placeable, not storable in any slot and having functioning backpack space in your offhand would already forcibly require a rework of how you can interact with the offhand. And just adding another combination of keys to place from/grab into off-hand is not helping the already cluttered control scheme.

At that point we are certainly drifting into essentially implementing Combat Overhaul. Which, you know, I am certainly not averse to. Would also solve a gripe I have with shield as they are right now - passive block. I get where it comes from: It's still a shield, still exists, and can still block. Just not targeted and not effectively. But implementing it as RNG is the cheap way out in a world where hitting is just a hitscan. With swing-radius-aware weapons we would basically already need a collider hitbox model at which point shields could "passively" block when and only when the hit actually physically intersects the shield. Aaaand this is essentially Quivers and Sheaths. Which, you know, I too am certainly not averse to. It's the two mods I'd rather stay on 1.21 for if a kind samaritan didn't pick up Maltiez' work after he decided to forgo updating them to 1.22, probably to work on the official armor rework for 1.23. Of course just slapping it in as it is right now wouldn't really fit (esepcially as the thing has pistol harnesses) but the concept invites a general rebalance of inventory as a concept. Instead of wearing 4 simultaneous backpacks to increase your space, you could have one actual backpack slot for primary inventory expansion, and then dedicated attachments for specific items. Knife can go into a knife sheath. Sword into a sword sheath. Bow... could reasonably speaking go over your shoulder without any pouch, but to stick with the system, quiver for arrows. In order do not clutter the inventory (and player model) with too many things, make them use similar slots. You can either have a big sword or a pickaxe strapped to your back. Either a quiver or an e.g. herb pouch. Something like that, enabling more purposeful equipment storage and incentivising choosing your equipment for the task at hand, not be a bring-all-do-all.

That is true. And while I'm all for belts (I am playing with Quiver's and Sheaths - though funnily enough that doesn't come with belt lamps) to attach lanterns to much like the elk (you can do that, right? It's not just the Equus horse?), that would then still need it's own balancing penalty. Which, with how things currently are, would probably once again just boil down to higher hunger drain Well... There are multiple way to approach this specifically, I guess. As I stated originally a two-handed system would certainly need atleast a bit more weapon variety to deal exactly with one-handed vs. two-handed considerations. There could just be long, two-handed pokey stick and shorter, one-handed pokey stick that works with shields and other off-hand items. Or we re-open the can of discussing "why are thrown spears stronger than hand-held ones"... Well, in an ideal world the shield would have debuffs itself aswell, incentivising not having it equiped most of the time. So all I can say keeping your shield close and a finger over F (or whatever swap hotkey you set) is the skill to learn, I guess? Ok, this one I wouldn't really attribute as an issue to this approach itself. The off-hand penalty right now is, to my knowledge/memory, also not really explained. So these new players would equally get confused as to why they need to eat so much while constantly running around with a crude shield they never actively used (Hi, hello, I was that new player). Though I guess off-hand related mechanics could be easily, yet subtly be hinted at. Highlight the off-hand slot in a red-ish border when having a two-handed item equiped while the off-hand slot isn't empty. Subtle enough to not be "Hey, listen! You're playing the game wrong!" but an indicator that something is up nonetheless. Also, of course items would need a clear "is two-handed" tooltip to be able to figure it out even without a dedicated guide page. Can't really do that with a stat modifier number changing from 100% to 120% in a menu you have to actively open.

Phew, for a moment there I thought you literally lose satiety with every single click. But this sounds reasonable enough.

...it... does?

This is exactly what I already brought up in previous threads about this mechanic. But people seemed to be equally unhappy to change the status quo because "hunger doesn't matter later in the game" and changing this barely notable stat change would mean the game got easier. Hence me, this time, proposing something that equally affects everyone, for a reason that makes notably more sense, and also specifically tailors this penalty to the two situations where it matters. Getting penalized for using the hammer for chiseling or the tongs for smithing is just plain stupid. Cause there is no alternative, the game literally forces you to do the latter to progress. Instead now, the penalty only kicks in primarily when you are in dark areas or otherwise heavily armored (with shield) and do stuff. Much like the armor you mentioned. As I said, I too agree the shield should just be treated like armor, because it is for all intents and purposes. Using the shield, no matter how, no matter what hand (can shields even be used in the main hand?) should give you armor levels of debuffs. The price you pay for safety. But with some variety in one and two-handed weapons, the choice of equipment now matters more. Trying to use the biggest weapon for the highest damage with a thick shield won't work so well anymore. Either big defense or big damage, not both. Lighting up the cave with one hand while fighting off creepy crawlies with the other is also now a matter of choice. Mining with a torch in hand heavily disincentivised so you'd rather put down your light and focus on mining. By extent, incentivising proper preparations for mining trips in caves lest you get surprised by a monster and need to run leaving your light behind. I'm not saying my solution is perfect, just that it's an alternative approach to solve an issue the old system doesn't do a good job in solving with while trying to accomodate for the complaints of both sides.

Considering that people can have very strong an fragile opinions to heated discussions topics, like this one seems to be, I really hope you don't take offense when I say this - but your way of reasoning is very much in line with "Might as well get rid of it entirely". Which goes to highlight how delicate a topic and split the opinions on this are, and how a completely different system alltogether could actually help resolve this, if only a little. What you are saying boils down to "Eating more food is nothing, a real otherwise notable penalty is actually limiting." Considering that the decision to put an active penalty on a system, as the current hunger penalty is, is done to actively hinder/discourage use of a system not intended to be used alot actually giving you a reason to not hold a torch while mining or fighting with a two-handed weapon would actually much more achieve this original vision; while still, in my opinion, being more palatable to the player. I feel more people would be able to logically agree with "this is a two-handed weapon/tool, you have your other hand full, so you won't be able to use it effectively" rather than "you are using your left hand. You now drop your hunger bar faster." As it natively makes more sense, even compared to other systems interacting with it. Yes, following a realistic hardcore vision for the game using both your hands to carry different things is more draining than just holding one thing in one hand (both hands), but as mentioned in the quickfire section that would require, if seen through to the end, to put alot more penalties and debuffs on every aspect of your inventory and is therefor less approachable. Following your logic of "If the hunger penalty is a problem just grow more food" you are essentially dismissing that this penalty has any meaning to begin with, in which case we could just go and remove it after all to have the same effect. In my opinion, as stated in the opening post, basing everything on hunger alone is a boring mechanic (especially since, as you said, food quickly becomes a non-issue) and currently just further scews to imbalance between the early struggles (adding more starvation pressure on a beginner player/limiting his options to do things in order to not starve) while becoming entirely meaningless later down the line. My proposed alternative keeps the original penalty vision that discourages excessive off-hand use, in only the situations that matter for balancing purposes (at home you don't have to care 99% of the time), while affecting beginners and veterans alike. It keeps, if not better reflects, the limit people hope to see in this system in the first place.

Like LadyWYT said - while I do think there needs to be more to temporal storms to keep them relevant and interesting beyond their first every appearance, randomly nullifying a player's built defenses is not a positive addition. In fact, a new player having half their house seemingly deleted might not even be willing to find out if it returns before rage quitting the game, writing a hateful rant on the forums and requesting a refund. In fact, I'd love for there to be any safety at all considering that with the current vanilla temporal storms, no amount of walls protect you from a "no spawn restrictions, at all" Tier 4 drifter to materialize on your head while in the safety of your house, inside the safety of your lit up village, inside the safety of your solid medieval wall. Shamelss plug for an in-depth suggestion thread I made about this exact concept that has been burried about 10 pages deep at this point.

*cue "booingAudience.wav"* Yep. Me again. This old topic again which has been heatedly argued about a million times in other topics. And yes, I literally just came here and made this from this other thread - as of time of writing - right down below this one. And yes, the name is deliberately chosen to both be meant literally, and simultaneously be the name of that one mod the contra half of us are probably using right now to remove the underlying "issue" feature. Clearly, there are opinions on this matter and arguments to be had for both sides. Though through all this bickering back and forth I came to realize that apparently noone ever made a dedicated suggestion on how to properly solve this issue. So here I am, trying to do my part. First off, to understand why I think my later proposed solution is a good idea, we need to understand why many people think the current "offhand penalty" system... well, isn't. This boils down to a couple key points: It is functionally obsolete Much like drifters throwing rocks, the impacts on "difficulty" can vary in perception but at the core of it the fact remains that the idea behind both features is flawed. There is no, or no longer any, need for them. The biggest counter-arguments for why the offhand hunger penalty is a good feature primarily come down to "If we don't publicly execute users of the forbidden hand we just get Minecraft 2.0" Yes, I can see why that is a concern. As a decade long Minecraft player myself, the offhand is just free inventory real estate, despite having basically no off-hand specific interactions outside of the "I am invincible now" shield. Hell, torches don't even work in-hand without mods over there. The offhand slot has even gone as far as break Minecraft's official April Fools "One Block At A Time" update, a gimmick whereas you were supposed to only ever be able to hold any one singular thing at a time but the devs forgot to remove the offhand. And Yes, I can also see how these concerns apply even moreso to Vintage Story seeing as this is a challenging game, and inventory management is part of that challenge. It takes till the end-game's highest tier of equipment to get the same inventory size as Day 1 Steve. It takes significantly more time and resources to build a basement full of trunks to store "everything in the game", especially since VS's assortment of clutter adds alot of unique, unstackable items people want to collect at some point. However. I do want to, once more, point out that there are only about 5 items that can go in the offhand in the first place. A light source, a shield, a hammer, a pair of tongs and a stick/grunting stick. 3 of these items are things you have no business carrying around with you everywhere, and as such gain nothing from holding in your offhand. On the other hand, 4 out of 5 of these items only work (or have specific, mandatory offhand use) when held in the offhand: The shield, the hammer (for chiseling), the tongs (for anything beyond the age of pottery) and the stick/grunting stick (for reasonably early-game entry to fishing). The allegations that getting rid of an arbitrary 20% extra hunger for using the "forbidden hand" brings us right back to Minecraft don't really hold much water when you consider there is about 2 useful offhand items versus 3 more you HAVE to use the offhand for. If there are more offhand-enabled items I forgot they can surely safely be added to the "no need to use much to begin with" category and do not counter this point. It is mechanically annoying The reason people are complaining about things is, atleast in this case, not because it is "too hard" and they want the game to be "washed down to their skill level". It is because things are just inherently unfun for their enjoyment of the video game. "Challenging" and "annoyingly tedious" walk a very fine line, and most challenges can turn into tedium real quick if they go nowhere. And Vintage Story already has a challenge turned tedium, as realistic of a mechanic as it might be: Food. Vintage Story's challenge as a survival game boils down to death, and the penalties occuring with it. Such is the staple and mostly unavoidable. Fall damage kills you, fire damage kills you, wild animals kill you, monsters kill you, freezing kills, eating the wrong mushroom kills you and finally, hunger eventually kills you. As such, the secondary factor giving a permanent challenge is hunger - the one factor you never overcome in order to have something forcing you to keep trying forever. Existing drains hunger. Sprinting (and jumping?) drains more hunger, freezing drains more hunger, healing drains more hunger, wearing armor drains more hunger and, of course, using the forbidden hand drains more hunger. The challenge of everything being about food can become quite annoying, especially because of balancing "issues" I'll cover in the next section - but the problem arises from the fact that all of these things can be reasonably countered or mostly avoided, except for the odd one out: The forbidden hand. Freezing can be avoided by wearing warm clothes and taking breaks at a fire. Armor penalty is avoided by only using armor when necessary. Sprinting is optional and can be reserved as an emergency counter. Healing can be replaced by chugging bandages. Butthe offhand penalty? Will reliably occur everytime you want to chisel, gather worms or transfer hot items during smithing. And the only "counter" to avoid it is to just... not interact with those mechanics. That is annoying because forfeiting 2/3 of the game just to not use the off-hand is not feasable. It is barking up at the wrong tree Imposing a 20% flat hunger rate is an active penalty. A deliberate choice to impose on this mechanic specifically. When there is seemingly no reason to do that. Which comes with it's own problemativ implications. For starters, the aforementioned balancing "issues" around hunger, which don't help any hunger penalty-based mechanic: In the early game, starvation is a genuine issue. An intended and "realistic" part of wilderness survival starting from nothing at all. In the late-game - you couldn't eat all that food before it rots even if you wanted to. Hunger-based mechanics lose their meaning and just fuel the incresing tedium of having to eat every 5 minutes. So all the hunger penalty for off-hand use does is punish already struggling beginner players even more, while becoming all the more pointless later down the line. Not a good mechanic. Furthermore, active penalization is sending a deliberate message: You are not supposed to do that unless you absolutely have to. Armor works that way. You are not supposed to wear it 24/7 like comfy PJs. It's several dozen KGs of solid metal you are wearing, after all. Wear it when necessary only. The off-hand penalty though? If it you want to penalize the "ease" of wielding a light source AND a tool/weapon, I'll get to that in a second. Much like the shield. But actively telling the player "You are not supposed to chisel, smith or fish"? Well might as well remove those features then. Which removes 2/3 of the game. The pottery age becomes the crux of progress. We can go back to 1.21 re fishing. And chiseling doesn't exist - for all the Minecraft 2.0 allegations, at that point I can just as well go back to that game. As has been suggested plenty before, just balancing different severities of penalty around WHAT item you hold would go a long way to counter this, but flat out 20% no matter if a 100% damage reduction solid steel shield or a literal stick for catching worms? Not a good choice. Then there is the things that this penalty is, probably, trying to counter-balance. The two remaining items on the off-hand-enabled list I also mentioned above: The lightsource and the shield. I do agree that just freely having a permanent light with you is a little bit overpowered for the vibe VS goes for. And that having free damage reduction from a shield is a big imbalance as well. But everytime this gets brought up as an argument for why the offhand penalty as it is right now is great and needs to stay, I always want to ask: Have you considered that's not the problem of your left hand to solve? The shield is a strong item. It's not the fault nor the respnsibility to fix of your left hand that happens to hold the shield. Penalize the shield, not the bearer. Treat the shield like armor, cause it effectively is: Penalty for using the shield, no matter what hand it's in. Balance it like armor so it give stronger penalties for heavy shields and less for a light crude shield. Remove passive block if necessary. A delay for blocking. There are options that don't require "You are using your left hand? I cast famine upon thee!". Same for light sources, even though I don't think they need any big special treatment to begin with. Even if you run around at night with a lantern living rent-free in your off-hand, you will still fall into pits of hell you didn't react fast enough to, you will still be ambushed by bears, wolves or monsters sneaking in from the shadows just beyond your light's range. But that's a different topic. If you think light sources are OP, punish THEM, not the hand holding them. With that now said, let's move on from all the complaining and move to the constructive part of this criticism: The proposed solution. The concept is simple in nature, albeit harder in implementation than just removing the feature outright or putting different values for different off-hand items; even though those options would, for many, be just as appreciated. Not, my proposed solution is remove the offhand penalty, without actually removing it. I.e. moving away from an active, perceived penalty tied to the action of "I put an item into my off-hand and that's bad" to a passive penalty system that naturally, and logically, arises from the world. I am proposing the implementation of a simple two-handed system. Have you ever seen a real-life pickaxe? A real-life coal miner swinging it? If so, chances are high that what you saw wasn't some buff guy leisurely swinging the thing around in one hand, but rather using both his arms to really put force into the swing. After all, it takes alot of energy to break solid rock and as such pickaxes are usually designed as two-handed use tools. Now apply the same to Vintage Story. Define certain tools and weapons as "two-handed". Simple enough tag/JSON value system. These tools/weapons now simply get their stats cut - maybe in half, atleast by a third? - when you don't have your off-hand free. Seeing as two-handed items would perform much worse when only used one-handed because your other hand is pre-occupied. Mining rocks while holding a light takes significantly longer now, incentivising you to put that torch down instead of holding it. Fighting with a shield or torch out becomes much less effective when using long, two-handed weapons like the spear (and maybe falx? We would certainly need new weapons to balance this mechanic), making you ask the question what is more important to you: Killing faster with less durability use or living longer when getting potentially hit yourself. Incentivising NOT using the offhand more than necessary, not penalizing USING the off-hand at all, and without having just yet another system tied to "more hunger". Of course, I am still in favor of applying the previously mentioned debuffs to the shield itself aswell, because it is for all effects and purposes an additional piece of armor. With this ground work done, the system could be expanded in the future to really utilize two-handed usage. Maybe block off-hand when using something that forcibly requires both hands. It's a foundation. To round this off, here is a quickfire round of honorable mentions of additional arguments I have heard regarding the current off-hand penalty system and/or its removal. Implementing minor features takes time away from cool new content So do bug fixes. So do internal refactoring and other things the developers come up with themselves. 1.23 may bring us the cool and highly anticipated armor rework (if it gets done in time), yet 1.23 itself is already officially delayed by the fact we were promised a fixed larger bellows and more variety for procedural dungeons later down the 1.22.x timeline. Seeing as this argument was brought up last in regards to a simple toggle in the world config for the existing mechanic to be turned off, this holds little weight - implementing a toggle for an existing mechanic would be the least problematic thing; and I don't need to know VS's source code for that. It would be a much better approach to atleast refactor the mechanic to be easily modable, which is in-line with the official roadmap goals of refactoring all code of the game into a better coding pattern (nullable wrappers for all things). If something is hard-coded so deeply you need to do disassembly surgery do edit it, it's coded badly. Especially for a game focusing on extensive, easy, official modability. There is no point in implementing a crutch for a tiny fraction of players I would personally say the amount of times complaints about this very mechanic have come up before and the amount of mods in the past trying to change or remove it shows there is decent interest. Regardless, as my proposed solution is a greater feature foundation that can be used for other cool things in the future I think this point no longer is valid. I don't want the game to be constantly watered down in difficulty just like Minecraft Which is why I proposed an alternate way to balance/penalize off-hand use rather then remove it, which is what I am currently doing with mods as there is no better alternative. This is better suited for a mod Maybe, even though I think proper treatment of the fact you have two arms would suit and benefit the base-game as a whole. And even if this is better suited as a mod, the fact still stands the current implementation of this mechanic is so badly hardcoded and obscured that it is barely modable. A refactor to make it modable, if not natively configurable, would be needed anyway. The current system incentivises cooperation That is a unique way to look at it, atleast for the discussion around balancing light sources. And I do agree that this is kinda true. However, Vintage Story is a game with an as heavy focus on singleplayer as it does on multiplayer. Class-locked recipes incentivise cooperation, yet you can officially turn it off so you don't get locked out of things in singleplayer. Atleast the previously proposed toggle of the offhand penalty would fall literally into same category. If not catering to a broader, less skilled audience that needs an "easier game" to buy it as feared before, it would certainly treat the current audience consistently. It is realistic that you expend more body energy when constantly holding with your non-dominant arm I mean, that is true. But then the same consistent logic would need to apply to holding heavy tools with your dominant arm all day long (having any item in your active hotbar slot), or carrying around several dozen if not hundreds of metric tons of raw materials somehow squeezed into your 4 normal-sizted backpacks you are somehow all wearing simultaneously. If we want to follow this logical reasoning for features, a lot of other stuff would need to be revisited instead. I think dealing with this particular issue is the easier option.

I wish there was a mod that, in turn, speeds up the stack heating by atleast a bit cause damn, heating up a larger volume at once should take longer but not THAT long. Cooking lime has become neigh impossible of a task.

From other posts I have seen, the do have (or can have) a surface entrance - so you will likely know when you come across one. That said, it's not necessarily the most obvious landmark so depending on the environment you might still need to look closely to find one - or find 5 right next to eachtother, like others did. Keep in mind, while the underlying feature allows for procedurally generated dungeons, right now there is only one variant in the game.

The butchering bag is supposed to give debuffs? I thought its whole schtick is to allow you to carry corpses without them debuffs like when you haul a whole ass bear over your shoulder. Anyway. Screw configuration, the whole feature is a pointless mess and needs to either be removed outright or greatly changed and rebalanced. I have ranted about this before and I'll happily do it again. It is trying to punish using the "free additional inventory slot" in your left hand, which can only hold, like, 5 different items to begin with, 3 of which are specific off-hand exclusives or atleast unavoidable to put in the offhand by design. And for that I should be punished with the same effect as wearing a full on chain armor? Ridiculous. So yeah, as long as this exists I'd happily break the butchering bag if it means I can use Alternative Offhand Penalty to yeet that thang.

While certainly possible and a potential nice-to-have, the reason it currently doesn't is because different mechanics use different timing references. Crops for example, which aren't configurable at all currently, use a month-based scaling. Hence why if you increase any time-based metric, they scale accordingly. Food spoilage (and probably other mechanics like curing/drying) use a fixed timeframe in days. Meaning they would scale if you increase the hours per day but not with days per month. And hungerrate is just that - a fixed delta defining how much the bar goes down each tick. It knows no timing point of reference at all, it's just that the default 1x delta is set in a way that is balanced around the intended default time settings, which is 24h x 9d x 12m. These mechanics would need to be changed to all use a timing based reference of the highest magnitude (actual months) to auto-scale with any changes you make to the time settings.

First off, welcome to the forums! Concepts around more meaningful, more global and less "source block goes flow 7 blocks" and "bucket pick up water and place new source block" water simulation come up every now and then, and I do agree that it would be a theoretically cool concept to have a way more indepth way to interact with water. However, any meaningful change to the water system I can imagine, such as the one you suggested here, would generally require a completely reworked implementation of water which, as you, too, stated, would probably not come for a long, long time. Simple rivers with the current simplistic model are still in the making as the developers have not yet found a truly satisfying solution to generate them in the world. Following through on that, I really wouldn't want to tie the general concept of hydration to that rework, if it takes forever to potentially become a thing. I'd much rather have simpler hydration mechanics now, as I still think the need to drink as a sorely missing mechanic in this "uncompromising wilderness survival" experience. Especially since it is heavily tied to the currently underdeveloped hot climate regions of the world. And could potentially be tied to a rework/rebalance of food aswells.

The question would then be, have you changed something since yesterday? I used a tin bronze helve hammer for the first time, like, two days ago in my 1.21 -> 1.22 world with currently over 60 mods, so if that still works on copper plates it should certainly work vanilla.

That's usually what happens when a modded in thing no longer exists. I guess it could also happen when something gets created by a mod that doesn't exist in the first place. The game's failsave to not explode if something "doesn't exist".

Welcome to a similar hell I went through. Even though I made my own a bit harder than necessary through brain derping. I went looking everywhere for chalk but there was none. None whatsoever in a 3k block radius that could reasonably traverse in the earlier stages of the game. I scrounged up every shell I could find to grind some lime for a little bit of mortar, but have naturally since run out. I accepted long ago that I need to push all the way to Bronze to use what little precious Borax I found for leather. Which has also since run rather low. Well, second ever translocator I repaired dropped my right into a chalk strata. And I do have since, in fact, realized that LIMEstone can be used to make LIME (really, really don't know why I thought it was only chalk or marble...). Anyway, to get back on topic: Yes, I fully agree that building materials traders should, indeed, sell building materials. Mortar is a very building material-y building material and it makes no sense they don't sell it. Would also fit right into their theme of selling and buying the most random, barely ever useful junk considering you only really need mortar for when you want to build with one very specific type of rock.

As I have already discussed in an earlier thread revolving around this mechanic, I am all in favor for a mid-tier solution between "lighting grass in a dirtpit on fire till kingdom come" and "spending all my money on a shiny new microwave for colors". Something that is maybe more efficient than a pit kiln, or atleast less resource consuming in the long run while also being simpler and cheaper to set up than the beehive kiln. Making a reusable pit kiln out of something that you just need to add fuel to while still being limited to 4 small/1 big items in their natural color would already be great. I don't, however, see much point in that. The only annoyance of pit kilns is that they feel both too primitive for all the rest of the technological advancements we make, and that they require alot (but primitive/abundant) resources to run. If we could only put a single small item in the bloomery, which then also - because it is the bloomery - makes us lose something as valuable as firebricks with each firing, that would be an even worse ratio and as such I'd rather stay with burning grass in a dirt hole all game long. It needs some advantage over the pit kiln and beehive kiln both (the latter being it being cheaper and simpler, most likely) while also having drawbacks to each (with the former then likely being higher initial setup cost)

Everything that's "more data" will eventually become a problem. Minecraft's greatest hacks for challenge runs (the ones revolving around magically re-generating chunks because the game cries) revolve around shoving too much data into a single chunk. If not taxing the runing game itself, storing all that data will become an issue. My VS world save is already 1GB in size and not even close in comparison to how much world I can explore in TOBG for the same world folder size - and that is despite VS just being a database, not a million actual files. "Just attaching" that additional data on demand doesn't work like it (granted, with VS's database approach it could but becomes less performant for retrieving that data in the thousands per chunk then) as the space to save all that data must be accounted for in the first place.

With the main points about going too in-depth with NPC interactions and world-building already being said, there is a mod out there (VS Village) which lets you build a functioning village with autonomous NPCs. Not quite the relationship building "marry and reproduce" Stardew Valley kind but certainly a way to add life and progression to the world as a whole, as well as adding a reasonably designed prupose to interact with the NPCs in the first place, all head-canon roleplay reasons included and not quite Minecraft Villager Trading Hall themed.

You mean this one? https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/47288 Generally speaking though yeah, I agree that more placement options would be very nice. Having free-form placement on ANY block akin to how cabinets work sounds like a performance nightmare in the making but atleast uilizing slabs (which the "Place on Slabs" mod already does) and vertical slabs would be nice. Would open up so many more options for cozy, cramped builds. EDIT: I just realized, if chiseled blocks had the cabinet placement system enabled that would help limit the performance drain.

Ah yeah, Minecraft hopper sorters but the chests have built-in filters.

Oh, I wholly agree that the hunger system could certainly need a little bit of... something, for sure. It sticks out like a sore thumb, being the neglected child between all the other food related mechanics. You gotta learn basic agriculture and do crop rotations and utilize fertilizers and check the right seasonal temperatures to grow you crops. You bake a simple pie in a multi-step in-world interactive process and cook meals of over-sold variety. You have to carefully care about preservation as all the food in the world is worthless if it rots before you can eat it. Yet eating itself is just holding RMB every couple minutes to turn an item into a bit more green bar. The nutrition categories, while a nice and reasonably "realistic" mechanic, don't really matter too much. However making things more realistic is a hard to balance. The need or atleast incentive for progress is a core mechanic of games. Hence why Vintage Story is currently centered around telling you to "go plant crops and cook proper meals, everything else is ineffective". The fun of games centered around progression, like Open World Survival games are, lies in overcoming challenges. Not starving, in the early game, is a challenge. Berries can do that if you find enough around but screw you over in the winter because not berries, and no preservation, means no food. Hunting can supplement that but is also heavily nerfed during winter. Unlocking the power of proper meals (more food for your food) and preservation (through literal preservation tactics like sealed crocks or just harvesting long-living grains) makes you overcome that challenge. It feels good to the beginner player to finally evolve from "surviving" to "thriving" where they don't need to worry about where to get enough food for the next days. That said, this is where the train currently stops. After that point, that challenge turns into tedium, because you constantly have to just follow the same cycle of cook, preserve, eat eat eat. There is not much more to it. Sure you can experiement with the advertised thousand of possible "dishes" (ingredient combinations resulting in unique names) for the fun of it, and even install mods like Culinary Artillery to add even more dishes but eventually you reach the point where that tedium becomes annoying and the only viable food is the most effective one, the one that makes you have to eat the least with the least constant preparation effort. That's why a more engaging, more meaningful and more forgiving hunger system is a good idea. The reason why I am not natively a fan of a body-fat mechanic is because I played Project Zomboid, which had exactly that mechanic. Project Zomboid does separate "hunger" (how empty your stomach is aka. how much you can eat right now, what makes you not drop dead right now) and nutrition (what your body actually processes and makes you not drop dead long term). Including all the under- and overweigth effects. The gripe I have with PZ's system is that it also, ultimately, falls short and turns into a way too limiting grind. We can blame the game's balance for that but the chosen system as a whole pronounces that fact. I played a world where my goal was to set up "ad infinitum" survival conditions. I.e. setup my world in a way where I can reasonably say that my character would not die by any causes other than old age, because I provided means to get all resources needed for survival renewably. The problem is, in terms of food that quickly highlighted a problem: Most renewable foods aren't sustainable alone. PZ has this very indepth cooking system that allows you to make pretty complex dishes and such but at the end of the day a whopping two food options remained that could actually, reasonably, sustain you long term - one of which was modded in. Hunting rabbits (as only source of non-fish meat in V41, cause fish suck) and watermelons. You can have a giant greenhouse with the finest crops growing and would still eventually die of malnutrition, because you cannot physically eat enough salad to sustain your weight. The only renewable food source that gives enough bang for your buck is "hunting" (trapping, really) rabbits. If Vintage Story would choose a similar approach to modeling food intake, I fear we would also reach a point where 90% of food options in the game become "Might as well not exist", because the minmaxed management of your body's fat value becomes the only concern. Hence why I suggested a simpler system that still allows for more depth and leeway than the current hunger system but also doesn't interfere with limiting food options. Simply displacing the dreaded green bar as the sole ground truth for living or dying in terms of sustenance goes a long way already. With the simple addition of gradual starvation through a status effect system - hell, maybe even expanding the other way too and adding positive buffs for being a healthy noodle - food management gets more forgiving while still retaining the core princinples of "you eat or you die". And because we don't specifically consider food types more than necessary, the late-game player is not locked out of half of the game's food because they are "simply not worth it". Tweak the general satiety values of everything in the game a bit to balance it around "You are going to barely fighting off starvation for as along as you just live off of berries, mushrooms and chicken" to retain the strong incentive for progressing into the age of cooking, aggriculture and husbandry. While I am not necessarily saying the base game needs all of Hydrate or Diedrate, the way the mod currently implements the system is great imo and has so far avoided the tedium of just another constant food intake. The need for water is present, but it has never really been an issue outside of hot climate regions for me. With many common foods in the game giving some hydration aswell, needing to specifically drink is only really a concern every couple meals. Or when you are out and about for too long living off of low-water foods. Efficient foods (like porridge) get more disincentived by actually draining hydration, as are long-term preserved foods (curing/pickling) to balance later game management. Drinking any random water source is disincentivised by untreated water giving you a nutrition/hunger debuff or salt water essentially killing you and mid - late-game options for building wells, collecting rainwater and building water pumps help procure safe water in your home environment without having to constantly boil it. Because water can be stacked in a container unlike prepared meals, inventory need for having water on you is overall less than food's even within the mod's self-enforced limit of only carrying max 4L of liquid on you or you get slowed down bad. So I think this easily proves a hydration system can be added to the game without making the current hunger system situation worse. That is an even more game-ified solution to a problem prefaced with "The current system is too game-ified and lacking". It also doesn't really solve the core issue. From a gameplay perspective giving unique buffs to unique foods is a widely used solution to make the player vary their diet instead of just relying on "the best dish" all the time. But from a depth and realism stand point it makes no sense. Why would bushmeat specifically give you buff X and red meat buff Y? Why would any of these give these specific buffs to begin with? Vintage Story itself isn't centered around a numeric skill system so just buffing "a stat" when you consume a specific item feels really out of place. It's a slightly different story when heavy armor slows you down and makes you more hungry, because that makes sense. It also does not address the core issue of the mundane, constant consumption of food being the end-all of the hunger system as a whole.