Rainbow Fresh

Now I don't wanna say ideas should be shut down immediately just because they ask to go into the opposite direction of the game's theme but having the suggestion of actively "game-ifying" a mechanic, with the suggestion for most mechanics in the game slapped onto it, in a game that specifically aims to have as little game-ification as possible (a 3x3 crafting grid is game-ified and the devs want it gone for more in-world interactions) just raises immediate concerns. You are mentioning essentially turning mechanics into minigames. That is, having a more active part for the player to play in it. And I do agree that some things could in theory be more engaging and "fun". I do also agree that any game basing its content and mechanics in "realism" is always balancing the fine line between fun and realism and sometimes realism needs to be dropped or loosened for the sake of having a more enjoyable experience. Using the term of "game-ification", however, makes me immediately think of the wrong kinds of non-realism. It makes me think of flashy popups, quick time events and some such. Which is certainly the wrong appeal for a game like Vintage Story, and not necessary in the first place. Let's take some of your later examples for where "game-ification" is supposed to help: - Cooking I wholeheartedly agree that it is lacking, big time, when it doesn't need to. You have a firepit with one input slot or a cooking pot with 4. You put things in the slots at the right ratio, light it up and wait. Done. That is boring and certainly part of the reason why food consumption inevitably turns into a drag later in the game; starvation is not an issue because you grow basically infinite food but constantly having to just do this and eat it becomes repetitive real quick. However, we don't need game-ification to fix that. What we need is, in contrary, more realism. Imagine if cooking in the game was actually akin to real cooking. You fill a pot with water and heat it up to cooking temperatures. Then you add your ingredients; not by "X times A, X times B, X times C" formula but more organic. A slab or two of redmeat, pre-cut into small cubes. Let it simmer. Add a carrot. Add a potato. Sprinkle in some salt to refine the dish. That would be much more engaging and fun to interact with (it's why mods like Culinary Artillery exist and are oh so popular) while being grounded more in realism than game logic. I mentioned it in another thread before but this is how cooking works in Project Zomboid and it's one of the most fun mechanics in that game imo. - Fishing Ah, the good old. The thing every game since 2016 must have just for the sake of having it. The dreaded fishing mechanic. Now this one is a real hardheaded contender because... real fishing is just the most boring thing imaginable. It's literally sitting and waiting for hours. Only - potentially - broken by the occasional moment of adrenaline when finally something DOES bite and you need to try and reel it in without it escaping, the line snapping or you loosing the rod. When it comes to fishing mechanics in games, Stardew Valley is certainly one of the more entertaining one and I can see where the idea to have something on the same level comes from. However, as LadyWYT mentioned, some tasks are just meant to be mundane and boring. In fact, as it currently stands, fishing is kind of overpowered with its only limiting factors being the depletion of fish through overfishing and how boring it is having to actively sit there and waste hours of daylight. That said, it could be made more engaging and as such potentially more fun once again not by adding a minigame popup but instead adding actually realistic fishing mechanics. Having to reel the fish in without the line snapping by holding it against the fish's movement careful to not stress the rod too much and reeling it in closer when the fish is exhausted. Much like any other "realistic" fishing simulator. Would also allow for making higher tier fishing rods later in the game. - Healing I don't think the process of applying a poultice/bandage to your wound can inherently be made more engaging. Not without going into grotesque medical territory which seems out of line considering the devs are adverse to adding proper butchering of animals due to "too much gore". That isn't all there is to healing though. Instead of adding a skill-check QTE for properly applying the bandage, we just need to wait for the status effect system to finally be implemented. With such a system, more complex injuries (infections, sickness, longer lasting injuries) are basically a given and longer-term treatment of such comes naturally with it. Once again making a mechanic more engaging not through game-ification but through adding more indepth realism. - Crafting As mentioned above, the devs are working in favor of getting rid of the crafting grid entirely in favor for solely interacting with stuff in-world to create stuff. - And finally, mining As mentioned above by both LadyWYT and Bruno, game-ifing something this basic is a tough choice. Yes, mining is inherently boring and if all you do with your evening is mine 1000 blocks of iron ore it can, in hindsight, feel like alot of time wasted doing nothing but holding down LMB (using a macro) and ever so slightly move your wrist. But turning the mining of a block into a minigame that takes significantly longer just for the sake of trying to add enjoyment into the process isn't gonna be as great in the long run either. As was mentioned in another thread, power creep doesn't really exist in Vintage Story's progression system. The difference between a copper and a quenched steel pickaxe is certainly not comparable to having an Efficiency 5 Netherite Pickaxe in TOBG. Even the latest game player will still spend notable amounts of time mining, be it for ore, landscaping or gathering fancy ashlar bricks. Turning every block mined into a minigame isn't gonna help the way you think it will. What could help is adding more stuff around it. As Bruno mentioned, having a properly functioning, clearly communicated cave-in mechanic will distract you from the repetition of holding LMB and moving your wrist by 0.5cm every few seconds. Having mechanics in the direction of the "Stone Quarry" mod or the "Immersive Mining" mod (if that was its name) could help add some depth to the process. Hell, even adding some more believable realistic tools (not talking about ore bombs) besides the pickaxe could help. Late-game mechanically powered drill maybe? We are also said to get Minecarts of some sort later down the line. All of this already interacts with mining and as such help breaks up the tedium somewhat without game-ifying anything.

It's been another 50h. Time does fly in this game, doesn't it. We're in the middle of winter which changes to looks of things quite a bit and limits the availability of alot of things. On a larger scale, not too much has happened. One big "under construction" building joined the fray, the rest is mostly detail work. Most time was spent surviving winter, passing long nights and finally raiding the Resonance Archives, aswell as exploring for more Better Ruins ruins to find the blueprints I need for cozy furniture. The smithy has gotten a little glowup. A type of design for hanging signs that I wanted a while back to mark buildings in-style. My first use of Black Bronze scrounged together from tidbits of gold and silver acquired over time - and suddenly I am not so sure about aiming for a Black Bronze Plate Armor for style points anymore. Entering the Iron Age proper now also spawned the need for a Helve Hammer to smith it, powered by the new 1.22 waterwheel moved by the new 1.22 rapids brought over from a nearby mountain(/hill?) via aqueduct. It'll eventually be fleshed out a bit nicer, if making mortar and collecting ashlar bricks wasn't such a time and resource costly process. The before empty nook on the main house has since turned into a cozy little corner for smoking meat and storing firefood for the winter... ...while the interior has seen a renovation adding a corner to store loree books and blueprints I come across on my journeys. The cellar also houses the first wine production now, seeing as living off of berries all non-winter isn't as feasable a prospect anymore. The stable has gotten some more detail; and while still not fully chiseled out atleast does not have missing walls on the lefthand side anymore. I originally intended to park an elk there once I acquire one of those but seeing the brains behind the Equus mod are cooking up a new variety of horse, that spot is now reserved in anticipation of the upcoming Destrier war horse. The mill - still in lack of a roof design that seems fitting - atleast has a restored interior now and is fully functional. The second image also showcases the road lanteren design I decided to use throughout my settlement to illuminate parts that lack buildings I can reasonably slap lanterns onto. The path is the one leading to the well for fresh water supply, but as of lately also to the first truly new addition: A little harbor/dock/pier thing. Good for fishing, good to spruce up the lakeside landscape - and where I'll eventually park my sailboat. Now why would I put a boat on a lake the size of a 30 in-game minute walk? Well, simple; the ocean is about 5000 blocks to the west from here. My original plan was to build a harbor there and pave a road all the way back home. Even installed a mod that adds cheaper but slower dirt paths for this purpose. However after carefully surveyin (staring at) the map for a while I came to the conclusion that it would be ultimately more efficient to just dig canals between a couple larger lakes on the way there. Construction effort should be about the same while it ultimately allows me to boat out directly from home instead of having to haul good one inventory at a time the entire 5000 blocks home each trip. And finally, the largest and most notable new addition that has certainly taken the most time, resources and sanity while not even being close to done: The inn. I have never used daub or thatch for anything before and after this, I don't think I want to ever again It's also the sole need for a mod that increses the maximum size of a room, how ever little my game's performance might light it. I'd showcase the upper rooms and wine cellar too but I have reached the upload limit. Moving forward, aside from the lunatic's errand of digging the panama canal, I have developed the serious need to build a tailor's workshop if only to store and display the... well, let's just say I have picked up every single unique clothing item I found on my journeys without fail. And seeing as Iron is already on the menu, somewhere there will need to be a steel smeltery. PS: If you are frequently snooping around build sharing posts like these around here and found the two additions quite familiar your are correct - for the have been inspired by @Edwin_Blacktallow's Village of New Sprout.

As Nathan said, using /time calendarspeedmul [x] is the easiest and safest way to go. It literally just slows down the progression of time in the game, meaning all relative time-based operations are scaled accordingly. As it makes the days itself longer, all day-based operations like crop growth, food spoilage and such is extended in tandem. Hunger rate is also slowed down as it is based on in-world time progression. Because it just adjusts timeflow, your calendar date will stay intact. The default setting is 0.5 Meaning in order do go from 2 minutes per hour to 3 minutes per hour, you'd need to set it to 0.33/0.34 (rounded) if I'm not mistaken.

I understand that mods exist to turn a game into anything else one wants and seeing as TOBG also had space mods ages ago, the idea might not be as far-fetched as I think it is; but I still gotta ask - what specially made you look at a medieval-levels-of-primitive-technology wilderness survival experience and think "Yes, what this needs is to build a post-modern-age solid space ship to explore other planets? You mentioned that Vintage Story's progression system is the most satisfying compared to other, dedicated slow-progression space-themed games (like Space Engineer; Minecraft but in space) yet all I see thinking about it that way is so much tedium it couldn't possibly be fun. It falls into the same discussion category as realistic trains; just imagine how much steel you would need to build a rocket. And now think about how much work it takes to make a single steel ingot. Not to mention making reasonable rocket fuel using baseline "throw rock in crusher to make powder, mix powder in barrel and wait" chemistry. The prospect of spending 1000h just to make your first unmanned rocket sounds like a fancy and motivating goal, until you realized it would just mean doing the exact same 3 loops for those 1000h. Mine iron ore, smelt into steel, mix fuel.

Disclaimer: I am playing with the "Temporal Symphony" and "Temporal Warden" mods. These mod change the behavior (and annoucement) of temporal storms to be much more... notable. And immersive. This knowledge is needed for this story to make sense. Short-term memory is a skill. One not all of us possess. It helps you keep track of certain, potentially important things between multiple small, individual tasks so you don't unnecessarily do work twice and thrice - or not forget important considerations that should certainly influence your tasks moving forward. It is the middle of winter. December is currently coming to a close and food supplies being prepared a-plenty this year it has been more productive than ever. With nothing better to do between sleeping through long nights, cooking and eating it's been the best time to do plenty a task the more busy seasons don't really allow for as easily. Building renovations, iron smithing, mapping out new areas and the occasional trip to an interesting location or ore vein to stuff my bags inbetween sitting around the fireplace. In the middle of all these busy bee operations, the sky turned red, the ground started shaking and the faint turning of gears could be heard. In the far distance, the bells rang twice - it is that time of the month again, a medium temporal storm is coming. Sadly, as the preset of this story might have already given away, I did not hold onto this memory. Temporal storms are such a common occurence, they come, they go. You stay inside for a day and hope for the best. It's so routine at this point it doesn't really register much anymore... And so I continued my small tasks before deciding "Yes, let's go out to Translocator #4 and explore the other side some more". It leads quite a fair distance away, directly into a locust nest with multiple interesting shapes to be seen on the map. So I saddle my trusty steed, pack my bags with bandages and food and head out towards the north-west. Navigate around lakes, over watersheds, through forests until in the distance it looms: The ruined tower housing the translocator. It was at that point that the world decided to remind me of the errors of my way; the sky turned redm the ground started shaking and the gears started turning. Much louder, much more intense than before. The storm was coming - now. "Oh shit - I knew I forgot something!" I immediately turn my horse around and kick it into a series of gallops broken only by short periods of restful trot, trying desperately to cover as much distance on the way to safety - home - as possible. Even with the second warning there is still some time, right? The ominous shaking of the ground grows stronger with each time it happens telling me my time is running out, and fast. And just when I'm telling myself it will be fine, I already made it halfway back - Dave emerges from the fog. The ground shakes once more as his massive leg (which I didn't quite remember to be THIS intimidatingly huge) comes to a stop before he unleashes his bone-shattering roar and all hell breaks lose. I guess my saving grace was that I originally set out on a combat - and damage taking - heavy adventure and as such packed the essentials. Bringing the good combat equipment and a bag full of the good bandages is certainly what kept me alive fighting through the hordes of rust creatures between the stable and the safety of my main house. Which I barely managed to reach in the first place, dodging masses of rust creatures emerging left and right all the way, trying to make it home in a straight line through the world that was warping around me so hard my straight line aqueduct was almost looping in a circle. It was certainly an experience, and ever so luckily one with a happy end. Will I remember it next time the bells ring for me? Surely not. I can only hope when it happens again that I don't find myself in even more unfavorable of a situation away from home.

There is no indicator for area stability other than your gear spinning. What you are refering to is "Rift activity", as seen in the character menu. That is basically a global weather pattern that changes every so often and determines the amount of rifts (and monsters from those rifts) spawning all over the place.

If you don't understand the core issue I am pointing at there is no need to get aggressive. I literally said that if every block could store everything cabinet free-style every single block as stored in your savefile would need to account for the space needed by the data potentially being there. Sure, if you don't put random junk on 4000 blocks around your base (though granted, early-game storage literally is ground storage galore so people would start putting "junk" everywhere in absence of better storage) loading times and RAM usage might not spike too much, but your savefile's size still will.

Correct. If you play with the map enabled, just look at all the territory you have explored. Then add a little safety barrier of about 200-300 blocks outside of the known world and that's where 1.22 world generation will kick in with the new berry bushes, new rock strata, new trader outpost designs, procedural dungeon and so on.

Since you are still insistent to scream "Bloody Idiot" at anyone not mindlessly agreeing with your hillbilly (didn't you actually say "Ask AI"?) math and one-sided vision for "I want this mechanic, therefor everyone should agree it's great" I'mma gonna give reasoning a second shot, even though I really don't want to get involved anymore in this pointless arguing. Let's start with the elephant in the room: Your favorite numbers. "360000" or whatever other number suits right then and there "different dishes". I already said that we have, logically and game-code speaking about 6 or so actually different dish recipes that count as prepared meals. The rest is simply generating a name from the ingredients and combining their satiety values into a dynamic end result item. The game overselling on food "variety" is actually kinda misleading here and I can clearly see why mods like Culinary Artillery or Expanded Foods or whatever are so popular. But whatever, let's assume we hook up a persistently seeded RNG up to every distinctly named combination and spread miniscule 5% buffs in, what, 6 categories across those 300k options. Congratulations, it achieves nothing. If "2 meat and 2 onions" is a different "dish" then "3 meat and 1 onion", same as "1 meat and 3 onions" (which doesn't even exist iirc) then chances are high enough for you to get all buffs just using the same logical dish after all. Meaning I can still just go and farm all spelt, onions and flax only. No incentive to actually try something else, just a matter of balancing the ingredient ratio based on my buff need. Secondly, super-imposing mechanics from an ever-growing sheet of other reference games that you'd want in VS isn't making for a convincing argument. VS, for most parts of the survival aspect, roots it's balancing and mechanics decision in some sort of reality. Tell me, where exactly in reality does throwing more or less onion into my stew make me walk faster, punch harder or whatever? Plainly, it doesn't. In reality you spread out your diet between different dishes because eating the same thing over and over again gets boring - something a videogame can hardly replicate. And putting in such a penalty was already mentioned as "not a great time". If you want to reasonably incentivise spreading out your diet, make more use of the existing nutrition category system. Your max health is already increasing with a balanced diet, maybe give small buffs to other aspects aswell. More run speed because you body is well fed and built muscle. Something like that. If you want to take ideas from other games, go look at Project Zomboid. The food system there would fit very nicely and does incentivise using many different available options all without magically making you stronger. Though granted, the main takeaway I'd take from Project Zomboid and why its food system is so great is simply because the indepth, engaging variety in food preparation makes it such a nice mechanic the player wants to voluntarily engage with it more. Something mods already brought to VS, successfully, showing - as others mentioned before - how simple changes/additions like that can also achieve the same result without the downsides of gating a core part of the gameplay loop experience behind the almighty RNG. Thirdly. Your insistence on "all forms of RNG are the same" whenever saying "no to this means no to ruin loot" fits the narrative vs. "there are many forms of RNG and most of which are good". Ruin loot is randomized, within a pool. A clearly communicated, fixed pool, all the same. You can go tell a new player asking about them "You need to be lucky for the right drop, but if you want Fire Clay you want to look at Forage and Arctic Supply vessels". If you want tools - well, tool vessels and hope for copper or tin bronze. It is RNG and as such has "variety", but within a clearly defined set of options - the more option your try the more world exploration you do in turn. Telling people "Nobody knows, go figure it out yourself" is not the same, great RNG experience. A repeated "learning" experience also only hold water for as long as you can reasonably be bothered. Seeing as your other prime argument is "it's so optionally miniscule it doesn't matter of you get a bad roll", having to re-learn the right recipes on every new character very quickly turns into a tedious slogh outweighing its intended benefits. If the buffs are so optional and ignorable, why would I bother trying dozens, hundreds of different "recipes" then write down the right ones just for myself as noone else benefits from it ever? I make my pie and call it a day. Once again, the intended incentive nullified. Except for those people, who didn't need one to begin with because they just like to roleplay or experiment for variety's sake. And finally, if your only argument for why this is a good mechanic is insulting everyone as spewing nonesense who doesn't agree with you and repeating the same three barely held-together arguments of how the numbers behind RNG define a good game for everyone (while arguing against the very players who engage with the game outside of your math already voicing doubts and concerns) it really doesn't help sell your point. Tl;dr, food variety could use some incentive. Food/cooking as a whole could do with a rework. I fully agree this far. Randomizing miniscule buffs per character across "300000 different dishes" is not it though. Moose's ideas above could be going into the right direction more. Simply expanding the engagement behind the food-making process such as mods like Culinary Artillery do or games like PZ have showcased successfully would also already go a long way to enrich and incentivise the process of experimentation without resorting to biologically sound penalties.

The general steps are Backup your world Update your game Update your mods Play the game That said, with world-gen changing mods like Tera Pretty and Rivers it's always a gamble and you'd do best to check the respective mods for any instructions/warnings on how to update. Worst case scenario you need to generate a new world and copy over your progress in creative/worldedit, but in most common scenarios it either works well enough or just creates funky terrain edges when you reach the end of the 1.21 generated terrain and enter new 1.22 generation.

If I'm not mistaken a Vintage Story savefile is just one big, watered down SQLite database. So you'd need an SQLite client and open the database file, then snoop around the data to try and find something about the player entity's position data.

As someone whose current in-game diet consist of spelt porridge with boiled onion - all day, every day, because those are the P and N crops I grow next to Flax as K - Having some sort of incentive to juggle around varying crops of carying effectiveness would be nice. Because sure, I could just go and plant something else; but these two are the easiest/fastest to grow so I don't have to babysit my farm when out on an adventure for, like, 10 days and I get nothing other than imaginary culinary variety for it. That said, the proposed solution doesn't sound any better. As was already mentione and discussed before, relying on RNG to bring the player to do something is never a good fit. It was already mentioned how the nature of randomizing effects per player per world would lead to confusion, tedium and frustration while on the other hand just even moreso spearheading the one min-max recipe at the end of a long trial-and-error run - but I want to point out that there is another aspect to it: Unavailability. The current food system has 5 nutrition categories. While fruit might be the most underdeveloped as it's 90% berry bushes which only exist in a certain climate, all other categories have variety suited for different parts of the world. Multiple versions of grain and veggies that can grow in a variety of hotter and colder climates. Protein from animals or fish is obtainable in basically all livable parts of the world. As are animal options that can produce dairy. If we now randomize effects, it can easily happen that the player finally finds the optimal buff recipe just to realize it requires ingredients they can literally not produce in their home area. What do you do then? Move your entire existence built up over 100+ hours? Hope a convenient translocator network takes you to "free, easy farmland" where you can spend a year overharvesting so you have 3 years worth of ingredients? That doesn't sound like a good solution to incentivise experimenting more with different recipes. Not to mention the current implementation of cooking doesn't even allow this as there are technically only, like, 5 recipes - the name is just generated from the used ingredients. At the end it's all stew, soup, porridge or variety of pie. If we wanted to forcibly make the player choose different foods, a wear-off effect might be a better approach. Eat the same food over and over again and it just becomes less and less effective; following the same logic of "Bushmeat gives less nutrition to emulate it being very, very unpalatable" the character would just "grow tired of eating the same dish 10 times in a row". However, I don't see this helping either cause then people just rotate two dishes over and over again. Make the cooldown harder and it becomes unreasonably unfavorable for beginner players that don't have access to reliable variety yet; which brings up the discussion of "survival vs. comfort". VS is a wilderness survival experience. If your very survival against starvation banks you eating any available food, would you really rather die than eat the same vegetable mash 10 times in a row? And if we say "Oh well, just apply it to established players" - how would one measure that. How do we define a clear line that separates the "eat anything starving survivalist" from the "well established homeowner" who wouldn't want to eat like a pleb anymore? So yeah, not really a solid approach either.

Just throwing this in as OP stated they tried disabling all their mods: As the thrown error states that the player entity's position contains NaN it could be that the savefile is now "corrupt", as in the faulty location is saved to disk and hence crashing on startup. In which case it might be necessary to manually fix the issue in the savefile's DB.

Go to single player, and click on the pen icon on your savefile. That menu tells you the world's seed and also lets you quickly generate a new world on the same settings/seed with a single press of a button. Or, depending on why you'd want/need to know the seed to generate the "same world", it also allows you to simply edit the difficulty settings (not world generation settings though).

Well, the simplest answer would probably be "They are called story locations for a reason". Or in other words, your reason you would want to go there is because you want to learn more about the story of this world. Find out what clusterfuck has gone down to lead to all this. Or maybe you are just interested in seeing some actual content in the world, that isn't just the same trees in the same plains, the same rocks filling the ground and the same couple cobblestones littering the world in the same "ruins". But instead actually big, cool, fleshed out locations with lots of detail in love put into it. Or you just want the shitton of loot you'd otherwise have to work long and hard for. Mind you, I'm not saying any of these reasons are rock-solid, kill-all-doubt reasons for why you must, absolutely, under any circumstances go there and do that. Far from it. If you don't feel like its worth it, maybe it's not. Nothing and noone in this game's story content is keeping you from anything; Homo Sapiens mode exists, after all.

I too would love it to get more beams even if solely for the reason that I am currently in need of several stacks for a build which is eating my trees like they're sticks with leaves. However, I am also not sure if there is too much gained in the long run by just making beams cheaper. Going off of your "it's just decoration" statement, you'll find most decoration in the game to be expensive. Want fancy ashlar bricks? Better start painfully mining solid rocks in the most inefficient way possible. Want fancy paintings? Better start bothering every trader in a 5000 block radius. Want fancy clutter? Well... You know how to get that. So having beams, a completely optional decorative build component, be inefficiently expensive kinda falls in-line with that. Furthermore, wood itself is a cheap enough resource. You may need some investment to get started, but if you plant... Is that Pine wood? Or Kapok? Either way, both trees are usually big enough. If you plant atleast 10 saplings of each near your base you'll have plenty of wood to go around. More than you would need for most any other wooden endeavor so you'd then just be sitting on stacks of logs with nothing to do (except turn into firewood I guess). And on an additional note, in a perfect world beams aren't just decoration. If you were to play with cave-ins enabled, and the cave-in mechanic was any more stable and fleshed out, you'd need beams to support your mining adventures lest you get crushed into a fine mist. Meaning gathering wood to turn into beams to be able to mine ores is, in some combination of difficulty settings out there, and intended step of progression.

I get that mentality. Why waste single bullet when you can spend beating the boss in melee for 10 minutes for free. So I used flint knifes, spears and axes even when I was equipped with a (modded) tin bronze long sword (mostly for aesthetics, because did I use it? No, thing would just break eventually!). Why spend those precious ores you have worked so hard to get, smelt and smith for something that just break in a couple days anyway, when can just pick up 3 flints along the road and craft three knifes with that to last you over? I have, however, since come to realize how really, really nice the durability increase is on any tool, if not the higher stats to boot. Used to take me three and then some flint axes to chop down one giant ass oak tree. Now a tin bronze axe shreds it barely breaking a sweat. My copper spears (which, granted, I just keep finding in ruins otherwise I'd use swords) last a fair while longer (and deal somewhat more damage) than the flint ones. And the knife? Haven'T had to replace my tin bronze knife once in all the time since I made it. Very convenient to just have at a ready without worrying about when to start gathering material for a new knife, and frees up the inventory slot for constantly carrying around flint.

Not so much a suggestion than your opening statement of how you don't like VS's trading, so you installed a mod that lets you kidnap traders for your personal human vernding machines at home. That is how trading work in Minecraft for every player over the age of probably 8 who has played the game more than once. Can't say if their "Trader rebalance" is finally a thing or not, but back when I last played it there was still one specifically overpowered item you could only get by being really, really lucky - or finding a single villager. Steal that villager in a boat, bring him home. Let him go through 20 years worth of unemployment history by constantly breaking his workstation and placing it back down to reset his trades (as they are locked per villager once interacted with once). Reroll until he sells a Mending Enchantment Book (the thing that makes all your gear never break). Trade. Feed him to a zombie on hard difficulty, cure him back, repeat 5 times, book now costs probably only 1 emerald (Gear equivalent). Done. Repeat as seen fit for every other max level enchantment in the game, aswell as all other resources other villager types can trade. Turns even the most "you start in an empty void with nothing but a single block to stand on" challenges into normal gameply as you can, between traders and randomly spawning wandering traders (more akin in function to what VS's traders currently are), obtain about 90% of all renewable resources in the entire game through them. No necessarily directly, but through chains of unlocking one item through another.

I have marked every single trader I have ever come across in my world with a waypoint on the map naming their profession. For specifically artisan and luxuries traders I am also writing the date of their next restock into the waypoint title. Because I still have 1 poor potential diamond, one poor potential emerald and 2 poor potential peridots at home which are virtually useless aside from selling them, and those two are the (seemingly rare) trader types potentially buying them. If I had the materials to make a book or some other mod for journal keeping installed, I would write down more details. Or if there just was an actually good, performant, realistic mapping mod that allows free-style writing on the map aswell. Every little detail I have at home I don't need to remember, because most things the traders buy are predictable; a random assortment of tools from various metals, clothing and food. As I had screenshotted above there are plenty traders everywhere so if I ever have the need to buy or sell something specific that isn't rare luxuries, I can go on a single 5000 block trip around about 10 traders. I am also playing with Combat Overhaul's "Quivers and Sheats" mod, meaning I always run around with a knife sheath with gear pouch giving me a free inventory slot to always have all my gears on me should I randomly come across a new trader and see a fancy painting or halite. For this specific playstyle that doesn't see trading a primary part of progression I think the current system is good enough. It could be cooler, for sure, but it works well right now. You can cut some corners with traders selling you stuff, you can surely optimize capitalist tendencies as Maelstrom pointed out but ultimately these traders do not break balance because they are not OP or exploitable and they do not allow you to obtain 90% of all progression items. I also play with better ruins which, as I mentioned, adds a few more "story" locations for which these traders give you quests. The required quest item I also write down in the waypoint's name.

It appears I may have mixed some thing into a single statement, but I have atleast found the mention of an official interview with the devs wherein Minecraft-style trading behavior was put as a no-go. Try seeing it that way: You go on an adventure 5000 blocks out. You come across a luxuries trader; the first one you found in your world. At home you have 1 rough diamond or two you are sitting on because you they sound valuable (they are diamonds, after all) but utterly useless outside of the small handbook note that Luxuries and Artisan traders buy them. The trader currently, however, doesn't buy (your potential of) diamond. You check to see he changes inventory stock in 3 days. You plop down a marker for the trader with the date, and move along on your journey. Eventually you come home, do your thing, the 3+ days pass - maybe 30 days pass, who knows. You pack for another expedition in the direction of the trader and deliberately make stop to check if he now has better deals. Alternatively, you maybe wander around with your money always on you on expeditions, so you randomly stumble across a... furniture trader, see "Ooh, fancy painting I have not yet obtained" and buy it. To me, that does sound like a better experience (better as in "makes sense, immersive and balanced", not purely "convenient") than having 20 traders of every type buried in a hole at home that you occasionally check on for trades as if you were feeding your chickens. And even chickens need sunlight. And yes, the current trader system is not deliberately designed for fun and enganging "I roleplay as a trader myself" type of gameplay, as constantly running around thousands of blocks between traders to check their Maybe Inventory is not a great time. But I have played Elite Dangerous before, so I am used to trading being tediously boring and I have also survived about 2 in-game years without the need for trading at all. Could have looked for lime on traders when I was desperately lacking it? Maybe. Did I just run around exploring and find Borax instead? Yes. The game is very much intended to be modded and their being a million mods for everything is a great part in what makes Vintage Story fun, no matter your playstyle. What I was hinting at here is the fact that this kind of behavior of "traders suck, so I'll immediately install a mod that makes them work like in Minecraft" is the reason why so many heated debates exist around here whose primary argument is "This isn't Minecraft, this feature would make it like Minecraft". Minecraft is a nice game, I have played it for over a decade. And I can safely say that Elytra and Villager trading are the two worst balanced aspects of that game. Because no matter how boring or bad trader in VS might be right now, atleast they don't replace 95% of the entire game. So I'd very much rather run 25000 blocks for 6-10 gears instead of building a trading hub at home, buy the best Steel armor through repeated exploitative trading, then complain there is not much content to the game.

That doesn't even require a mod, there is a whole other game for that. Cause that's just a notable part of what makes Minecraft's trading to unbalanced. I may be the proud inventor of a compact, Minecart-automated villager trading hall over there but I am also the first one to openly admit that villager trading killed the concept of progression in that game entirely. In Vintage story, you don't have control over other people's life. You may find a trader out somewhere, it may be the type of trader who could sell/buy the goods you want and they may or may not actually have that in stock. It fits into the theme of the world, it makes sense and it isn't exploitable because you cannot control it. You cannot reroll a trader in an endless cycle of re-employment to get the trades you want, you cannot forcibly feed him to the monster to then act as hero in shining armor to scam every last cent out of them and you cannot conveniently relocate all traders you ever need right to your doorstep. Of all the things that could be improved or changed about the current trader system, the ability to control them is one thing that should never become a thing. If we approach this topic from an angle of "trading is to be freshly invented for the game and you get to design it" - then sure, there could be more and different things to it. I would certainly agree with suggestions made in the past that it would be very neat to have actual dynamics in a living world. Those trader carts? Better be moving. Some sort of rudamentery trade network with bigger hubs and traders moving inbetween. Some sort of persistence where positive trading boosts the economy so that more traders travel an area and or have better wares. Of course I am aware that the devs are clearly against building your own society as they said there will be no proper settlement building, which limits the degree to which traders can be fleshed out without being too overbearing as a mechanic, but having some sort of life in this world would certainly be nice.

A bit, yeah. Granted those are in 1.21 territory so I can't say if 1.22 adjusted this already, but there is on basically everywhere And I constantly find more coming back at night.

Nope. Back in 1.21 I used a mod that culls 3/4 of their useless circle-trading inventory so they only buy and sell stuff actually relevant to their job and only things the player can reasonably obtain without trading (following the logic of "If I can buy it from another trader, so can you. I ain't Amazon"). I just like seeing some life in the world, with Better Ruins they have a few more quests/locations and I can occasionally stumble upon a good deal on my travels to either lighten my inventory or my purse.

I do like the current traders. Less common might be nice, if there was some way in turn to specifically locate X type of trader (took me to the second year to find an artisan/luxuries trader to buy my diamonds). But their new houses are much cooler and much more believably immersive compared to the same copy-pasta human in the same copy-pasta cart 100 blocks over.

So, uh... Why would the devs need to spend alot of time and effort into an obscure mechanic like this when you can just Backup the world (just in case) Update the game Play on the new version on the same world That's how it works most of the times, and the times it doesn't you can still put in the effort to fix what didn't translate by itself if you want to keep your forever world.