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Lazy Warlock's Tweaks (AKA lazytweaks) Hello everyone! Now that I've got a suggestion to-do list I've started making small quality-of-life tweaks to the game using simple asset mods. I mostly play single player, so I don't know if these would ruin tribe dynamics for multiplayer servers where resources and land claiming is important. However I think most will appreciate the small changes I've made here. (Also let me know if they can't be used on servers, not sure what needs to be done with asset mods to make use of them server-side) Okay now for the Mods: Whittling (IE stick crafting) Okay, so sticks are a crazy valuable resource in VS but I didn't like how you couldn't craft them from other pieces of wood. No more! Now you can craft sticks from planks and firewood using a knife or saw, however planks and saws are far more efficient at making them: Recipes (they're all shapeless): Stacking Tool Heads Sometimes you just want the spend your primitive night knapping a bunch of javelins to throw, only to find your inventory is full and you don't have a wicker basket to store anything. Now you can make tool heads to your hearts content! Some items stack less since they would technically be larger than others (like scythe blades), but anything you can knap from a piece of flint can now fit into stacks of 64 (arrowheads can stack up to 128). Limestone Gathering Gathering limestone can suck hardcore if you spawn in an endless sea of peridotite (like I did). I wanted a consistent way to get lime and still remain faithful to the semi-realistic methods of VS, thankfully I found a cool bit of info about limestone here (Limestone Deposits). More or less, in real life limestone is quite common on sea floors and can be found as chunks mixed with muddy silt. So I thought, why not make use of that "muddy gravel" that does nothing. You'll still need a bucket and quern to get the desired end result, but at least you won't have to find another continent to continue your progress. You can also produce limestone even faster in a barrel, by mixing muddy gravel and water in a 1:1 ratio. Recipe (Shapeless): Ash Leaching Potash is a useful substance in VS for K fertilizing, but it's a rather scarce product. I fixed this by introducing White Potash, also known as Caustic Potash. Following the real life methods of production, it first requires making ash by burning logs, firewood or planks in a firepit. Certain woods, like oak, produce more ash than others. Once you have your ash, soaking it in a barrel with a 4:1 ratio of water over 24 hours will produce Lye, which must be evaporated slowly again in a barrel to produce White Potash in a 2:1 ratio. White potash is just as effective as regular Potash, and almost triples the effective fertilization of regular ash (which can also be used as a basic K fertilizer). (once I or the VS team make a item-to-item recipe in the cooking pot I'll change this method) Recipes: Cooked Eggs A simple recipe that allows you to cook eggs on a firepit (which can be done IRL for all the skeptics out there, check this out here). Cooked eggs don't last as long, but at least you can eat them now Recipe: Tool Molds and Smithing Adds in tool molds for knives and spears and reduces the units required for some smaller tools. I calculated this mostly by checking the smithing recipes and counting the voxels. Then I rounded to relatively simple numbers to keep the units from being overly precise and frustrating to mix alloys with. Most are in multiples of 25 units (25, 50, 100, 150). If people REALLY want precise measurements though, I can release a separate mod that counts units down to multiples of 5 or less. I also added a double knife recipe for smithing and tweaked the shape of the knife since it seemed too boxy. Iron Spears Iron spears are strangely missing from the VS files, and spears can't be cast (which they definitely were in antiquity). They also don't have damage tiers, which I thought was strange. This fixes all of those things! Pictures: Straw Straw is a new item addition that I found to be somewhat absent in Vanilla. Straw is obtained by harvesting any grain. It replaces many of the recipes for Dry Grass and reeds, including skeps. You can also use it to make thatch roofing. Seed Conversion Any grain can now be converted into a seed. They cannot be converted back however, as seeds do not degrade over time and this would allow you to indefinitely keep grains. Powdered Materials Sulfur and charcoal can now be powdered in a millstone, which is essential for making blasting powder and terra preta. The recipe for blasting powder has also been changed to be more realistic, and ultimately more efficient since saltpeter is generally easier to find. Compost Changes Compost is a little strange in Vanilla VS, so I changed it to suit my preferences. You now create a compost item from rot, any dirt and straw. The item cures over time into different stages and improves at each stage. At the final stage (cured), it can be combined with soil to make "composted soil", or it can be used as a fertilizer. Even more significantly, it is an essential component for Terra Preta production, which you can now make with the addition of charcoal powder, bony soil (renamed ancient loam). You can also now make a "Compound" fertilizer, which combines various things to make a very effective universal fertilizer. Pictures: Efficient Leather Tanning Allows you to convert every stage of hide into smaller pieces to make batch processing easier. You can use a knife or shears to process the hides, but shears provide slightly more pieces. Also adds a final "tanned" version of hide rather than having the barrel convert prepared hide into pieces (which doesn't really make sense). Skep Changes Real world skeps don't need to be destroyed to harvest the honeycombs, so I just made it so the skep drops when harvested. You can also make skeps from straw as well, as was traditionally done in various parts of the world. Miscellaneous Changes: You can now make a new firepit with peat bricks. Added a recipe to convert hay beds into wooden beds. Next on the List of tweaks: smelting down intact tool heads disassembling anvils Installation (Vintage Story Version: 1.12.+) Just drop the zip file right into your "mods" folder in Vintage Story! If you can't find it, you can open it up in the vintage story mod manager at the main menu. For those having issues with steam: Known bugs: I had to adjust the GUI position of a few tool head so they didn't intersect with the stack number, but this caused some to move out of place on the tool-tip window. Log tooltips and the firepit recipe don't match up with the quantity of ash produced. The tooltip is the accurate amount! Incompatibilities Potentially incompatible with anything that alters Vanilla spears, let me know if this comes up and I'll see what I can do. Changelog: Licence & Support: Current Version: Lazytweaks V3.0.0 (Google Drive Link) Older Versions: lazytweaks v1.3.0.zip lazytweaks v1.8.1.zip lazytweaks v1.9.1.zip

POINT Ever since TFC, Sevtech and other tech-age-traversing mods, I was really bugged by these 2 things: No story or overarching goal, no direction; no-one to compete with, no-one to share/compare the progress with, no-one to learn or to steal from; => no motivation to do anything beyond hording and acquiring new-whatever. Building new stuff for the sake of building newer stuff, while fun for a-while, eventually gets boring and the feeling of all-is-pointless starts to prevail. I was trying to reflect onto whats and whys --- what exactly is missing from vanilla minecraft, or these great mods, that makes me feel this way, and I think the answer is fairly simple: the emptiness comes from a sad realization that whatever goal you choose for yourself there's no-one in the entire game-world who could appreciate it (and/or your struggle to get it). Basically, a conquest game starts to feel shallow, when immersion is broken by actors not being able to achieve (to compete to achieve) things you want, --- or in other words, when there's no economy simulation going on (no shared vision of goals and what they cost). While you could find very interesting proofs of concept like Millénaire, the cohesive world generation is another thing. It always felt wrong the game (minecraft in this case) generates terrain on the fly in a non-cohesive random and messy way. We have villages, but where are all the roads? Where the travelers, convoys, caravans and such? What would it cost to pre-generate meta-layers of the world, like climate-zones, habitable and non-habitable zones, roads and towns (just relative positions with no geometry what-so-ever) and actually generate the geometry and actors when the player gets there (while still being able to reason about them even if they wont)? The closest successful world-gen with roads I can think of is Lost Cities, but I'm not sure whether it achieves that via meta-layers, or it's just very clever reflective, but still random, world-gen. * Basically, the conquest game like minecraft seem to have no vision on how to scale its gameplay beyond hording. One could argue, that multiplayer is the ultimate answer to these issues, but the counter-argument to that would be in acknowledgement that every player in a multiplayer-setting would have to force themselves to consolidate with other players in order to form competitive economies --- and for those to form you would still need some kind motivators (something extremely rare and useful? something to transcend to prestige and reputation?)... and there's no telling how many players do you need before the overall economic struggle would seem sustaining? EXAMPLE Like, did it ever bugged you, that in order to progress through the tech-age-traversing mods (or even in vanilla minecraft/terraria and such) you have to deal with menus, upon menus, upon menus to find all the recipes you able to craft from an item, to find the entity you have to craft them with, to find a pattern in which you have to lay the items you have, only for the cycle to continue anew with each new shiny thing you'll get. Sometimes it feels like you spend most of your time in the crafting menus or on Wikipedia, rather than in the actual game. Even doing the most basic stuff (like finding and cooking food, or forging metals) could be challenging because how particular and obscure the recipes/block-behaviors are. Wouldn't it be way cooler and way more approachable if a game-world had an entity you could simply observe to learn all the mechanics from? An entity with the same'ish goals and restrictions you could could compete or live along with? It doesn't have to be sophisticated, it simply have to be somewhat aware. QUESTION What's the VintageStory stance on this? Would we be able to expect these issues being addressed in some near future and in what way? I know there's some kind of story in VS and villages are one the road-map, but what exactly you envision for you product so far? DISCUSSION What do you people think of this? Is this the direction you want to see VS go? ====== Thank you, VS-team, great product so far! Cheers,

To implement "debuffs" like illness, poison, etc. The player would need to gather some herbs and prepare a proper medicine to cure it. Otherwise, the player would start losing health/satiety points after some predefined time. Others will reduce health regeneration, movement speed, attack power, etc. The system could be expanded further with an addition of illness "progression". It would be something like illness stages. Some types of illness would progress and transform into more serious ones if not cured in time. The higher stage would be more diffucult to cure.

As I finished putting on another layer of cobblestone atop my ever growing castle, I noticed a flat patch on a nearby hillside and thought to myself how wonderful it would be to have a small farmers cottage perched on that hill. I could put farms around it, make it look like someone lived there, maybe put a few more and give the illusion of there being a sleepy farming community right outside my home. The only problem is that all the dwellings would sit empty, and I'd be alone surrounded by a ghost town. So I got to thinking, how could npc civilians be added to the game that didn't stifle creativity or options. This is my proposed solution. Commonfolk: A new mob, spawn in small groups wandering around much like the other wild fauna of Vintage Story. They would be hunted by wolves, ignored by drifters and maybe lash out or run if attacked by a player. In addition, they will seek out unattended bowls of food, not unlike a hare to crops or domesticated mobs to feeding troughs. Once they have eaten enough from bowls they will claim a nearby bed as their own. It's their home now, they live there. At this point they would have a satiation threshold, which would reset at regular increments. With the seasons update on the horizon I would suggest that at the end of every season, their satiation is checked and dropped to zero. If they had had an empty satiation bar, they would leave their home, becoming homeless and wandering as they had before being fed. If they had a partially filled satiation bar at the end of the season, two seasons in a row, they would do the same as if they hadn't eaten for an entire season. Female Commonfolk would have a chance to become pregnant if their satiation bar was maxed for a certain time and they were around a male Commonfolk, she would have a chance to become pregnant and give birth after nine months. The child Commonfolk would require half the amount of food as an adult and take many years to grow into an adult. (I believe these times should be adjustable for single player versus multiplayer, months might be a better time increment than seasons for checking satiation) As you can probably guess, keeping the Commonfolk fed would be quite a time consuming task, which goes against the whole idea of having farmers in the first place. Better to let them feed themselves. Farmers: A player with permission would be able to access a Commonfolks inventory, in order to give them tools and access anything else they might have on their person. By giving them a hoe, their behavior would change. Every morning Commonfolk with a hoe would wake from their bed and seek out the nearest fully grown crop within a certain range of their personal bed. They would go to it, harvest it, and if the soil nutrient levels would allow any seeds in their inventory to fully grow, replant the space. They would repeat this until all fully grown crops within range are harvested, and then water all dry tilled earth within range, then check all empty tilled soil within range to see if they can plant any new crops. Midday they would stop, go home and eat their harvest until their satiation is full or their inventory is empty of food and go to bed. Children would also do the work of farming, albeit slower or with a lower inventory slot number. I won't try to calculate an exact number for how much satiation per season they need as things might change considerably with the seasons update, but my thought is that a farmer maintaining about 24 medium fertility tiles would provide 110% of their food requirements. With more optimal farming layouts, paths between their home and fields, better quality soil, the yield would go up. My reasoning behind this number is that through much of history 90% of the population were farmers. If you want to have non farming Commonfolk you'll need around nine to eleven farmers to provide the food to feed them if you don't want to gather it yourself. If a Commonfolk with a hoe, unarmed, or any other non weapon tool, is attacked, they'll fight back until they reach half health at which point they will drop any food in their inventory and flee. Though mugging a Commonfolk for food would be pointless if you had permission, which is where contracts come in. Contracts: Contracts would be items the player can make that allows them to claim an unclaimed Commonfolk and access the claimed Commonfolk's inventory. A basic one might be a Tally stick that allows you to claim a single Commonfolk and access their inventory, while holding said Tally stick in your inventory. More advanced ones could allow more Commonfolk per item, progressing to clay tablets, parchment and pulp paper which could allow up to one hundred claimed Commonfolk. Right clicking a contract should open up a UI that lists all claimed Commonfolk and right clicking an unclaimed Commonfolk with a contract in your hand could be all it takes to claim them. This would lead to a player being encouraged to build all their Commonfolk homes, design optimal farms, protect them from wolves, and other players who might mug them for food. What's more they would need to carry their contracts around the country side to effectively collect taxes near the end of every season (or month) encouraging them to build roads between the farming communities they've built dotting the landscape. If the player takes too much, they risk letting their farmers starve next season (or month) especially if crops do not grow in the winter. However, that isn't the only threat. Player Interaction: As you might have noticed, I specified that all it takes to access inventories of Commonfolk is to hold the contract in one's inventory. If the Commonfolk population grow sufficiently large, players would have reason to delegate people to collect and maintain different areas, effectively creating townships within a greater kingdom. What's more, other players could attack and steal the contract, effectively claiming the area for themselves. Large populations of Commonfolk would be a valuable prize so contracts would need to be guarded when not being used to collect taxes. Of course, you could always use your Commonfolk to protect the kingdom you've grown. Soldiers: A Commonfolk given a weapon in their tool slot changes behavior as well; they'll sleep for a period of the day in their bed, but otherwise they will wander the area, attacking wolves or drifters they encounter and fighting to the death unlike other Commonfolk. They could be equipped with armor and just like other Commonfolk would need food, but as they don't gather food themselves, must have food put out for them in the form of bowls to ensure they are fed enough. If you want to travel with your soldiers timing would be important, leaving when all your soldiers are fed at the beginning of a season would give plenty of time for a campaign, but guiding a group of soldiers through rough terrain would take time. Orders: To use soldiers more effectively they need to be given orders. Orders could be objects made like contracts, clay tablets, parchment or pulp paper. They would have a basic UI to issue basic commands, such as guard coordinates x,y,z at day or night, follow player x, patrol between coordinates x,y,z and x,y,z and maybe one or two others. Once one is selected and the required variables set, the order can be placed in a soldier's inventory. A player acting as a military commander would have to write an order out for each soldier, but that is the reality of war. Lots of paper work. However this won't mean the soldiers will attack just anyone that approaches, they'll need further instruction. Edicts: Edicts could be created by any player, probably as parchment or pulp paper items. They would have a UI that allows the writer to specify a few specific instruction such as creating a black list of players to attack on sight while everyone else is left alone unless they attack a Commonfolk, or a white list that includes players that shouldn't be attacked while everyone else is. There could be other edicts created as other kingdom features were added but these seem the most important. An edict would then be applied to a contract in a player's possession. Maybe contracts have a slot for edicts, or simply right clicking with an edict would update the contract. Whatever the case it would be a way of quickly setting players as friendly or targets for soldiers. Summary: With all these features in place, a number of game play options suddenly become available. Players can build up a kingdom of Commonfolk, tax them, protect them from harm, build an army, and most importantly, have it all stolen from them. If they were to lose their contract due to their death another player could quickly claim control over their kingdom and black list the former ruler, effectively annexing them from their kingdom and having their own soldiers keep them out. While player death is relatively easy to recover from, losing your kingdom would be a devastating blow. Protecting your contracts in castles and reinforced safes would be vital as well as having guards patrol with you when you travel your kingdom collecting taxes. A ruler banished from their kingdom could form a new kingdom and raise an army to claim their kingdom back. Kingdoms that focus too much on military campaigns might find their farmers raided by other players or attacked by wolves and no longer able to feed the army they had formed and have to convert soldiers back to farmers to restore it to its former glory. All of these features could be largely ignored for players not interested in managing a kingdom, but it would open up a lot of options for both single and multiplayer. I'm certain this system could be expanded upon, other trades could be added, Commonfolk behaviors could be elaborated on, currency or kingdom trade/diplomacy could have more systems put in place.

2019-07-15 23-18-35.mp4

First: Vintagestory - even in an early stage - is really really cool and this discussion should produce some ideas to make it even cooler! The first impression is always important, so I start with my first impressions. Hopefully some of you out there give some comments and and share your first ideas.