After being in development for over 10 years, Hytale, a sandbox game from the Hypixel Studios team with support from Riot, has officially been cancelled. Hypixel Studios’ CEO, Noxy, announced the cancellation on X on June 23, with the official Hytale forums following suit.
Vintagestory is my Minecraft killer, but it’s also got very different item/tech progression, so probably not perfect for many (former) Minecraft fans.
Is there a good overview of the progression somewhere? I vaguely remember buying it a while ago, but couldn’t really get into it.
If you know Terrafirmacraft it’s roughly that. Basically to even get to a point where you’re chopping down trees, there’s a few hours of gameplay trying to replicate fairly realistic early human technological progression. But it has a shockingly good late game with quests and dungeons and bosses. Due to the slower nature of the tech progression, and you being a relatively fragile creature in a shockingly cruel world, the game feels like it’s always going somewhere. There is always something you can be doing to prep in some way.
It uses a lot of diagetic UIs and in world crafting which I love. Modding it is as easy as clicking the install button on the mod webpage and it launches the game and prompts the install. I do suggest using some mods, even on a first play through, because a lot of them are just things that make sense, and often get worked into the full game over time.
A couple more game changing mods I’d suggest are rivers, wind, sailboats, and canoes. Basically anything that makes water a slightly more viable form of transport once you’ve got a bit of tech. The game has more or less accurate geology, so materials will only spawn in specific rock types, and those rock types only occur in specific areas due to tectonic plate interactions. This means you’ll often go on loooonnngg expeditions to find a particular material, and I find water transport to be a very balanced tool with rivers because you cannot sail or paddle up stream, but downstream is very fast. You can use this to your advantage in some ways, while still forcing you to portage your gear at other times.
Anyway, I love this game. Check out the comm for it! !vintagestory@lemmy.ca
Is this a game where I could reasonably discover how to progress by myself, as an average adult human with no special knowledge of history or technological progression? Or will I need to resort to a wiki? I’m cool with either but curious
There is a very well done in game journal, that is essentially the wiki. It includes crafting recipes, as well as more free form, expository writing on general gameplay and progression. Most mods also do a good job of including their own journal pages and info as well. Though there’s some things that take struggling on before the info provided fully clicks. There is a prospecting system for example to help you locate ores since they are rarer with bigger deposits. I struggled with it for a while, but eventually you develop this sort of intrinsic sense of how to use the info the tools provide. There’s a very satisfying progression in most of the game systems from floundering at first, then understanding the numbers behind it, then internalizing the optimization and it becoming instinct. Very much matching the layperson to apprentice to specialist progression. I’ll finally add that the game does have sort of RPG style classes that encourage people to play multiplayers and specialize into a particular job. There’s is a commoner class that doesn’t have any drawbacks, but also doesn’t have the bonuses the other classes get which is okay for single player, but to give a small spoiler,
Tap for spoiler
I’d suggest using the tailor class for your first solo play through. Winters are brutal and being able to repair clothes rather than always have to craft new ones is huge. Also flax, plant lots of flax as soon as possible.
Don’t be afraid to abandon a save after a few in game days and take what you learned into a new one. Or check out the difficulty settings/sliders, there’s lots of ways to tune your experience. If you don’t get your feet under you it can be grueling to try to recover.
There are videos on youtube that sum up main progression from stone to steel.
There are also other topics to learn, like prospecting for ore, leather making (for backpacks), animals handling, bee keeping (if you want lanterns), windmill building (to automate iron processing and as prerequisite for steel), and many more.
Survival hanbook (H key by default) have a lot of info and guides on game mechanics. Otherwise, google videos on certain topics.
It is fun to pass all these milestones and see how your small village grows.
P.S. As for storage, keep food and unprocessed animal hides in storage containers made from clay in cool cellar, bulk resurces (stone, ore nuggets, wood blocks) in crates and everything else in double chests that you can make as soon as you get access to copper (for nails and strips).
Some things like firewood, peat, bricks can be stockpiled right on the floor. Also you can lean tools to the wall or put them on tool racks for convenience. This also adds to an atmosphere of medieval building.