Honestly, I thought I was the only one with this feeling that the game is too focused on casual play 
I’m playing again after a few years, and honestly, I miss the “pre-Ages” era. I have nothing against how most things have progressed in terms of content, but I feel that survival is completely secondary now, and it seems like everything has been geared towards following the logic of current MMOs: getting to endgame content as fast as you can.
With this new update, I was really looking forward to play again, but the ping on the official servers is… welp. And there are no more hardcore servers out there (I guess because the mods port gonna take a while).
Summary
Unfortunately, I’m looking for something that seems impossible nowadays: PvE, very low experience rates, high NPC damage to the player, reduced player damage to NPCs, more consistent thirst/hunger, etc…
I have a local save configured like this, and I’m actually enjoy it:
- General experience rate: 0.8
- AFK experience rate: 0.7
- Experience rate from kills: 0.3
- All other experience rates are x1.0
- Hunger/thirst multiplier (active): 2.8
- Hunger/thirst multiplier (inactive): 2.7
- Stamina cost: 1.1
- Crafting time multiplier: 1.15
- Crafting cost multiplier: 0.85
- Gathering amount multiplier: 0.3 (literally, my iron pickaxe is giving me 2 siderites every time I mine).
- Player damage multiplier: 0.8
- NPC damage multiplier: 1.4
- Additionally, messing with the gamesttings.ini, I reduced the player’s base speed by 10% (when moving without running with Shift).
And… that’s all, I think.
I have installed mods with different QoL features, like Simple Minimap, Lore & Loot Highlight, Glory of Combat, and a few others that make the game something like a “Semi-hardcore Vanilla +”.
On the other hand, I have Night Terrors installed to make the nights more challenging, and The Purge mod because I miss the old purge system; although this mod isn’t supposed to interfere with the base game’s purge system.
To try and fix the loot issue, I installed Xevyr’s Loot Balance and left everything at its default settings.
I also have Legend Beyond Mortality installed, which is a mod that aims to create a “Vanilla + experience” with the leveling system (level cap 120 with a vanilla experience curve).
The rest of the mods are purely cosmetic, and while I’d love to see them on private servers, I understand that not everyone likes every mod, so I can try to live without them (I’m referring to skimpy stuff, like Aquilonian Females, for example).
I’ve been trying to set up a local save that’s a bit like Vanilla +; since I’m playing solo, I wanted to have some tweaks here and there; there’s no need to see all that on the same private server, of course.
This project, although you haven’t given all the details yet (rates, specific rules, etc), seems interesting, and as long as Discord isn’t mandatory (voice calls) and there’s no RP, or voice ingame, I might be interested in it. I should mention that I’m a lone wolf, though I don’t mind joining events or groups to help with specific tasks; but in general, I like to play chilling, advancing step by step. I must say that I’m not an expert/veteran of the game. I have +200 hours, and almost all of it has been on “pre-steel” content.
