A Rustique Story Experiance (ARSE) is a handcrafted modpack designed around preserving the naturalist, rustic vibe of Vintage Story whilst simultaneously enhancing those same mechanics.

ARSE focuses on immersion and difficulty; exploration and survival; flora and fauna; nomadic gameplay.

This is a thoroughly tested set of mods which has gone through months of playtesting, both in singleplayer and on my server. Tying the modpack together in a unique way is Crosscomme, a personal patch project which provides additional compatibility across the suite of mods, and ARSE itself which contains tweaks to both base-game and modded mechanics. As I don't believe in exclusivity, nothing I do will ever be restricted to ARSE (or Crosscomme); folks are always invited to pull apart my work for their own ends.

ARSE is not yet feature complete. There's still a lot of work I need to do in regards to gameplay tweaks and overhauls. However, the modpack is fully playable (and enjoyable), and is finally ready for an "open beta".

Please direct comments, bug reports, suggestions, and assistance requests to the ARSE thread on the official Vintage Story discord. I do respond to ModDB comments, but given the size and nature of the modpack, discord makes communication more convienent.

Installation:

Installing ARSE is not a one-click process. You must read and follow the instructions below to achieve the intended results. If you are already comfortable and know your way around installing Vintage Story mods and changing their configuration options, you shouldn't encounter any issues. If you're not yet at that point, then I recommend going over the instructions at least twice!

World Generation:

When creating a new world it is important to customise the following settings in order ensure the existence of both oceans and rivers. Other world settings can be adjusted based on personal preference. Optionally, you can copy the recommended world settings below and paste them during world creation.

I highly recommend disabling maps and coordinates. It creates a much more fun and immersive experiance when you need to navigate via landmarks, magnetic compass, spyglass, and cave art glyphs!

REQUIRED SETTINGS

• Landcover: 60% or below.
• Landcover Scale: 200% or above.

Packages:

The packages are not a tier/ratings list. All the mods featured in ARSE have been meticulously placed in their respective package based on a multitude of criteria, including but not limited to: a desirable game-play experience to performance ratio, divergence from the base-game, and complexity of configuration. Users are free to mix-and-match, but do consider the limitations of your computer hardware.

The Core Package is for systems with ~16GB RAM. It contains the quintisential experiance of the modpack crammed into as few mods as possible. [Very Stable | Limited/No Configuration Required] ☑️☑️☑️
The Recommended Package is for systems with ~24GB RAM. It contains a more robust experiance with more crafting overhauls. [Stable | Some Configuration Required] ☑️✅
The Full Package is for systems with ~32GB RAM. This is my personal modlist and contains everything, including functional yet finicky mods. [Less Stable | Heavy Configuration Required] ✅⚠️