Server Tweaks / Proto's Mechanic Tweaks

Tags:
Other Creatures QoL Tweak
Author:
prototype464
Side:
Both
Created:
Nov 22nd 2025 at 9:19 PM
Last modified:
Feb 22nd at 6:18 PM
Downloads:
339
Latest release (for Vintage Story 1.21.5 - 1.21.6, outdated):
ProtoMechanicTweaks_1.1.4.zip  1-click install

NOTICE

This mod is provided as-is, which is another way of saying I will not provide support for most issues. This was made primarily for a co-op with friends.

This mod is also NOT COMPATIBLE WITH COMBAT OVERHAUL due to conflicting patches affecting rust creatures. A solution will likely be implemented in the future.

 

  • Contains literally hundreds of tweaks to the stats of rust creatures - NOT COMPATIBLE WITH COMBAT OVERHAUL!
    • A detailed list of the changes will be provided eventually, but here's a brief rundown:
      • Bells have been buffed significantly but made more rare and given an idle sound with a far range (32 blocks)
      • Drifters have had slight tweaks to all sorts of values
      • High tier shivers have been toned down health and damage-wise, shivers overall have less health than drifters
      • Bowtorn have been rebalanced, devastating melee and better range, but runs slower and has much less health than drifters and shivers
      • Locusts received slight tweaks, and sawblade locusts can now be hacked with the tuning spear but have reduced stats compared to wild ones

      • All rust creatures have a significantly higher chance to flee upon recieving damage, and flee slightly slower
      • All rust creatures have had their temporal stability reward on kill buffed, with bowtorn rewarding the most. Due to the increase in lower tier temp-stab rewards, Nightmare-tier rust creatures reward less than before.
      • All rust creatures have had their knockback resistances changed: Drifters take little knockback, bowtorn take none, shivers get knocked around, and bells no longer take knockback. This is to make these enemies less annoying to fight.

      • Tweaks to spawning heights of all rust creatures, bowtorns encountered higher up and shivers encountered lower down. Drifters are common and everywhere.
      • All rust creatures given a negative spawnCapPlayerScaling multiplier, which is what should have been done in the first place instead of lowering the cap entirely (??)
      • Raised the spawn cap of drifters back to their former glory, shivers are encountered more often than bowtorn
  • Wildlife changes:
    • Moose more formidable in a fight, give more redmeat / fat, and have new combat noises
    • Bears take slightly more knockback, wolves take less knockback, both give more bushmeat and fat
    • Small mammals yield a little more bushmeat, redmeat, and small - medium hides
    • Small fish yield a little more fish
  • Stole a few of Tetere's Class Tweaks
    • Didn't take many of them, rust creatures counting as mechanicals doesn't even make sense

 

This mod is also being used as a de-facto testing mod for potential Temporal Symphony features:

  • riftweather.json Rework
    • Make Calm / Low / Medium fairly common, but make High / Very High / Apocalyptic (especially) worthy of their names
    • Spawning multipliers increased for High (2x) / Very High (5x) / Apocalyptic (12x) - (Why name it "Apocalyptic" if it's not gonna be insane?)
      • It should be noted that Drifters have a spawnCapPlayerScaling multiplier of 0.5x, so take whatever Apocalyptic makes it, and halve that.
    • Adjust times where certain rift activities can start happening in a world
    • Adjust durations of rift activities
  • New Drifter Sounds
  • New Bowtorn Sounds
  • New Bell Sounds
  • New Chapter 1 Boss Sounds

Mod Version Mod IdentifierFor Game version Downloads Released Changelog Download 1-click mod install*
1.1.4 pmt
1.21.5 - 1.21.6
37 Feb 21st at 2:42 AM ProtoMechanicTweaks_1.1.4.zip 1-click install

- Fix recipe breakage, oops
Edit: Turns out it was PIT, not this mod. Ah well.

- Reduce chance of higher rift weathers and slightly increase chance of calm rift weather
  - After playing another 100+ish hours with the tweaks I made previously, I've come to understand why the devs did what they did to the rift weather chances
  - Now, the rift weather rework should make higher rift weathers more noticeable when they ARE in effect, but less common overall than in vanilla
  - (Our new players are almost always harassed by drifters and bowtorn and get High rift activity a lot, it hasn't been fun for them)
- Tweaks to Chapter 1 Boss
- Added experimental Chapter 1 Boss sounds
- Attempt to fix new class-specific recipes again
- Add missing hacked sawblade locust texture

1.1.3 pmt
1.21.5 - 1.21.6
1 Feb 20th at 11:00 PM Release Retracted

Retraction Reason:

- Breaks all modded recipes, oops (fixed in 1.1.4)

Changelog:

- Reduce chance of higher rift weathers and slightly increase chance of calm rift weather
  - After playing another 100+ish hours with the tweaks I made previously, I've come to understand why the devs did what they did to the rift weather chances
  - Now, the rift weather rework should make higher rift weathers more noticeable when they ARE in effect, but less common overall than in vanilla
  - (Our new players are almost always harassed by drifters and bowtorn and get High rift activity a lot, it hasn't been fun for them)
- Tweaks to Chapter 1 Boss
- Added reworked experimental Chapter 1 Boss sounds
- Attempt to fix new class-specific recipes again
- Fix missing hacked sawblade locust texture

1.1.2 pmt
1.21.5 - 1.21.6
29 Feb 14th at 8:14 AM ProtoMechanicTweaks_1.1.2.zip 1-click install

- Fix class rework, was broken this entire time but hadn't gotten around to it
- Custom class traits now properly in their own patch file
- Attempt to fix new class-exclusive recipes
- Removed ConfigLib stuff for now, will return in the future

1.1.1 pmt
1.21.5 - 1.21.6
46 Dec 5th 2025 at 11:32 PM ProtoMechanicTweaks_1.1.1.zip 1-click install

- Higher tier drifters now have higher idle sound chances
- Higher tier drifters' idle sounds now have farther range
  - (Early warning for what kinda caves you're stepping into)

1.1.0 pmt
1.21.5 - 1.21.6
38 Dec 1st 2025 at 11:46 PM ProtoMechanicTweaks_1.1.0.zip 1-click install

- Moose now more formidable in a fight
  - Moose damage type changed to blunt
  - Added combat growl sounds
- Bears take a little less knockback but give more meat and fat
- Wolves take less knockback but give more meat and hide
- Increased yield of redmeat and fat from moose
- Most small mammals drop more meat and small hides
- Increased health of foxes slightly
- Reduced yield of hides from swine
- Hyanas drop a little more meat and fat
- Reef fish have a chance to drop meat
- Salmon drop a little more meat
- Other meat, hide, and fat drop related tweaks
- Longbow rework moved to Proto's Item Tweaks
- Organized patch folder

1.0.4 pmt
39 Nov 29th 2025 at 8:05 AM ProtoMechanicTweaks_1.0.4.zip 1-click install

- Made Drifters / Shivers / Bowtorn spawn at light levels 5 / 3 / 1 respectively
  - (Tired of them spawning in our large house even though lanterns are literally everywhere, leading to micromanaging lighting, when this wasn't a problem pre-1.20)
- Reverted lightLevelType change for drifters (set back to OnlyBlockLight)

1.0.3 pmt
43 Nov 24th 2025 at 11:37 PM ProtoMechanicTweaks_1.0.3.zip 1-click install

- Reduce Malefactor scrap bomb recipe cost, swap flax twine for rope
- Update Malefactor alternate scrap bomb recipe description

1.0.2 pmt
32 Nov 24th 2025 at 5:22 PM ProtoMechanicTweaks_1.0.2.zip 1-click install

- Slightly decreased higher tier Shiver knockback resistance
- Reduced the spawnCapPlayerScaling value on bowtorn to that of shivers (0.75x) instead of increasing it by 1.25x
- Lowered the spawn chance of shivers, and significantly lowered spawn chance of bowtorn
  - (Trying to make drifters more common by reducing the chances of the other two, and because bowtorn are #%$&ing annoying)

 

1.0.1 pmt
37 Nov 23rd 2025 at 8:55 PM ProtoMechanicTweaks_1.0.1.zip 1-click install

- Fixed wrong path for drifter sounds
- Adjusted riftweather values
  - (Trying to combat the world being stuck on Very High rift activity. Is this bug still a thing?)
- Changed lightLevelType on rust creatures to "MaxTimeOfDayLight" instead of "OnlyBlockLight"
  - (Trying to fix an issue with drifters spawning in the house. Why was this changed?)

1.0.0 pmt
35 Nov 22nd 2025 at 9:19 PM ProtoMechanicTweaks_1.0.0.zip 1-click install

- Initial Release

6 Comments (oldest first | newest first) (threaded | flat)

prototype464 , May 21st at 12:53 AM

Just fyi for anyone finding this mod and being like "oh cool", I will be gone for over a year and don't plan on updating this mod to 1.22+ in the 10 days I've got left right now

prototype464 me if you upload a mod using parts of this one, I'm curious to see what'll get made out of it! :)

MikeSyrup, Dec 25th 2025 at 2:03 AM

@prototype464 Gotcha, sounds fair

prototype464 , Dec 24th 2025 at 8:28 PM (modified Dec 24th 2025 at 8:38 PM)

MikeSyrup At some point I'll be making configs for this and Proto's Item Tweaks, though I can't guarantee toggles for specifics like animal drops. Will most likely be general toggles like "Change animal stuff?"

Currently thinking about splitting this and PIT into smaller mods since there's some stuff I figure people might find useful like updated Lumber Sling and Explosives.

 

It may take a few weeks though, having to reformat the Drifter / Shiver / Bowtorn JSONs because VS ModMaker doesn't do it in a way that makes it easy to configure after generating the patches and ChatGPT tried to upsell me on Plus instead of saving me hours of time and energy. I've got time but little energy for it.

MikeSyrup, Dec 24th 2025 at 4:40 PM

Could we get a config to turn off the wildlife changes in case we have a mod that already changes that? Just to avoid a conflict. I'm using Truth and Beauty for animal drops

prototype464 , Dec 5th 2025 at 5:50 PM

Sure.

MageTrash, Dec 5th 2025 at 12:15 AM

Yo, this feels mostly like a Server Tweak. Do you mind declaring it as such ;v;