Playstyle

Humans are the reference point and the most flexible choice. They have no special racial penalty, so the class and the situation do more of the work.

Physical traits and limitations

• The Human positive trait is an empty marker in this release: it adds no extra numerical attribute.
• There is no racial damage, movement, temperature, gathering or food-capacity bonus to plan around.
• That also means no Human-specific weakness beyond the ordinary vanilla baseline.

Survival

Humans use the baseline 1× stomach and 1× hunger rate. A full stomach lasts 1× the baseline at the same activity, so ordinary balanced food works exactly as the reference comparison suggests.

Available classes

Commoner, Hunter, Malefactor, Clockmaker, Blackguard and Tailor.

With RF Mechanics: Humans get no race-specific RF Mechanics ability. The mod's shared one-block step height applies to every race, including Humans, but it is not a Human racial perk. See RF Mechanics for controls and the shared movement settings.

With Diet Setup: The optional Human candidate is a generalist: all five nutrition capacities are 1.0, with demand-normalised nutrition, proportional overflow and no special food rules. It is inactive until an administrator copies and binds it; see Diet Setup.

Playstyle

Dwarves are durable miners and settled-world workers. They handle cold, armour and several damage types well, but swimming, sprinting and heat are real costs.

Physical traits and drawbacks

• 50% less crushing damage, 20% less blunt damage and 50% less frost damage.
• 85% less armour movement slowdown and +4°C warmth.
• 30% larger stomach.
• 50% slower swimming, 30% less buoyancy and 20% slower sprinting.
• Animals detect Dwarves from 20% farther away; bow draw is 30% weaker and received healing is 20% lower.
• 10% more fall damage and 60% more heat damage.
• The Dwarven Craft marker is present but carries no numeric attribute in this release.

Survival

The 1.3× stomach with the unchanged Human hunger rate gives about 1.3× full-stomach duration. Dwarves can carry a little more food between meals, but cold resistance does not make heat, falls or water harmless.

Available classes

Commoner, Hunter, Malefactor, Clockmaker, Blackguard and Tailor. Mountain Dwarf and Hill Dwarf are not classes anymore.

With RF Mechanics: Ore-Song is on by default: sit beside stone or ore, empty your main hand, aim within two blocks and press Race Ability (default R) to listen for nearby mineral voices. Dwarves also get the enabled depth/altitude mining curve, depth-based ore yield curve and mining-depth feedback, plus the enabled climbing-cost/speed adjustment. See RF Mechanics for the current controls and limits.

With Diet Setup: The optional Dwarf candidate favours preserved roots, greens, fruit, meat and fish, with fungus and roots especially useful; raw meat is poor and cooked grain is improved. Its capacities and rules are provisional, demand-normalised examples, inactive until an administrator binds them. See Diet Setup.

Playstyle

Elves are mobile woodland specialists. They forage, move and shoot well, but mining, armour, warmth and stomach space are trade-offs.

Physical traits and drawbacks

• 60% more forage yield and 30% more wild-crop yield, with 8% faster walking.
• 25% stronger bow draw, 35% better ranged accuracy and 25% more animal loot.
• Animals detect Elves from 60% less range, but harvesting animals takes 40% longer.
• 35% slower mining and 20% less ore yield.
• Armour slowdown is 80% worse and warmth is 4°C lower.
• Stomach size is 30% smaller, while the base hunger rate is 47.5% lower.

Survival

The 0.7× stomach is offset by the 0.525× hunger rate: a full stomach lasts about 1.33× the Human baseline at the same activity, or about 1.57× with RF Mechanics' default Elf hunger reduction. That does not make one identical meal last 1.33× as long, and a small stomach still punishes wasteful meals.

Available classes

Commoner, Hunter, Malefactor, Clockmaker, Blackguard and Tailor.

With RF Mechanics: The enabled Elf mechanics include two-block stepping, tree-trunk climbing with corner traversal, branchy-leaves passthrough, tree-proximity movement, reduced fall damage, leaf gathering, zoom, Watchfulness and a further 15% hunger reduction. Watchfulness uses Race Stance (default Ctrl+H); Race Ability (default R) is used while observing. See RF Mechanics for controls.

With Diet Setup: The optional Elf candidate makes meat and organ foods inedible, favours seeds, nuts and fresh food, treats preserved food as harmful and lets spoilage decline gradually rather than as one cliff. Dairy has no supported bar in the example. This demand-normalised example is inactive until an administrator binds it; see Diet Setup.

Playstyle

Orcs are large, resilient hunters who turn food and low satiety into part of their toolkit. They are effective when provisioned, but their appetite and ranged penalty are hard to ignore.

Physical traits and drawbacks

• Stomach size is 150% above Human, or 2.5× the baseline.
• Animal harvesting is 30% faster and animal loot is 10% higher.
• Ranged accuracy is 25% lower.
• Hunger runs 40% faster than Human.

Survival

The large stomach and faster drain combine to about 1.8× Human full-stomach duration at the same activity. A same-sized meal lasts about 0.71× as long as for a Human before any RF Mechanics effects. Orcs need food volume, not just a large-looking capacity.

Available classes

Commoner, Hunter, Malefactor, Clockmaker, Blackguard and Tailor.

With RF Mechanics: Thew, body-size bands, Frenzy, Burn-to-Survive, the enabled Orc scent and hunt system, and passive Tier 2 natural skin are on by default. Race Stance (default Ctrl+H) toggles the hunting stance, and standing or sitting builds scent focus; Thew and Frenzy can change hunger and movement as satiety falls. Blood pursuit needs a separate bleeding provider such as BloodTrail or The Hunter, so it is inactive without one. See RF Mechanics for controls and the exact caps.

With Diet Setup: The optional Orc candidate has no fruit or vegetable capacity, uses grain, protein and a reduced dairy share, and makes cooked meat, raw meat, organs, fish and insects useful in different ways. Raw-meat grants are an additional example configuration, not an automatic Race Framework feature. The candidate is inactive until an administrator binds it; see Diet Setup.

Playstyle

Goblins are quick scavengers and ambushers. They are excellent at gathering, sneaking and working around darkness, but have less health, a smaller stomach and several daylight and combat penalties.

Physical traits and drawbacks

• 60% more wild-crop yield and 135% more forage yield, with 10% faster walking.
• 20% more vessel contents, a 12% whole-vessel loot chance and 15% more rusty-gear drops.
• Animal harvesting is 25% faster and animal loot is 20% higher.
• Sneak speed is 40% faster and darkness walking speed is 30% faster; poison damage is 50% lower.
• Animals detect Goblins from 85% less range.
• Three fewer maximum health points, 25% worse armour slowdown, 20% weaker bow draw and 15% less melee damage.
• Day walking speed is 10% lower, warmth is 3°C lower, stomach size is 30% smaller and hunger is 15% faster.

Survival

The 0.7× stomach and 1.15× hunger rate mean a full stomach lasts about 0.6× the Human baseline. Goblins need frequent meals and cannot rely on ordinary daylight travel to cover every weakness.

Available classes

Commoner, Hunter, Malefactor, Clockmaker, Blackguard and Tailor.

With RF Mechanics: Goblins get the enabled one-block stepping, tree climbing, rock and dry-earth climbing, sticky Clamber stance (Race Stance, default Ctrl+H), tunnelling movement, 0.4× stone/ore mining, reduced fall damage, rot aura, literal-rot eating and spit charges for repairing targeted blocks. Darkvision exists as an opt-in configuration but is off by default; spit-packed earth conversion and the old goblin digging prototype are not active. See RF Mechanics for controls.

With Diet Setup: The optional Goblin candidate makes rot and insects nourishing, lets meat, fish and organs improve through spoilage, and makes fresh fruit, leaves and roots harmful. Raw meat requires the example food override as well as the diet. It is inactive until an administrator binds it; see Diet Setup.

Playstyle

Half-Giants are a deliberately demanding large-body choice. They hit hard, move quickly on land and carry a huge stomach, but environmental damage and food consumption are severe. The model is new in this release and deserves more testing than the older races.

Physical traits and drawbacks

• Model size and the Race Framework character definition are 2.1× the Human model; the patch also supplies 2.1 step height for the model.
• 100% more melee weapon damage, 30 extra maximum health points, 25% faster walking and sprinting, and +7°C warmth.
• Stomach size is 630% above Human, or 7.3× the baseline.
• Frost, heat, starvation, suffocation and fire damage are each 200% higher.
• Fall damage is 530% higher, hunger runs 431% faster and animals detect Half-Giants from 50% farther away.

Survival

The 7.3× stomach is paired with a 5.31× hunger rate, leaving about 1.4× Human full-stomach duration at the same activity. A same-sized meal lasts only about 0.19× as long before RF Mechanics effects. This is a food-logistics race, not a free health upgrade.

Available classes

Commoner, Hunter, Malefactor, Clockmaker, Blackguard and Tailor.

With RF Mechanics: Half-Giants get the enabled 2.1 step height, wading and breathing in water up to about three blocks deep, adjusted wading speed, swim-up control with Space, sinking while idle and a remembered third-person camera distance. See RF Mechanics for controls. Multiplayer and armour interaction testing for this new body are limited.

With Diet Setup: The optional Half-Giant candidate uses demand-normalised nutrition to absorb the 5.31× hunger demand, with modest agricultural and herding preferences: dairy and grain are nourishing, roots are improved and cooked meat is a normal nourishing food. It is inactive until an administrator binds it; see Diet Setup.

How the numbers are applied

Vanilla and Player Model Library blend the supported character attributes into the player. The food-capacity key is maxSaturationFactor; the hunger key is saturationLossFactor. Player Model Library applies the stomach size, so the new capacity becomes visible after a world reload. RF Mechanics reads the race marker traits to enable its own mechanics and has its own configuration defaults.

Some trait entries are not features of this release: the dv-* dark-vision values and slowtox:* alcohol values are not used by anything this release requires, and the older rfTreeClimbing, rfBranchyLeavesPassthrough and rfFallDamageReduction entries are no longer how RF Mechanics decides who gets an ability. RF Mechanics uses the race traits themselves plus its own configuration.

Elven branchy-leaves recipe

recipes/grid/branchyleaves-elf.json is a 3×3 recipe using placed leaves and sticks to make the matching branchy-leaves block. It requires the rf-elf-positive trait, so only Elves can craft it. RF Mechanics supplies the movement passthrough around branchy leaves.

Existing dwarves and race changes

Race Framework 1.1.0 removes Mountain Dwarf and Hill Dwarf subrace classes. With RF Mechanics 1.2.0 installed, those saved characters become Commoners at login and keep their model, inventory and gear. Without that migration, Player Model Library can fail when it tries to apply the retired class. A race change also needs a world reload before its new stomach size is applied.

I've been a developer for about five years, and for the last two years I've worked closely with advanced AI models. C# is a language I have much less experience with, so I use LLM coding tools to supplement my knowledge of the language and Vintage Story's modding API.

That includes generating and explaining code and data, researching implementation options, investigating errors and helping with documentation. AI has a substantial role in this project's development. I choose what goes into the mod, playtest as development progresses, and handle release decisions and maintenance. That does not mean every situation has been tested. The source is available for anyone who wants to inspect it, contribute or make their own version.

Original work is MIT-licensed. You are welcome to fork it, tweak the balance and redistribute your changes without asking. Keep the included copyright and license notices. Third-party material remains under its applicable terms.

Thanks to Tomoyuki for Racial Equality and Caliber for work on Player Model Library. These projects supply the models and model system used here.