Temperature

Temperature is a core mechanic in Vintage Story. It can influence the player's body temperature, plant growth, and wild animals' weight. Different regions will have different temperature bands, which significantly affect the placement of flora and fauna and therefore, the resulting type of biome.

Players can check the immediate ambient temperature in the Character screen with C.

World generation

Depending on the chosen World generation settings, the game creates different temperature regions in the world. Under "realistic" settings, the game creates a gradient of temperature stretching from a cold "north pole" to a warm "southern equator". These points loop - if a player goes further north than the north pole, the temperature will start increasing again until hitting another "equator", and moving north beyond that will lead to another "pole".

Under "patchwork" settings, temperature regions are arbitrarily generated and distributed, meaning that it is possible to see very cold regions bordering hot deserts.

Temperature, alongside rock strata and rainfall , strongly affects the types of blocks that will generate. Therefore biomes are an emergent property of interactions between temperature, rainfall, and landform shape. High-temperature, high-moisture climates will result in a rainforest-style environment, while high-temperature, low-moisture climates create deserts.

Regional temperatures also vary over the course of the different seasons . Summer is the warmest season, and Winter is the coldest.

Technical

With admin privileges, you can use /wgen pos climate to see climate statistics, including current temperature and the yearly average temperature for the position you are standing at. The initial yearly average temperature obtained by running the above command is based on distance from the equator and influenced by elevation and a noise map, and cannot exceed -20°C or 40°C.

Temperature at a given time at a given block varies based on several factors:

• Distance from the equator and month of the year
  • The yearly average temperature at sea level at the equator is 30°C, at the poles the average is -20°C, and in temperate climates the average is 10°C.
  • Additionally, temperature varies based on the month of the year, by ±0°C at the equator, ±16.25°C in temperate regions and by ±32.5°C at the north and south poles.
  • Above the equator, mid-January is the always coldest time of year and mid-July always is the hottest. The reverse is true below the equator.
• Time of day and rainfall
  • The hottest time of day is always 4pm and the coldest is always 4am.
  • The temperature varies over the course of the day by as much as ±9°C in areas with 0% rainfall, and as much as ±2.5°C in areas with 100% rainfall.
• A climate noise map and elevation
  • A climate noise map is generated with the world that causes the random fluctuations seen in the yearly average temperatures over a region.
  • Yearly average temperature is decreased by roughly 1.5°C for every 10 blocks increase in elevation.
• Per day and per year noise fluctuations
  • Temperature fluctuates randomly but gradually over the course of a day or year, by up to +1°C per day and up to +3°C per year.

Body temperature

If true winters is enabled, a seraph's body temperature needs to be kept at 37°C or more, otherwise they will suffer from cold damage, and potentially freeze to death. There are no other penalties for having low body temperature. As of version 1.22.7, there is no penalty for overheating.

Body temperature can be maintained using various means, or can be disabled completely when creating a world by disabling true winters. Post-creation, the following commands can be used:

/worldconfig harshWinters false
/worldconfig bodyTemperatureResistance -40

With true winters enabled, the player will start taking 0.2 damage every 10 seconds if they are at least 4 degrees too cold for more than 3 in-game hours straight. Warming up for even a moment will give another 3 hours before damage is taken. The player will visibly shiver and hold their arms close to their body while dangerously cold.

Players may employ several tactics to ensure they stay warm in cold conditions:

• Rooms are technically always 1°C warmer than the player's freezing point for the purpose of body temperature. Body temperature will slowly adjust toward normal while indoors.
  • Greenhouses do not grant the bonus to players that they do to crops.
• Wearing warm clothes . Woolen or fur lined clothes tend to grant more temperature protection, and clothes lose temperature protection as their condition degrades.
• Standing beside a lit firepit , forge , bloomery , pit kiln , burning blocks, lava, ember blocks, or boiling water.
  • The warming range of a heat source will be effectively 3x larger while in an enclosed room; open-air heat sources will only heat up the area in very close proximity to them.
• Sprinting for long periods of time will accumulate up to +5°C.
• Being on fire. This almost immediately raises temperature to maximum.

• Sleeping will slow temperature change (loss and gain), but only when inside a room.
  • In practice, the slowed temperature loss cannot happen since rooms are never too cold for a player.

Note: Torches, whether held or placed, do not raise body temperature.

Wetness

If it is currently raining and the player is exposed (no solid blocks directly above), they will gain wetness every second, faster if it is raining heavily. Wetness will accumulate 20x slower if it's snow, and some hats offer passive rain resistance while worn. Swimming will immediately set wetness to maximum. Wetness passively decays over 1 in-game hour, and up to twice as fast when near a heat source.

Wetness reduces the player's experienced temperature by up to -13.5°C, and scales linearly back to 0 as they dry off.

Effect on plants

Wild crops are not killed by cold, but will not grow. Berry bushes will stop flowering and producing fruit as it gets colder, and will eventually go dormant when it gets below freezing. They will leave dormancy once it warms up again. Fruit trees will also become dormant, though for some of them this is necessary for vernalization.

Cultivated crops have different tolerated temperature ranges. Crops suffer hot or cold damage very quickly once the ambient temperature is outside of their tolerated temperature range. If a crop suffers from cold, they will only yield half of their possible harvest, even if the temperatures go up again. They will however always drop one seed. Similarly, if a crop gets too hot while not yet ripe, they could suffer from heat damage, which will also halve the harvest. An already ripe crop will not be affected by this.

All trees and crops will stop growing at 0°C, however some hardy crops can endure even lower temperatures without getting cold damage.

Effect on animals

Wild animals and unfed domesticated animals will lose weight over the colder months, resulting in less meat and less or no fat dropped on kill.

Bees will hibernate at freezing temperatures. See Beekeeping for specifics.

Video Tutorials

Detailed look at body temperature

History

Version	Description
v1.19.0	Slanted roof blocks now count towards enclosing a room; adding full blocks or slabs below them to create a ceiling between the room and the attic is not required anymore.