Any QoL "vanilla" mods worth grabbing?

[Roland]

To elaborate:
I'm looking for mods that don't change gameplay from the original concept, or add things that aren't orginally there.
Mods that say, fix a bug, or maybe make a menu more accessible, or save you a button press though, I'm all for, and this is what I'm seeking.
Especially ones that improve the overall experience with a controller.
Cheers and thanks in advance!

[Sicksadpanda]

So like S+ as an example?

There's stuff like super spyglass (or Awesome spyglass) where you can see health and torpor along with wild lvl up stats...super useful for breeding.

Death recovery mod is there if you dont want to grab your own stuff.

There's various of teleporting mods that can make travelling shorter.

There's dino pickup and dino storage mods, one allows you to shrink and carry any dinos on shoulder, and the other is basically an easier and cheaper cryopod.

Upgrade station is nice as you can upgrade anything to ascendant quality, turn anything into blueprint, and dismantle things into resources.

Reusable grappling hooks, climbing picks and parachute mods are pretty self explanatory.

There are mods commonly called as dino scan, which allows you to locate any wild dinos without having to find them (in my personal opinion, it's best not used early in the game)

As for bugs, there's honestly not a lot of bug fixes.

[margalus]

Builders Improvements. All it does is add and fix snap points for vanilla structures so you can build properly. Nothing new added and no problems if you remove the mod.

[Veeshan]

Lol i love the gigantic whole game revision suggestions!

I use one mod only, Auto Run. Very well done mod works with all movement modes very intuitive and simple.

[KitsuneShiro]

Mods that "don't change gameplay" don't exist.

[margalus]

These are the two mods I use: Builders Improvements I already mentioned. The other is "Equalized Dino Levels," that one gives you an even spread of dino levels instead of the mostly low levels with only an occasional high level one that the vanilla game spawns.


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=854186603

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1675932178

[KitsuneShiro]

Originally posted by margalus:

These are the two mods I use: Builders Improvements I already mentioned. The other is "Equalized Dino Levels," that one gives you an even spread of dino levels instead of the mostly low levels with only an occasional high level one that the vanilla game spawns.


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=854186603

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1675932178

Both change gameplay especially the second one.

[Veeshan]

Originally posted by KitsuneShiro:

Originally posted by margalus:

These are the two mods I use: Builders Improvements I already mentioned. The other is "Equalized Dino Levels," that one gives you an even spread of dino levels instead of the mostly low levels with only an occasional high level one that the vanilla game spawns.


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=854186603

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1675932178

Both change gameplay especially the second one.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pedant

[KitsuneShiro]

Originally posted by Veeshan:

Originally posted by KitsuneShiro:

Both change gameplay especially the second one.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pedant

Ok. Sure. I was just responding to exactly what the OP asked. He even made the word "don't" bold.

Originally posted by Roland:

To elaborate:
I'm looking for mods that don't change gameplay from the original concept, or add things that aren't orginally there.
Mods that say, fix a bug, or maybe make a menu more accessible, or save you a button press though, I'm all for, and this is what I'm seeking.
Especially ones that improve the overall experience with a controller.
Cheers and thanks in advance!

[Veeshan]

Originally posted by KitsuneShiro:

Originally posted by Veeshan:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pedant

Ok. Sure. I was just responding to exactly what the OP asked. He even made the word "don't" bold.

Originally posted by Roland:

To elaborate:
I'm looking for mods that don't change gameplay from the original concept, or add things that aren't orginally there.
Mods that say, fix a bug, or maybe make a menu more accessible, or save you a button press though, I'm all for, and this is what I'm seeking.
Especially ones that improve the overall experience with a controller.
Cheers and thanks in advance!

I know. I agree that Panda's suggestions and and level modification mods were well outside the OP's specifications, but the rest were plenty minimal.

[Dalinar917]

There is a pretty handy mod for building that I use called the Builder's Helmet. It allows you to craft a helmet that boosts your carry weight to 2,000 and allows you to pick up structures while it is worn. Afterwards if you don't want the weight buff or pickup ability you can just remove the helmet, and everything returns back to normal.

It is a very small mod, but very useful for building projects without really changing the game mechanics. I know they recently added some S+ features into the game, but that doesn't help you much if you finish the build and don't like the way something turned out.

[Roland]

Originally posted by Panda:

So like S+ as an example?

There's stuff like super spyglass (or Awesome spyglass) where you can see health and torpor along with wild lvl up stats...super useful for breeding.

Death recovery mod is there if you dont want to grab your own stuff.

There's various of teleporting mods that can make travelling shorter.

There's dino pickup and dino storage mods, one allows you to shrink and carry any dinos on shoulder, and the other is basically an easier and cheaper cryopod.

Upgrade station is nice as you can upgrade anything to ascendant quality, turn anything into blueprint, and dismantle things into resources.

Reusable grappling hooks, climbing picks and parachute mods are pretty self explanatory.

There are mods commonly called as dino scan, which allows you to locate any wild dinos without having to find them (in my personal opinion, it's best not used early in the game)

As for bugs, there's honestly not a lot of bug fixes.

Most of what you mentioned would be severe gameplay changes, and not really what I'm looking for. Though, i was eyeing up spyglass mods, as well as that one universal remote control mod. They'll probably be the first things I had once I get bored of vanilla.
Also could you elaborate one what you mean by S+?
Typing that into the workshop search yielded no relatable results, so I'm not sure what you are referring to...

Originally posted by margalus:

These are the two mods I use: Builders Improvements I already mentioned. The other is "Equalized Dino Levels," that one gives you an even spread of dino levels instead of the mostly low levels with only an occasional high level one that the vanilla game spawns.


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=854186603

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1675932178

Thank you for the first! These are the kinds of things I'm wanting.

The second, I'm less eager on only because I wonder about balancing, and I kinda like the rarity that comes with finding a higher level. I'm curious to hear what motivates you to use it? And what ways does it shift the gameplay experience for you?

[Sicksadpanda]

S+ is Structures Plus. It's a highly popular mod, almost must have for every servers really. It has its own buildings that look very similar to vanilla, but with better placing and are less prone to problems. You can also pick them up infinitely (and that can be changed as well).

That's the basics for Structure Plus at least, there are tons of other QoL changes, such as being able to pull items from nearby buildings (for example, having to pull metal from your nearby anky to your forge). It's a time saver really.

As for the equalized dino levels, it's popular as Ragnarok and TheCenter already has high lvl dinos being easier to find. Other maps, especially TheIsland, are super rare, and it takes a long time for players to find high lvl dinos as they'd have to constantly wipe dinos for new spawns...and that's something not a lot of players enjoy doing.

[Veeshan]

On the level equalization,, I'm a hardcore vanilla player as well and I'm experiencing precisely what Panda says, very rare high level dinos on The Island. This one is a bit of a toss up really,, I'm actively considering equalization still.

[Roland]

My memory is a bit fuzzy, and perhaps it's changed, but don't dinos end up with better stats when raised to a level versus being found at that level? Or am I mis-remembering/that's changed?

Panda these extraneous things you keep mentioning are gameplay altering and immersion breaking, and not what I'm looking for. (there's noting in the canon of the universe that explains why you can do those things and they're just "features" you added because you're lazy. Features to be lazy are not QoL improvements.)

Structures + sounds a lot like Builder's Improvements. Why use it in lieu of Builder's Improvements? Especially given that it adds buildings to the game, and I don't yet want things in the game that weren't originally.

[Elaara Wylder]

Depends what you mean by "original concept". Originally you could level the speed of flyers for example. A lot of S+ features are being added into the base game, perhaps not in the format seen in the mod, but added non the less.

If you are playing SP, then you can choose not to use certain items or features of any particular mod.

If you like building (as I do) then S+ or Builder's Improvement are a great addition. They merely fix the somewhat wonky building mechanic and oddly placed snap points. You can chose not to use the various guns from S+ and do the work by hand. As pick up of building pieces is already in the base game, but only for a short time after the item is placed, then allowing pick up at any time is perhaps not too much of a stretch. To maintain your "vanilla" experience tho, I would also avoid using any of the helpers such as the gardener, hatchery, etc.

I feel Builder's Helmet adds carry capacity beyond the amount available via normal vanilla levels.


As for breeding. You have it half right. Animals found at max level in the wild will probably only have one or two "good" statistics, provided they are tamed "perfectly". The idea with breeding them is to produce offspring that are born with a combination of all f the best stats you can find. This will have them born at a much higher level than "perfect tame" wild dinos, and once they are levelled will make them much stronger again.