Less Finicky Coppertail Spawns (QOL patch)

TLDR:This mod was originally created specifically for the Amberfields server. It is a simple JSON patch that expands the spawn opportunities for the Coppertail Drake by allowing it to spawn using the loose boulders asset as an option.

 

Please Note: Yes, I have tried to reach out to the Draconis mod developer prior to posting this. This patch is in no way a jab at them. I have the utmost respect and love for what they've done to expand the world of Vintage Story. I also have a lot of faith that the Draconis mod can only get better and will certainly achieve more balanced and consistent spawns in the future. This is just a small QOL patch so myself and the members of my server as well as other players can get to experience the Coppertail Drake more often in gameplay. However, if you are one of the Draconis developers and would like me to pull the patch, please contact me or comment on the mod and I will be happy to do that and revert it back to a private server patch only. I sincerely tried all the listed methods to contact the developer, but it was a no go.

Also, it is very important that I make the distinction this doesn't (inherently) make the Coppertail Drake "easier" to find.

It does not address any of the spawn criteria  core to the Coppertail Drake. It simply utilizes the loose boulders in other criteria meeting biomes as acceptable spawn points. The purpose is so servers can create more spawn points from the more abundant boulders when the loose stones inevitably start getting less available. The patch does not affect spawn rates or the Coppertail Drake needing a combination of forests and rainfall below 30%. it should also not affect any other changes you make to the Draconis mod's configurations.

The patch also does not address any of the other dragon types or change their preferred habitat spawns or spawn criteria. Even with most mod influenced terrain mods, the snowy mountain peaks, temperate forests or storms you need to find the other eggs will likely be fine and present enough so I didn't see this as a needed feature. The Coppertail has an extremely finicky and specific criteria set that necessitated the boulder exception. Our server saw three in-game years and one person found a Coppertail egg in that time. But, that brings up the elephant in the room.

 

Why is the Coppertail so hard to find?

 

Bear with me while I nerd out a bit,because making this simple patch was a journey. When I initially embarked on making it, I initially thought with the heavy mention of spawning in gravel that the spawns were dependent on terrain. My initial attempts targeted adding sand as a spawn point because I assumed it was bound to gravel. This was actually wrong. The spawn isn't linked to terrain at all. After scouring the files for the Coppertail I noticed it spawns in loose stones, so I studied what I thought were the loose stones to figure out how they linked to the spawning. It eventually dawned on me the thing I was looking at wasn't the loose stones, but the loose boulders which I incorrectly assumed were what the spawn point was. This misunderstanding told me exaclty why the Coppertail spawn rate is low and finicky. 

Have you ever wandered around your Vintage Story world and picked up a fortuitous piece of native copper, small stone or loose flint? You may have just eliminated a spawn point for a Coppertail egg. Over the age of a server we as players are doing exactly as the game intended,picking up small stones and using them as resources. The less of these small stones there are, the more bottlenecked Coppertail spawns are. Paired with their very specific criteria, this makes them the proverbial unicorn of the game over time.

 

But ,why does it look like the egg favors gravel biomes?

 

This is simply because not only do players hate and avoid gravel biomes but also go out of their way to create lush worldgens utilizing popular mods like Biomes,Rivers or Watersheds. This means less gravel pits spawn and if you want a Coppertail that's bad. The gravel biomes have the highest count of small loose stones,making them a gold star spawn point for the egg. Boulder and stone distribution in other biomes like the deserts or drylands is much more sparse and creates far fewer spawn points. 

Once I realized this was the case, I quickly also realized the answer was staring me in the face. The boulders that we usually leave in place while traversing the server are an abundant alternative spawn point for the Coppertail drake. We don't need to settle for drab gravel pits and dream about more water or stop picking up every small stone we see. Instead, the mod makes a simple change that turns those useless plain boulders we ignore as players into an opportunity to hatch a Coppertail.

 

Known Issues: There are no known issues with this patch. It was designed to spawn Coppertail eggs in a less picky manner and that's it. When I tested it I experienced no lag and it didn't bother the general operations of the Draconis mod or generate any crashes. There is an offchance the added spawning criteria may make the egg spawn in a weird area or mismatch the egg texture because the game isn't perfect and is reading the spawn point by purely vegetation and rainfall which isn't exclusive to deserts or any one biome.. Case in point, I've gotten four Alpine Boneknapper eggs next to my Northern redwood forest base which is certainly not a snowy peak, so the Draconis spawns aren't perfect. The core Draconis mod or the game itself may hiccup and create what looks like an issue, but it shouldn't affect your gameplay negatively outside of a weirdly placed or miscolored egg.

However, this patch was fitted to Draconis 1.5. There is a slim possibility that if the mod syntax or the file structure itself changes that it may negatively affect the pathing of the patch. If that happens it's an easy correction to change the path in the .json file and just plop in the correct path to the files for the Coppertail Drake. I am not making any promises I will remember to check against future versions of the Draconis mod. You are welcome to let me know in a comment the path is jacked up and I will update the patch when I see it, but it is also a pretty basic coding fix that's hard for you to screw up if you want to update it yourself. If you do get a crash report that mentions this patch and isn't about the pathing, please include the crash report information in your comment.

FAQ/Additonal Information

 

Can this patch be applied client-side?

No, it cannot be applied client-side for interaction changes with a multi-person server. Due to the patch needing to interact with the spawning function of the Draconis mod, it will not do anything client-side. It has to be on the server, but should also work in a single player game as well. It's a simple drag and drop to the server mods folder like any other .zip file. It should go without saying that you need at least Draconis 1.5.0 or it has nothing to actually patch. Please make sure that Draconis is in your mods and turned on with all of its dependencies installed as well or this patch will serve you no purpose. If this file is put in client-side  then it will not be able to interact with the Draconis files, so you can't quietly patch the spawns as a player on the server. It will need to be put in by your server administrator. There is no way around this and no way for me to make it client-side compatible by any means.

Will there also be habitat/spawn expansion for the other three dragon types added to this patch?

No, I am currently not planning on doing any patches for the other dragons as it doesn't seem to be as big an issue finding them in the world and their spawns don't suffer as much from modded worldgen issues or a lack of a sparse asset.

Will you be adding other alternate spawn bindings besides boulders?

No, I am currently not considering adding extra  alternatives besides boulders. I want the Coppertail egg to be more accessible, but I want to retain the experience the Draconis developer intended for it. It is more QOL and feels organic to the vanilla goals of the mod to have the egg spawn in rocks. The goal of the patch isn't to flood every environment with Coppertail Drakes to make them easier to find or more abundant. It's to add an organic extension to their spawn zones. The fun of the Draconis mod is the hunt for the egg. Coincidentally though, I'm not your mother and if you add to the spawn friendly assets in the .json then you do you. This patch is intended for people that want a small QOL touch to searching for a Coppertail, so it's compact and simple without removing the excitement of hunting the eggs or making it too easy.

Will removing the patch cause issues with the Draconis mod or my game/server?

No, there should not be any residual issues if you remove the patch from your mods. All it's doing is a simple patch to one Draconis spawn condition. If you remove it then the spawn zone will simply limit back to loose stones and start passing over boulder clusters again.

Does this mod interfere with the Unofficial Drake Patch or have any ties to it?

No, this patch should not interfere with the Unofficial Drake Patch as that revolves specifically around spawning on materials from two other mods that add new sand and ore to the game. This patch should be able to go in alongside those with no issues and shouldn't interact with the Drake Patch. This patch simply utilizes a different rock which already exists in the game files to supplement less abundant loose stones in a generated world. Please be aware that if you have the Unofficial Drake Patch and see a pathing issue, it may also be coming from that mod or its tied in mods and not this patch. It is advised that with any crashes that you carefully check which mod is being cited in the crash report. Also..no, I am not in any way affiliated with the Unofficial Drake Patch. I just got sick of scouring thousands of blocks looking for gravel and decided to code a better solution for the server I'm on that met our specific needs and didn't require a new worldgen.

Will you be making more mods or making any future changes to this one?

No, I will not likely be making more mods or patches anytime soon and this patch will likely never need much updating for what it does. Barring a strong enough annoyance with a small mod issue or me having one too many Alani Nu drinks that lead to an impromptu coding adventure, I am not really a mod maker. I'm just an IT person that likes playing Vintage Story and that has a virtual animal hoarding and collection itch to scratch. I hope the patch helps some people having issues with Coppertail spawns and that there's a Coppertail Drake for every household on your server, because you can now have  a lush beautiful world,stop chasing gravel pits and turn those boring boulders into a future new friend.

Does this Affect the Biomes mod?

The best answer I can give is that it shouldn't. It's only patching the Draconis file and should not affect you using Biomes with Draconis or change the search criteria of the Biomes mod drastically. At best, the Biomes mod may change the frequency of where the boulders are utilized and maybe spawn an egg in an unexpected spot.

Does this mod use AI?

Yes, ChatGPT was used to develop the separate dragon egg,frame and Coppertail Drake drake meme template graphic assets before they were further composed and edited into the final product cover image in Canva by me. No art was stolen. it was generated freshly then made transformative in postwork. AI was also used to troubleshoot small spots of code and research coding standards and asset IDs for Vintage Story so I knew the code was corrrect. Even though I have done coding, I have limited knowledge with the .json format and wanted to make sure I understood the basic syntax fully and had the right structure to the mod file for Vintage Story to read it.All final editing, game testing.file arranging and the composition of the page here and the readme file were done by me and not an AI.If you have any issues regarding seeing creative applications using a speck of AI as a development companion tool as "slop" without considering the human contribution to that project, please familiarize yourself with the back button and feel free to not use the mod. Please do not make the mod comments toxic by making your feedback all about AI and how much you hate it. I will only be responding to comments that address the actual mod and any commentor that calls it "AI slop" because I used AI for miniscule elements will be passed over for responses. If you don't understand how AI technology actually works then I don't have time to explain it to you.