A few more wilderness tools

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

I’m seeing in the .5 changelog that a bunch of craftable fur clothing has been added, really rounding out the amount of things that can be made without supplies from town. With the stone tools, and even a stone pot, I’m only seeing a couple of things missing: some sort of bone-saw for doing the stuff that normally requires the surprisingly rare wood saw, and a means of making fire without lighters or matches. It’s kind of silly that I can make a stone pot to cook with without any manufactured materials, but I have to regularly go into town to get the means for producing fire to use said stone pot, where I could also just as easily get a real pot. It seems like there’s been a lot of things added for survivalist characters, but the ability to create fire is more fundamental than most and is still missing.

EDIT - A friend just suggested something else: ropes from plant fibre. This gives access to some of the better constructed walls and such as a survivalist in a believable way.

2

Looking at Wikipedia, it seems like the plausible firestarters would be a bow drill, or a fire piston. The fire piston sounds like it might be easier to use, but it’s also not widely known, and I’m not sure it would be all that obvious. Could be a good recipe to be learnt by tinkering, though.

The bow drill, on the other hand, is fairly obvious and has passed into common knowledge, so would be appropriate for auto-learning. I’m thinking I’d make it a difficulty 2-3 recipe, since it might be harder to get it right. I also think I’ll make it have a success rate that depends on your survival skill, because they’re tricky to use. Also probably make it a fair bit slower than a lighter or matches.

3

I like stuff that lets you be more self-sufficient in the wilderness. So I definitely support this kind of thing.

I really hope Tool Quality gets added in at some point. Stuff that’s hacked together in the wilderness shouldn’t be quite as good as machine-built steel tools, etc. That’s my only gripe with hand-built stuff right now. Usually you’re tacking together weird, imperfect materials to make something that is just as good as something you got at the hardware store. It’s a little weird.

4

If it were me, I’d make a bow drill require 1 or 2 survival, use sinew and wood to craft, and have only a small handful of charges. It’s a solution for a truly survivalist character that looks at town and then heads the other way, but not a particularly good one, much like the other survivalist items (except for the bone needle: it’s a sewing kit with zero weight).

5

For strings/ropes: there’s a bug where unloading a sewing kit/bone needle always gives thread, which can be upcrafted into ropes. Haven’t crafted much, but at survival 3 you can get 50-100 sinew per larger animal (bears and dears give most), which when combined with throwing rocks/javelins, is pretty easy.

6

That’s quite close to how I ended up coding them: 2 survival to craft, requiring 2 skewers and 1 6 inch string (which can be made from 50 sinew in the dev version), and has 20 charges. Each attempt has only a limited chance of success - 50% at 3 Survival.

7

That’s quite close to how I ended up coding them: 2 survival to craft, requiring 2 skewers and 1 6 inch string (which can be made from 50 sinew in the dev version), and has 20 charges. Each attempt has only a limited chance of success - 50% at 3 Survival.[/quote]

sounds good to me, would the rate of success ever reach 100, or near 100 at say, 6+?

8
Fire pistons and other wood based firestarters

Stick and groove.
Early game fire starter.

Pros
+makes fire…that is it
Cons
-low chance of doing so
-wears out or breaks easily
-takes a long time to start a fire

Bow drill.
Moderate game fire starter

Pros
+faster than S&G
+Lasts longer
+Slightly less time to make a fire

-Still a low chance of making a fire
-Still wears out quickly
-Still takes a long time to start a fire

Fire piston.
A late game fire starter.

-High skill needed to make.
-Horribly hard to craft. High failure rate. Seriously? Air tight seal?
-Horribly low chance of starting a fire. Due to tinder needing to be emptied while still burning.

+Light though not weightless
+++++Never wears out.
+++++Never runs out.

Any one ever made/used one?
The wiki says it needs to be air tight…

9

I haven’t run the exact numbers (it’s based on a set of dice rolls, and I forget the relevant math), but the chance does get progressively better with higher skill levels, yes. It won’t quite reach 100% in a normal game, but it should get pretty reliable if you’ve got a 6+ Survival.

10

[quote=“TheRealTenman, post:8, topic:1027”]Fire piston.
A late game fire starter.

-High skill needed to make.
-Horribly hard to craft. High failure rate. Seriously? Air tight seal?
-Horribly low chance of starting a fire. Due to tinder needing to be emptied while still burning.

+Light though not weightless
+++++Never wears out.
+++++Never runs out.

Any one ever made/used one?
The wiki says it needs to be air tight…[/quote]
From what I’m reading online the way to create the airtight seal was simply to wrap twine, string, or leather around the end to make a gasket, and then grease the whole thing to ensure that it slides easily. It seems like the majority of the difficulty in crafting one wasn’t creating the gasket, but rather having an accurate enough of a bore so that it slid straight and easily (along with ensuring that your material didn’t crack or split). Personally from the videos I’ve watched I’d set the chance of fire higher then either the stick and groove or the bow drill, since all you have to do with a properly working fire drill is to dump the created ember out onto your tinderbed (it appears to be even better then the bow drill since it generates a slightly larger ember).

Really I’d put most of the difficulty in a fire pump in the crafting, since you need to be rather good with a bore to get the proper hold and then a very good carver to get the proper ramrod. Also you may want to consider having the fire pump require rags to charge it at a 1:10 or 1:20 ratio since it appears that most people who use fire pistons use burnt cloth to make their starting ember.

11

I suppose finding flint and having a steel item of some sort might be too much to ask?

12

There’s a bigger question here: SHOULD there be enough tools and things where a person can survive without going into cities? I’d definitely agree on having more plentiful firestarters if someone wanted to survive as long as possible, but should they be craftable from ‘normal’ things? I almost think maybe we need stronger and weird enemies, and you have to use those for crafting, that way there’s more of an omnipresent danger, even if that danger is forgetting to repair your clothes after bashing ten enemies to death. Like a stone golem or some such thing could provide the flint for flint and steel (metal golem anyone?), and although a bow-drill is a realistic idea, it’d just be way too easy. Maybe we could smash up blobs and get some flammable jelly, which could then be used to reload a zippo lighter. For balance sake the jelly could have weight, but needs to be cooked into jelly fuel or something which doesn’t have weight.

If there was flint underground which could then dissembled with a hammer to provide flint chips, it’d give both a fletching ingredient AND an ingredient for flint and steel or lighters. Lighter takes scrap, a welder, jelly fuel, and flint, but the flint and steel just takes steel and flint but lasts less or takes a lot more time and may even require kindling. One uses mechanics the other survival.

Also when can we get animal fats?? It’d be great to make candles and torches from em, and use those to light things

13

While I understand the concern about balance, this suggestion is more about “finishing” a playstyle that already has considerable support and will have still more when .5 comes out with more fur clothing. It’s not like fire-production is rare in normal play. If I want to spend a considerable amount of time in the wilderness, I can get a single cheap lighter from the first house I come to and be set for months, but that just doesn’t feel right for the archetypal fur-clad, stone-tool-using mountain man, does it?

14

[quote=“pingpong, post:12, topic:1027”]There’s a bigger question here: SHOULD there be enough tools and things where a person can survive without going into cities? I’d definitely agree on having more plentiful firestarters if someone wanted to survive as long as possible, but should they be craftable from ‘normal’ things? I almost think maybe we need stronger and weird enemies, and you have to use those for crafting, that way there’s more of an omnipresent danger, even if that danger is forgetting to repair your clothes after bashing ten enemies to death. Like a stone golem or some such thing could provide the flint for flint and steel (metal golem anyone?), and although a bow-drill is a realistic idea, it’d just be way too easy. Maybe we could smash up blobs and get some flammable jelly, which could then be used to reload a zippo lighter. For balance sake the jelly could have weight, but needs to be cooked into jelly fuel or something which doesn’t have weight.

If there was flint underground which could then dissembled with a hammer to provide flint chips, it’d give both a fletching ingredient AND an ingredient for flint and steel or lighters. Lighter takes scrap, a welder, jelly fuel, and flint, but the flint and steel just takes steel and flint but lasts less or takes a lot more time and may even require kindling. One uses mechanics the other survival.

Also when can we get animal fats?? It’d be great to make candles and torches from em, and use those to light things[/quote]

The real problem with survival is that game is too plentiful, too easy to catch, and too nutritious.

In real life you cannot survive off of rabbits and squirrels. You will die of starvation, partly because rabbits and squirrels have no fat and your body can’t metabolize that much lean protein. You have to have some fat sources, especially if you’re living a high-calorie outdoor lifestyle. At the very least gathering fruits requires walking.

On the other hand things like nuts might not be that hard to find given the right area and season. But this is all way beyond the question of “how hard should it be to make fire” and “what enemies should roam the wilderness.”

Personally I think we should have certain monsters that only come out at night, and otherwise sleep in the trees. Like giant demon owls or something.

15

[quote=“grisamentum, post:14, topic:1027”]The real problem with survival is that game is too plentiful, too easy to catch, and too nutritious.

In real life you cannot survive off of rabbits and squirrels. You will die of starvation, partly because rabbits and squirrels have no fat and your body can’t metabolize that much lean protein. You have to have some fat sources, especially if you’re living a high-calorie outdoor lifestyle. At the very least gathering fruits requires walking.

On the other hand things like nuts might not be that hard to find given the right area and season. But this is all way beyond the question of “how hard should it be to make fire” and “what enemies should roam the wilderness.”

Personally I think we should have certain monsters that only come out at night, and otherwise sleep in the trees. Like giant demon owls or something.[/quote]
+1 for giant demon owls.

I would like to see creatures and animals potentially mutating over time so that the game gets more dangerous/surreal as it goes on, maybe using the existing mutations. A wolf with wings that can leap and glide at you, a giant rabbit with tentacles and a carapace, causing your crossbow bolt/arrow to merely piss it off…
There are many and varied combinations of FUN, as well as convenient bad mutations such as a slow deer you can walk up to and kill with little effort. I’d suggest a better chance of more mutations, or how likely mutations are as time goes on, maybe based on proximity to things like labs/radiation.