This mod adds some more crappy(and maybe silly) makeshift armor(and a couple of weapons). You won’t find any overpowered items(well, with one exception maybe), actually most items may feel underpowered under the regular conditions, assuming you have a lot of leather and no problem looting. But if you play with more hardcore settings you may find some items useful. I’ve been playing with high spawn, low loot, hordes, 16-0 cities, pk and overmap rebalance mods, and i often find myself in a situation when i’m holed up in some mansion with city all around me and all the precious leather gets spent to make more urgently needed items like funnels and waterskins, then i go looting in cloth armor, make one mistake and die. When in real life one would be able to make at least some armor from wood and plastic from the consoles, right?
The entire list of additions with my comments about item balance under the spoiler. Keep in mind, most of the armors have fragile flag to represent their makeshift nature. But wood and steel are already kinda strong, so even with this flag when i tested with a novice character you would faster die than witness ruining your armor, so as for me it’s kinda balanced.
Most items require both fabrication and tailoring(1-4 for the main skill and same or a bit less for the secondary) to unlock the recipe, and a bit of survival wits(1 skill point).
[spoiler]ARMOR
Makeshift wooden cuirass - like 2-by guards, just a bunch of boards fastened with strings. high encumbrance, low coverage, only for those who start with some melee skills.
Elaborate wooden cuirass - takes a couple of hours to craft, has lower encumbrance and higher coverage, but is thinner and gives less armor
Wooden scale suit(torso legs arms) and scale cuirass(only torso) - first one takes about 12 hours to craft, good coverage and armor, high-ish encumbrance
All wooden armors have a high weight. In some google link i read that some native tribes actually had wooden armor and it apparently was okay against clubs, stone, bone and obsidian, so it’s not completely unrealistic to have them.
Wiremail shirt, sleeves, and leggins - not a real chainmail. I had an idea from suggestions thread, but someone mentioned it would take 900 hours to craft, and even if you shorten the craft time like many items do it is still hundreds of hours.
Instead, imagine you wear a shirt\sleeve, coil the wire around yourself, then cover it again with a layer of cloth and sew it close with a couple of rows of stitches. Perfect if you found a power substation or another place with wire fence early on.
Wooden helmet - unlike wooden armors it requires some glue to craft. Average coverage for a helmet, shares all wooden flaws like weight and encumbrance, but is way better than cloth hats.
(plastic)Bottle vambraces, tin can vambraces - you get the idea. Very low coverage, also take some rags to craft, but they are probably better than nothing.
Plastic breastplate - you can craft knee\elbow pads, neoprene guards and a hard hat, but cannot make a plastic body armor? Not anymore! Breastplate sounds like a logical choice, because how would you even put on a full plastic cuirass? that’s why only 50% coverage.
Plastic sheath - same logic. a bit more encumbering than the leather sheath.
Sandbad vest - a vest with small sealed pockets filled with sand upfront. 50% coverage, good initial armor value, but impossible to repair(sand disperses when a pocket gets ripped)
Linothorax - i wonder why it wasn’t included in historical mod. A very good armor as far as makeshift armors go, made with only rags and glue, BUT you also need some beeswax to waterproof it, or it would fall apart at rain. That means either raiding hive or spending royal jelly.(or a pair of lucky honeycomb drops). Not autolearn, recipe in historical armors book.
Visored helmet - a medieval helmet, not autolearnt too. opens a visor when you activate it, uncovering eyes and mouth. This mechanic may be overpowered, but i tried nerfing it by giving this helm average armor value and non-perfect coverage.
WEAPONS
makeshift mace - when it comes to makeshift bashing weapons, it’s either low-damage clubs and crowbar or an unwieldy homewrecker, or a huge quarterstaff. This mace has the same skill requirements as the staff, has lower accuracy and dps, higher weight, but it takes only 5 volume and can be clipped to firefighter belt.
crude mace - other weapon categories have forged sword and steel spear, better-end makeshift weapons requiring just welder and no other smithing tools. I made one for bashing, comparing to homewrecker this one has a bit less damage, but +4 accuracy and lesser weight. Can be clipped too.
crude dagger - using the same logic to piercing weapons. It’s either low-damage knives or you are forced into a spear of some kind. this dagger has good dps, but shitty accuracy, weight(for a dagger) and is not usable as a tool. Too big for an ankle sheath too. Can be used as a main weapon, or a backup for spearmen.[/spoiler]
1.1 update:
[spoiler]New stuff:
Cardboard visor - as a sunglasses substitute. I thought about cardboard armor, but decided against adding it.
-too similar to bookplate and paper arm\leg guards
-must have shitty armor values, no reason to craft it instead of normal t-shirt
-it would require lots of boxes, it means you will probably come by some leather or at least rags by this point
metal skullcap - a low coverage metal cap made out of metal sheet.
metal sheet vest - like a makeshift MBR vest, it’s just a vest with 2 metal sheets sealed in pockets.
(You need some form of metal sawing to craft those metal items.)
blanket poncho - blanket with a hole for the head and a belt. Lower encumbrance, coverage and warmth.
Rebalance:
Wooden armors no longer require a drill to craft. I realized drills are way less common and harder to craft(smithing tools or a rare electronics book) than i thought.
Wooden scale armor renamed to wooden laminar armor(meaning it is made from thin wooden planks with grooves, instead of drilled holes).
If you manage to find a drill though, you can craft the scale version with a bit less encumbrance and more coverage.
Makeshift vests rebalanced. 50% coverage was just not good enough, one would rather wear a light jacket just for more coverage. Also, every vest has it’s own niche now.
Sandbag vest - it wasn’t just working as intended. Low coverage and high armor meant it never actually got shredded.
Now it has lowest armor, lowest encumbrance, highest weight and coverage and is REALLY fragile.
Plastic breastplate - still lowest coverage and weight, average armor and encumbrance. Now has some environment protection, should help with acid barfs.
Metal sheet vest - highest armor and encumbrance, average weight and coverage.
+some minor tweaks to cost and requirements.[/spoiler]
1.2 update:
[spoiler]wooden mask - as per request. decent protection and coverage for a primitive item, but 9 encumbrance means wearing almost any other mouth\eyes item will start causing penalties.
wooden pike - long reach weapon carved from a log. a non-smithing and weaker awlpike alternative, this one is mostly to keep NPCs from harm’s way.
lowered some crafting requirements
lowered encumbrance value of most armor by 1-2 points
visored helm recipe fixed for a new chiseling quality
once i manage to craft or find a decent armor piece for a normal slot, i found myself using plastic breastplate for outer mostly for it’s acid protection. but i don’t want to remove that feature or reduce coverage again, i guess i’m going to keep buffing other armor types instead to give an alternative. that’s kinda the piont of the mod, to give alternative equipment choices.[/spoiler]
1.3 update
tire arm/leg guards - made from a bike/car wheel. low-average encumbrance and armor, but has some acid resist.
patchwork pants - for some reason crafting pants is rocket science. the only pants you can craft without recipes are leather pants at 4(!) skill or cargo pants at 3, if you manage to dissasemble some and learn it. now you can craft some primitive pants to wear instead of shorts.
wire holster - from ‘100 deadly skills’ manual. the recipe is in some gun and survival books. made from a single wire, waist slot, 0 encumbrance when empty but gives some when full, like a chest rig or waterskin(1-2 depending on a handgun size), slower to draw from.
telescopic spear - a weapon that lucky survivor should be able to craft at day two, providing some utility. 3 fabrication, 2 melee to craft, it takes some tools and springs(tip: dissasemble something). so, what’s the point of this weapon?
it’s intended to be used mostly as a sword(collapsed). this way it has a bit higher damage than crude sword. the spear form on the other hand has lowish damage for a spear(stone spear tier), but otherwise there would be no reason to swap forms.
I playtested this weapon for a while with a lucky toolbox drop and i really like how it worked out. chopping weapons are superior and it’s nice to start training one early, but spears provide some priceless utility with reaching. this weapon provides you two-in-one without having to swap a weapon for 300 turns. crude sword still has less weight and knife spear - more damage, so this weapon is balanced and has some drawbacks. swapping forms takes 60 turns, sword form also fits in sword scabbard.
makeshift raft - if you played some wilderness starts you probably had this situation when you saw something awesome on the other side of a river but you had no way to cross it, because building a boat with a boat mod takes a bunch of 2by4’s plus about 200 nails. now you can make a raft with heavy sticks tied with a cattail stalks or ropes. coded as a folding vehicle, so you can’t dissasemble it. 2 fabrication 1 survival to craft, you should be able to grind it in wilderness no problemo.
IMPORTANT NOTES ABOUT RAFT:
This one is using boats mod, obviously. If for some reason you don’t use it - there would be an error upon starting a game. Either enable boat mod, or delete mod_items, mod_vehicles, mod_recipe_other jsons.
some items should spawn in museums
opening/closing a visor now takes some turns too
some other minor fixes i don’t remember about because i made this update a couple of weeks ago
1.4 update
[spoiler]updated mod for current experimentals, with filament and cordage usage for most crafts, some rebalanced to make crafts a bit easier
buffed many items for a bit
it autoenables boat mod if you didnt have it so it should produce errors no more if you didn’t have it
however i added one melee technique from pk rebalance mod for a new item, i did not use autoenable because this mod is huge and in-game version is outdated anyways
the usual stuff stands, you will get an error, skipping it is probably k, or you can open melee json and delete “heavy blow” from the maul
NEW STUFF
Stone maul - a homewrecker but for actual combat(no to hit bonus or penalty, has 2 offensive techniques). Stamina ineffective to fight regular zeds, however using it you can kill zeds you simply couldn’t with primitive weapons(like soldiers)
balanced by the fact that it has higher weight and volume, takes time to craft about the same as the stone axe.
Wicker shield - self-explanatory. low-encumbrance shield from cordage, takes time to craft.
Dugout canoe - takes way more time and tools to craft(stone axe, knife and adze are enough, you also have to fell a tree for a log) than the raft, BUT it has 2 wooden boxes for storage. Beware, it has a weight limit or it will be too heavy for paddles. I tested it for a bit, its somewhere between 80-90 kgs. Enough to ferry your stuff, not enough to effectively ferry vehicles, so it’s kinda working as intended
[/spoiler]
DOWNLOAD LINK - https://www.dropbox.com/s/tjdyfihg68oe0w8/More_Makeshift_Stuffv1.4.rar?dl=0
I’m a Dungeon Crawl and Pen and Paper rpg fan and I still don’t get all the references sometimes, simply because there are so many variations of stuff by now.