[NEWBIE] Experience trying to retrieve dropped quarterstaff

Game Talk The Bunker
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My first game, my first character, bionic prepper. Survived the first day, huddling in the emergency shelter, good so far, not counting the occasional zombie bashing his way in, particularly the one that went inside along with the window frame, leaving a pile of rubble.

After whacking the intruder into submission with my quarterstaff, I go and stand on the rubble pile and sure enough, he brought a friend. I drop my quarterstaff, pull out the crossbow and send two bolts his way. Done and done, but my quarterstaff seems to have vanished.

Some looking around the wikis and it looks like it got lost in the rubble. Okay, fair enough, I’m a prepper, I quickly build a makeshift digging stick. No dice though, apparently to recover my quarterstaff I need a wooden shovel, something with digging of 2. Okay…

So I get the planks, nails, extend my cybernetics and… my bionics are insufficient to craft a shovel - I need a wood chiselling implement. I guess it kind of makes sense a chisel wouldn’t be in my cybernetics, I wouldn’t want to bash rocks against my extended, expensive bionics, although this IS a SHOVEL, I’ve carved out a servicable spoon and bowl with a cheapo mora knife myself and I’m a survivalist lvl1 at best, but whatever, maybe my character is a perfectionist.

What do I need for a chisel? Sand? Oh sure no problem I just need to… find a riverbank… which there aren’t any in sight from the top of the radio tower… or raid the town center playground.

Realism is something this game seems to do very very well, but “To retrieve the quarterstaff you dropped on a rubble pile you will need to raid the city center to smash the sandbox to get the sand you need for a chisel” sounds like Kings Quest Sierra adventure game logic. Something about this chain isn’t right.

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Well, this happens because the game is very well still in an “Alpha” phase and does not have different layers for rubble. It does not know if that what you’ve dropped was on top or below.
I’m confident that one day this will change, as well as balance added to these things.

Until then, you’ve learned one important lesson: Don’t drop stuff on rubble.

It’s probably cheaper/faster to just craft another quarterstaff…

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My character has a sentimental attachment to that specific quarterstaff and will accept no substitute - in reality I feel like the game is cheesing the player, and I’ll try going the hard way, however many shallow ditches that entails, shallow ditch loot being random.

If I understand correctly, gating craftable rubble-removing shovels behind (fairly painful to obtain) chisels is an experimental feature, as of E stable stone shovels (of digging 2) were sufficient and easy to craft.

I lack the context for the wider balance change of stone shovel removal and have only a narrow view of this specific scenario - but in this narrow view, it has regressed from somewhat gamey but reasonable to silly.

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the problem is that wood chisels need survival 4 which tends to be achieved noticeably latter in the game then when you want normally want a shovel (fortifying by digging pits for example). This leads to an awkward period where progress is hindered by the lack of a shovel. One solution I implemented in a mod (simple additions) gives a recipe that has you carving a wooden shovel out of a log (similar to carving wooden clogs).

edit: forgot an “a”
edit: specifically my recipe requires a fabrication of 3, wood sawing of 1, and a cutting tool

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Well, on the plus side, shovels (and entrenching tools) are fairly common items found in a wide variety of places, including several outside the city, so finding one shouldn’t be too hard.