Is this a planned feature?
As it stands, I can get a huge pile of leather and fur, and not be able to make anything without heading into civilization to find a limited resource that I can’t create elsewhere.
I’m not saying it should be possible to make cargo pants and trenchcoats out of sinew, but survival crafts such as fur clothes shouldn’t require me to scavenge for thread.
The majority of tailoring recipes don’t actually require any thread - it’s entirely possible to load sewing kits or bone needles with sinew, and use that for tailoring. I think the main exception are those few recipes that actually require string, and they’re pretty rare or specialized (no idea if chitinous gear should be made entirely wilderness-craftable, though).
Personally, I’d like to see some way of making bowstrings that can be done using wilderness components, though. Maybe a slightly lower-quality longbow?
If it still hasn’t been “fixed”, you can create thread by loading sewing kits/bone needles with sinew/plant fibre, and then unloading them: the sinew/plant fibre magically becomes thread.
Last time I did that was in a build right before the official 0.3 build went out, so I’m not too sure if it’s still there.
It’s an exploit, but yeah. If you’re kind of desperate you can go for that.
That’s already implemented in 0.4 pre. You can use sinews or plant fibre instead.
But TBH you’ll probably find 3ft strings (or bigger, then decompose it) before you get enough of that. Unless you have the patience (and skill) to kill a few deers, are crazy enough to fight some bears or are lucky/unlucky enough to be attacked by dozens of wolves and cougars or spawn close to a triffid grove.
If we’re going to do wilderness survival we should probably add flax plants. Flax is used to make linen. It’s relatively easy to process in a primitive form.
You’d be looking for dogbane, not flax. Flax is middle eastern, doesn’t grow wild in New England, and is pretty much inferior to dogbane ayway for the stuff we’re doing.
Velvet leaf, cattails, milkweed, and the bark of some trees work well, too, esp. since dogbane is a mostly-spring sort of thing, but that’s probably more detailed than we want our game to go.
Have a generic “fibrous plant” that grew commonly in, say, swamps (and maybe far less commonly in forests) would be nice, I think. Basically add cattails and the various swamp milkweeds to the game as a primary fiber source.
Finally! A reason to visit swamps!
Note: Velvet Leaf isn’t native, but it’s certainly found here now. It was actually brought over as a fiber crop, and promptly became an incredibly common weed.