Taxidermy derail Re: Needfull things (simple additions to improve the game)

[Azrad]

Maybe just for fun: taxidermy. Come one, don’t you wanna have a zombie hulk on display for your home?

[troll_from_behind]

Oh yeas, need trophies!
A base surrounded by heads on spikes just feels right.
If only it would keep the NPCs out…

[Litppunk]

Heads on spikes surrounding base to ward out all but the most strong willed…or rock brained NPC’s? +1
setting them up far enough out mixed with “keep out” signs should make it so that you can happily shoot any NPC that comes into your “turf” Finally we can all be that crazy old coot in the apocalypse. “GET OFF MY LAWN YOU DAM SKULL MUNCHERS AND WHIPPERSNAPPERS!” I approve of this with every fiber of my being.

[Azrad]

Or the head of a moose to show that you mean business.

[Litppunk]

OH. different heads have different deterrent factors. Love it. And theres nothing like having a stuffed bear in attack position in your living room to jump scare both you and your survivor until you remember that you PUT it there. Characters that have a hard time laughing at themselves might get annoyed with stuffed bear and its jump scares though.

[Valpo]

Except that bears aren t dangerous to midgame cata chars and therefor will not scare you after a day or 2.

[Litppunk]

yea but it would still startle and or cause flight or fight response… fight after day 2 or so. But still a reaction. OH Shit I gate kill that bear in my house! oh… right already did. Silly me.

[Valpo]

Make it so it depends on a perception or memory check. if you remember or see that its dead already you won t be startled.

[Litppunk]

relative to how close you are when you first spot it. so you walk through door and its one tile away facing towards you it still scares you a couple of times early on.

[Valpo]

If you critically fail your preception check you think its a real enemy and are able to attack it for a few turns till you realise its fake destroyed it.

[Litppunk]

failed perception check but successful dexterity check results in character auto snap attacking it with favorite attack (i.e. if you always use throwing character throws, if punching punches etc.) but now we are straying into bad ideas thread territory…yet this just feels right. Message “the stuffed bear frightened you and instincts took over, still a nice hit though” on successful hit and “the stuffed bear frightened you and instincts took over, to bad you can’t even hit an unmoving target” on a miss corresponding moral bonus/penalty for feeling good/bad about your prospects for surviving in this world.

[Azrad]

Or make it so that the stuffed bear (or human) makes dumb zombies think it’s real, and attack them instead of you. Maybe booby trap it as well. And have something to make noise to lure them to the stuffed whatever.

But mostly for the aesthetic factor. A hall filled with stuffed jabberwocks to give that “don’t screw with me” feel. Might go well with red carpeting.

[Litppunk]

the red carpeting is mandatory, but there are so many potential uses for stuffed animals, and even more in aesthetics category.

[Azrad]

Maybe a morale boost, perhaps? Pride of being able to hunt down whatever you got stuffed, or somesuch. Could be handy to help reduce morale loss while reading through certain books. Maybe less gains in morale after a while, requiring the player to hunt down more things to stuff.

[Litppunk]

that too. ok so potential uses off the top of my head for taxidermy.
-several methods of moral boost
-ability to ward off most NPC’s
-funny messages when your character gets scared/reacts to them in some way
-traps to get zombies/other stupid creatures to attack stuffed creature and then get blowup/trapped/whatever
-distractions if you are no longer in sight, more effective if moves/scented

maybe some scarecrow type contraptions could be done to make low cost variants of many of these purposes. …‘Motorized scarecrow’s v-12 engine is destroyed by zombie hulk’… yes… this seems increasingly like something that should be done.

hmm a farming update…
birds eat the seeds/plants of crops in which case…
Scarecrow & taxidermies could also be used to keep birds from eating all the crops…as quickly due to ‘avoidance’ of the stuffed things

hmmm more on birds… random bird swarms much like zombie swarms, but separate option.

“a large flock of crows flies in to the SouthWest, a second glance shows that not all of them are acting in concert and seem more interested in eating there friends then seeds and grubs”

“that flock of ____ sure are making a lot of racket, they might attract unwanted attention”

“the flock of sparrows suddenly take off in a half organized spiral and fly SouthWest, good riddance”

[Muaddib]

I’m gonna decorate my base with chickenwalker-heads on spikes.

Now that’s a “Fuck off or I will annihilate everything you ever loved” sign.

[Pthalocy]

What skills would be used for taxidermy? I assume the same one that allows you to craft pelts into useable leather. What would it require? I am thinking you would have to do it in two or three steps. You’d need to (a)pply a cutting tool to an unbutchered/unpulped corpse and select a new option to attempt prepping it for taxidermy, I think. It’d basically be a slower butchering process that leaves a pulped corpse(or destroys the meat?) and an unprocessed whole hide (fresh). You could cut up the whole hide to salvage pelt scraps if you changed your mind.

I’m thinking next step would require something to preserve the hide. No idea if this would take a lot of time or what. Third step would involve a sewing kit, filler materials like rags, straw, fifty billion cottonballs, etc, and if it’s something big like a bear, some 2x4’s or heavy sticks to sturdy it up.

This makes it sound simultaneously feasible and tedious, wow.

At least mounting heads on pikes would require nothing more than something’s head and a pointy stick. Those would rot over time, but instead of becoming inedible they just become more demoralizing to everybody but the person who placed it on the map (could recycle trap code to place). My only issue with that would be adding a function to get heads from dead mobs, as this would technically be applicable to npc’s as well. I’m significantly less interested in enabling players to decapitate npc’s post-mortem, even if they are terrible lighter-eating goobs.

[Grandpuh_Ty]

New weapon: The Head Banger

Human Head + Canvas Sack.

[Azrad]

Hmm. Can’t we just use the whole, unbutchered corpse as a crafting recipe? Like crafting a severed head will use up the whole corpse, or something like that?

[Pthalocy]

Hmm. Can’t we just use the whole, unbutchered corpse as a crafting recipe? Like crafting a severed head will use up the whole corpse, or something like that?

That would be preferable to adding yet another function for knives.