I live in a village. I own an axe, a hatchet, a chisel, a chainsaw and many other tools. I have two main knives, Mora Basic 511 and Opinel No. 7. I know that it is almost impossible to work with blunt tools. It is also dangerous. For me, the issue of tools sharpening is the most concerning thing connected with Cataclysm. Everlasting tools are irritating. What is more, they contrast with all other realistic elements of gameplay.
What is my suggestion?
Players should be able to sharpen their tools with four sharpening tools:
coarse whetstone which provides us with sharpness quality of 1
medium whetstone which provides us with sharpness quality of 2
fine whetsone which provides us with sharpness quality of 3
hone (a leather strap, a ceramic rod) which provides us with sharpness quality of 4
What is very important, players should be capable of using a rock or a file as a sharpening tool that acts as a coarse whetstone.
All sharpening tools should spawn at houses, lumber mills, butcherās shops, cabins, sport shops etc.
Tools should become blunt faster after a hard use (butchering large game, chopping many trees, cutting ropes or cardboards etc) and slower after an ordinary, everyday use (cooking, fighting, simple crafting etc).
I am aware that it may seem tedious, annoying, debilitating etc but sharpening tools is an ESSENTIAL part of humansā life. Native Americans were not eager to use their old bone and stone knives after testing iron knives. Edge retention of those iron knives was astonishing for them.
I know that it is a crazy idea but I believe that it is necessary since all other elements of Cataclysm are so realistic
There are several features like this that are not included. The problem isnāt realism, but tedium. Before a feature like this gets mainlined there would need to be a good way to automate the sharpening such that the player doesnāt need to fiddle with sharpeners CONSTANTLY.
Kevin has said that he will probably add restroom and hygiene needs at some point once it becomes un-tedious by something like a build-a-routine macro is created to allow cleaning, bathroom etcā¦ needs to be recorded and auto done as needed via a few key-presses, similar to how sewing currently is.
blade sharpening strikes me as something that would fall pretty firmly in that category.
Hell if I know exactly where. He says a lot about intended features when he gets exasperated at people asking for the same nonsensical feature 50 times. Iāll see if I can find it
Edit: Quote Hunt:
Iāve said the same thing before so, at least Iām consistent and it was sometime before Jan 18.
And yet we have gun cleaning that takes an hour per gun regardless of the amount of fouling, rather than the time being a factor of the amount of fouling like it realistically is. It doesnāt take me an hour to take down my 1911, swab the bore and lube the moving parts after fifty rounds downrange.
Well, weapons in use do get damaged and their attack values reduced, which basically is them āturning bluntā. Using some parts and a hammer (ā¦and a forgeā¦) to fix them back up seems realistic enough (if one of the āmany other tools [you have]ā is a scythe, youāll know what iām talking about; if not: (simply put) hitting the edge of the blade at the right angle with a hammer is a regular way to āsharpenā it).
The question could be now, should tools take damage (extremly low chance*, taking skill and stats into account and maybe graded by your suggested scale) if they are used in a recipe (similar to if youāre smashing something with them)? That would make it less tedious, but still having an impact and resulting in a risk of loosing a tool if poorly managed.
Iām not up to date, but isnāt there a mod that uses something like a sharpening stone or other tool to reinforce weapons up to two times? Maybe using sharpening equipment like this would be better, leaving it to the player if they want to run with the chores of sharpening and therefore reinforcing their tools, or run the risk of damaging it?
Also, letās not forget that there are electric sharpening tools, which could make such a process much faster.
*In my kitchen, there are steak knives older then 10 years, maybe even 15, regulary used, handled poorly (dishwasher) and never seen a sharpening tool. Although starting to show wear, they still cut - be it food or my hands. Iām not a chef, donāt have to cook for 100 people a day, but neither does our apocalyptic survivor, soā¦ It seems fair that the tools last a long time.
I have a scythe and I use it often during summer. The process of āhitting the edge of the blade at the right angle with a hammerā is extremely difficult. This skill is forgotten / dead in my area. One can do it but it is likely that he will ruin his scythe. What is more, a scythe is usualy sold blunt as it is a HUGE amount of work to sharpen it. BTW did you ever try to cut grass with a blunt scythe? Good luck with that
Thatās sad to hear/read. I had to consult a dictionary to find the english wordā¦ In hindsight, it would have been faster to just google itā¦ Peening was the word I was looking for.
Not if done properly. Itās like saying āDonāt use the gas pedal, youāll drive your car into a wall!ā. Of course, I agree, without anyone to pass on the skill of peening, the risk of damaging the blade is high.
Justā¦ why? I mean, I get it, thereās the danger of getting hurt, butā¦ itās a tool! Most tools can hurt you or someone else in some way or another. Where I live, they are sold (mostly) sharp, with a protective hull made of some type of plastic. But why would it get sold because it takes long to sharpen it? Or did I missread/-understand that sentence?
Yes, thatās why it getās peened firstā¦ it does shorten the process of sharpening it by a lot! For other readers of this thread who donāt know what we are talking about; peening is the process of āflatten and thinning outā the edge of a (scythe) blade. It improves its cutting property and reduces the ammount of material youāll have to grind away to sharpen it. Compared to how you can cut through some/most materials with only a thin wire, even though a wire has no cutting edge to it.
No, because I donāt have a blunt scythe. And again, like Iāve said about my steak knives, unless you misstreat it, accidentally hit a lot of rocks or use it a lot (or participate in contests), you donāt have to resharpen it too often.
Check minute 18:48. In Poland it still works like this. Second thing: you do not have to hit a lot of rocks to dull a scythe. A small molehill that is hidden in long grass will be enough to do it. You hit it and it is done
Ah, yes. About half an hour ago it dawned on me what you meant. Our store-bought scythes are mass produced, so not sharpening them would make no sense, unless itās for safety reasons - or they are made by an āevilā company who likes to see their customers sufferā¦ But yeah, handmade is a different story.
Until now, Iāve hit a few trees and -stumps, the ground and once even a metal wire sticking out of the ground. Still cuts fine though.
I guess thereās some difference in the used material. In the video youāve posted, it shows how the steel gets hardened and tempered, soā¦ I donāt know what it could be. Maybe different carbon content? If I saw it correctly, they layered steel and iron together.
I have a hard time to figure out what the scythes here are made of - it just says āsteel, (oil)hardened, peened, anti-rust painted and sharpenedā in the description. For one, broad and heavy blade it even suggests to use it on āthick grass, scrubs and slightly lignified plantsā. Soā¦ thereās that.
'Not sure how the situation in New England is on that topic.
But again, maybe integrating this idea into the already existing damage and repair system would make more sense, than to add another system on top of an already quite complex game. Or create a mod for it, although Iām really not a fan of doing that in this caseā¦
its still hand made though, so it can be expected to be lesser than a manufactured blade, due to how exact the metal being used, techniques used which are impossible in hand made, and then precision of the forging itself -so long as the manufacturer is going for quality, not pure cost cutting
I also would like to see tools degrade after alot of use, aware already that if your using your tools as weapons they will suffer damage, but as far as Iām aware the durability of a tool has no impact on crafting or constructing.
