Make getting water from melted snow more intuitive

[Wasteland Watcher]

A friend of mine who just started playing said it took a while before he figured how to melt snow. 

Perhaps at loading screens tips could be added to tell people how to perform basic functions.

Or maybe add a short Help Section with some simple instructions.

 

Also, in every person's inventory there ought to be a 1L aluminum pot that weighs 100 or 200 g. 

 And everybody should start out with two 1 L bottles of water. The bottles are recycled when empty so we have to have bottles to keep water in. 

 You can find empty bottles to use, or keep bottles to use after you drink the water from them.

 Of course, they come at a very minor weight cost. 

Edit: Main reason I suggest having actual bottles as a necessity is because there needs to be some factor to limit the amount of water we can make from melted snow. Being able to just have 30 days of water on hand at all times takes away from the "danger" of trying to survive The Long dark.

Cheers

[TLD Survivalist]

+1 to more intuitive snow melting and recyclable water bottles

[Axtos]

The problem with this "ghost bottles" aren't new. For me, i don't need this static bottles because it's make the game not really more realistic but more complicated. With a too realistic eye... how melt you the snow? In the bottles? How do you become the snow inside? Realistic you need also a metal pot for this. There are many things in the game are much more "unrealistic".

+1 for the small tutorial. A few basic tips at the begin avoid manny dead's by new players.

[TLD Survivalist]

The bottle thing could just be a stalker only feature or something of the sort

Plus you find metal pots all the time or at least pans... Make pots interactable and able to pick up and carry around harvest for scrap etc

 

[Wasteland Watcher]

@Axtos a one liter pot could easily have a lip for pouring melted snow from pot into bottle after melting it. I'm not saying we'd have to manually pour anything, but what I am saying is that making bottles-in-inventory necessary for storing water will pretty severely limit how much water we can have in storage at a time. And this is realistic.

@TLD Survivalist I'd really like to see bottles-as-a-necessity in Voyageur as I'm a Voyageur player.

 

Main reason I suggest having actual bottles as a necessity is because let's face it: it's completely ridiculous to start the game, accumulate 5 (or more) cedar/fir logs, and then make 30 L of water on day one. I personally don't make any more than 10L at a time and still... it feels like a cheesy exploit and definitely takes away from the "desperate feeling" of the situation of being lost in the Canadian wilderness.

I actually got this idea for needing to find bottles from a friend of mine who started playing over the weekend. He said how "it's stupid that you magically get bottles from nowhere to store all your water."

I happen to agree with him on that 100%.

[cekivi]

Then again, there's containers everywhere that you can fill with water. The plastic bottles are just convenient to avoid a lot of fiddling. Personally, I'd keep the bottles and just make the players find a pot or mess tin. The amount they could melt at one time would be limited by the size and quality of their equipment. See below for what I mean.

 

[Wasteland Watcher]

On June 6, 2016 at 3:14 AM, cekivi said:

Then again, there's containers everywhere that you can fill with water. The plastic bottles are just convenient to avoid a lot of fiddling. Personally, I'd keep the bottles and just make the players find a pot or mess tin. The amount they could melt at one time would be limited by the size and quality of their equipment. See below for what I mean.

 

 Interesting article, thanks for the link :-) 

 Anything to add a little bit of realism is welcome in my book. 

 For the sake of simplicity I was thinking a small, 1L pot could be a permanent fixture in everyone's inventory (unloseable) to make them always be able to boil water. 

 Of course , water could be stored in cans, etc but could not be carried around: No saran wrap or rubber bands, and even if we had that, cans would still be a terrible choice for water containers. 

 That's why am so enthusiastic about recyclable plastic bottles

 

 Edit: I just wanted to add a minor note that in my games I only boil  1 L  at a time and then repeat.  Does not take much longer in the current interface at all doing it that way, and for my own personal sake adds a tiny bit of realism. 

 Provided the weather's good I start my fires with the magnifying glass and don't make any more than 4 L of potable water a day, up to my (self-imposed) 15 liter limit. 

[vitamin]

Yeah, I completely agree with this. Water is easy to acquire in this game, in unlimited quantities. I feel as if I was really trying to survive.. getting enough water would be a significant amount of work. In this game, it's ridiculously easy. You can make drums filled of water with like no work. I mean, not that I don't already have enough to do in this game.. lol. But it's a good point that was raised.