Axes, knifes and bloody whetstones!

[Goggs]

So you've finally found a good quality hunting knife. Even if you did need to pry it from someone's cold dead fingers. With the right care this blade should last you a lifetime! 

 

Unfortunately that's not really the case here. It's very frustrating that the lifespan of the blade/axe is limited by the whetstones you collect. Each weights 0.10kg and can only be used 20 times! My father still has a whetstone that's 10 years old. I bought a new one 2 years ago and sharpen and oil my axe and knife after every use and it almost looks brand new.

 

I propose either putting less knifes/axes/whetstones in the world and making the whetstones degrade by 1% each use and increasing their effectiveness. The knife/axe degradation seems about right but with proper care good tools should last a lifetime. Or maybe have different levels of sharp things. 

[octavian]

Balancing a sandbox like TLD will always be; difficult.

Today I started a new Stalker sandbox and on day 2-3 I was at the summit and had 4 knives and 4 hatchets all ~80%. Now I'll go to FM to make arrowheads and on the way I'll find enough whetstones to last me "a lifetime". Not to mention even more knives and hatchets.

If there were less knives/hatchets/whetstones - it would be easier to just craft knives and hatchets instead of bothering to look for them. I probably wouldn't even bother with a hatchet since hacksaws are better than hatchets anyways.

Besides, forging is very sexy now because FM is attached to ML. So since you'll presumably do some forging sooner or later, you have to go through DP or ML; the former being a supermarket in a rough neighborhood and the latter a supermarket in a regular neighborhood. So you'd loot those maps since you're forging on the Riken/FM to begin with and most likely find even more knives hatchets and whetstones.

We could also raise all kinds of problems - why repair a serrated blade for a hacksaw instead of forging blades for it; it would make the hacksaw less overpowered.

I think tools will remain the way they are now; it would be hard to rebalance them now. That being said there is the possibility of the axe being introduced soon, which I imagine would warrant a rebalance of at least the hatchet. Not to mention that if cooking changes fire mechanics, I imagine fire making and implicitly wood and how you harvest it will change too.

We'll see. Maybe in the future we'll see a more robust approach regarding tools.

[Goggs]

I have no trouble with the way tools are balanced. It's really just the overly rapid degradation of the whetstones.

Hacksaws would be great if not for the fact you can't breakdown furniture with them.

[cekivi]

Welcome to the forums @Goggs!

[Troxism]

It's a case of 'gameplay > realism'. Most degradation rates in this game are ridiculous (the whetstone is the worst for this IMHO), but the thing is if you made the whestone effectively last forever (as it would IRL), it would just mean that you would no longer have to worry about tools ever. Even making whetstones much rarer wouldn't help; as long as there was even one in the entire game world it wouldn't be very hard to get it.

To say it a little differently: the reason the game has you require a ridiculous amount of food (you know, unless you exploit via starvation), and everything (clothing, tools, food, ect) disintegrates in days, is to force you to go out and actually do things. Get more stuff, or get food, get firewood to cook the food, ect. If the game didn't work this way, what would happen is you would gather your initial supplies (some tools, whetstone, weapon) and then only leave your shelter once a month to hunt. While this might be a more realistic experience (IRL a deer would last you more then the 3 days it lasts in game for food), the problem is it would be a horribly boring game to play as you would basically sit around and do nothing most of the time. And no, cabin fever wouldn't solve anything (you would just sit in a cave instead and do nothing). 

So the reason for all these silly mechanics (whetstone disappearing in 20 uses) is basically to actually force the player to play the game rather then sit around. While you could change them (I'm sure someone will make a 'realism mod' the day modding is out which makes everything not degrade so fast), I think you would find that if you actually did that the game would quickly become super boring as you would be set for life within the first 3-5 days of starting a new game.