Harvest or Not

[nicko]

The term Harvest for this game is a good name when hunting.
 or harvesting crops (what crops) but why use the same term for everything else?

My suggestion is why not just use the word repurpose when we want to erm repurpose other items?

I.E.
Ok I have a blunt knife here, I might repurpose it to make something else?

or I have this old lantern that I want to repurpose for some extra metal to use elsewhere.

[TerribleSurvivor]

Do i get you right? You want a "better" wording for a perfectly fitting term. You are harvesting scrap metal by dismantling a knife/hatchet/other metal stuff.  The verb "harvest" doesn´t describe the process of dismantling an item but receiving the ressources yielding from dismantling it.

I do not see any need to change it and the devs really should adress more important issues than "bad wording"...

[Sunwolf]

While I think this is something that could be put on the back burner, so to speak, I agree with the OP.

[oversoul]

The term "harvest" does seem weird, when you are scrapping an item or recycling it.

 

[Mroz4k]

I am fairly certain that "harvest" is not a term limited to harvesting crops or animals only. 

While there surely are other terms that could be used to describe said activities, harvest makes sense as well.

You harvest an old item by destroying it in order to obtain resources out of it - that is my understanding of the word, at least - and it fits. Because the original item is always destroyed in this process.

Sure, scrapping could work for metal as well. But that is the beauty of English - same thing can be expressed by different terms. And, quite honestly, the game doesnt have to be more complicated in this regard then it already is - better to have one universal term for it then 4 different ones  

Word "repurpose" could not be used. It would not fit well - because repurpose implies you dont destroy the original item, only modify it.

To give you an example - if you repurposed storm lantern, for example, into a portable lantern fuel burner. You would destroy the glass protection of the lantern, as well as the top part of it, and you would use the exposed "burner" to heat up a cup of coffee on the go. That would be repurposed storm lantern.

This suggestion, in my opinion, is not neccesary.

[LucidFugue]

You can do a custom localisation to replace the word with something more suitable in the interim.