suggestion LONG list of wishes for changes and new mechanics/items

[reginaphalange]

Most of this is just kinda nitpicky but some I think would be great.

Changes:

• Chopping wood gives you logs and sticks, not tinder. You can make tinder afterwards if you want. (Late game, you don't need tinder).
• Arrows should not have to be made at a workbench. You don't need any tools to make them but your hands.
• Movable wooden planks. Like the planks placed in that barn in Muskeg, you can place them inside that barn near Trapper's Homestead to utilize that platform, if so desired. Just for instance.
• Break down those planks holding up orchard trees (reclaimed wood), branches on fallen trees (sticks).
• Take down boards from houses, enter, loot.
• Replace Cured Gut with Tendons. Tendons must be used to craft arrows, makeshift axes and knives. Tendons are used to sew clothing. (I'm not an expert but I don't think intestines - what Cured Gut looks like - is used for any of those things.)
• Stones can be used to quickly Harvest 1-4 legs from an animal carcass, yielding some meat (also marrow, see below). This is useful for early game scavenging.
• Movable containers (those plastic/metal ones). Putting them outside acts like an outside freezer and food degrades slowly. Possible loss to predator looting if they patrol that area. Similarly (and maybe this is already the case), food stored in fishing hut cabinets should degrade slowly.
• Clean That House. Clean up all that garbage from places like the Mystery Lake Camp Office. Optional, takes energy and time to do. (Like, really, who needs a laptop now).
• Bury Those Corpses. Sometimes there are bodies inside a place you want to squat in. Take a couple hours to bury the poor sap. 
  • Corpses outside attract crows which we need for feathers, but I think it'd be neat to have the option to bury them too.
• We should be able to Harvest a few pieces of cloth/cured leather from frozen clothes on a corpse, as all corpses are dressed.
• Harvest Those Mailboxes for scrap metal. 

New things:

• Meat caches. Build them anywhere on the landscape, like snow shelters. Required items: 1 hide or 4 cloth/cured leather (to line cache). Meat degrades much, much slower inside. Add risk of predator theft (RNG) if meat is just dropped somewhere outside without being put into a cache. Like melting snow, covering a cache with collected snow takes time. Can be harvested by hand (slower) or knife (faster) or hatchet (very fast). Can be repacked (again taking time, like melting snow). Snow caches have very low predator theft RNG. Possible protection against scavenging would be an option to melt the snow with a torch, letting it glaze (requires hatchet to break open thereafter). Meat caches have a weight limit, say 100-200 lbs. 
• Stone tools and a knapping skill. Introduce quarries of usable stone (not all minerals are knappable). Stone tools don't last as long as metal ones but can be made anywhere, anytime. The Ravine would be a good place for a quarry, also Timberwolf Mountain.
• Use rabbit hides for small clothing items: scarves, hats, socks, underwear.
• Use deer hides for clothing items head to toe. Make a deer-hide shelter (lean-to) with sticks. Deer-hide pack will also lighten your load, a little.
• Use wolf hide for clothing items head to toe, warmer than deer. 
• Use cloth to Craft yourself any number of items, such as a balaklava, which are apparently rare in the game.
• Make a teepee out of multiple deer hides. The structure would not be transportable once built, but you can repair it where it stands (would need to incorporate shaping big branches instead of breaking them down, or use of planks perhaps). Damaged by high winds and time. Chance of predator invasion without fire going inside.
• Bone tools. Bones are harvested from a carcass. For simplicity's sake I'd say 4 per animal, using the metapodials which are all going to be long and straight and sturdy. These bones can be used to make needles (awls) and bone points for arrows (multiple per bone). Use rabbit bones for awls, deer/wolf/moose/bear for arrowheads. Bear/Moose bones could be used for forged hatchet/knife handles. Bone awls and arrowheads cannot be harvested/repaired once ruined, but bone handles can be harvested from the makeshift tools. Oh, and fish hooks. Yes, bone can be used as hooks/spears. 
• Marrow. Harvested from animals, again for simplicity let's say 4 units, harvested from the humeri and femora. Can be harvested in the field or later after quartering. If you don't harvest them on the spot you have to pick up the bones to take with you and they are heavy. You need a stone (any stone found on the ground) to break the bones open. You can also boil the bones (a cooking option at a fire) to obtain grease, which can be used to make soups with meat. Anyone eating mainly meat forever will be malnourished because Snowpocalypse animals will be crazy lean. The game could even introduce a Protein Poisoning affliction if Marrow is made an option. (I'll withhold my suggestion of also harvesting brains and other organs, and stomach contents of herbivores, to avoid malnutrition).
• Harvestable nails from furniture, to build things like pantries to keep outside as makeshift freezers using either reclaimed wood or planks. Maybe even tables, chairs. (Needs heavy hammer as tool, or maybe make a stone+fir wood into a hammer at a workbench). Hacksaws could be used to turn cedar logs into planks.

I'm sure I've had more ideas but these are what I could get down at this time. I'm sure others have suggested some of the same over the years. And, no, I don't know what Hinterland has planned for the future.

[Ms Nutcracker]

No upvotes well I put in mine!  Thank you for those ideas! 

[reginaphalange]

On 3/13/2018 at 3:18 AM, Ciliate Organism said:

No upvotes well I put in mine!  Thank you for those ideas! 

ha thanks. didn't do it for the upvotes obv. just wanted to jot down my thoughts!

[Fuarian]

I like them all! 

[The lonely murf]

Loving all the suggestions there's so much more that could be done with the materials already in game just to vary things up with regards to caring for meat and bushcraft. Alot of people I've spoken to who make it into the long term sandbox need extra 'projects' to work on. And early game too, take a leg bone from a deer, snap one end off and wrap a cloth around the other, boom makeshift knife, great for stabbing an attacking wolf but not so great for harvesting.

 One thing that's bothered me about the quartering mechanic is that once we've made it back to our shelter and harvested the meat out the bags we would realistically be left with some waste. This coupled with the common tactic of storing meat outside should realistically draw predators for miles to the shelter. As such the meat cache to me is a necessity.

[reginaphalange]

8 hours ago, The lonely murf said:

Loving all the suggestions there's so much more that could be done with the materials already in game just to vary things up with regards to caring for meat and bushcraft. Alot of people I've spoken to who make it into the long term sandbox need extra 'projects' to work on. And early game too, take a leg bone from a deer, snap one end off and wrap a cloth around the other, boom makeshift knife, great for stabbing an attacking wolf but not so great for harvesting.

yep, broken green bone can be pretty sharp. enough to cut through meat, maybe skin (not bear hide, probably).

in the game one of the "tools" you can use is scrap metal (the one that's stuck in your hand in the beginning of Wintermute), so why not "scrap bone" fragment?