Hot rocks

[odizzido]

It would be cool if we could heat up stones by a fire for some extra warmth, trading weight for warmth, giving us another option for preparing for going outside, and choices to make if we need to drop the weight.

[Guest kristaok]

Rocks don't really burn, but they could get hot... they'd make good hand warmers, but other than that... I don't know what the need would be. 

[Mroz4k]

Apart of A) putting water through boil in a wooden container, or B) using some heated stones in a bed to heat it up faster, I really dont see much use for hot rocks. Carrying them would serve next to no effect and would be quite impractical.

I gotta say, I see no real game application in here, nor a really good real application to tell the truth, other then as a sort of luxury task.

If this is a reference to Thermal stone from Dont Starve, Im afraid that kind of application there was quite fictional.

[odizzido]

I've never played don't starve...and I would be shocked that this wouldn't work in real life. I will try it next time I have a camp fire. I just can't imagine that carrying hot rocks wouldn't provide any warmth.

 

The idea would be to have a dozen or two dozen stones in your pockets that have been in a campfire. They'd be quite hot and provide a few degrees of warmth for a while.

[Guest kristaok]

But over all they wouldn't remain hot for too long before they cool down, also to carry enough Rocks to even do anything at all would just weight the Player down. So far the only thing Rocks are good for is stunning Rabbits, and maybe marking paths etc. I just don't see them ever coding this in. 

[Mroz4k]

Not for long, and not enough warmth to make any real difference, not to mention it would be a huge extra weight to carry around, not to even mention that depending on what your backpack is made out of, you could damage or even destroy it. 

If it provided any practical use at all, then natives in one of the colder parts of the world would have made a use of it at some point. I cant find any written evidence anywhere on the net that hot rocks would have ever been used for survival, other then what was already stated - as hand warmers, to boil water in flamable containers or to warm up feather beds in the evening. 

Rocks just dont keep the warmth for that long, they are heavy to carry around and the heat they emit is not considerably strong enough for it to make real sense.

in TLD setting, two dozen stones (24) would have the collective weight of 6Kg. A dozen is 3Kg. And Im talking about those small pebbles we use to stun rabbits with... a stone like the ones you use for cooking on campfire would easily have the weight of 2kg each. When was the last time in TLD you had that much carrying capacity to spare?

Im not disproving that hot rocks have no use in survival setting - they do. Just not the one you are proposing. And for the purposes of TLD, there is just no real need for hot rocks right now the way I see it.

1 hour ago, kristaok said:

So far the only thing Rocks are good for is stunning Rabbits, and maybe marking paths etc.

Dont forget wildlife scaring and distractions.  That is their second best use, right after them, being the bane of bunnies.

[odizzido]

Interesting. I still want to see for myself IRL at some point. Assuming you're correct however, I should change the title to hot water. I know the thermal capacity of water is very good.