Stag handle tools / forge overhaul

[Tbone555]

I have a suggestion for the forge ladies and gentlemen.  One that may actually make us want to use it.

As you know, I've never been for the forge. Until they add the bear spear to survival mode, I have literally no reason to use it. I can find a knife and hatchet easily and can find arrowheads with not much more difficulty. That makes it useless to me. However. If they offered alternate, more powerful tools, it would actually make sense.

Here's how it would happen. You would get a new skill tree, a new harvesting option, and possibly a new skill book added to the game. And obviously new crafting recipes. The stag handle knife and hatchet.

You would learn these recipes at level 3 of the forging skill. At level 1 you can still make improvised tools, but as you level the skill your tools work better and better, last longer, and crafting times decrease. You'll be able to harvest deer and moose antler, and use a work bench and high quality tools to make a "stag handle." Then you would take it to a forge with some steel, and forge your knife or hatchet. The stag handle tools will be much better, but slightly heavier and stronger than the standard hatchet and knife. Still not as heavy as the improvised tools. And since forged tools tend to have much much tighter steel than manufactured, they would cut much better aswell drastically decreasing wood cutting and carcass harvesting times. There would have to be a new texture made for the hatchet, but the model for Jeremiah's knife in pre-dux (which I'm not sure is actually obtainable at the moment. Look it up on the wiki if you never got this item) is already a stag handle blade. What do y'all think?

Edited June 30, 2019 by Tbone555

[TheHunter280]

I see you are refreshing my old post but thank you anyway to bring it back

Stag handles don't seems to be realistic for hatchets and efficient for knives. Antlers aren't big enough for hatchet handles dunno how tough is keratin and what make a knife efficient is foremost it's blade and antler is too much busy work. What's more realistic is to make axe handles out of hickory but we don't have that and the toughest trees in Great Bear Island are maple trees.

Steel indeed change structure when striked but self forged tools are better because you fit them to you and your environment

 

 

[Tbone555]

2 hours ago, TheHunter280 said:

I see you are refreshing my old post but thank you anyway to bring it back

Stag handles don't seems to be realistic for hatchets and efficient for knives. Antlers aren't big enough for hatchet handles dunno how tough is keratin and what make a knife efficient is foremost it's blade and antler is too much busy work. What's more realistic is to make axe handles out of hickory but we don't have that and the toughest trees in Great Bear Island are maple trees.

Steel indeed change structure when striked but self forged tools are better because you fit them to you and your environment

 

 

Oh my apologies, I had no idea a topic like this already existed. I'll make sure to check yours out! I just really want to see some practicality added to the forge because it has never ever been a useful mechanic to me. I'm not against the forge - it can be a great idea. It just needs a huuuuuge overhaul.

[ajb1978]

I don't really want to see the forging/crafting system changed, since it works well as-is.  However more crafting blueprints is always a good idea.  I like having the option of doing things, even if I ultimately choose to not do the thing.

[TheHunter280]

6 hours ago, Tbone555 said:

Oh my apologies, I had no idea a topic like this already existed. I'll make sure to check yours out! I just really want to see some practicality added to the forge because it has never ever been a useful mechanic to me. I'm not against the forge - it can be a great idea. It just needs a huuuuuge overhaul.

No need to apologize my friend, that topic is old, I'm glad someone still care about the forge. Maybe should I have gone for "and" instead of "but", on my bad

[Skelegutplays]

How about having the knife handle only craftable with a moose antler as deer antlers are not thick enough for this.

Also it would be more balanced because if you could do it with deer it would be too easy to get.

[Tbone555]

23 minutes ago, Skelegutplays said:

How about having the knife handle only craftable with a moose antler as deer antlers are not thick enough for this.

Also it would be more balanced because if you could do it with deer it would be too easy to get.

Well that's really not true, realistically. Knife handles are made from deer antler all the time. Just bought one for my dad for his birthday, that's what gave me the idea. But I do like the idea of making it another moose hunted item, to balance it out

[Guest jeffpeng]

I kinda see how the forge isn't really interesting for anything other than arrowheads for anyone not playing Interloper. Even on Stalker you get buried in tools, and if you are both thorough looting and conservative using them there is no realisitic way to run out of tools in a thousand days. But on the other hand I don't really like the idea of being able to make "superior" tools considering how crude our manufacturing methods are and what little tools we got. But being able to create tools that obviously surpass what we can find which is made with modern machinery and by professionals feels .... weird. What I could get behind is that over time forging would get better, and your selfmade tools would slowly approach the level of the tools you find. But that still wouldn't make a Stalker player value the forge more.

I remember reading the argument that something shouldn't be in the game for a game difficulty that a big portion (the majority?) of players doesn't touch. But I disagree on that. A lot of the available mechanics in TLD only ever reveal their true potential in Interloper games, and I cannot help but feel that Interloper is the way sandbox works best. That is my personal opinion, of course. But I personally think the real, true way of making the forge make sense is to play with Interloper loot tables.
 

[Tbone555]

1 hour ago, jeffpeng said:

I kinda see how the forge isn't really interesting for anything other than arrowheads for anyone not playing Interloper. Even on Stalker you get buried in tools, and if you are both thorough looting and conservative using them there is no realisitic way to run out of tools in a thousand days. But on the other hand I don't really like the idea of being able to make "superior" tools considering how crude our manufacturing methods are and what little tools we got. But being able to create tools that obviously surpass what we can find which is made with modern machinery and by professionals feels .... weird. What I could get behind is that over time forging would get better, and your selfmade tools would slowly approach the level of the tools you find. But that still wouldn't make a Stalker player value the forge more.

I remember reading the argument that something shouldn't be in the game for a game difficulty that a big portion (the majority?) of players doesn't touch. But I disagree on that. A lot of the available mechanics in TLD only ever reveal their true potential in Interloper games, and I cannot help but feel that Interloper is the way sandbox works best. That is my personal opinion, of course. But I personally think the real, true way of making the forge make sense is to play with Interloper loot tables.
 

I agree, the only way to make the forge make sense is to play on interloper, which basically makes it an interloper only tool. But not everyone prefers interloper. More power to you if you do, I personally can't last 20 days. Stalker, which I prefer to play on, is hard to me. Interloper is just sadistic haha!

The only issue with this is that the forge was introduced before interloper was. But it has absolutely no balancing for any other difficulty except interloper. Maybe once they add the bear spear I'll have some reason to use the forge but until then, I've played this game for almost 7 years now and I have only used the forge twice, and those two times were just because I wanted to mess around with it, being a new addition at the time.

The idea of superior tools isn't as bad as it sounds. It's definitely something that would come with a new skill. As your skill goes up you would learn how to make more professional grade stuff and your steel would hold tighter. Which is very very typical to smithing your own blades - forged blades are typically much higher quality than what you'd buy at John Deere. And by superior I do not mean supertools. I mean SLIGHT buffs. Like downing wood chopping time for cedar to 35 minutes instead of 45. Downing carcass quartering to 45 minutes instead of an hour. Things like that. This would give you incentive to take up that metalworking skill and use the forge more. And using stag, your tools would also be heavier and degrade a little faster, so there's also still incentive to use the basic tools, if you're worried about the weight of your pack.

[TheHunter280]

18 hours ago, loriaw said:

While I agree with you about the hatchet, you're simply not correct about knife handles (which happens to be exactly what my husband who crafts knives in real life calls antlers!). The inside is soft enough to punch a tang into, glue can easily be made from a number of sources already available in this game but not used, and they can be crafted to fit your hand much easier than sanding and shaping a wooden handle (which also requires rivets and other tools). I use knives my husband has made, including a customized ulu that leather workers requested after seeing pictures of it over store bought knives every single day. They are far superior for fitting my hand, holding an edge, etc.  The very real problem I have with the forge in this game is the utter lack of knowledge of the proper metals to use, NO quenching (which WILL make or literally break a blade if done incorrectly) as a necessary part of the procedure, and a bunch of other nit-picky things that are completely left out. 

Cold striking steel changes it ~ for the worse. It becomes brittle and won't hold an edge. The 'scrap metal' available in this game is only good for fish hooks. The hardenable steel that is lying around everywhere is in/on the abandoned vehicles. Sure, you can craft a crap knife from scrap metal, but it should have to be sharpened constantly (as in 10+ times while harvesting a deer) and not worth the effort and resources. Those leaf springs on the other hand …. 

Hold my beer, you can still make a pull tang handle of wood with just a knife and make it fit better by pushing the handle while the tang is hot, if you want to cut time, split and shape it with a knife and cut the sanding out, it's just finishing touche.

By normalizing (letting it cool down by air) you just make it soft, not handy for blades. There is water everywhere so it's not that hard to bury it in the snow. Most of the steel laying around is mild steel (not great, not terrible) it's good enough for knives and axes, scrap metal is just a convenient term left to be interpreted. Cold striking to shape a knife ? must be super thin or have the time and patience of a god

Salvaging useful reshapable parts of cars ? sound good but I hope some cars and trucks have spring leafs instead of dampeners and coils at the rear plus it give more use for toolboxes, but how the devs want to lift those cars, with the propers way or the bush way ?