Lightsticks

[StrayCat]

Hello all,

I was tidying up my camping gear, when I stumbled upon some lightsticks. Then I thought : "hey, this could be cool in TLD" !! For those who don't know what I'm talking about, it's something like this picture, you light it by twisting it, it creates a weak light for hours due to a chemical reaction.

In TLD, this could be used to get a weak light for ~12 hours, useful for navigating / living in caves, or crafting / reading at night. In return, wolves would not fear it at all (and may even be attracted by it, out of curiosity ?). Weight would be something like 0.10 kg. Obviously, this is a 1-use item, like flares. It can not be used to light fires (as it is a cold light), and do not give the small heat bonus that torches give.

I can't see it as OP, but I can see it opening new small lines of play (crafting at night to lower stamina before sleeping), or throwing it to find one's way back in a blizzard / at night.

[ajb1978]

I posted this in the Steam wish list a few years ago and it got mercilessly shot down lol.  The game does strive for realism in many ways, so there are some caveats that throw a wrench into this.  Mainly temperature--chemical glow sticks don't glow in sub-freezing conditions, as low temperatures retard the chemiluminescent reaction.  So these glow sticks would only really be useful in explorable caves and mines, or when you already have a fire going.  Any time the ambient temperature is already above freezing.  Realistically, the warmer the glow stick is, the brighter it glows, and the shorter its life.  So ambient temp would affect this as well.  That's going pretty far down the rabbit hole, but the main bullet point is these should only work in above-freezing temps.  So...spelunking basically.  And that's where this kind of crumbles.  We already have so many light options for cave exploration, I'm quite OK with skipping this wish list item, even though I would enjoy it.

Save it for the modding community when mod support is introduced.

[StrayCat]

I agree that it's not realistic in freezing temperatures. But Raphael stated many times that he does not care about realism, only about mecanisms that allow interesting lines of play.