Compass and Cartography skill

[Runooo]

Hey all !
First of all I want to express my gratitude for your part in creating a game I enjoy so much :)

I've been wanting to share with you a few ideas :

- Compass : I'm thinking having a small compass (I imagine it as a broken wristwatch whose compass still works) could make orientation in low visibility conditions or unknown terrain more interesting (at the moment for me it often boils down to going in a line and hoping for a familiar sight). It might be fun to see the needle go crazy during auroras.

- Cartography skill : To me the current map making process is so unrewarding that I never use it, preferring the wiki maps when I'm feeling lost. I would suggest a skill that goes up when using charcoal to draw bits of maps.
Skill progress could increase the size of the area a single charcoal creates, but also help locate the player by marking his/her approximate location on the map. I'm seeing this as a circle that would appear on the map and whose size diminishes as the skill increases. An expert level bonus could be that the circle shows up even on parts of the map that haven't been "charcoaled" yet.

Skillbook titles ideas : "Find your way", "Expert surveyor guide".

Hope this finds some support,
Have a great holiday :)
Renaud

[UpUpAway95]

The idea of a compass has come up many times.  However, it is felt that the nature of the geomagnetic storm that brought down MacKenzie's plane would render compasses unusable anyways.  If it didn't conflict with the game lore, I'd be all for it.

However, there are several tricks you can use to find your way.  For example, if you travel in a straight line, you can use the fact that items, like sticks, dropped from your inventory will drop "pointing" in a single direction specific to that type of item.  So, if as you leave your base, you drop your axe or even a stick and note which way it pointed relative to the direction you want to travel... and then, if a storm closes in, you'll be able to just drop your axe or a stick again and walk in the reverse direction relative to which way it points in order to find your way back to your base.   If you're changing direction, you can also mark your turns with stones or pieces of tinder (even shaping them into arrows).

I don't generally map or use maps at all anymore.  To find shelters and paths, I look for old man's beard, rose hips, reshi mushrooms, and the fallen trees that seem to point towards caves and such.  I only harvest old man's beard, rose hips, or reshi's as I need them and I try to leave at least one behind to continue to act as a marker if I need to come back to that particular cave again. 

However, some sort of market locating the player on the ingame map would certainly make those maps more useful.

Edited December 20, 2019 by UpUpAway95

[JimmyPL56]

I have always thought there should a variation of mapping radius based on your elevation and visibility. If you charcoal map from one of the lookouts on a clear day you should get a nice size chunk of the entire area, a much bigger radius than you get now. 

[Yusufpaw]

We need a feature to freely add marks to the map that would be great ^^