Sharpening, flintlock, and firewood

[Rover East]

Having played the game for quite a few years now, I have found the most engaging, enduring aspect to be the realistic, engaging survival mechanics. How hunting, scavenging, cooking, staying warm, mending, making cloths, and all the other little things you do to stay alive interconnect is grand.

given so, there are a few additions that would make me very happy

the first would be, once you have maxed out your sharpening skill, the ability to either use stones to sharpen or midigate the damage inflicted on wet stones. As it stand even a fantastic sharpener has to have a wet stone which gets ground to a pulp after just a few tune ups.

Another addition that I would like to see would be a flintlock rifle. I image it acting as a late late game item. It would be interesting if you had to make it yourself from pieces scattered across Desilation point, Ash Canyon, Hushed River Valley, Broken railroad, Timberwolf Mountain, ravine, and Pleasant Valley. You would have to assemble it at the gun bench in bleak inlet. You could also forge musket balls and craft powder bags from deer skins. This would give late game players an extrinsic reason to explore after ascertaining all the traditional goods needed to survive. Additionally, it would add a fun late game mechanic that could tie in well with new wildlife. If per say a few small hard to catch animals like foxes, geese, or snow hairs were added to make exclusive clothing  items like fur drawers, scarfs etc the flintlock could be used to target them with craftable pepper shot (an alternate load for the same gun) or, for larger game, regular slugs. Perhaps adding such a device to interloper would permit players to get all five skills to the max, give an additional challenge, and not compromise on the difficulty and mood of interloper as the gun and ammo has to be crafted an is archaic in design.

Finally I would like a firewood overhaul. It takes a horribly unrealistic amount of time to cut branches into logs. The current system makes collecting logs impractical, dangerous, and unrewarding. It is better to just horde sticks and coal unless you want to set off several days to saw or chop wood safely. I think a better system would be to have easy to harvest wood, but greater disparity in the quality of the wood. Everyone knows soft, sappy wood like pine burn long but cold whilst dry hardwood leaps to life but doesn’t endure as long. Adding in rarer wood like birch and fatligter could motivate people to be strategic about wood gathering maybe even taking journeys to furnish their settlements with good supplies. this cure go well with a smoking system. Before a journey, you could smoke some meat to give it longevity and resume sent, and to smoke it effectively you would need a sheltered location with long burning pine; the temperature wouldn’t matter because it’s not for warmth.
In tandem with this, a wood stacking mechanic would be great. It would be a cool sight to wander home to fresh food and a crisp stack of firewood.

Two more small things: A horn for carrying coals that last a day or two to save matches even in bad weather. This would be really great on journeys; perhaps you get burned though if a wolf or bear mauls you.

Additional tracking mechanics. More signs of animals and longer rendering tracks.

[Rover East]

Goodness, pardon my typos. If anyone wants clarification let me know.

[UTC-10]

The game's objective was story mode aka Wintermute which was set to occur in a very limited timespan, probably only a few weeks at most, during winter.  We also do not know what the ultimate outcome of Wintermute will be.   Survival mode was an extension of the survival sandbox used to work out the survival mechanics and proved to be so popular that the devs made it an alternate play mode.  However, the objective was still doing Wintermute. 

There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of your and many other suggestions except they do not fit into the scope of Wintermute and anything added to survival mode would impact what happens in Wintermute, aside from the possibility that new/expanded mechanics might break something.  So the devs would have no reason to try to implement any of the worthwhile suggestions until Wintermute concludes.  That said, they do surprise us from time to time.  

[Megaloceros]

@Rover East No notes, just wanted to say this is a smart, respectful, well thought out post! I really enjoyed reading your ideas! I especially love your thoughts about having greater variety in wood, and having them have realistically diverse properties instead of just a difference in burn time. 

A common want among the community is the ability to make a crude sled or sledge, with which to haul firewood or game. I think the ease in carrying corpses to a new area to harvest would be balanced by the fact that it would attract more hostile wildlife, and you would have to stop hauling the sledge to ward them off. You could also feasibly craft a sledge using some climbing rope, and use it to move branches to a more suitable place to cut them up.

Remarkably, yours is also the first post that I have read suggesting a new gun be added in a way that actually seems reasonable, and would contribute a lot to the game! Love the idea of a flintlock, with powder bags ready to go, and having to load it with slugs and shot and all that before firing on a distant fox or lining up a mark on a feeding grizzly bear! 

Please share more of your ideas! They are great!

[Omnijack]

I'm a big fan of expanded crafting, some good suggestions there.

To address the woodcutting issue, perhaps we could have a 2-handed heavy duty woodcutting axe (3 or 4kg ?) that, if used to choose wood logs, reduces the time from 45 mins to 20 mins. It's a big, heavy thing, so you'd only take it out when going specifically for firewood. Being heavy duty, takes extra calories to do the other normal hatchet tasks (although, perhaps a bonus to harvesting frozen carcass?).

Also, I would love a Blackpowder Flintlock Muzzleloader. Maybe a use for all the leftover newspaper could be making paper cartridges for reloading a Musket.

[Megaloceros]

The thing with guns is that they really do give us a ton of rifles in Stalker; I feel like it would not be all that bad to maybe add in one more gun variant, which is stronger but requires a lot more upkeep, perhaps. 

That being said, TLD is very much not a shooter, and I don't want firearms to take to central of a focus.