suggestion Thoughts On Late Game Crafting for TFTFT

[BeautySauce]

First of all, this does contain very minor spoilers to do with the crafting system. 

And second, I'd like to ensure the tone of this post is clear by prefacing it with:

I've been playing the long dark for over 4 years now, and I love the game, the devs, and Hinterland as a whole. This game has given me hundreds of hours of fun, and the studio's generosity, transparency, and reliability are a stark counterexample to so many triple-A let-downs in an industry that's becoming deceitful to its consumers. I was sad to see people be so quick to scold Hinterland for some launch day mishaps after years of FREE high quality content. This entire project has been a incredible success, and I wish I found it just a bit sooner so I could have supported it from the beginning.

 

Now, I'll get on with it. There's a TL;DR at the bottom.

 

I think I may speak for a lot of people when I say, my favorite thing to do in survival games is to craft/find all the best gear. This is followed very closely by levelling up my character's skills. It's incredibly satisfying to have put time into crafting/ levelling and be rewarded with the game being less tedious going forward. I think both of these provide a lot of purpose in games where the only "real" objective is to not die. In general the Long Dark has done an awesome job of crafting and levelling up to this point. All the things you can make are genuinely cool, and the realism added by actual time passing during crafting is awesome. Furthermore, I think the benefits of the best gear and max skill levels are satisfying, but not at all game-breaking. Well done.

 

However, having to restart my survival save to play TFTFT made me realize how shallow these systems are if you know what you're doing. I won't get into specifics to avoid spoilers, but with the knowledge of where are all the best stuff is, and how to prepare for/ craft the best gear, I was back to a full kit pretty quickly. On my initial play-through, this wasn't a problem, because I was exploring each region on release and my survivor got incrementally better as intended. But, after bee-lining the good stuff this time, I found myself quite demotivated to re-explore the rest of the map, given that any building I would enter, any backpack I find, couldn't possibly have anything better than what I already had. It is cool that there has been a loot refresh to mix things around, but it seems that the time you actually spend worrying about finding things in containers is a relatively short part of the game.

 

My solution is this:
Add another tier of craftable items that require resources of a "higher quality" and are locked behind levels in both mending, and carcass harvesting (maybe 5 mending, 4 harvesting). There could even be a sewing machine setup that functions only in the aurora, but not completely necessary. The higher quality materials could be a findable item, OR to save dev/ placement time, it could be what is produced when breaking down "good" clothing items. For example, break down a T-Shirt, get cloth, break down a Cowichan Sweater, get Thick Wool. This way, you would be incentivized to continue looting the entire map to collect high quality materials, and be able to explore/ map along the way. Even if these items weren't drastically better than what's currently craftable, they would be incredibly satisfying to make for vanity's sake. Another amazing addition would be the introduction of unique animals to hunt to make these items.

For example:

-The summit of Timberwolf Mountain is home to the only colony of fuzzy black rabbits.
-The last Spirit Bear roams the Muskeg, surrounded by a maze of thin ice.
-Deep in the gulley of Hushed River Valley hides a giant moose with nearly impenetrable hide!

A quicker implementation might look like:

High Quality Bear Skin Coat
2 Bear Pelts
2 Rabbit Pelts
3 Thick Wool
4 Quality Thread
2 Leather

But smashing it out of the park would look like this:

Spirit Bear Coat: Special Effect Camouflage, halves the range at which animals notice you
1 Spirit Bear Pelt
2 Timberwolf Pelts
2 Black Rabbit Pelts
4 Quality Thread
2 Zipper (Milling machine?)
4 Thick Wool
10 Eyelets (Milling machine?)
5 Abalone (Beach Oysters??)

 

Travelling to the far edges of the map to find the resources needed to craft the best gear would be incredibly cool, and provide new purpose to survival mode. And, the satisfaction of flipping to the clothes tab, and seeing your survivor decked out in some cool, late game gear would really scratch the completionist itch. I was disappointed to see that there isn't much at all in the TFTFT roadmap about new craftable items, and I think there's a huge opportunity to add some awesome stuff there. Furthermore, I think there are ways to do it relatively/ easily cheaply (see quicker implementation), especially in comparison to developing entire new regions. I would absolutely love to see something liek this in the game, and I'm certain others would too.

 

TL;DR

-my favorite thing to do in survival games is to craft/find all the best gear
-having to restart my survival save to play TFTFT made me realize how shallow the crafting system is if you know what you're doing
-after bee-lining the good stuff this time, I found myself quite demotivated to re-explore the rest of the map

Solution:
-Add another tier of craftable items that require resources of a "higher quality"
-higher quality materials could be a findable item, OR to save dev/ placement time, it could be what is produced when breaking down "good" clothing items
-Another amazing addition would be the introduction of unique animals to hunt to make these items.

[MarrowStone]

I do like the sewing machine idea, but i think an old footpedal machine would fit the game's theme a little more. 

Tiers locked behind certain character levels is a great way to extend a run's busy stage. However, I dunno if I like the different kinds of cloth harvested from various items. When resources get too specific it can make things less fun. Imagine if scrap metal was like 10 different types and only 1 could fix your lantern. 

Finding/hunting the unique materials sounds great though! Or maybe having to find and read a specific book to learn the crafting recipie. 

[Moosemaster]

I agree with the sewing machine for repairs after you can’t find any sewing kits. And I agree with the special animals but if they were to add that I would say a better way to do it would be to add animals like the stags. Now with Does they have less meat than stags, it would be cool to find bigger and stronger bears/moose (like how there’s the strong wolves) that give extra meat and guts and possibly more pelts at the price of having more health, being more dangerous, and being much harder to find.

Edited January 24, 2023 by Moosemaster

[hozz1235]

I really like your thoughts and ideas!  Expanding upon it further, perhaps make levelling up skills more difficult.  For example, from level 4-5 mending, you will only receive a skill point when mending a more "valuable/difficult" item.  Same for cooking..maybe only bear and moose meat gives a point.

[MarrowStone]

I'd be okay with that @hozz1235but only if they lowered the point requirements to level along with it. Do you know how much clothing needs repaired to get to 5?!

Would make it potentially impossible on interloper or if you ruin a lot of clothing too. 

[Semple Fi]

On 1/24/2023 at 11:05 PM, MarrowStone said:

I'd be okay with that @hozz1235but only if they lowered the point requirements to level along with it. Do you know how much clothing needs repaired to get to 5?!

Would make it potentially impossible on interloper or if you ruin a lot of clothing too. 

Cool ideas, a bit too specific in some cases but cool none the less.  I think they may be implementing something along those lines in the realm of cooking, sounds like “recipes” will be a a thing.  
 

also, we still have no idea what will be crafted from the cougar pelt.  

[piddy3825]

35 minutes ago, Semple Fi said:

Cool ideas, a bit too specific in some cases but cool none the less.  I think they may be implementing something along those lines in the realm of cooking, sounds like “recipes” will be a a thing.  

speaking of the recipes to add in the planned updates, kinda makes me wonder if they'll be using any of the recipes submitted by the community for the recipe contest that Hinterland ran last year.  As I recall, there were some pretty good dishes submitted using the in game available ingredients.