New Skills suggestion

[CrazyLazyCat]

The benefis are not in a particular order and could be moved around and/or spread across skill levels, not aiming for balance now, just brainstorming ideas.

Cartography

- Reduce the weight of charcol at every level (due to beign eble to carry smaller bits)

- Reduce the time it takes to draw

- You can manually add notes to the map

- You can see your postion o the map

- (at level 5) you now draw a better version of the map

Something like that, where you can actually see walking spaces. Could make for an insteresting new objetive to remap the world)

 

 

First Aid

- Reuce the weight of bandages at every level*

- Reduce time it takes to apply bandages**

- Reduce the dacay rate of all medicine you already found

- Reduce the recovery time of diseases and traumas (looking at you broken ribs)

*As a balance counterweight, 1 cloth produce 1 bandage.

**As a balance counterweight, I think the time of mending should be increased, as it is way too fast on current version of the game

Crafting

- Reduce the time it takes to craft anything (5%/10%/15%/20%/25%)

- Reuce the material required to build Rock cages and snow shelters

- Let you build one container per indoor location

-  Newly crafted clothing weight less (Could make for an interesting new objetive to recraft all your animal clothing)

 

I think upgrading skills level are a fun part of the game, it adds objectives you aim for, both short and long term.

That beign said, I know adding more skills would make the game easier, and for that I think it should come with another overall to some mechanics, like Ruined food eating and food storage (meat left on the groud should be eated by predators/ crows).

Another suggestion is Encyclopedia books, which, when read, increase randon skills that are not yet maximized, but I think I'll make another topic about this.

 

 

Edited February 8, 2023 by CrazyLazyCat

[A Lamp]

What about fitness and strength?

For example with strength you could:

• increase the amount of kg you can carry in your inventory (5-7.5 kgs)
• increasing the efficiency of all weapons during a struggle (35-45%)
• reducing the weight taken from wore clothing (up to 40-50%).

On the other hand fitness would:

• increase your maximum stamina (up to 50%)
• increase your stamina recovery speed (up to 35%)
• reducing the bulkyness of clothing (up to 25%)
• Faster running (5-10%)

Since these 2 are physical skills, you would only be able to gain xp through an exercise mechanic.

Obviously exercising would require a lot of food, water and energy. Also, fitness and strength would be the hardest to maximize to level 5 (if one would exercise 24/7 ingame, it would take like 75-100 days for each skill, so the total would be 150-200 days.)

One last thing, since Snow Walker increases the stamina recovery speed by 20% and with level 5 fitness it would increase it furthermore by 35%, it would be quite unbalanced. So rathen increasing stamina recovery, it allows you to start the game with level 3 fitness (just like the Fire Master).

[wilsonaka]

I can offer a few insights.

Cartography:

I like the idea of improved mapping as well as the reduced charcoal weight. Maybe craft charcoal into "charcoal pencil" since regular charcoal is used in another crafting recipe.  I don't think knowing your location on the map would be realistic, because in survival you're constantly moving and have only 1 map. You should know where you are by landmarks, or feel lost. That's part of the charm of the game.  We can already add icons in the game via spray paint, and also rock caches can be named.

First Aid:

Bandages I agree are over-weight. A cup of  tea weighs the same as a bandage. That is one giant bandage. However, since they're crafted from cloth which weigh the same, I disagree that 1 cloth should make 1 bandage. I just think a reduction would be life-like. The crafting time should be reduced. Does it really take 20 minutes?  I'm pretty sure I could fashion a make-shift bandage in under 5 minutes. 

With the Old Man's Beard wound dressing, just do not craft one until it's needed. The weight of the raw materials are significantly lower than a crafted bandage, and you will not need to apply one immediately as infection risk takes much longer than it takes to craft.

Pills decay, yes, but they're still usable at 0%. Don't store them in a container. No need to change decay since that adds difficulty if you do not find them in time.

I disagree with mending.  Some items take quite a while and you lose resources from failures quite often in the beginning.  You get a time reduction with skill increase.

I think the afflictions are mostly fine as they are. Have you ever had broken ribs? I think the game is super lenient since they heal 100% without any lasting effects and in a great deal less time than in reality.  Perhaps there can be 2 levels: cracked ribs and broken ribs with the latter adding a permanent mobility decrease. I think the pre-requisite for that condition should be another status affliction of some sort or during an aurora with a bear attack.

I think the Cabin Fever can use an adjustment.  10day average instead of 6.

Crafting:

I think some realistic adjustments to the crafting times are in order, as well as weights of clothing.  ex: How can 1 bear hide(1kg) and 4 gut(.4kg) equal 4kg when crafted? It's just not reasonable. Where did the extra weight come from?

There are upcoming updates for modifying your home base, perhaps they will include the ability to add a storage indoors.

If newly crafted clothing were to weigh less, then each repair should increase some weight.  Just my opinion there.

 

This isn't a critique, these are just my ideas as I see them. I appreciate any input or insights.

 

[Moosemaster]

Keep in

39 minutes ago, wilsonaka said:

The crafting time should be reduced. Does it really take 20 minutes?  I'm pretty sure I could fashion a make-shift bandage in under 5 minutes.

Keep in mind this is the same guy that takes 10 minutes to break down a limb with a hatchet

[Kranium]

I do think the map needs huge improvement. Nobody would draw a map like that IRL. The posted example is much closer to how it should be.

[Lexilogo]

Cartography: The idea of a better map is probably a discussion to be had as a default feature, rather than a Skill locked feature, but yes, I agree the maps with seemingly random ^^^ ^^^ ^^s everywhere are bad and would vastly prefer just an outline of what areas are walkable and which aren't.

Seeing your position on the map is something I believe should be a custom difficulty feature, not a Skill.

Manually adding notes should probably just be a default feature. (and with Spray Paint, it kind of already is)

So that only leaves Charcoal weight and survey times as something for the skill to effect... Which is fine. If you throw in a small buff to overall survey distance/effectiveness, it'd be pretty great as a Secondary Skill. You get +1 point to a maximum of 100, for every named location you map. It'd add a reason to shoot for Faithful Cartographer progress besides the achievement itself and be a nice, genuinely practical collectable and reason to travel the world.

First Aid: While First Aid makes intuitive sense to exist as a skill in the game, I think it's clear you (understandably) struggled to figure out how to make it work as a fullblown skill.

First Aid being a proper skill would probably need changes to how Wound recovery works, such as you needing to re-bandage some wounds multiple times or etc. Currently, Wounds are essentially just a simple resource management decision.

Well, either that, or gating medicinal teas/beard lichen dressings behind levelling the skill, but I that might be a bit  controversial.

Crafting: Nah, I think some of these ideas for this skill are reaching a bit too much, and I don't see why we can't rename Mending to Tailoring, and have that skill gain animal clothing crafting benefits instead.

 

Also:

7 hours ago, A Lamp said:

What about fitness and strength?

For example with strength you could:

• increase the amount of kg you can carry in your inventory (5-7.5 kgs)
• increasing the efficiency of all weapons during a struggle (35-45%)
• reducing the weight taken from wore clothing (up to 40-50%).

On the other hand fitness would:

• increase your maximum stamina (up to 50%)
• increase your stamina recovery speed (up to 35%)
• reducing the bulkyness of clothing (up to 25%)
• Faster running (5-10%)

Since these 2 are physical skills, you would only be able to gain xp through an exercise mechanic.

Hold it right there! That levelling system's the property of Project Zomboid! Stealing game design is against the law, and the gamer police (pictured below) will come to arrest you.

[A Lamp]

15 hours ago, Lexilogo said:

Also:

Hold it right there! That levelling system's the property of Project Zomboid! Stealing game design is against the law, and the gamer police (pictured below) will come to arrest you.

Ah damn i got caught...

But i may or may not made my suggestion a bit too similar to PZ (since the idea came from it).

Perhaps there's another way to add strength and fitness into the game without copying?

[Lexilogo]

7 hours ago, A Lamp said:

Perhaps there's another way to add strength and fitness into the game without copying?

Well, my thought is mostly that Project Zomboid has strength/fitness because- like its Panic and panic desensitisation system- It's supposed to act as a barrier to you being able to deal with zombies well at the beginning of the game.

I also don't think exercise would fit as well, because there's not as many variables you need to consider in TLD compared to PZ. In PZ an exercise session will leave you tired out, and in a world where zombies could break into your house at any time. (plus, in a world where there is much more active time pressure and things competing for your attention) In TLD I think it'd devolve into encouraging fairly boring hibernation sessions.

If TLD had a Skill for simulating your survivor's physique, it would probably just be one skill IMO and be a steady build from a variety of sources. Eg. You get points from simply eating a kilo of meat, surviving outdoors for periods of time, each hour you spend Harvesting, etc. It could effect things like what you mentioned, or other stuff like the max capacity for Needs/Condition, wound recovery time, harvest times/calorie efficiency, etc.

I think it'd be nice to feel the experience of truly starting as a weenie and working your way up, but my main concern is that it'd take a lot of balancing work. Presumably, some power would need to be deducted from players by default, and fully levelled players would be stronger in many inherent, important ways that'd have big knock on effects on the game. Could work out and be quite fun, though.