Mending skill stopped

[javijungle]

Hi, I'm traveling the island with my voyager survivor and reaching day 300 pursuing the Skilled Survivor achievement, all my skills raised to level 5 except one, the mending skill.
This skill stopped at some point at the beginning of level 4, about 20%, from there on it doesn't advance by repairing or crafting clothes at all.
My doubt, for which I hope someone can answer me, is if I must find a mending book to continue improving the skill or is it probably a bug related to a recent update.
Thanks and best regards.

 

[hozz1235]

No, you don't need a mending book to proceed.  Are you sure it's not advancing?  It does move very slowly at lvl 4.

[UpUpAway95]

To get from Level 4 mending to Level 5 mending seems to take forever and each instance of mending does not seem to move the progress bar at all... but it is probably still working. 

One way you could see this with greater certainty is to go to a place where there are ample houses with curtains (i.e. lots of cloth) and mend any available clothing items you have there in rapid succession until you can see that the bar has moved.  Of course, this will also use up sewing kits (or you can make fishing tackle using cured guts and scrap metal). 

You can also mend your bedroll without a sewing kit or tackle (just be sure to drop any sewing kits or tackle you have in your inventory beforehand).  Mending the bedroll without the sewing kit or tackle does take a lot longer.  In addition, your bedroll does drop condition after each usage, so you can also just start a cycle of mend, sleep, mend again, etc. until you can see that the bar has moved for you. 

If you do a bunch of mending in rapid succession and the bar indeed has stopped progression, then I would recommend submitting a bug report.

[javijungle]

Thanks to @hozz1235 and @UpUpAway95 for your comments.

I finally found a mending book at Broken Railroad and I could see the progress result on the bar after the five hours of reading, only 10 level points.

Really the progress in level 4 is so slow or progresses with very few points mending clothes, that explains my perception that I was not advancing.

[Leeanda]

I've always found it odd that sewing takes so much longer to go up..   it's not that hard a thing to learn in real life..

[hozz1235]

2 hours ago, Leeanda said:

I've always found it odd that sewing takes so much longer to go up..   it's not that hard a thing to learn in real life..

Can't drink boiling water IRL either ;)

[javijungle]

2 hours ago, Leeanda said:

I've always found it odd that sewing takes so much longer to go up..   it's not that hard a thing to learn in real life..

Well, you'd be surprised how complicated it is for my male counterparts to simply mend a sock or put a button on a shirt 😂

[Leeanda]

1 minute ago, hozz1235 said:

Can't drink boiling water IRL either

Too true.🙂.    Coffee with no sugar is bad enough but no ordinary tea at all ??😁

[Leeanda]

5 minutes ago, javijungle said:

Well, you'd be surprised how complicated it is for my male counterparts to simply mend a sock or put a button on a shirt 😂

Lol.    Yet will and Astrid can make the well fitting outfit of their choice,by reading a few books.

[ManicManiac]

I can agree that Mending is objectively the "slowest" skill to increase, taking a staggering 350 successful mending actions to fully grow the skill to its highest level.  (1 point per successful action/10 points per skill book)

This becomes an especially slow process if our survivor is trying to make the most of cloth/leather/pelt by waiting for clothing to wear down enough in order to make the most efficient use of materials.  

So for some items we can start repairing at 70% condition (like coats, pants, boots) but other things we have to wait much longer... anywhere from 50% all the way down to 25% in order to get the most condition from each repair.   ...and as we out skill level increased the amount of condition restored by repairs increases, making it even slower if trying to get the most out of each repair job.

Compared to the other skills... Mending does indeed just require the most "effort" to master. 🤭

For simple comparison...
Archery                         125 pts.
Carcass Harvesting    100 pts.
Cooking                        350 pts.
Fire Starting                 200 pts.
Ice Fishing                   250 pts.
Mending                       350 pts.
Rifle Firearm                100 pts.
Revolver Firearm         100 pts.
Gunsmithing                100 pts.

While cooking and mending do both require 350 actions/pts to reach level 5, cooking is still objectively much "faster" considering eating is something we need to do every day... so there is plenty of opportunity to use the skill a lot and rather frequently.
(There is even a cheeky way harvest carcasses creating smaller portions of meat that enable us to "practice" cooking on many smaller portions of meat rather than .5kg increments the UI constrains.)

Now granted... we do have the option to "fast track" mending as well...  But like any choice in TLD, there's a tradeoff.   We can do this simply by repairing clothing anytime a clothing item loses as little as just 1% condition... but that, of course, is a colossal waste of cloth/leather/pelt.  

~~~~~

Now at this point, let me be clear.  I'm perfectly fine with all of this.  I'm good with Hinterlands decisions regarding the requirements for masting the various skills.  This isn't a complaint or a call to change/overhaul anything...  I'm simply pointing out the objective facts.

However, now comes the part when I'll posit that it doesn't matter that Mending takes so very long to master compared to any other skill...
I say this because of how the skill progresses.

By the time we get to Level 3 (75 pts.), we've gotten to the point where as long as we have a sewing kit (and the "tool bonus" that brings with it)... each mending action is virtually a guaranteed success from that point on.  Beyond level 3 all we're really improving on is the time repairs take and the amount of condition restored to the clothing item.  

So, while mastering the skill does objectively take the greatest amount of time... getting good enough to no longer have to worry about losing material due to a failed repair attempt is gone by level 3.  I think everything after that is just bonus.

 

Edited May 4, 2023 by ManicManiac

[Blizzard Walker]

The last sixteenth of an inch of the mending progress meter seemed to take forever to advance.  Once I was sure one more mending would propel me to level 5.  Instead it would five or so mending episodes to get me to level 5.  At times it seems that the progress meter doesn't advance when it is just advancing glacially.

[sierra 117]

My pre dlc run it took me over 500 days to level mending.

Personally I think this could be Improved a lot if crafting clothing also gave points toward levelling.

Also I would like the reward for reaching lvl 5 mending to be able to repair ruined clothing.

Although admittedly I'm just a bit salty from a long interloper run, where I got to my second wool sweater too late.

Edited May 7, 2023 by sierra 117

[Kayosiv]

On 5/7/2023 at 11:03 AM, sierra 117 said:

My pre dlc run it took me over 500 days to level mending.

Personally I think this could be Improved a lot if crafting clothing also gave points toward levelling.

Also I would like the reward for reaching lvl 5 mending to be able to repair ruined clothing.

Both of these suggestions seem phenomenal to me.

Spending 40 hours making a coat from scratch should increase my mending skill by an immense amount.

Having ruined clothing items that are rare or one of a kind is a sad affair. Being able to keep them around once you get to level 5 mending would be a nice goal to set for yourself and feel triumphant when you can finally fix that pair of snow pants that got eaten early on in your run.