Electrical Sewing Machine

[Willy Pete]

Have you ever finally found a clothing item you were searching the map for only for it to be ruined? Or maybe you re-enactments of 'Dancing with Wolves' has ruined some special clothing items you can't replace. What if there was a clothing-equivalent of the milling machine so you could, with a little help from the Aurora, repair ruined or even damaged clothing without the need for sewing kits or fishing line?

Like the milling machines, the sewing machine would only work during the Aurora and would probably be in a hard-to-reach area (perhaps the upcoming Mountain Pass?). It would work the same as the milling machine does, requiring materials in order to repair clothing and would also be capable of repairing ruined clothing.

[Glacia]

Also, several times the players have suggested being able to fully repair and restore ruined clothing items with tailoring Nv5, and makes sense, after all you are teorically a 'tailoring master' 

A sewing machine could be very interesting anyways!

[ajb1978]

Considering the environment and how it looks like a lot of the infrastructure is real old-timey, I would expect to be able to find a pedal-powered sewing machine too. The old ones where you just rock the pedal back and forth to move a pulley that actuates the needle. My mom used to have this old Singer model where you could fold the sewing machine itself down into the table. It was mainly just the table where junk mail went to die, but every now and then she'd actually use it to sew something. Still worked great. I mean there's no electronics and you can replace the belt with practically anything. Unless you got into the oddly specific habit of storing it salt water those things just don't die.

[Admin]

Thanks for the suggestion! 

[Stranzua]

Fixing ruined clothes with level 5 mending and adding a sewing machine are both great ideas. In my opinion, some regions can use something region specific to make players want to go there repeatedly and the sewing machine could be one option. Here are a few ideas for the sewing machine: 

1. It decreases repair times.

2. Allows clothing and bedrolls to be repaired up to 125%.

3. Allows the ability to add a third accessory slot by upgrading the technical backpack.

4. Allows you to make a new item called the bearskin satchel. An accessory that allows you to carry up to 5 kg of meat without smelling. 

5. Allows you to craft other items like an improvised bedroll, improvised ear wraps, a poncho, or socks.

6. Allows you to repair sewing kits.

7. If it's manual, then maybe we will find a note that leads us to a blueprint for a part needed to repair it. The part will have to be crafted at a forge. 

8. If it's electrical, then maybe it can be behind a door with a keypad like the ammunition benches. 

9. A way to improve animal skin clothing and/or new ways to use animal hides would be cool to. 

 

[Enigmaecho]

Speaking of mending has anyone else  noticed that the sewing primer research book isn’t granting any xp progress in the mending skill? Only book that’s not working that I’ve found 

[Leeanda]

I think an old manual one would be fitting. Maybe at grey mother's in Milton..  

I don't really go there unless I have to because of the climb only access.  

[UTC-10]

Sewing primer book give comparatively little advancement in skill especially as one advanced in level.  I read all the sewing primer books I found and the advancement from reading one, about part way through level 3 or 4, was pretty small.  If you don't make comparisons before and after it would look comparatively negligible progress compared to most any other skill.  

I finally got to level 5 sewing and you can bet that the last stretch took two or three times as many mends as I would have had to do for any other skill.  But I finally got there.  

If Hinterland were to implement a sewing machine (I doubt they would) its range of things it can do will be severely limited.  It would likely allow mending a nearly ruined piece of clothing (e.g., at 1%) to 100% for one piece of cloth (essentially one set of repair components fixes something up to 100%) but not ruined 0% items.  Ruined is ruined.  They could be a bit more liberal about what it could do but I would think they would be likely to stick with something like what I described. 

The possibility of implementation is still there so it could happen.  

[ajb1978]

1 hour ago, UTC-10 said:

Sewing primer book give comparatively little advancement in skill especially as one advanced in level. 

This is exactly it, the Mending skill requires an obscene amount of successful repairs to max out, so the sewing book really only has a noticeable impact going from level 1 to 2. At any other level, you'd have to like take a dry erase marker to your screen to notice how much the skill improves after reading. Like I'm not entirely convinced someone on the dev team didn't misplace a decimal, that's how extreme the Mending skill requirements are. A couple orders of magnitude compared to something like Cooking which you can max out in a day if you're committed and care to carve up an entire moose in 1kg increments.

I don't think a sewing machine should offer any new functionality beyond what a sewing kit offers. They aren't magic, and in fact require MORE skill to operate than a needle and thread. They just get the job done faster. So sewing machines should require at least a level 2 competence before you can use them, at which point they would accomplish all sewing tasks in 1/10 the time. You still need a sewing kit on hand, and it still degrades normally (thread doesn't come out of thin air), but a sewing machine would drastically reduce the time it takes to perform the task.

And even though I said "it's not magic", the fact that it does allow you to sew a lot faster it might open up new crafting recipes. Like allowing the player to craft old-world clothes from scratch. Would allow Interlopers to enjoy an Expedition Parka, perhaps.

A fun idea to think about, if nothing else. As far as crafting stations go though, a sewing machine does sound like a pretty feasible candidate in terms of utility and fitting with the overall theme. Of course I'm biased to my own thought of a pedal-powered sewing machine in some random cabin in the middle of nowhere. A nice excuse to visit a remote location now and again. Like a trip to Grandma's cabin in the woods, a couple wolves early on, but afterwards it's just bunnies and deer.

[Stranzua]

It literally took me over 500 to 600 days to max out the mending skill on my Voyager playthrough. Took forever. 

Edited June 14, 2023 by Stranzua

[Leeanda]

10 minutes ago, Stranzua said:

It literally took me over 500 to 600 days to max out the mending skill on my Voyager playthrough. Took forever. 

It does take a very long time...  I find if you take sprains off you'll get there quicker..the damage you should get is transferred to you and your clothes.  Not the best way to get it up faster though.. and slightly unfair it takes double damage when sprains don't.

[Lumi]

I don't know if this counts as post necromancy, sorry if it does, but I've had the same general idea and couldn't agree more. 

Pretty much all suggestions here are great, I like both the idea of it being manual but perhaps missing some parts (in my experience sewing machine parts are a PAIN PAIN PAIN to find, and I can't even imagine how much worse it would be for an out-of-production vintage Singer) or electric and only aurora functional.

In addition to repairs, upgrades are a great idea IMO and I think they could be pretty powerful but still nicely balanced if locked behind sewing level requirements, seeing as that skill progresses SLOWLY. 

 

This idea reflects some thoughts I've had about TLD's endgame which I think the Tales have started to cover, mainly that the survivor should be able to make/find unique, luxurious, specialized, etc. gear after long multi-step processes. Although this idea would basically be killed if item variants like hatchets or knives were added, specialty blacksmithing could be a great concept. 

As an example idea, toss in the bolt cutters from Wintermute into one or two locations and add a professional forge setup into the game somewhere (not just the furnaces we've been using lol). Using the bolt cutters (which are heavy and single-purpose), players can access rare caches of special industrial materials around great bear (i.e. micarta, wood for handles, expensive tool steel) and then go and make specialized knives. Maybe one is for skinning, one for bushcraft which speeds up crafting times, maybe one is a chopper that can double as a hatchet without reducing the time of usual knife tasks by too much, whatever. Though the benefits would be small, they're persistent and would ultimately stretch out the player's whetstones plus make the day-to-day more convenient.

Basically what I'm saying is one of the endgames I think TLD should consider is giving the player a bunch of hard-to-earn luxuries which eventually can stack up and really mean something during late-game scarcity.