A few Suggestions

[Mystix]

Hi there, Hinterland team! I've got a few suggestions that would make the game even more realistic. So, here they are:

1. Clothes.

We have a tough, cold winter too where I'm from and to tell you the truth - I do wear my wool socks over my cotton socks, and then the boots. The same goes for the sweaters. Last winter when the cold wind came I wore my t-shirt, a thin sweater, a heavy sweater and my leather jacket on top. I sure felt like a balloon, but it kept me warm. So that's what I want to see in the game - wearing more than one of certain type of clothes. And please make the rabbit-skin mitts an index finger, there's now way you can make a single shot with the rifle these mitts.

2. Indoor lighting.

There are just two types of indoor lighting in the game - pitch black during night time and lighter during the day. I'd like to see the rooms a little darker when there's a fog or a blizzard out there, or really bright when the sky is clear and the sun is shining or something in the middle (like it is now) when it's cloudy.

3. Temperature during climbing.

If there's one thing that's really unrealistic in the game is that the character's temperature stays the same while he's climbing a hill. No matter what the weather's like, the heavier your backpack and the steeper the hill goes, the warmer you get. I've been hiking in the winter with a 20 kg backpack on my back and I've been sweating like a pig. I'd love to see that in the game.

4. Circling birds.

The crows are circling over dead human remains, and it's completely logical, and following that logic they should be circling over dead animals as well. It's hard enough to spot a dead deer or a wolf as it is, this might help a little.

5. Coffee and tea.

Can you make bottles for storing boiled coffee and tea? Just the way it is with water - the more tea you have, the fuller the bottle is. No one would actually carry 5 coffee mugs in their backpack. Although I love these hinterland logo mugs and I would like to get my hands on such merchandise.

6. Knifes and hatchets

The knife and the hatchet become more ruined the more you use them. Logical. But the thing you need to repair the knife is a certain kind of wood? Not logical. If you repair the knife's handle it would be, but it would be better to be able to create some kind of grinder on the workbench to sharpen the knife. About the hatchet - there is an axe in my mom's basement that I use every year to chop wood for her. It belonged to my grandfather, he gave it to us and I still use it every year. Never sharpened it or changed the handle. Just saying.

7. Workshops.

Why would I need the workbench to make myself a coat or a torch if all it has is just a vice? Make more big tools for the workbench, like a hacksaws and stuff like that, stuff that every repairman has laying around. It would be perfectly fine if they are just graphical and not intractable, just give me a reason to go for the workbench.

8. Bow and arrows

I'm kinda running out of bullets in there and I just wanna say this, even though a lot of people already did - if I was really in that game and I got my hands on some wood, animal guts and a workbench, the first thing I would do is make myself a bow. The arrows could be made from sticks or cattail stalks even (because they're really light) and scrap and when their percentage starts to drop, I'd love to be able to "harvest" them and reclaim the tips to make more arrows.

I'm sorry for my English, I'll clarify if there's something you guys didn't understand.

I'm sure you will take some notes out of this so I'll thank you in advance.

[jackattack]

3. Instead of making the character's temperature dependent on heading uphill, what if running and encumbrance affected the freezing bar? (Which I'll express in progress by arrows.) If the freezing bar is progressing at two arrows, running would make it progress at one arrow, essentially trading exhaustion for freezing (which in my book is a good trade). If you are walking around with a lot of gear, it would also reduce the progress of the freezing bar by one arrow, making encumbrance a bit less of a losing proposition.

6. I've always assumed that wood used to "fix" the knife or hatchet, used in conjunction with scrap metal, was supposed to represent wood expended in a fire to heat the metal -- not sure why I thought that. Maybe knife/axe repair should require a fire or a workbench. Maybe each region could have one unique "quality" tool (one of the four, not one of each) that degrades half as fast (or not at all).

7. If there are tools at the workbench, why are we dragging around these heavy toolboxes? If the do add tools to the workbench, I hope they are hanging off the front, or on a rack at the back -- it's hard enough to see hooks a lines on the flat surface.

8. I've seen the bow and arrows idea a few times, but are they really that easy to make? Or use?

[Mystix]

I agree on 8 - it should take a lot of time to make one and to perfect it and they definitely SHOULD make a bow a lot harder to use in comparison to the rifle. Aside from calculating the wind speed, the distance and the strength there are other variables, such as how tired or cold you are, how much you carry on your back and have you eaten lately. All of this stuff combined could lead to having unsteady hands or even shivering - that would make using the bow a lot hard.

[BigJayA]

I'd think that a spear would be more feasible than a bow and arrow.

Something like they made in "The Edge" to kill Bart.

[Ryan CM]

Thanks for your suggestions! You will find there are other threads in our forums about these topics that you may also like to join in on.

(Note: If you are able to keep each suggestion in separate threads (or on other threads associated with the same suggestion), that can be a great help for us to see the volume of requests for specific ideas more easily and keep the forum tidy. Thanks for your help!)