Traps


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I was thinking about the trap mechanic in the game. There has been talk about them BUT nothing I have seen about actual mechanics.

We all know we can use guts and reclaimed wood to make snares. What if we were able to craft a stake using a piece of reclaimed wood (broom handle, bed slat, table leg, etc) or maybe 2 stakes from a piece of hard wood. A plain stake would do X*Z amount of damage. X = Stake and Z = Stake Condition. So if a stake does 4 points of damage and the condition was 75%, the stake would do 3 points of damage. A weaken stake just wont penetrate a target with the same effectiveness as a stout one. The devs could then add a "Fire Hardening" choice when a fire is brought up. The risk is the player could burn to much of the wood and destroy the implement or make it hardened but weaker. I think this chance could be a modifier of their (Fire Making Skill + Repair Skill) / 2. A fire hardened stake would do (X+Y)*Z damage: X = Stake, Y = Hardening and Z = Stake Condition.

The player then takes a stake and places it like they do snares. However, stake placement takes more time. Maybe 10 minutes per stake. Otherwise a player could just drop the stake in front of a charging wolf and impale them. The player could then do various things with the stakes: put them in a row to make a perimeter, bundle them up to make a more effective kill zone, etc. Rabbits and any other small game would be immune. Walking game would be immune, though it may slow them down a bit. Running game however would hit the stake and break it, doing whatever damage. Stakes could also be broken in time (just like snares are). A broken stake could be used in a fire and have half the effectiveness of reclaimed wood.

This would become a time sink for foraging, crafting, hardening (with a chance of losing the stake) and placement. They would decay in time, so just putting them up all over would be a waste. It would allow players to place stakes in advance and either lure a wolf into the kill zone or run a deer into the kill zone, which might not kill them. On a side note, a player who ran into a stake zone would also be hit with the trap and suffer all the ill effects therein.

This "punji" type trap would be a realistic addition to the game. It is something that has been asked for, does not require any new raw materials, though it does create a crafted material and a broken crafted material. The placement mechanic already exists (as we can place snares and lamps), however the logic behind running into a stake would definitely be a time sink for the devs.

The real downside of this is animal fight or flight mechanics are extremely predictable. It is a straight line. Forcing a deer into a kill zone would be pretty easy. The change of the wolf AI might make the kill zone a bit harder as they now do not purely run, they stalk and trot. A stalking or trotting wolf would simply walk over the stakes with no ill effects. Now if we can create some sort of pit or depression to place the stakes AND the pit does not fill with snow...

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Would be a nice defensive addition, if you put camouflage over it, it can work vs walking animals too, so in case you are out in the open you could have a noncontinuous perimeter with these traps around your basecamp and approaching animals would fall into it, be scared and after a while of untangling run away.

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