Wetting the whetstone!

[druffzilla]

We should be able to wet the whetstone to prevent it degrading so much, and to get better results on the sharpening of the knife.

I personally think 5% degradation per use is too much for the whetstone anyway, 3% would be much better, then if you add water, lower it to 2% and be 1-2% more effective on the sharpening of the knife.

Therefor we should use ~0,3l of water, can be dirty water of course.

EDIT: I thought about this a little more, how about the option to wet the whetstone beforehand in the "actions" tab, something like "soak in water" and then it stays wet for 3 uses or 60minutes.

[Boston123]

Considering how I have been using the same whetstone for literally about 10 years, now, the fact that the sharpening stone degrades so fast is just asinine.

They REALLY want us to make those completely-worthless "improvised" tools, which is a shame.

If it wasn't for that stupid forge, I would have absolutely no reason to go to Desolation Point.

[Hesha]

Yeah, they do... I guess with this trend, we can only hope for mods...

[Scyzara]

I actually like the new whetstone mechanics pretty much. The higher your sharpening skill, the more durability you restore to your weapon per sharpening, e.g. 3% at 30 sharpening skill and 5% at 67 skill. I haven't leveled up the sharpening skill to 100 yet but I guess in the end you'll restore 6 or even 7% weapon durability per sharpening. Which makes a whetstone more than equivalent to the hatchet or knife that you would have found instead in previous versions.

For me personally it's not of utmost importance whether something is 100% realistic or not (otherwise I could never play a game where wolves are the main antagonists anyway^^), but whether something makes sense from a game design's point of view (and is thus fun to play). And at least for me the whetstone definitely does make a lot of sense.

I've never been a fan of infinite resources (e.g. eternal hatchet repair with almost infinite scrap metal) because this takes away choices from me and thus somehow "devalues" the tool. If I can repair my hatchet for all eternity, there's no reason not to use it every time I could theoretically use it. With premade hatchets and knives now being finite again* - and forged ones being much worse - it's now worth a second thought whether you really want to use your precious premade hatchet and knife on every occasion possible.

I for one e.g. started to use the hacksaw to harvest frozen meat now (takes the same time as with a hatchet) to save a bit of hatchet condition. And I certainly recommend picking up sticks whenever you come across them. There are more trade-offs to be made now: Time vs heat vs weight of fuel for example. Or whether it makes sense to thaw up and harvest a corpse by hand even though this will make the meat deteriorate faster and exposes you to the cold and the wind for a longer period of time.

It really depends on your current situation and various circumstances which of these options might be the best choice. Saving hatchet condition by wandering around picking up sticks can be a great choice, but less so if your clothes are in a bad shape or if the weather looks as if it might change soon or if the area is unfamiliar and you're afraid to get lost. I think you understand what I'm pointing at.

Fun is about choices for me and the whetstone (indirectly) adds some pretty interesting choices in my opinion.

Another nice sideeffect of the new repair mechanics is that the whetstone gives you a way to pass time during a blizzard. I've hardly ever repaired my weapons this way in previous versions (rather repaired them completely at once whenever they dropped below 10%), but it somehow feels more natural to maintain your weapons more often now.

* I'm saying again as there was a similar situation back at the beginning of the alpha when scrap metal was actually still a rather scarce resource and you were already really lucky if you found maybe 20 pieces per game.

TL, DR:

I really like the whetstone (and the fact that it's finite) from a game design's point of view.

[Hesha]

I do like the whetstone, as it makes far more sense than repairing your knife / hatchet with scrap metal and wood. I don't like what they are trying to do with it one bit, however. Of course no game will ever represent reality 100%, but survival games live off realism. I am not interested (not one bit) on artificial "balancing" or such things. I play this game because I am interested in survival. The more realism the game conveys, the better.

To be in a situation in-game where even a complete survival-noob has like ten ideas of how to fix the problem and the game allowing for none of them is nothing short of frustrating. The game punishing you in arbitrary, artificial ways on top of this is simply abuse.

Hatchets don't break. End of discussion. Sure, they can go a bit blunt from prolonged use (i.e. weeks/months), but that doesn't really make that much of a difference - you can still chop wood. Of course the handle can break, but fixing that required nothing but some wood and basic tools.

The rate of degradation for your main tools is already ridiculous as it is. Introducing finite means of repair is just plain mean. Knowing that all this is done only to force us to hike over to that shitty forge only adds insult to injury.

I think I will have to shelf this game until either realism becomes a priority or there is a mod available that focuses on realism.

[druffzilla]

I do prefer the whetstone mechanic over the old mechanic too, and I don't mind the fact that we would have to make improvised tools one day. There is definitely some truth in what Scyzara said about resource management being a interesting part of the game. But the whetstone having a max of 20 uses is just ridiculous, even with 33-50 uses the whetstone would still degrade unrealistically fast.

The games difficulty should not be balanced by totally unrealistic decay rates, hunger rates or anything similar, it should be difficult because resources are scarce.

The possibility of using water to soak the whetstone would add more choices to make, do you carry more water with you to be able to use the whetstone most efficient or do you rather sharpen your tools at home. Do you light a fire to get water and get the most out of the whetstone resource or do you sharpen your tool dry and possibly waste a bit of the whetstone.

I wish axe heads and knife blades would have different mechanics, having a sharpness and a lifespan indicator, sharpness would indicate the efficiency of the tool and lifespan would indicate the lifespan, with every sharpening the lifespan slightly drops and there is no way to restore it. But if this would exist in TLD with the current trend of decay rates, I would probably rather not see it.

[Hesha]

I wish axe heads and knife blades would have different mechanics, having a sharpness and a lifespan indicator, sharpness would indicate the efficiency of the tool and lifespan would indicate the lifespan, with every sharpening the lifespan slightly drops and there is no way to restore it. But if this would exist in TLD with the current trend of decay rates, I would probably rather not see it.

I'm actually happy enough with knives degrading. And to be honest, when a knife breaks, it is usually the blade, no the handle that broke. Also there are a lot of ways of abusing knives in the game (hacking ice, opening cans, etc.), so I think it is fair enough for the knife to degrade when used inappropriately, especially when used as a lever - as it could snap.

I completely agree in regards to the hatchet, though. It would be great if the head and handle remained two items in terms of repairs, the head being indestructible, but requires sharpening every now and then, and the handle deteriorating over time, needing replacement after a while (as you cannot really fix it).

[elloco999]

I'm all with Scyzara on this. The new wetstone and rifle cleaning kit are a serious improvement IMHO.

[Hesha]

I really don't see how it is an improvement when the game arbitrarily takes tools away from us that, in a realistic scenario, would be nigh indestructible (talking about the hatchet here)...

[Scyzara]

I would really be interested to hear how you would suggest to make TLD an interesting game that is fun to play for more than 5 or 10 days if pretty much everything you need to do to survive is finding one hatchet (or one of each tool in general) at the beginning of the game which will then last eternally.

This is not meant to be criticism, but an honest question. Would you rather have (much more scarce and non-respawning) hunting prey as the sole reason to ever leave the area around your home base and explore all regions? Or would you have tools 10 times more scarce and accept the (presumably high) risk that new players would never find any tools at all?

Because this "in reality things don't degrade, thus they shouldn't degrade in TLD either" argument can be applied to pretty much everything ingame, ranging from clothes and matches to weapons, tools and canned food.

In reality you could find one of each tools and would probably be good for years. Canned food and matches would never turn bad and one set of clothes would last at least a year.

If you ended up in a TLD-like situation in reality you would probably only gather what you desperately need to survive and from that point onwards try to leave your base as little as possible. If you managed to kill one deer you would have food for weeks, thus you wouldn't even go hunting very often. You'd almost certainly try to somehow sit out the winter season while postponing all travelling plans until spring arrives.

My problem with this setup is that I for one have an incredibly hard time to imagine how TLD could be fun (or exciting) if things were that way. Maybe my imagination isn't good enough, I don't know.

[druffzilla]

Having longer respawn times and less animals would be a good start to force people to move around, although it is possible to live off fish and rabbits you need to gather scrap metal, guts and reclaimed wood for the traps and hooks. Fish goes bad faster then meat, so you need to do more cooking and use more matches too.

When I tried to catch rabbits on Timberwolf Mountain, my only rabbit snare broke before I caught a single rabbit, maybe it was just bad luck, or rabbit snares are less effective now and more likely to break?

That seems like a step in the right direction to me.

I don't mind degrading items, but they should be balanced, having matches degrade but then beef jerky and salt crackers last forever?

Having a huge amount of toolboxes you can barely use for anything have 50 uses, but a whetstone which is required to maintain your most important tools has only 20 uses?

Not that I would want toolboxes to degrade faster, their weight is a good counter balancing point. And matches should degrade too, but the rate is the problem...

Same with the food input, I never really complained about that before but eating 5kg a day is insane, why are animals not more rare but have higher calorie meat?

Anyway, lets stay on topic, the thing is that the whetstone is a good implementation but it degrades too fast, a option to use water to slow that down is real world accurate and would be a good mechanic, in my opinion.

[nicko]

how long does a whetstone last in this game? did someone say 20 use? really come on a whetstone should last lot longer its a friggn stone it would out last you. It should be like a striker last for pretty much forever.

[elloco999]

If the wetstone lasts forever, then so do your knives and hatchets. So why not lose the wetstones and just make the knives and hatchets indestructible?

Just as an FYI for anyone who thinks I'm actually suggesting doing this: I'm not. I think it would be a terrible idea.

[Boston123]

Because using tools makes them less effective? So, you have to repair them?

When you use a knife or axe, the tool gradually loses its edge. This makes the tool 1) less effective 2) more arduous to use ( harder to cut things), and 3) actually more dangerous. A dull knife/axe is MUCH more likely to slip off the object and hurt you. I would LOVE to see worn-out tools in-game have a chance to slip and cut you. It would give you another reason to maintain your tools.

Not touching the fact that sharpening tools can actually be a rather lengthy project.

Sharpening a knife: resetting the edge with a sharpening stone, honing the edge with a steel, stropping the edge with a bit of leather. Takes me generally an hour if I want to go into detail

Sharpening a hatchet: Removing nicks from the blade with a file, reset edge geometry with a file, sharpening with a sharpening stone, then you oil the head and handle, make sure the head is still seated properly, etc etc etc.

ALSO not touching the fact that "properly" sharpening a knife using a good stone will "return the knife to 100%", to use game terms. Why the in-game sharpening stones only repair a couple of percentage points is asinine.

[FINDarkside]

I think I will have to shelf this game until either realism becomes a priority or there is a mod available that focuses on realism.

There was a mod that added stuff like item rotation, stacking and jumping and stuff like that, but Hinterland does not allow talking about mods so there probably won't be much mods. Kinda shame since realism mod would definitely be possible to make.

[KD7BCH]

No mods is terrible because the developers cant possibly hope to build the game exactly how the community wants in every respect. Mods are also must better on the whole over time because they bring into focus those things the community feels need priority over what developers feel is important since their interest is financial in nature.

[nicko]

If the wetstone lasts forever, then so do your knives and hatchets. So why not lose the wetstones and just make the knives and hatchets indestructible?

Just as an FYI for anyone who thinks I'm actually suggesting doing this: I'm not. I think it would be a terrible idea.

Yeah I know what your saying, but I'm sure the whetstone just needs tweaking to last a bit longer surely? it's pretty lame atm it last's about as long as sand paper.

[McGuffin]

There was a mod that added stuff like item rotation, stacking and jumping and stuff like that, but Hinterland does not allow talking about mods so there probably won't be much mods. Kinda shame since realism mod would definitely be possible to make.

I dont see shame there.

The game is in Alpha, Hinterland wants to balance it with feedback based on the vanilla rules and the original code.

I dont think it's hard to understand.

[nicko]

There was a mod that added stuff like item rotation, stacking and jumping and stuff like that, but Hinterland does not allow talking about mods so there probably won't be much mods. Kinda shame since realism mod would definitely be possible to make.

I dont see shame there.

The game is in Alpha, Hinterland wants to balance it with feedback based on the vanilla rules and the original code.

I dont think it's hard to understand.

Also off topic guys take your modding stuff to a new post this is about the Whetstone and other how to survive without mods.

and matches last longer than a whetstone that is interesting fact matches get wet and degrade over time, the only time a whetstone would degrade is its used.

[metsavend]

Another nice sideeffect of the new repair mechanics is that the whetstone gives you a way to pass time during a blizzard. I've hardly ever repaired my weapons this way in previous versions (rather repaired them completely at once whenever they dropped below 10%), but it somehow feels more natural to maintain your weapons more often now.

TL, DR:

I really like the whetstone (and the fact that it's finite) from a game design's point of view.

I completely agree, it's good for the game dynamics that you have something to do, when you have to wait out the bad weather. Sharpening your knife and maintaining your rifle (and repairing clothes) are perfect activities for that.

[I like hiking]

Of course no game will ever represent reality 100%, but survival games live off realism. I am not interested (not one bit) on artificial "balancing" or such things. I play this game because I am interested in survival. The more realism the game conveys, the better.

I agree with this 100%. I've never played a game that tries to be realistic which is why I like TLD so much.

[Bobfrid]

http://officeforward.com/main/wp-conten ... -ever.jpeg

[vancopower]

all I can say here is this was necessary, in order for the forged tools to make sense if we could repair the whetstone then forging again will not make sense. I support the idea of decreasing it's condition from %5 per use to 2% per use or was it 3% if you add water in the process I think is good to have a variety but, nothing else the line must be drawn here no further - Jean luc picard as a matter of fact I think that all tools should be finite like that and have less effective counterpart that can be forged, it adds certain kind of flavor, the only way to get yourself some new "original" tools should be through trading in the future yea that makes sense 2 options Forge your slightly inefficient tools or trade something you stockpiled to get expensive new tools from a certain future area. It makes much more sense that way instead of prolonging the life of a single tool.

[Amazombie]

I think the stone should last longer, but be very rare. maybe only one or 2 in all three maps. I"d love to see things more rare , but more long lasting .

I agree with the others about forcing us to go to DP. At least if we are going to have to go there , give us some books to find that increase our skill or something so that the tools we craft and not so low quality. IMHO Once you get to the point you have no more axes and knives you have to go there and at the rate they degrade and the risk of getting caught in weather, whats the point leaving?

[vancopower]

I think the stone should last longer, but be very rare. maybe only one or 2 in all three maps. I"d love to see things more rare , but more long lasting .

I agree with the others about forcing us to go to DP. At least if we are going to have to go there , give us some books to find that increase our skill or something so that the tools we craft and not so low quality. IMHO Once you get to the point you have no more axes and knives you have to go there and at the rate they degrade and the risk of getting caught in weather, whats the point leaving?

First of all nobody will wait until the last minute to go to DP for forging, you have to plan ahead. Me personally my first priority is to get myself to trappers as quick as I can then once there try to hunt and craft some clothes not all but some and go to costal and then DP for collecting tools and forging arrowheads but if heavy storms hit or I am attacked too much by wolves I wait it out and try to make the next day. What most of the people don't understand in this game is the time there is no rush in fact the more you rush the harder it gets you get surprised by the weather by wolves ect. Go slow take only what you need leave everything else you will double back latter. My point is you can have forged tools way ahead of time before you run out of whet stone and original tools in general you just have to make the effort. In my last gameplay I even survived a bear attack in costal, barely but I survived and continued to DP again with the usual routine. Also nobody is forcing you to go to DP you could always use the hacksaw to harvest corpses the arrows you could find everywhere where is an archery target when they broke recycle them so DP just adds to the survival flavor it is not necessary at all however if you decide to adventure there be prepared have some meat on you lots of torches so you could chain them dropping one on the ground and lighting up the new one also the wolves will never cross a burning torch on the ground and you could scare it away with the one in your hand so yea I see no problem here even on stalker mode you just have to be prepared as in any other game, cheers