Branches require Too Much Time and Calories to Harvest

[Mikeloeven]

Just from the point of view of someone who actually has some basic survival training I want to point out some issues with the math for harvesting branches for sticks. In game the cost is 10 minutes of time and about 21 calories to obtain 2 sticks.

I am not sure who or where these number come from but they are simply not realistic. 21 calories is equivalent to running about 5 minutes on a treadmill whereas breaking a branch is about a 5 second activity that probably uses less than one calorie.

Grab Branch Place foot on center give a quick tug and snap two pieces of wood in under 5 seconds.

[Xantar]

A lot of stuff in the Long Dark is out of whack. 150g for a stick? Hmmm... okay. Not really sure how heavy a stick is in real life, but one branch (especially from the size in the game) worth way more than 2 sticks. At least 5 in my opinion. And why can't I burn anything, really? A lot of stuff cannot be used as fuel.

Tinder should be able to be used as fuel. Newspaper, Roll up should be able to be used as fuel. Cloths should be able to use as fuel... I want to burn stuffs =P

Honestly, if it was real life, I would take a axe and sledgehammer to turn unused buildings into fuels. As long as it is dried, it is burnable. Fences? Doors? Flooring? All fuels. And why can't I create a campfire in door? This is more like a "game" restriction than actual realistic restriction.

Hinderland seems to unsure whether they want a game or an experience.

[Mikeloeven]

Dont forget to fell a few trees for next year as well as chopping up those piles of logs up at clearcut

[Xantar]

Someone on steam once said: Why am I running out woods? I'm in the fucking woods!

[DigitalDeath849]

In my opinion, branches aren't energy viable in their current states. Why spend 15 minutes braking a branch into sticks when I can get much more sticks around them. I find myself only breaking branches when I am in desperate need of fuel.

To make branches more viable and rewarding for harvesting, I would suggest increasing the amount of sticks acquired to somewhere between 4 to 6 and perhaps 1 tinder plug from pieces of the broken branch. This is what I would.

[akodo1]

I agree that game wise I never break branches into sticks unless there is one next to the campfire I am warming myself at. (If I do build fire outdoors I do try and build it next to wood. It's great with hatchet, build next to a fir log. Chop and warm up at the same time)

I've lived in woody area of Minnesota, where winds knock down lots of branches. The way I look at it, you have sticks which are short enough to fit into your backpack and branches which aren't. Especially when only partly dry it can be a pain snapping them in half or whatever, and/or snapping off the twigs. So to me the time feels about right. The yield is off though, branches should deliver 4-6 sticks and a tinder plug.

I think they should add sticks to what limbs deliver as well. roughly equal sticks to wood.

Big trees lying down in the environment that are too big to be limbs should be instead a truck with multiple limbs. Your little hatchet can't hack the thick trunk, but you should be able to harvest a couple limbs, replacing the limb with a nub once it is chopped off.

[akodo1]

Someone on steam once said: Why am I running out woods? I'm in the fucking woods!

Well, I will say that just because you are out in the woods doesn't mean there is a lot of useful stuff to burn. Often there aren't any branches in easy reach. So scrounging the forest floor for sticks and branches which have blown off makes sense, Also these tend to be dead/dying and so are dry or partially dry so good for burning.

[Maninpants]

I have to agree that branches should contain at least 4 sticks and the time to harvest could still be reduced by half. I think there was some kind of petition at some point trying to sort this out.

Running out of wood does happen to me as well but I think the Devs will let us, at some point, start chopping branches and limbs off the big trees we see around as well as what we can harvest now. This wood (hey hey!) at least help players out with their fuel shortages and in a realistic way.

This game is quite hard to balance but there are some stats/numbers that do need tweaking

[starfighter441]

I don't bother with branches any more, just always pick up any stick I see, they add up over time.

[elloco999]

I don't bother with branches any more, just always pick up any stick I see, they add up over time.

This... Branches are not worth it.

I always collect sticks when I see them and it is safe to do so. In 250+ days on Stalker I have hardly ever burned anything other than sticks and I have piles and piles in reserve at all my major bases. Why spend 10 min and 21 cals just to get 2 sticks? Okay maybe 21 cals is not fair, you would also burn cals if you just stand there for 10 min so the actual cal cost of breaking a stick is less then that. But still, you can pick up a dozen sticks in 10 min, so why bother with the branches? You're better of walking a bit to find sticks lying around.

[akodo1]

I keep on coming back to this. Now when I play I don't even touch branches, ever. I'm not one of those fanatics who never chops a long with his ax so it lasts as long as possible, but I don't bother with branches. I would suggest increasing the number of sticks that come from branches until it is balanced and people start going back to breaking branches. This may also entail slowing the spawning of new sticks.

[Boston123]

In "real life", fueling a fire with nothing but thin sticks is a poor choice. Good for starting a fire, but keeping it going? Not so much.

[nicko]

I will collect some branches if I have plenty of food and time. Also from what I can see you don't need and axe so really all your doing is burning a few extra calories. but I agree it should be at least 4 sticks per branch, 2 seems a bit pointless. I also agree with another post we should be able to burn anything that is pretty much dry. cloth, tinder, etc.

[Hesha]

The problem is with the way fires work at the moment. Every piece of fuel simply adds to the fire's duration, when in reality whether you put one, two or five sticks onto a burning fire, they will all be burnt out by the same time, the second stick doesn't "wait" for the first stick to be burnt.

[KD7BCH]

I don't bother with branches any more, just always pick up any stick I see, they add up over time.

This... Branches are not worth it.

I always collect sticks when I see them and it is safe to do so. In 250+ days on Stalker I have hardly ever burned anything other than sticks and I have piles and piles in reserve at all my major bases. Why spend 10 min and 21 cals just to get 2 sticks? Okay maybe 21 cals is not fair, you would also burn cals if you just stand there for 10 min so the actual cal cost of breaking a stick is less then that. But still, you can pick up a dozen sticks in 10 min, so why bother with the branches? You're better of walking a bit to find sticks lying around.

I agree with you all that they are a wasteful expenditure of time and calories for the pickup. However the benefit here is that you can use the trade-off as a time passer to rebuild stamina if you have recently used it running. This is the only reason I bother with branches, unless I absolutely need the wood.

[elloco999]

In "real life", fueling a fire with nothing but thin sticks is a poor choice. Good for starting a fire, but keeping it going? Not so much.

True, but we're talking TLD not RL and in TLD fueling a fire with only sticks is a perfectly viable way of keeping a fire burning for a long time. It does require a lot of clicking though, that's the only reason I can think of to use logs.

I agree with you all that they are a wasteful expenditure of time and calories for the pickup. However the benefit here is that you can use the trade-off as a time passer to rebuild stamina if you have recently used it running. This is the only reason I bother with branches, unless I absolutely need the wood.

I usually don't stop to let my stamina build back up again. I'll just keep walking to where I'm going.

[jumpingbean77]

I also skip branches, simply not worth the effort

[yoshiro]

In "real life", fueling a fire with nothing but thin sticks is a poor choice. Good for starting a fire, but keeping it going? Not so much.

True, but we're talking TLD not RL and in TLD fueling a fire with only sticks is a perfectly viable way of keeping a fire burning for a long time. It does require a lot of clicking though, that's the only reason I can think of to use logs.

This may be true, but there is a good argument that your character could simply be waiting for the 1st stick to almost burn out before putting on the 2nd stick into the fire. I think their current system is smart. Could you imagine being cold, tired and stuck outside in TLD? You would need to wake up every 6 minutes to put another stick on the fire? I seriously wouldn't be interested in playing this game if there was this much micro-management.

As for breaking down branches - I completely agree with all the comments. It is not time efficient and I am all about making every second and every calorie count! Not only is it inefficient, but it can be an extremely risky thing to do! You make 10 minutes fly by and a wolf might have moved closer to you while you were breaking it. 2 stupid sticks is simply not worth the risk. It needs to take 5 seconds and give more sticks.

[joki]

I just don't pick up any branches either. They take way too much time, for only 14 mins of burn time, no thanks. (It would probably be better balanced, if they took like 5 mins to harvest, yielding 3 sticks, or 4 even? Not sure.)

[elloco999]

In "real life", fueling a fire with nothing but thin sticks is a poor choice. Good for starting a fire, but keeping it going? Not so much.

True, but we're talking TLD not RL and in TLD fueling a fire with only sticks is a perfectly viable way of keeping a fire burning for a long time. It does require a lot of clicking though, that's the only reason I can think of to use logs.

This may be true, but there is a good argument that your character could simply be waiting for the 1st stick to almost burn out before putting on the 2nd stick into the fire. I think their current system is smart. Could you imagine being cold, tired and stuck outside in TLD? You would need to wake up every 6 minutes to put another stick on the fire? I seriously wouldn't be interested in playing this game if there was this much micro-management.

I'm not complaining about the current system. I was just pointing out that although it might not be realistic, in TLD you can simply throw a bunch of sticks on the fire and have it going for several hours. Even if that may not be possible in real live. I'm fine with the way that works.

As for breaking down branches - I completely agree with all the comments. It is not time efficient and I am all about making every second and every calorie count! Not only is it inefficient, but it can be an extremely risky thing to do! You make 10 minutes fly by and a wolf might have moved closer to you while you were breaking it. 2 stupid sticks is simply not worth the risk. It needs to take 5 seconds and give more sticks.

It's not as unsafe as you might think. Yes, the time is sped up for 10 min, but the wildlife doesn't move any faster. Same with harvesting a deer carcass. Harvesting 9kg of meat, the skin and 2 gut takes several hours, but the other animals hardly move during this time.

[McGuffin]

The branch inconsistency is a concern since a long time.

I don't bother to pick them up at all.

It's also faster to open the timberwolf crates with the hacksaw (which basically takes no time, while this should probably take at least one hour in real life)

[yoshiro]

As for breaking down branches - I completely agree with all the comments. It is not time efficient and I am all about making every second and every calorie count! Not only is it inefficient, but it can be an extremely risky thing to do! You make 10 minutes fly by and a wolf might have moved closer to you while you were breaking it. 2 stupid sticks is simply not worth the risk. It needs to take 5 seconds and give more sticks.

It's not as unsafe as you might think. Yes, the time is sped up for 10 min, but the wildlife doesn't move any faster. Same with harvesting a deer carcass. Harvesting 9kg of meat, the skin and 2 gut takes several hours, but the other animals hardly move during this time.

I've been wondering about the mechanic for wildlife as your harvesting meat. I'll have to do a test later on, but I'm pretty sure they still move around while your doing things. Maybe there is a mechanic that keeps wildlife from getting close while we are busy. Maybe we have just been getting lucky. I'll do a couple tests and figure that out so I know for sure.

[elloco999]

As for breaking down branches - I completely agree with all the comments. It is not time efficient and I am all about making every second and every calorie count! Not only is it inefficient, but it can be an extremely risky thing to do! You make 10 minutes fly by and a wolf might have moved closer to you while you were breaking it. 2 stupid sticks is simply not worth the risk. It needs to take 5 seconds and give more sticks.

It's not as unsafe as you might think. Yes, the time is sped up for 10 min, but the wildlife doesn't move any faster. Same with harvesting a deer carcass. Harvesting 9kg of meat, the skin and 2 gut takes several hours, but the other animals hardly move during this time.

I've been wondering about the mechanic for wildlife as your harvesting meat. I'll have to do a test later on, but I'm pretty sure they still move around while your doing things. Maybe there is a mechanic that keeps wildlife from getting close while we are busy. Maybe we have just been getting lucky. I'll do a couple tests and figure that out so I know for sure.

They do still move around, but it's at the same speed as they would if you were just standing there.

Say it takes 30 secs of real time to harvest a complete deer carcass. If you just stand there doing nothing, in 30 seconds of real time, only a couple of minutes of game time passes. But when harvesting several hours pass. But the animals move the same distance in either case.

[yoshiro]

It's not as unsafe as you might think. Yes, the time is sped up for 10 min, but the wildlife doesn't move any faster. Same with harvesting a deer carcass. Harvesting 9kg of meat, the skin and 2 gut takes several hours, but the other animals hardly move during this time.

I've been wondering about the mechanic for wildlife as your harvesting meat. I'll have to do a test later on, but I'm pretty sure they still move around while your doing things. Maybe there is a mechanic that keeps wildlife from getting close while we are busy. Maybe we have just been getting lucky. I'll do a couple tests and figure that out so I know for sure.

They do still move around, but it's at the same speed as they would if you were just standing there.

Say it takes 30 secs of real time to harvest a complete deer carcass. If you just stand there doing nothing, in 30 seconds of real time, only a couple of minutes of game time passes. But when harvesting several hours pass. But the animals move the same distance in either case.

Ah, thanks so much for clearing that up for me. I won't be quite so paranoid while skinning animals now. lol

[SteveP]

+1 for making breaking branches faster and adding more sticks for the effort. I think each stick is about 1" in diameter by 18" length so in a big fire, it doesn't add much burn time so the burn time for a stick is about right. Sticks in real life burn faster than chunks of wood. I wish we had an axe for faster harvesting of wood and for felling trees. Also a saw would be nice. Perhaps a nice Swede saw.