Bone needles/hooks, cordage and ladders for roof repair

[cekivi]

Just some simple ideas to improve the length of time you can survive in the sandbox and add some new mechanics.

1. Bone needles and hooks. These are both ancient tools that have been around for centuries. Although not as good as metal they can certainly be used for fishing tackle and making homemade sewing kits (bone needle + line). They should be something craftable at the workbench from cured bone and a knife. Bones should be harvestable from deer or bears.

2. Cordage. We can already make line at the workbench from cured gut. We should be able to use the line to make other items such as sewing kits or outside the crafting interface as cord.

3. Ladders. Obviously you shouldn't be able to run around the map putting ladders everywhere for the same reason why players don't have a jump button. However, homes in rural areas sometimes have ladders affixed to their side to aid in snow removal. It would be neat if the mountaineer's cottage (for instance) had a ladder on the side that you could repair with cord and firewood to enable you to climb up on the roof to repair it. Repaired roofs would increase the warmth of the home. Roofs should be repairable with any large hide and some cord (if necessary) to stitch it together. This would be a nice, and simple, way to implement a mechanic that gives players another degree of control over their situation. Tree stands to assist with hunting (again with either missing or broken ladders) would also be neat although it would make hunting much easier.

[draebor]

Love the idea of the bone tools you suggested... +1

[Dirmagnos]

Bone implements have been suggested several times by now, fingers crossed.

Altho id prefer instead of making a brand new handmade sewing kit ability to recycle old ones.

Basic sewing kit content is: needle(s), thread, safety pin(s), patches, scissors, thimble.

Needles could be made from bones, both animal and fish; thread could be made from guts, patches from cloth and hides; safety pins are rather simple and sturdy, plus can be replaced with same bones to some degree; same for thimble, and it could be made from scrap metal; scissors, the most complex tool in the kit, is rather hard to break, so those shouldnt be an issue anyway. So, aside of scissors, everything else needed is already in the game and is not that hard to make. Sure, it wont be of the same quality and manufactured ones, but it will do the job.

[cekivi]

Good point about sewing kit. Repairing it with some bone needles and cloth/hide patches would make more sense. Plus it may finally give a reason to use cured leather again!

[Patrick Carlson]

Just some simple ideas to improve the length of time you can survive in the sandbox and add some new mechanics.

1. Bone needles and hooks. These are both ancient tools that have been around for centuries. Although not as good as metal they can certainly be used for fishing tackle and making homemade sewing kits (bone needle + line). They should be something craftable at the workbench from cured bone and a knife. Bones should be harvestable from deer or bears.

2. Cordage. We can already make line at the workbench from cured gut. We should be able to use the line to make other items such as sewing kits or outside the crafting interface as cord.

3. Ladders. Obviously you shouldn't be able to run around the map putting ladders everywhere for the same reason why players don't have a jump button. However, homes in rural areas sometimes have ladders affixed to their side to aid in snow removal. It would be neat if the mountaineer's cottage (for instance) had a ladder on the side that you could repair with cord and firewood to enable you to climb up on the roof to repair it. Repaired roofs would increase the warmth of the home. Roofs should be repairable with any large hide and some cord (if necessary) to stitch it together. This would be a nice, and simple, way to implement a mechanic that gives players another degree of control over their situation. Tree stands to assist with hunting (again with either missing or broken ladders) would also be neat although it would make hunting much easier.

A quick question regarding the bone+line sewing kit idea: Do you currently make use of the fishing tackle as an improvised sewing kit to make repairs?

And thanks for the feedback!

--Patrick

[cekivi]

Yes, I have used fishing tackle as an improvised sewing kit to repair clothes. However, making hooks requires scrap metal so, in a very long game, you'll eventually be unable to make them.

I was envisioning the improvised sewing kit with bone needles as an intermediate between a sewing kit and the fishing tackle with the bonus of it being repairable.

Edit: Also thanks for reading my post! It's great to see how committed Hinterland is to the Alpha process!

[akodo1]

Maybe a simple implementation would be to allow making hooks from bone. Then you can make the fishing tackle, which can be used for sewing, or fishing. No need to actually include needles.

[cekivi]

Maybe a simple implementation would be to allow making hooks from bone. Then you can make the fishing tackle, which can be used for sewing, or fishing. No need to actually include needles.

Well, the reason I was thinking of them as separate things is that a bone hook is usually a bone needle tied to something else like scrap wood, another piece of bone, etc. Like how they do it in this video:

Now, obviously I couldn't make anything near as nice as in the video but given two bone needles, some line and a lot of incentive I'm sure I could make a crude imitation. If I just wanted to repair clothes though I'd just make a needle and grab some thin strips of cured leather. However, I will concede the point that since fishing tackle can already be used to repair clothes making improvised sewing kits is probably redundant.

[Dirmagnos]

Fishing tackle has several severe drawbacks compared to sewing kit. Repairs with it take considerably longer time and you cant craft clothes with those.

Currently im saving sewing kits just for those reasons, i at day 89 and i have over 200 units of metal, but only 4 sewing kits.