UpUpAway95

I've had runs in single-zones where there has been no hacksaw to be found (I just RNG'd that sort of start in Broken Railroad yesterday with item spawned pushed to their easiest level. There was one hatchet (which is also not guaranteed any longer) and one knife (which is still a guaranteed spawn) whenever baseline resources are not set to low. It's also inconceivable to me that a person stranded and starving in the wilderness would opt to go hunting for a hacksaw to skin a rabbit rather than find anything sharp to help them do it. I've also found the early "mad dash to a forge in interloper" to be somewhat immersion breaking in the same way. To me, survival is using what you find around you first - not running off to loot distant places or to show off your forging skills before you can eat.

I'd be certainly OK with an imposed very limited durability. Good suggestion.

Why not just remove the cooking skill-up altogether and acknowledge that cooking meat at level 1 should be as effective at eliminating parasites in it as it is at level 5. The meat is cooked or it isn't. https://www.adfg.alaska.gov/static/species/nonnative/pets/pdfs/common_wildlife_diseases_parasites.pdf

It seems reasonable to me that any early game Will or Astrid should be able to find innumerable jagged stones (given the geology of BC) and/or broken metal pieces (given the state of decay of equipment all over GBI) that would be sharp enough to cut into a rabbit hide. I don't think an interloper player should have to run to a forge and manufacture an actual knife or hatchet or even find a hacksaw before being able to skin a rabbit or ptarmigan that a wolf hasn't gotten to first.

I find it even more immersion disrupting when the metal pipes sitting on top of crates just disappear into thin air and I just get a little bit of wood for breaking the crate itself (e.g. Broken Railroad Maintenance Shed). Really, the pipes should just fall to the ground everywhere. On the another immersion breaking note - why can't we use the many metal pails in the world to melt and boil water? Currently, we're reduced to using tin cans or have to find a cooking pot (or now skillet) and always carrying them with us; while the metal pails have to be broken down into scrap metal to make any use of them at all.

Tying it to level or even just the number of days passed in the world would make more sense to me and make it more immersive, for sure. Still not sure why they chose that sort of animation to begin with. I would have preferred just taking out a rag (presumably from cloth in inventory) and just wiping the hands clean if they had to show something about the character's reaction at all. I mean, I'm sure Will is used to at least having oil on his hands from working on his plane and Astrid is/was a doctor of some kind, wasn't she? It just seems really out of character to me. ETA: Also, didn't Will calmly pull a metal chard out of his hand at the beginning of Wintermute? - Which leads me to think that maybe one way to handle the "can't harvest without a tool" bit is to allow us to craft metal chards out of scrap metal without the need of a workbench or tools (i.e. just by picking up sharp pieces of metal lying around) and then use that to start dressing game. ETA2: Or perhaps we could be allowed to knap a stone into a sharp stone and open the hides of small game that way. In reality, given the geology of BC, we should be able to just find stones sharp enough to cut into a rabbit hide.

Providing a "standing at a workbench" option would be nice, but it would require the game to "know" to change the animation if the player is inside near a workbench (unless they make such that the player has to open the workbench to trigger the animation (and that would mean too interfaces open at the same time. Not sure though what that has to do with my dislike of their choice to make Will/Astrid look squeamish about having a little bit of blood on their hands - "Out, out d* spot" to quote MacBeth.😀I find it disrupts my immersion more than enhances it.

I still don't think they were thinking about "all" when suggesting that - something like scurvy (which was intentionally left out by the devs on older saves) should have had an "opt in" option for older saves - not that I would have selected it. I don't think an option to opt in or out of the harvesting animations is feasible, short of playing the older version (which is not an option available on console, AFAIK). Scurvy is also not active in all difficulty settings, which means a toggle could easily have been added to custom to turn it on or off (as they've done with other afflictions). That wouldn't have solved anything for older saves, since custom options can only be set at the start of a new save. Although I've requested an option to change "difficulty" related settings mid-game (mostly to allow for increasing difficulty after the player is somewhat established and to help alleviate late game boredom), HL has never even remotely entertained that idea.

I'm not a fan of the character attempting to shake the blood of his hands (I'm sure Astrid does the same, but I haven't played a run with her yet). Still, in my mind, it's just not something Will or Astrid would do, particularly after spending hundreds of days in the bush.

Back, sort of, on topic. I don't think anyone asking for the custom menu to be updated is asking for every single feature to have a toggle. My own is encouraging "as many toggles as possible." I fully expect there are limitations to the size this menu can be and what, in game, it can be allowed to control. As I said before though, it's been a number of years since it's been changed at all. It REALLY needs some love.

One can easily spend far too much effort in try to "fool proof" something regardless of the circumstance. Too much fool proofing hampers creativity as well. We don't all march to a single drum though history has often tried to make us do so.

I've never been a fan of the microharvesting, but I do agree with the no gloves comment. I would also love to be able to cancel part way through the animation in case a storm blows in while I'm harvesting. I think there are better ways to disallow the microharvesting (although I don't think HL was focused on that particular issue but rather it being disallowed is just a side effect on the new animations). I would prefer they got rid of the needing a tool even to harvest small game and instead force players to first quarter large game (which already required a tool). They could make then just make an exception for the prop deer, allowing players to harvest those as before and adjust the time it takes to quarter so that it takes a lot less time to quarter a doe than it takes to quarter a bear. They could set whatever minimum steak size they wanted when harvesting the quarter bags and just make such that any "leftovers" smaller than the minimum just disappear and get lost. The "savvy" player could then ensure the leftovers get processed by adding them to the last steak in the bag - making it slightly larger than the rest. If they wanted to legitimize microharvesting then, all they would need to do is set a very small minimum steak size.

I never agreed with the microharvesting and I don't regret it being out of the game; but I fail to see where it is connected to this issue. It would have been easy enough to prevent people from taking cuts of meat lighter than 0.5 kg while still allowing them to take the cuts by hand. The related changes seems to be more about disallowing cancellation of the action of harvesting before completing it. They could have instead gone with forced quartering of large game, which already requires a tool, plus it requires that the carcass be unfrozen. Shortening the time it takes to quarter a deer as opposed to the bear could have been added to compensate. Quarters could have then been loaded up on the travois and taken to a base or camp to be harvested at leisure by hand if desired.

Ptarmigans should be exempt from this as well since you don't need a knife to clean them either:

I don't think they have to worry too much about whether each option in the Custom Menu is "balanced" with the other options. The idea is to let the player create whatever "imbalance" they prefer while deviating from the standardized balance used by the devs in the standard difficulty settings and see what happens. As wide a range to each setting is preferable, IMO. Sure, not every game mechanic is going to be "selectable", but that HL has offered more selectable options via a custom menu than other games is really the reason I was drawn to this game in the first place. However, the custom menu hasn't really been updated for a few years now, despite many new mechanics being added to the game. It desperately needs that attention. As far as scurvy goes - I'm quite happy with HL's decision to leave it out of older saves. I do wish they could have still updated the food descriptions to include their vitamin C content, just to help players using old saves learn what HL is counting towards scurvy prevention. I don't think that would have hurt anything for anyone. The mechanic I don't really like is the new harvesting one. I felt the old was was well balanced to both interloper and beginning players in easier difficulties. Adding in a "you must dress this animal first with an appropriate tool" just seems to me to be adding complications for the sake of complications. For me, that sort of thing only makes a game more tedious and more tedium, for me anyways, makes a game less enjoyable. Challenge, for me, is a different thing entirely.

Fair enough, but there was really no need for it. We're good as far as I'm concerned. Too often people think I'm being "prickly" when all I'm doing is trying to explain my ideas as thoroughly as I can. What all this boils down to is my feeling that this game's custom menu needs a BIG overhaul. Some of the slide bars have too little effect between the easiest and toughest settings and too many of the mechanics that have been added since I started playing are not reflected at all in the custom menu. HL has hinted at a custom menu update, and I'm glad for that - IF they follow through with making it broader and more versatile for a wider variety of players - not just those that want to make it "more challenging" and not just by continually reducing rifle spawns.

I don''t know why you think I would think that you're "trying to denigrate" my position on the matter, TBH. There was nothing in my post that would suggest that I thought that way. I can adapt without necessarily "loving" the change. It was well balanced before, now it's a bit of a mess, IMO. They should at least allow the rabbits since that has been the basic food supply for a LOT of interlopers (not just the one's that like to force themselves to stay in a single zone). They've also reduced spawns (again) on certain items. I can confirm that BR no longer spawns the campfire with the hatchet (which used to be a guaranteed spawn in that zone when all the applicable settings were pushed to their easiest levels. Keep in mind that one cannot fish without something to break the ice. After several starts, the rifle spawn in that zone also appears to have been eliminated. Food, which was particularly ample after the Frontier Comforts update, has also been significantly reduced on average in that zone. Keep in mind these are at the easiest custom settings - where the game isn't supposed to be that tough. I'm still testing other regions, but I expect the same pattern. I'll adapt (as always); but I'm not really finding these changes make the game more "enjoyable" for a wider variety of players.

Challenging, yes - even nigh on impossible in some single-zone runs where the wolves don't kill much. Enjoyable? Not really. 😀

Yes, I'll adapt (probably by changing from one-zone runs to two-zone ones to ensure a forge is available and increase the likelihood of finding a heavy hammer and hatchet). I'm still not a fan of the change, though. I liked it the way it was and don't really see why they needed to change it. Regardless, I would love them to allow me to compensate by enabling knives and/or hatchets without resorting to increasing the baseline resource setting.

I don't think the risk will climb super fast, so you should still have time to respond while the risk is low and just eat something that is a source of Vitamin C to wipe out the risk.

Apparently the inability to harvest with bare hands is intentional - seeming to negate that benefit of Level 5 carcass harvesting.

I'm pretty sure the video showed a bar that climbs as the risk for it climbs. It's not there when your risk is 0%, but appears as soon as you get any risk.

Lol - just bite them off - that's what I would do.😀

Possibly the elusive Jack Rabbit Transport one they mention in the video.

I'm assuming this then also includes the fresh wolf kills and not just the prop ravaged deer. HL - I'd still love an option to enable knives and hatchets separately in custom while keeping the baseline resources setting at low - maybe in the update to the custom menu mentioned in the trailer? (I'm really looking forward to that update - thanks sincerely for giving custom some love!)