tinyfenix

5 minutes ago, UpUpAway95 said:

On the easier difficulties, it is not uncommon to find a hammer near at least one of the 3 forges in the game.  The harder difficulties are meant to be harder, so hammers do not spawn near the forge.  The head canon I use is that the forges were looted for forging tools long before Will/Astrid arrived on Great Bear.  People needed them to break apart furniture and we not using them for forging (but knew they would likely find one at a forge).

They don't want to make crafting arrows simple simply because it is the primary weapon for their hardest difficulty setting.  Loper relies on the need to forge the tools and the need to first find a hammer in another zone to make it difficult.  Making it easier would undermine that setting.

I get that it’s all for gameplay balance. 

Simple solution: have different kinds of arrows. Arrow heads made from rock or reclaimed materials would be inferior to arrow heads forged from metal. 

Or just make it like the improvised knife and hatchet. You can use them, but they will be worse and take longer. Crazy that i can find a quality workbench and quality tools all over the place but I can’t use anything except for a specific heavy hammer for forging... ridiculous that there’s no improvised hammer or regular hammer of any other type. 

1 hour ago, ManicManiac said:

@tinyfenix

All things considered... I think handcrafting arrows requires far more time and craftsmanship than using "modern" tools to fabricate rounds.  I mean properly fletching an arrow shaft takes time and real skill.  Never mind hand carving strait and balanced shafts from the "saplings."

I think it makes sense that hand crafting arrows takes more time that making ammunition in this context.

I mean, I can “repair” a can opener with simple tools and a piece of metal reclaimed from a prybar but I can’t make an arrow head from the blade of a broken knife? 

Im also not sure what you’re getting at. Crafting an arrow shaft is like the easiest possible thing you can do in the game. But making a sharp pointy object is literally the most challenging... lol Even making a premium bow is somehow easier than making an arrow head. 

I can literally go into the garden right now and find a rock I could shatter to make arrow heads out of. It’s a pretty simple concept. And I have no idea how to operate a machine that loads bullets into shells. 

This is also leaving out the fact that to make bullets, you need to harvest car batteries lol. 

You really think crafting a simple arrow head should require more skill than transforming car batteries into bullets????

3 hours ago, jhickie said:

100 days and no hammer? That's insane. I always find one in the first 10 days, and have crafted tools and weapons usually by day 20. How many locations have you discovered in these 100 days? Maybe you just haven't covered enough territory to find one. There are specific spots that are very likely to spawn a hammer. It can spawn in at least 4 places in ML that I can think of.. ML is one of the best places for hammer hunting. There's also some very specific places to look in CH, PV, and MT. They're out there, trust me.

Also, hammers don't spawn near forges on Loper.

That’s the thing. I intentionally went into this playthrough completely blind after over a year of not playing. That way I wouldn’t have the locations memorized and it would prevent me from “cheating” or meta gaming. I was going for a realistic experience and just never could find a hammer. I’ve pretty much scoured the main areas and no such luck. 

I also know it’s a game and designed to be difficult but it really doesn’t make a lot of sense to have a forge... where someone lived... and no tools for miles to utilize it... did the person who lived there build a forge and then drive away, tossing their tools out the window randomly? It’s just kind of hilarious. Like there’s no hammers anywhere near any forges but you can only find one in a completely remote location miles from any building where a hammer would be used??

I feel like either you’re lucky with this or not on survival.

Just around 100 days into my current run. No hammer found anywhere near any forge of course. First hammer I found was in the cannery in BI... where I was shocked to find no forge...

Strangely, crafting bullets has somehow become easier and faster than crafting simple arrows. 

Is it just me or does it seem really ridiculous that the only way to craft an arrow head is by smelting reclaimed metal in a forge? I mean you have access to quality tools, whetstones, work benches with vices, etc. You should be able to craft arrow heads out of stone or by shaving down an die sharpening fragments of metal too. 

I mean, at the worst you should at least be able to sharpen the ends of arrow shafts to make improvised arrows. 

Just wondering if anyone else has crafted a bow, has three dozen arrow shafts and feathers they’ve been lugging around for weeks (even months) thinking “Surely I’ll find a hammer to forge some arrows heads with soon”... 

And surely since you can make an improvised knife and hatchet (and even use them for free without crafting them at a work bench) there should be some kind of improvised hammer as well. 

Its also kind of funny that tool kits and even quality tool kits for some reason have no hammers in them and... basically have little to no use in the game at all. 

On 2/2/2020 at 6:54 PM, TLD Survivalist said:

Has noone else come across the crafting blueprint issue that I have had.... As I stated earlier upon shutting down, and reloading today, everything was back to normal. But as I suspected upon returning to the cannery and crafting more bullet tips, the same exact thing happened. Just curious if I am the only one so far??

I have had this issue. I discovered that, at least for me, my problem was that after using the bullet bench, the crafting menu got stuck in the bullet section. 

So on the bottom left of the crafting menu, there’s a way to arrange the view. A-Z, bench, forge, etc. What I had to do was manually turn it back to A-Z. 

Im on PC though and could just click it. I’m not sure how it works on console. 

@ManicManiac

I’m with you on not just having a simple timer so that people can easily just wait them out for a few minutes and call it a day. 

But i do think there should be a mechanic involved during torrential blizzards where no animals are out there at all. 

This could kill a desperate player that needs to hunt to find food adding an extra element of danger to bad weather. 

And/or they could even make it so that right after a bad blizzard that wolves are out in droves due to being hungry after not being able to hunt during it. 

I just think that if you’re in a location that’s completely inaccessible to the wolves, they would be smart enough to give it up after a time especially during bad weather. 

On 1/21/2020 at 7:04 PM, ManicManiac said:

@dahemac

I disagree, I don't think there is anything to fix.

The fact that they are tenacious and will stay on your trail until dealt with is one of the things I really like about them.  It requires us to both be more careful and a need to come prepared.  I say leave it as it is.

Their tenacity is what makes them such a wonderful and genuine threat...

Gonna have to argue with this.

It doesn’t matter how tenacious or angry an animal is, they know to take shelter during a blizzard. 

I agree with OP that it does seem really ridiculous that a pack of wolves would continue running in circles and screaming for three straight days during an absolute white out blizzard, trying to get to a person they haven’t even been able to see in three straight days...

while the survivor is camped out with food and water and a fire, the wolves are only wasting energy and freezing to death while getting zero sustenance.

they still need to survive too. They would be forced to find other means of food after a certain period of time. And, like I said, they should also need to sleep and find shelter too. 

I know they’re not supposed to behave exactly like normal wolves but should they be immortal?