Mrcpu

I posted a response on another similar topic about being able to craft black powder and a muzzle loader but the main advantage of a simple smooth bore muzzle loader is you could smash some stones with your heavy hammer or the back of your hatchet and have a shotgun to hunt rabbits or crows. You could even give the player the ability to smash stones into larger pieces and use it to shoot at wolves. Then if you wanted to go large game hunting load it with round ball. Later in the game you could upgrade your skills and equipment to be able to do minie ball for better accuracy and range! Powder could be found, harvested from cartridges (let's skip over how dangerous that is IRL!) or crafted from minerals that you create after finding raw materials in mines or around the environment.

In a real world situation I'd 100% build a sled. A couple long green older "saplings" debarked as runners and a busted up pallet as cross members would work perfectly. You lay the two saplings down parallel and and the wide end attach cross members with cordage, then pull the pointy end of the saplings together and tie them, then run cordage from the tied together ends back to the main part of the sled so that you end up with this piece that is bent up and back. In the game you could require climbing rope (for cordage and to pull the sled), 2 maple or birch saplings and reclaimed wood. I'd add that while we are at it you should be able to craft snowshoes. In the army during winter operations we would carry around 70 lb of gear on our backs and 3 people (2 pull, 1 push) would haul another 400+ lb of gear in a sled. It's simply the best way to travel in the winter with a lot of gear. Back to game mechanics, you'd want to consider how you'd deal with traveling up/down hills and how it would affect your stamina.

I love this idea! To be realistic you'd need to find pipe and maybe some other pieces around like wire and scrap wood. Then you'd need to find a sapling to make a ram rod lead wheel weights from the cars to melt for projectiles and cloth for wadding. Then inside mines there could be some raw minerals needed to make the black powder. You'd need to use deer hide to make a satchel for carrying your powder, patches and balls. At the end of all this work you'd have a working muzzle loading flintlock that would be good for hunting deer. If you had a heavy hammer or hatchet and stones you could also use it as a shotgun for rabbit hunting! I would totally love this idea!!! Also should add that if you can make black powder you can use match heads to rebuild primers and potentially reload your 303 rifle cartridges. They won't be as powerful but at the ranges you have to be at in the game to hunt I don't think it would be a problem.

A calorie is the amount of heat it takes to raise the temperature of 1 ml of pure water 1 degree C at sea level so it takes 100 calories to heat 1 ml of water from 0˚ to 100˚ C or 37 calories to heat 1 ml of water from 0 to your core body temperature. Before we talk about eating snow we have to understand what a calorie is vs a Calorie. A Calorie (uppercase C) is actually 1000 calories of energy. When you eat a 250 Calorie food item in the game you are actually consuming 250,000 calories. So, if you eat 100 g of snow you are going to burn about 37 Calories to heat it up in your stomach (I've over simplified for the sake of our discussion). Based on this math I'd say that the game should work like this; Eat a handful of snow and it increases your hydration by 100 ml but increases your hunger by say 50 Calories. Now how about decreasing your warmth too? I'd look at two things. First, look at what the game does to increase warmth when you eat or drink something hot. Is that formula realistic and could you just inverse that for eating snow? Second, there is a missing component (maybe I don't see it and it's there) but when you run it should increase your temperature. So, I 100% want to be able to eat snow but at the same time I want it to be realistic. Realistically IRL when I'm out in the bush in the winter hiking and doing things I eat snow all the time. I usually grab it off branches and fallen logs and not the ground but it's a fantastic way to help stay hydrated and to cool yourself down when exercising outside in the winter. I've been doing it for almost 50 years and never got sick or died so don't listen to anyone who tells you it's dangerous. They have little or no IRL experience. It's just obviously better to drink boiled water if not exercising.

Yea.. I was in the army and can sleep anywhere LOL Seriously though, I think you should be able to sit and rest or lay down and sleep pretty much anywhere however doing this without a bedroll would have ramifications. For example you'd get colder, not warmer unless laying next to a fire. In addition you'd risk waking up with a pain in the back or neck and have to use pain meds. Neck pain would be fun if everything was canted to the side until your pain went away.

You can pasteurize water to purify it by bringing it up to a particular temp for a longer period of time. The lower the temp the longer the time and the closer to boiling the shorter the time. So to that end I’d say if you leave a can of snow near the fire it should eventually be pure water.