Avoid useless items, crafting mastery

[smartrip]

A couple of ideas - 

First I'd love it if items didn't just become useless.  Specifically, rabbit skins and stack of papers/newsprint and tinder plugs.  Rabbit skins are only good for repair after your first pair of mittens and after firemaking level 3, tinder plugs are not necessary.  Nice to drop around or mark places with, but no real mechanic that needs them.

Maybe an idea for rabbit skins could be small embellishments to boots or gloves - small bonuses to warmth or waterproofness or windproofness, or a reduction to the chance to sprain an ankle in a fall maybe, in the case of boots.  So you could craft these enhancement(s) onto a deerskin boot or trousers or any crafted item.  

When crafting, maybe your level of ability could matter.  So a wolfskin coat made with mending level 1 might be a little sloppy and would only have maximum stats 75% of the maximum possible.  Maybe it just starts in a degraded condition.  As your level increases, you could improve your item so the maximum stats are raised, similar to repair.  At mending level 5 maybe the stats are always all maxed because you make really good stuff.  Maybe mending would have to be level 3 or higher to make the rabbitskin embellishments in the first suggestion above?  

Second - tinder plugs could give some small bonus to making a fire, 1-5% maybe depending on skill, or maybe just for level 3+ fire makers.  Using tinder plugs is better than not using them, but they could still be not necessary after level 3 since you're so good at it.

I saw the idea for crafting a firelog out of them + lamp oil and like that idea too.  

 

[Doc Feral]

Rabbit skins tend to pile up. I suggedted using them as "patches" instead of cloth, or even soaking them in fuel for torches. A multitude of pleading voices pray for a cap or hood. Using them for improvements is a good idea, if it doesn't get complicated.

Same for wolf pelts. The awesome wolf hood Jeremiah wears in the picture makes everybody green with envy.

Wolves and rabbits are the most frequent kill and their skins only have one use, and this is sad.

Many have noted that "crafting" could be a new skill, suggesting  one could switch from using a workbench to a normal table to just sitting on the ground, as a bonus.

Good idea the bonus for tinder plugs. By the way, no matter how good you are, lighting a fire with reclaimed wood still sucks.

[smartrip]

I like your idea for patches too.  Craft a rabbitskin into a patch then you can apply that patch onto a piece of clothing.  

The wolfskin hat would be amazing, I definitely want to steal Jeremiah's!

Yeah reclaimed wood is a bad starter.  I'd like to see the ability to choose some small number of sticks and start a fire with that instead of just one stick when you initially start the fire.  That way you get a fire that lasts long enough to throw your reclaimed wood on

[huntergathers]

Being able to build a blanket out of furs, with the amount relative to the type of furs, would be pretty nice. Upgrade the quality of your bedroll or improve the warmth of that dang bed in the mountaineers hut. I also like the idea of needing tinder to relight a torch just to burn through some of it, needing to pack the torch with tinder between relighting it with a match, but not at a lit fire.

[JErosion]

or turning those extra pelts to into regular leather so you can fix your combat boots, but then again there are a couple of items that could benefit from having an expanded use. I'd like to have the option to use a prybar when taking apart certain things. sort of like the right tool for the right job. like using a hatchet on that stack of pallets gets you 8 reclaimed wood, but using the prybar gets you 12.  Toolboxes have become kinda useless too, they are only used to repair 3 or 4 items in game and unless your hitting the cargo pods in Timberwolf or your doing a super long run in stalker or on interloper how many times are you gonna need to repair that Hacksaw or that hammer? Maybe you should be able to use the Toolbox to pop locks on trunks and lockers , with maybe the cost difference should be only that it takes more time. or maybe use it as a portable bench to craft items with