Pots, pans and tools hard to find items???

[piddy3825]

Is it just my imagination or what?

I recently started a new game and decided to randomly spawn to see where it would take me, turns out I spawned at Desolation Point.  At face value not a bad place to spawn considering the size of the map and all the lootable amenities it has to offer.  Not to mention the forge and all the stuff you can make to really kick off your adventure in high gear.

....the one and only thing, that could have really come in handy would have been a cooking pot.  I managed of course with a couple of recycled cans, took for ever to lay in a good water supply.  Between the Lighthouse, the Ryken and the processing plant,  you'd figure there outta be a cooking pot somewhere between them?  

Shortly there after I start another game and this time spawn at Mystery Lake.  This time around after checking the entire map, no hacksaw.  I had to divert into Forelorn Muskeg to retrieve a hacksaw from the train car at the poachers camp.  Found 3 cooking pots though....

anybody else notice anything like this on these two maps,  some of the other maps maybe?  are there some areas where some stuff just doesnt ever spawn?  

your thoughts and feedback appreciated and encouraged.  thank you!

[U47]

You don't mention what difficulty you are playing and that can affect the type and amount of loot you can find. With items like pots it is randomly placed so where one finds them are just chance. I am sure someone more informed than myself about tool spawns will post.

I found three pots in HRV on my current stalker run and that I did not expect.

From my experience stalker is just as much of a loot pinata as Voyager and there definitely needs some balance tweaks to the loot available on stalker in my opinion.

[UpUpAway95]

ML is a beginner's zone.  There are 2 cooking pots in ML that are not random (one beside the stove in the Trapper's Homestead and one turned over on the counter in the Camp Office); so finding one there is just luck of the draw.  DP is a more advanced zone.  There are no placed cooking pots, so finding one there is a random event and you might wind up with several of them or none at all.  On one Pilgrim DP start, I wound up with 3 cooking pots and no can opener.  I also found two heavy hammers, so I was able to start forging right off the bat.  In interloper, however, I believe no heavy hammer will ever spawn in DP if the player is starting in DP; so the player has to find one in another zone before they can craft a knife, hatchet or arrows for themselves.  That's a tremendous part of the challenge on that difficulty since regular knives and hatchets don't spawn at all either.

If they had guaranteed placed tools of each type in every single zone, it would make the game too easy.  Doing without is a big part of the survival tension in the game; particularly on higher difficulties.  RNG can be fun... roll with it.

[hozz1235]

All that being said, there are certain zones where pots are MUCH more likely than other zones.

[piddy3825]

On 2/9/2019 at 9:14 PM, U47 said:

You don't mention what difficulty you are playing and that can affect the type and amount of loot you can find. With items like pots it is randomly placed so where one finds them are just chance. I am sure someone more informed than myself about tool spawns will post.

I found three pots in HRV on my current stalker run and that I did not expect.

From my experience stalker is just as much of a loot pinata as Voyager and there definitely needs some balance tweaks to the loot available on stalker in my opinion.

I was a voyager difficulty game.  I can why the dev's would want to "not" include certain items from spawning so as to make the game a little more challenging perhaps, but considering that sometimes there is such a loot imbalance from one map to another, I more curious as to what items "never" spawn in any given map location.

[piddy3825]

On 2/10/2019 at 7:25 AM, UpUpAway95 said:

ML is a beginner's zone.  There are 2 cooking pots in ML that are not random (one beside the stove in the Trapper's Homestead and one turned over on the counter in the Camp Office); so finding one there is just luck of the draw.  DP is a more advanced zone.  There are no placed cooking pots, so finding one there is a random event and you might wind up with several of them or none at all.  On one Pilgrim DP start, I wound up with 3 cooking pots and no can opener.  I also found two heavy hammers, so I was able to start forging right off the bat.  In interloper, however, I believe no heavy hammer will ever spawn in DP if the player is starting in DP; so the player has to find one in another zone before they can craft a knife, hatchet or arrows for themselves.  That's a tremendous part of the challenge on that difficulty since regular knives and hatchets don't spawn at all either.

If they had guaranteed placed tools of each type in every single zone, it would make the game too easy.  Doing without is a big part of the survival tension in the game; particularly on higher difficulties.  RNG can be fun... roll with it.

as you said, ML is a beginners zone.  so not having a single hacksaw spawn on the map in Pilgrim mode doesnt make any proper sense at all.  

[piddy3825]

2 hours ago, hozz1235 said:

All that being said, there are certain zones where pots are MUCH more likely than other zones.

yeah, thanks for the thought, but what I really want to know is if there are any items that are guaranteed not to spawn on certain maps.   

[UpUpAway95]

1 hour ago, piddy3825 said:

as you said, ML is a beginners zone.  so not having a single hacksaw spawn on the map in Pilgrim mode doesnt make any proper sense at all.  

Well, there's always the possibility that it was there and I just didn't spot it.  I'm certainly fallible.

Also, I don't think a hacksaw is as essential in Pilgrim mode as it is in Interloper.  Both knives and hatchets spawn in Pilgrim, generally in pretty good abundance in all zones.  Both of these can be used to harvest frozen carcasses.  The unique usefulness of a hacksaw is really for breaking down metal, and loose scrap metal can also be found quite frequently in Pilgrim mode.  I didn't really miss it.

[piddy3825]

2 hours ago, UpUpAway95 said:

Well, there's always the possibility that it was there and I just didn't spot it.  I'm certainly fallible.

Also, I don't think a hacksaw is as essential in Pilgrim mode as it is in Interloper.  Both knives and hatchets spawn in Pilgrim, generally in pretty good abundance in all zones.  Both of these can be used to harvest frozen carcasses.  The unique usefulness of a hacksaw is really for breaking down metal, and loose scrap metal can also be found quite frequently in Pilgrim mode.  I didn't really miss it.

of course there is always that possibility, however remote, that I did miss finding it.  aside from just cutting metal though, I like using the hacksaw because it just about covers every other aspect in game play and can be repaired infinite number of times.  Yes, the usage times are longer for harvesting wood and cleaning game but the utility of use and overall moderate carry weight give it a lot of flexibility, dont you think?

[stratvox]

The hacksaw is really good because you can use it to harvest the material you use to repair it and the tools that repair it. On the other hand, during the early game when there are hatchets about and your clothing is not so great, forty five minutes vs. an hour and a half is potentially a LOT of condition. Eventually the hatchets and knives and whetstones go away. By then you should be incredibly well equipped anyway, as well as having high skill levels and if you haven't decimated the stuff you can cut up for scrap metal, you're going to get a lot of mileage out of it later because you'll be far better equipped to keep from freezing while cutting up firewood.

There's no reason not to run down the whetstones, hatchets, and knives, and they make certain things in the early game a lot easier to survive because of how much time you can save with them. The hacksaw... keep that for later. I'm on day 610 or so of my long run, and I'm almost out of hatchets in the world. However, the world is stuffed full of things to cut up for scrap metal. 

My bigger problem is going to be running out of birch saplings. They're running really low on me now. I've only fired the rifle once, though, and I have some impressive stashes of rifles and ammo and gun 4 from reading, so I think I'll be okay when they run out, it's just that the rifle's so bloody heavy.

[stratvox]

There's another thing to consider too. When you use a hacksaw to chop up a limb, you burn 5% of the tool condition. When you use an improvised hatchet, you burn 3% condition. An improvised hatchet takes 5 scrap metal to make, and returns 2 on harvest, so each one costs 3 metal. When you use a scrap metal to repair the hacksaw, you get a 30% improvement. So, each scrap metal used on the hacksaw gets you six limbs harvested. When you use an improvised hatchet, it can break any time after its condition drops below 20%. This means you're getting between 27 and 33 limbs hacked with the improvised hatchet. Let's say thirty limbs on average. That's ten limbs harvested per scrap metal consumed. Three scrap metal buys you either 18 limbs harvested when it's used to repair the hacksaw, and between 27 and 33 limbs harvested when you use an improvised hatchet. That's a significant difference.

[hozz1235]

19 hours ago, piddy3825 said:

yeah, thanks for the thought, but what I really want to know is if there are any items that are guaranteed not to spawn on certain maps.   

Not that I'm aware of.  I'm guessing only HL can answer that since there are so many variables that could go into item spawning.

[UpUpAway95]

15 hours ago, piddy3825 said:

of course there is always that possibility, however remote, that I did miss finding it.  aside from just cutting metal though, I like using the hacksaw because it just about covers every other aspect in game play and can be repaired infinite number of times.  Yes, the usage times are longer for harvesting wood and cleaning game but the utility of use and overall moderate carry weight give it a lot of flexibility, dont you think?

It's a convenience, sure, but still not essential.  There are other tools that definitely spawn in ML somewhere that can harvest wood and carcasses.  Conversely, using a knife in the early going to open cans still costs the player the calories... and a can opener didn't spawn in ML for me that one time (unless, of course, I missed it - however unlikely).  I'm not sure there is much of anything that will reliably spawn in every single startup on every single difficulty level.  I think the game is based on a number of loot tables that set certain groups of items, since I've seen Youtubers use these on Interloper to find essential gear, like a bedroll... but first they have to determine which of the 4 tables they are on.  I suspect there are more than 4 different tables at lower difficulties, and I don't think anyone has taken the time to determine that like they have in Interloper.