Cordage, stone tools, gill net, ladder, temp shelters, traps


SteveP

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It would be nice to have a long term strategy for survival once arrow heads and metal tools get into short supply.

There should be a way to create cordage from raw materials such as from cedar bark or even fir or other bark or perhaps lashings for a shelter from pine or willow sticks or from cat tails or a similar cordage plant like milkweed or dogbane. Excellent cordage can also be made from sinews especially the long sinews taken from the legs of deer or wolves or bears. Rawhide can make excellent cordage since if soaked it shrinks as it dries and becomes rock hard. It can be used to fix spear heads to shafts for spears. Spear heads should be craftable in the forge or made using flint knapping. Flint tools are superior in sharpness but prone to breakage. Flint should be renewable resource found in caves or in stream beds or perhaps around cliffs. Typically flint is knapped in the field right where it may be needed. Quality tools can improve how quickly you can do knapping since a copper billet greatly enhances the process. It might take an hour to knap a small arrow point, two hours for a spear point and five hours for a stone knife.

Cordage could be used for making an improvised ladder used for digging a pit trap. It could also be used for constructing a dead fall trap and for attaching flint arrow heads made by flint knapping to arrow heads. It should be possible to make arrows in the field without a work table.

One of the most important tools one could make from cordage is a gill net. This would greatly improve survival time if other metal tools get in short supply.

An improvised ladder is useful for digging and climbing into and out of a pit trap. You'd need a ladder to harvest a bear or other animal which has fallen into your pit trap.

Other uses for cordage might be for the construction of a sledge for transporting heavier loads like a bear harvest or large amounts of firewood. A temporary shelter would be nice to improve sleeping outdoors and to provide wind shelter for harvesting a bear or other carcass out in the open where one might need fire to keep warm and a safe place to put down a bed roll. Cordage could be used to create loop snares for catching squirrels or for making fishing nets and fishing lines. A simple gorge hook made from wood could replace metal fish hooks.

Another extremely important use for cordage is for making a bow drill or a hand drill for fire starting. Attach two handles to each end of cordage and wrap it around the fire drill, hold the guide in one's mouth and use both hands to spin the fire drill. This makes it easier to control the pressure on the drill, more wraps can be used however requires more dexterity to handle the guide in one's mouth.

Here are some references for making cordage from natural materials:

Make Rope out of Dead Plants

Making cordage by Hand

Making cordage from natural materials

Flint knapping is a skill requiring considerable practice to master. The player should start by trying to make cutting flakes and then progressing to larger items as his skill is mastered. A copper pressure flaking tool or a billet would be handy tools. A flint core is necessary to make flint tools. It's just a large chunk of suitable stone weighing perhaps a kilogram. Arrow heads and flakes only weight a few grams. A stone axe might weigh a half a kilo or so.

Making Flint Arrowheads

Making a stone knife:

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I really think that if we make meat last a bit longer so that a deer might last a week or more of food and a wolf could last several days, that we could have more luxury time to spend indoors making tools during the periods of stormy weather. We should also be able to make beads and other items, perhaps not all utilitarian but which could add other intangible factors such as inspiration and bolstering confidence.

Temporary Shelters

Temporary shelters could be made from a variety of materials. In a wooded area, one could lash a pole to two trees and then lean a dozen poles to create a lean to or A-frame shelter. Pine bows, fir bows, cedar bows: all these make excellent insulation for the floor and for the roof to keep off snow. Snow can be added to improve the insulation of the shelter roof. A temporary shelter dramatically improves your ability to survive outdoors in cold weather particularly if using a debris pile with leaves for insulation.

A snow shelter, igloo could be made using snow with some type of long knife or shovel. A simple snow wall would provide temporary wind shelter for protecting a fire from the wind and protecting the player from wind damage to her clothing while harvesting outdoors. An igloo would provide significant warmth bonus however you can't have more than a tiny fire going inside using the Inuit stone lamp, the Qulliq.

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Please note that the igloo can be breached by polar bears. I think if we have a bear sniffing around the igloo, we should awaken and there should be considerable noise of the bear snuffling around so that there is at least the possibility of survival. Eventually the bear might start breaking into the igloo. The igloo would provide adequate protection from wolves. If you add two doors to the igloo, you can decide which one to sneak out while the bear is at one side or the other. Bears should not venture out during storms so one would not be forced out into the elements in terrible weather. Perhaps an alarm system could be made using cordage to give advance warning of a bear or some other system for discouraging the bruin. Any suggestions for bear defense? A pit you say?? Excellent plan! I wonder if you could make a pit out on the ice. Hmmm.

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I find this cordage idea fascinating. As you point out, a good rope or line can be quite the life-saver in a wilderness situation.

In terms of the flint tool/knife, how would you see this item differ from the current hunting knife or forged blade? Is it just the availability? Or would it have some special purpose? A super sharp edge for faster animal harvesting perhaps? Just speculating here.

Thanks again for the detailed post.

--Patrick

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Flint is much sharper than steel and holds an edge. It can be retouched if chipped. There's always a chance of breakage with it. The purpose would permit extending the player hypothetical survival time once metal tools ran out. It adds quite a cachet to the game too! Suppose the player had to sort through rocks or excavate in the mines with attendant risks. Loss of oxygen for example or cave-in. If we had some bio-luminescent or radioactive materials, they could be a way to navigate in a cave.

Cattail stems would be a good source for cordage unless you introduce another plant.

It would add to the object count; I don't know if there is a limit of size in the game.

I enjoy the game and the opportunity to contribute ideas! My pleasure!

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Flint is an interesting hypothetical option.. but, metal should never really wear out to the point that you would have make a flint knife.. I mean, the thought that you would be reduced to learning to make and use flint tools within a year is really far-fetched. It's not like there isn't piles of resources left all over the place. If you were stranded somewhere without human resources it would be different of course---but that's not the situation in TLD.

Certainly flint is very sharp when freshly knapped. But, steel can (and should) be sharpened to razor sharp and is much more durable and easier to retouch.

For cordage, I'd be scrounging around the fishing huts way before I tried making my own rope. They're bound (hehe :) ) to have piles of rope, and maybe nets too. Making rope from the mountains of available cloth would be easier and more reliable than trying to use cattails.

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url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwi0s6bUwMPKAhVGjz4KHSQPDE0QjRwIBw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fantiquity.ac.uk%2Fprojgall%2Flarsson330%2F&psig=AFQjCNEIc4yRlJHwRvbEG-rAIqVaKiWTbA&ust=1453761203126289In all honesty, I would probably (and preferably) use broken shards of glass for arrowheads, as opposed to making them from scrap metal. You can make an almost-infinite number of arrowheads from shards of glass, with almost no effort and time involved.

If they break, who cares? It takes 30 seconds to knock some flakes out of a shard of glass.

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Temporary Shelters - snow and hidden shelters.

https://pp.vk.me/c315620/v315620532/4ff ... GWmmeA.jpg

or http://tradsur.ru/wp-content/uploads/20 ... ages-1.jpg

A large spreading tree. Direct under it in the snow pulling our shelter, the tree will be our roof.

It's funny but in all my years of snowshoeing and ice fishing I've never seen a hollow at the base of a tree large enough to take shelter in :)

As a whole, cordage is a great idea as are gill nets and ladders. Still don't know if pit traps would be worth the time and effort especially with the ground frozen solid and a high risk of killing yourself if you forget where your trap is. Temp shelters I think were originally planned (snow caves?) but I don't know if they'll make the final release. Lastly, I don't think flint napping should be in the game. Yes, it is possible to do but it requires training and a lot of trial and error to find the right rocks (which are all buried under snow and ice) and technique to get a sharp edge. I'd rather just see homemade/repairable whetstones.

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In all honesty, I would probably (and preferably) use broken shards of glass for arrowheads, as opposed to making them from scrap metal. You can make an almost-infinite number of arrowheads from shards of glass, with almost no effort and time involved.

If they break, who cares? It takes 30 seconds to knock some flakes out of a shard of glass.

Well an experienced knapper can knock off glass shards in 30 seconds however, as illustrated by your video, it takes a lot longer than that to craft an arrow since you also would need glue of some sort such as pine pitch or birch tar. Glass is a little bit tricky to knap but knapping in general takes a long time to master. Even longer if you have no teacher or video to learn from. Perhaps our survivor in the game would choose to use pieces of tin from all the tin cans and simply sharpen the edges on abrasive rocks.

The paleolithic hunters would spend a long time on their arrows since the key is having the best weapon possible for the rare opportunities when one has a shot at an animal. Remember the effective range for a home made bow and arrow is about 25 meters or less. A hunting bow has much more range due to its higher power.

More likely our TLD survivor would be hunting porcupine and other rodents and he would be using snares in preference to arrows for fast moving rodents such as squirrels and gophers. Paleolithic hunters would be operating in teams and might even use tamed dogs to assist in hunting. Many opportunities for meat are had by simply driving off larger predators from their kills.

You can get shards or micro-lithes easily however mounting them on a handle takes time. The handle makes it easier to use the flake for scraping hides or other time consuming activities. Flakes could be used in a pinch for harvesting meat from a carcass much as you could gut and skin a deer using a razor blade.

If Hinterland chooses to add stone arrows and tools, we should not trivialize the effort it takes to master the technology. I've studied many videos on it but aside from glass, I don't have suitable materials to try it out. Glass is good to use but not for beginners. It also does not tend to come in a large enough size to make large blades, only small dart tips or arrow tips although you might be able to get large shards of glass from a window pane and then retouch the edges using pressure flaking. You can find lots of beautiful examples of flint and other stone knapping on the facebook group Flint Knapping.

DSCF7670-vertical-crop-327x441.jpg

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Still don't know if pit traps would be worth the time and effort especially with the ground frozen solid and a high risk of killing yourself if you forget where your trap is.

Watch the movie, "The Edge" which has a bear pit in it. It takes a lot of effort and time but is an effective defense against a grizzly bear. I won't spoil the movie for you; trust me on this!

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-snip-

I am not referring to making bifaces and other nicely-knapped stone/glass tools. I know how difficult it is to make those: I knapp glass as a hobby. Take small microliths of glass and set them on the point and length of an arrowshaft. Done, and perfectly effective at close range.

As for making "glue"..... there are plenty of resinous trees around. Break off some resin, melt it by a fire, and mix in powdered charcoal. Done. A "glue stick" (aka a stick covered in pine/coniferous resin) is a handy survival tool. Lacking that, just bind it tight with sinew. If the microliths break/fall out, whatever. Knock some new ones off a shard of glass.

Hafting a flake isn't particularly difficult, either.

http://www.primitiveways.com/pt-hoko.html

Take a stick that fits well in the hand, tie it off firmly a couple of inches away from an end, then split it. Wedge a stone/glass flake into the split, then bind the split up tight. Done. When the flake wears out, undo the binding and insert a new flake.

I've make a "Hoko knife" in literally 5 minutes or less. The most difficult part is splitting the handle evenly.

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First, its no a "whos the best knapper" contest, where shape and size are important, a showoff contest. In survival only thing that matters is "does it gets things done" and making effective things tend to take far less time and skill than making effective and pretty version of the same things

And second, necessity is an extremely effective teacher. Without distractions of civilization and nothing much else really to do, a human being has an amazing capacity to learn with proper motivation.

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Excellent points fellows! I like the idea of just using micro-liths or small glass shards to embed in the side of an arrow shaft. Here is a video play list on the subject of flint knapping. It covers briefly, the variety of tools that can be made and in detail, the various techniques.

You know, if you implemented all of the physics for flint knapping, you would have enough for a very fascinating game all on it's own! Watching these videos make me wish for a game that could utilize this kind of beautiful detail. TLD is miles beyond the competition in terms of crafting and immersive detail but it could always improve with animated sequences for all of the crafting mechanics. I know, that's a tall order but it would certainly bring life to the crafting experience!!

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Regarding Bear pits, without a heavy pick there is no way to dig through the frozen ground. In order to build the pit you'd have to build a large fire over an area to thaw the ground and then dig, then build another fire to thaw again in the same spot. Doing that 2X should get you deep enough to be out of the frozen layer.

All of this assumes you have a means of digging that much soil, and in this game you just don't.

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Bear pits: and yet native people used them (in warmer areas when dug during summer) When you have a problem bear, it must be dealt with. You can't just kill one with a primitive bow and arrow very easily. They would seek the safest way to dispatch bears. In the game, if folks want to make bears more realistic and harder to kill, then another fool-proof hunting method needs to be present, albeit not without certain controllable risks.

It's just an idea. Pits can be dug in a variety of methods with hand crafted tools.

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Instead of digging a pit to trap bears, you can also make a weight trap by hanging a cedar/fir limb with a rope in a tree and make the limb more lethal by adding wooden spikes on it. It's easier than digging, there's less risks for the one who crafted it to fall in his own trap and you don't have to carry your prey out of the hole.

I agree a lot with your ideas in general SteveP, I would like to see all of this in TLD, those are really basics things than people can do when in a survival situation. I don't know if you spoke about it, but if there's nothing to craft arrow/spear heads, the pointy extremity can be burned to be harder too.

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Instead of digging a pit to trap bears, you can also make a weight trap by hanging a cedar/fir limb with a rope in a tree and make the limb more lethal by adding wooden spikes on it. It's easier than digging, there's less risks for the one who crafted it to fall in his own trap and you don't have to carry your prey out of the hole.

I agree a lot with your ideas in general SteveP, I would like to see all of this in TLD, those are really basics things than people can do when in a survival situation. I don't know if you spoke about it, but if there's nothing to craft arrow/spear heads, the pointy extremity can be burned to be harder too.

This, pretty much.

No need to dig a pit (and the ground is frozen, anyways?). Take a decent-sized log, firmly lash some spikes to it, and suspend it over a trigger.

Like this:

Or, if you have a little more experience, or lack a heavy log, make a "spear trap"

Those can be very dangerous. I personally have set on off on my leg (on accident, of course, and there were no spikes. 1st rule of trapping: ALWAYS REMEMBER WHERE THE TRIGGER IS :? ). The spring hit my leg on the thickest part of the thigh muscle, and I thought it broke my femur. Couldn't walk for several hours after that.

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I find this cordage idea fascinating. As you point out, a good rope or line can be quite the life-saver in a wilderness situation.

In terms of the flint tool/knife, how would you see this item differ from the current hunting knife or forged blade? Is it just the availability? Or would it have some special purpose? A super sharp edge for faster animal harvesting perhaps? Just speculating here.

Thanks again for the detailed post.

--Patrick

flint tool/knife could be a multipurpose tool used as a cutting tool, defense, and fire-starter perhaps but it's durability could be very low, and chance to start fire much worse than cardboard matches. Also time to create could be like depending on the quality of the tools used which will be required, which makes tools much more useful again. :)

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Personally, I'd be more likely to try and use a kitchen knife or even a butter knife (there are plenty of homes around after all) before I start trying to perfect my flint knapping skills. Why spend hours trying to make a stone knife when any steak knife will be roughly as effective?

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Personally, I'd be more likely to try and use a kitchen knife or even a butter knife (there are plenty of homes around after all) before I start trying to perfect my flint knapping skills. Why spend hours trying to make a stone knife when any steak knife will be roughly as effective?

Because civilization around you is dead and frozen for the most part and you have no idea what happened and how long it will gonna last.

Its called thinking about the future. So that by the time you run out of all manufactured supplies you have some skills aside of scavenging and farting.

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Personally, I'd be more likely to try and use a kitchen knife or even a butter knife (there are plenty of homes around after all) before I start trying to perfect my flint knapping skills. Why spend hours trying to make a stone knife when any steak knife will be roughly as effective?

Because civilization around you is dead and frozen for the most part and you have no idea what happened and how long it will gonna last.

Its called thinking about the future. So that by the time you run out of all manufactured supplies you have some skills aside of scavenging and farting.

These are both fair points. I understand the attractiveness of creating stone tools, but I just don't think this is the game for it-- I lean towards utilizing the abundance of metal items that can be scavenged. To me that's just more logical, as there's essentially a lifetime supply available.

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And because, when a civilization collapse, instinctively, she returns to basics skills, which are crafting, hunting, harvesting. Think about it, you are lost in a bloody blizzard, far from your last refuge, and your great kitchen knife just broke up, you'll be glad to spent your last few days or weeks to master flint knapping. And when society is over and your only purpose is surviving, time is one of the last thing you'll try to save. No more TV shows, video games, school or work. You got plenty time to learn about survival.

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I'd argue that time is really the one thing you don't have.

The reason we have time for TV, video games, etc. is because we are assured of our basic needs (food, shelter, water and security). Take those away and every moment you're not working to improve those is increasing the risk of death. So, while learning flint knapping may be worth it if I was in a group I'd rather just grab 10 steak knives and continually work on improving my shelter, stocking up on firewood, repairing/crafting clothing, and harvesting food. There are things of far more immediate concern that mastering a technique that you should honestly never really need. Besides, the reason why no one today uses stone tools is that humans long ago learned to work metal. It may be the apocalypse. We may not know what happened or what the future holds. But we do have the detritus of an advanced society, the knowledge and tools to craft metal, and lots and LOTS of scrap metal lying around. Why try to re-learn a primitive skill when anyone with a file (or a coarse rock, or a concrete floor, etc.) can give a piece of metal an edge sharp enough to cut with?

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Because civilization around you is dead and frozen for the most part and you have no idea what happened and how long it will gonna last.

Its called thinking about the future. So that by the time you run out of all manufactured supplies you have some skills aside of scavenging and farting.

If I ran out of all manufactured supplies in the situation described in the game I'd be amazed if I was still farting since I'd be over a 100 years old by then! :D

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@cekivi

I think we both have our own vision of surviving, which I respect, trust me. Personally I would do my best to be able to survive, even if I'm split of my group or if I loose my stuff, I mean if I have to rebuilt from nothing. In your opinion, and I mean no offense, you want to build something durable, which I understand, but, to me, fundament of survival is that nothing is durable. So I would like to be able to use every renewable things that nature offers to me.

And in my opinion if society felt into apocalypse, I'd rather not use what she left behind, but knowledge about the link between human and nature. It's pretty much hard to me to explain myself well due to the fact english is not my own language, I hope I'm well understandable. I don't say I'm right and you are wrong, I just try to give my own vision of what I'd do. Who knows, maybe if one day humanity collapse, that would be funny (way of speaking lol) that we be in the same group of survivors, we could argue about the best way to do.

Oh and one last point. The character we play is able to smith, right? Where did he get this skill? To me, master smithing is much harder than flint knapping. And why carrying scrap metal to a furnace that I'm depending should be easier than shocking two rocks, than I can find while walking, together?

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