There's a flaw in your game logic

[Mroz4k]

With a craftable headgear, that takes care of the last item to be "possibly unattainable but essential to survival" - haven't read the rest of the posts in the thread because most of it is almost two years old, but what I noticed in the early comments is that you never accounted for beach combing (reading through the rest now, I see that you did mention it later). With beach combing, all of the resources are renewable. The only item that is not renewable as far as I know is the Rifle cleaning kit. But, that would require an incredible amount of bullets fired to ever get into a point where you would need more of these kits - considering how common rifles are, and how uncommon the rifle ammo is. But, it is theoretically possible, because apparently, you can find rifle ammo as one of the items during beach combing, making the rifle ammo rare, but renewable (though i never saw it happen yet, as far as I remember).

That includes cloth and scrap metal which both can be commonly found on the shore. The only item that was problematic in the past was finding non-ruined headgear - but just a week ago, I found a cotton toque on the shore with some 50% condition so still, even headgear was already renewable by now.

But the arguments were true - there are so many resources in the game one would likely die or become bored of the game before the resources would run out.

I highly dislike the idea of fire piston. Friction fire is difficult to do in the best of conditions - like mediocre temperature, no wind, dry wood, without sweaty and stiff hands from the cold. Not saying it is impossible... but for a regular person, it might as well be. Natives would know how to get the friction fire going - indoors in windless conditions. So unless the option of friction fire becomes only available at level 5 fire making skill and is only applicable indoors (contrary to mag glass) - it would be immersion breaking in my opinion.

There is a better alternative to "craftable ignition tool" - a forge could be used to craft the "steel" part of the "flint and steel" - this was always the preferred method of starting fires in cold regions, because you can still feasibly hit the steel with the flint, even if your hands are stiff with cold. Still, I would say it should only become an option from level 4 and up, and would require the use of tinder. That should also be the requirement for a use of mag glass and possibly even the friction fire method. Wouldnt have to be "flint & steel" in a traditional sense - as long as the rock used can be cracked to reveal a sharp edge, and has higher hardness than the metal, it would work. Probably better if flint as an item was not used, else everyone would want flint knapping and flint tools, too.

I also highly dislike the idea of bone and flint tools and arrowheads. Again, flint knapping ain't that easy (though I agree it is possible to learn eventually through practice). But mostly it is because they would be unnecessary. But adding them would make the forged tools irrelevant, effectively taking away one aspect of the game.

While I enjoy realism about the game, in this case, I am in favour of game balance. Some things should not make it into the game for the sole purpose of ruining the challenge of it. Things like slings which would make projectile hunting super easy, bone and flint tools and arrowheads which would remove the necessity to forge them, super simple-to-get and easy-to-do friction fire methods, and other ideas. After all, many things in TLD don't make sense - like caloric values of food or even the amounts of food one can find on particular animal... these things are there for game balance purposes, so the player doesn't have enough food to last for a month in-game from a single deer.

[Rolandtigerfish]

Quote

I highly dislike the idea of fire piston. Friction fire is difficult to do in the best of conditions - like mediocre temperature, no wind, dry wood, without sweaty and stiff hands from the cold. Not saying it is impossible... but for a regular person, it might as well be. Natives would know how to get the friction fire going - indoors in windless conditions. So unless the option of friction fire becomes only available at level 5 fire making skill and is only applicable indoors (contrary to mag glass) - it would be immersion breaking in my opinion.

That was kind of the basic idea; more end game help than early and for indoor use since the magnifier glass only works outside when sunny. I like the idea of it being level difficulty locked.  It just feels that once you hit level 5 in all your abilities you should get some reprieve from doing so aside from the micro bonuses (not including fishing bc thats perfect where it is).

 

Quote

There is a better alternative to "craftable ignition tool" - a forge could be used to craft the "steel" part of the "flint and steel" - this was always the preferred method of starting fires in cold regions, because you can still feasibly hit the steel with the flint, even if your hands are stiff with cold. Still, I would say it should only become an option from level 4 and up, and would require the use of tinder. That should also be the requirement for a use of mag glass and possibly even the friction fire method. Wouldnt have to be "flint & steel" in a traditional sense - as long as the rock used can be cracked to reveal a sharp edge, and has higher hardness than the metal, it would work. Probably better if flint as an item was not used, else everyone would want flint knapping and flint tools, too.
 

Flint and steel is real world extremely harder than a fire piston.  A fire piston (made for deep woods or arctic survival) is extremely simple to use.  Just a little bit of char-cloth and 2-3 pushes down on the piston and you have your ember to start flame.  Where flint knapping is quite a bit harder to earn the ember; often taking anywhere from 10-20 blows for someone familiar with it to never being able to catch an ember for the novice.  Using a spark-able rock for a pro would take 40-60 blows to catch a viable ember and i doubt a novice could get more than a spark or two no matter how long they tried.

 

Quote

I also highly dislike the idea of bone and flint tools and arrowheads. Again, flint knapping ain't that easy (though I agree it is possible to learn eventually through practice). But mostly it is because they would be unnecessary. But adding them would make the forged tools irrelevant, effectively taking away one aspect of the game.

The metal arrow heads do degrade as they are used add to that there is a fairly short supply of birch to use for arrows.  Bone arrow heads are extremely easy to make.  You boil a raw bone until it gets "loose" and then cut it into triangle shapes and let it set near heat for about 2-3 hrs and cure it for a day.   It would deal less damage than a metal one and be less durable. But crafting it would be "easier" than metal early game.  ***Playing this game as long as I have I understand why its not really needed or necessary but it would be nice to add a little more crafting variety.

 

12 hours ago, Mroz4k said:

That includes cloth and scrap metal which both can be commonly found on the shore. The only item that was problematic in the past was finding non-ruined headgear - but just a week ago, I found a cotton toque on the shore with some 50% condition so still, even headgear was already renewable by now.

Where on the "beach" does one find wash up anyway?  All Ive ever found is weak ice.

[Mroz4k]

6 hours ago, Rolandtigerfish said:

The metal arrow heads do degrade as they are used add to that there is a fairly short supply of birch to use for arrows.  Bone arrow heads are extremely easy to make.  You boil a raw bone until it gets "loose" and then cut it into triangle shapes and let it set near heat for about 2-3 hrs and cure it for a day.   It would deal less damage than a metal one and be less durable. But crafting it would be "easier" than metal early game.  ***Playing this game as long as I have I understand why its not really needed or necessary but it would be nice to add a little more crafting variety.

If I had to choose, I would go with flint arrowheads over the bone ones. Little known fact - flint edges can get sharper than the razor sharp steel edge. There are records of cavemen performing brain surgeries in paleolite with flint tools. And the patients actually survived - there was a skull discovery which showed three different holes in the skull that were healed up. The thing is, flint edges dull faster than the steel. And like it was already said, rather than making a bone arrowhead, I might as well just sharpen the stick and harden it in the fire. Easier and maybe slightly less effective.

Irrelevant how quickly arrowheads degrade. Have you ever actually ended up "ruining" an arrowhead in the game? I imagine you would have to re-make an arrow with it at least 6 times to properly ruin it. As I said, the resources in the game are very plentiful.

You can find washed up items along the shoreline, it is on the edge of the weak ice. There are 4 areas where two to three items will spawn every 4 days or so. But I am not an expert on beachcombing. But you can definitely find saplings and scrap metal there, and cloth is very common, and so are clothing pieces. All in all, almost everything in the game can be renewable thanks to beach combing.

[Mroz4k]

6 hours ago, Rolandtigerfish said:

Flint and steel is real world extremely harder than a fire piston.  A fire piston (made for deep woods or arctic survival) is extremely simple to use.  Just a little bit of char-cloth and 2-3 pushes down on the piston and you have your ember to start flame.  Where flint knapping is quite a bit harder to earn the ember; often taking anywhere from 10-20 blows for someone familiar with it to never being able to catch an ember for the novice.  Using a spark-able rock for a pro would take 40-60 blows to catch a viable ember and i doubt a novice could get more than a spark or two no matter how long they tried.

You cant compare fire piston with charcloth to just regular flint and steel. Use flint and steel with charcloth and you will catch an ember right away. 
I assumed you meant fire piston friction method, because mostly people suggest friction fire of some sort. My apologize, now I understand you meant the tool that works on friction fire principle, but is more elaborate. I could see fire piston as a possibility. Since there is not charcloth (and doesnt have to be) - it could work with birch bark specifically. I would scrape off the top thin paper layer, use that inside the piston.

I actually had an idea of not locking it with level, but make it so these firestarting methods actually "decrease" a chance to make fire, rather than increase it like it is with most firestarters. This would make it next-to-impossible at lower levels, and still difficult at higher levels. The added advantage to it was that it would force the player to go and forge them at the forge. 

[gnomegnine]

On 11/22/2018 at 6:16 PM, Rolandtigerfish said:

Where on the "beach" does one find wash up anyway?  All Ive ever found is weak ice.

You have to go to desolation point. the beachcombing at CH is crappy.

[Pillock]

This thread being resurrected comes at a convenient time for me! I've recently resurrected an old idea for a new playthrough: systematically destroy everything I find in the game world as quickly as possible, and see how long it takes to truly reach The Day When Supplies Run Out. (I'm doing it on Stalker.) I haven't got very far yet - it took me ages to find a hacksaw), but it's actually quite challenging: constantly breaking stuff like furniture and crates takes up a lot of calories, and a hell of a lot of hatchet/whetstone wear and tear. And then there's the problem of actually getting rid of certain items - stuff that burns like reclaimed wood is very easy to delete from the world, but there's an awful lot of scrap metal and cloth (there's about a 30kg lockerful of each in Townsite alone), and not that many options for using them up. I've started hoarding can openers so that I can pointlessly repair them numerous times - I'll probably have to use unwanted clothes for this purpose as well.

I intend to reach a point where I have literally nothing left to find, and have nothing except the clothes on my back, plus one of each necessary tool that can be renewed (or cannot be destroyed, like a mag lens), and then try to survive and build up from what I find washes up with beachcombing. I'd like to know what the game is like to play in this scenario, for one thing, but perhaps more interestingly to test how quickly I can actually get there (there's also the side-challenge of seeing if I can successfully juggle it so that I run out of everything at roughly the same time, while keeping fed along the way). I reckon it's a good month average on each map, though - minimum.