Flint Knapping (Stone Arrowheads)


IanS

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I'd like to see flint knapping on the road map.Steel arrowheads are great, and I like the forging in the game and hope they will expand it. But, if I were in this situation in real life and forges were this scarce, I'd be making stone arrowheads. If you can't find stone, you can even knap shards of bottle glass into perfectly serviceable arrowheads.

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No. No you wouldn't.

Instead, you would be finding alternate methods to craft metal arrowheads, from flattening spoons to cutting them from sheet metal. Both of which can be done on a vice, which, lo and behold, can be found at every single crafting station in the game! Using a single sheet of sheet metal, I have churned out 20+ broadheads in little over three hours in real life, using nothing more than the tools on a multitool.

Why people so desperately want knapping in the game is beyond me. Asides from a few people on these forums, chances are you haven't done it before, and therefore have no idea just how difficult it can be. It isn't just "bang rocks together, arrowhead magically appears". It is a artisanal skill, that requires a lot of knowledge, practice and so forth, that even back in the times when stone was used, not many people developed. Kind of like metal forging.

I've done it, and it sucks. So long as there is access to metal in some form (it doesn't even have to be steel! I've made perfectly usable broadheads from copper pipe, aluminum cans, and metal coins). There is a reason Native Americans dropped flint tools and weapons as soon as metal trade goods came around.

Metal arrowheads are easier to make the same weight, meaning it is easier to balance different arrows and therefore, easier to achieve greater accuracy. Metal arrowheads are also stronger, and won't break after shooting them once (this is something many people don't realize about lithic points: they break, often the first time you shoot them into an animal.) Metal arrowheads are easier to make than lithic ones, so long as you have the material, and in-game and in-reality, we do.

The forge was, quite frankly, a stupid addition to the game. One of, if not the most, blatantly unrealistic aspects of the game to date. 

.... sorry, flint-knapping is one of my sore-spots.

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13 hours ago, Boston123 said:

No. No you wouldn't.

Instead, you would be finding alternate methods to craft metal arrowheads, from flattening spoons to cutting them from sheet metal. Both of which can be done on a vice, which, lo and behold, can be found at every single crafting station in the game! Using a single sheet of sheet metal, I have churned out 20+ broadheads in little over three hours in real life, using nothing more than the tools on a multitool.

Why people so desperately want knapping in the game is beyond me. Asides from a few people on these forums, chances are you haven't done it before, and therefore have no idea just how difficult it can be. It isn't just "bang rocks together, arrowhead magically appears". It is a artisanal skill, that requires a lot of knowledge, practice and so forth, that even back in the times when stone was used, not many people developed. Kind of like metal forging.

I've done it, and it sucks. So long as there is access to metal in some form (it doesn't even have to be steel! I've made perfectly usable broadheads from copper pipe, aluminum cans, and metal coins). There is a reason Native Americans dropped flint tools and weapons as soon as metal trade goods came around.

Metal arrowheads are easier to make the same weight, meaning it is easier to balance different arrows and therefore, easier to achieve greater accuracy. Metal arrowheads are also stronger, and won't break after shooting them once (this is something many people don't realize about lithic points: they break, often the first time you shoot them into an animal.) Metal arrowheads are easier to make than lithic ones, so long as you have the material, and in-game and in-reality, we do.

The forge was, quite frankly, a stupid addition to the game. One of, if not the most, blatantly unrealistic aspects of the game to date. 

.... sorry, flint-knapping is one of my sore-spots.

You are making a lot of assumptions, and you know what they say about that. You come on pretty strong saying "No. No you wouldn't". Suggesting that you can predict my behavior better than I can seems like a pretty aggressive and frankly, totally irrational position. Your assumption that I "haven't done it before" is also dead wrong. I have a long-held interest in crafting primitive tools and weapons and I have knapped obsidian and flint many times. It is definitely an acquired skill, but no more so than skinning an animal or crafting a bow, and it's not as if an arrowhead needs to be a work of art by a master to do its job. I am also a blacksmith and a professional bladesmith, so I can make a steel arrowhead as fast as anybody, and my suggestion is not based on ignorance of the properties of metal arrowheads or the ways in which they are superior to stone ones. Your observation that metal heads are easier to make is relative. If you already have a forge, and coal, and the metal, and a heavy hammer, then sure, I would choose metal over stone any day. But that a lot of things to pull together, not to mention the logistics of traveling to a forge every time. You can bet that if I needed arrows in a pinch, but lacked any of the ingredients and was faced with traveling far away in bad weather to make them, I would not hesitate to make stone arrowheads, and if a broken arrowhead that I spent an hour knapping was the price of taking a deer, that still sounds like a good deal to me under the circumstances. You mention copper arrowheads, yet the native tribes who were known for copper working still made their arrowheads from stone, which should tell you something. I am also mystified by why you think the forging part of the game is so unrealistic. As a blacksmith, I can definitely attest to it being oversimplified in the game, just like the cooking and fishing and most other things, but I fail to see how it is so unrealistic or "stupid" as a concept. You seem to have an abnormal level of emotion on both subjects.

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  • 1 year later...

I know this thread is old, but I couldn't help but lol Boston123.  I think he may have spent way too much time naked in the snow with hypothermia, dehydration and starvation and aurora syndrome . . . or something!

Having spent four years as a Native American education teacher early in my teaching career, I can tell you we had fourth grade native (and non-native) students doing just fine making decent arrowheads and knife blades out of obsidian  by day two that they locally sourced themselves near Mt. Shasta CA. Sure to become a master flintknapper takes years, and only a few become the top talented artists in the field . . . like every other skill in the world.  But most can do a decent job with a decent guide and a little bit of practice.  I would like to see where the info is sourced that flint arrowheads usually break on the first shot.  The only time I've ever seen an arrowhead break was when it hit a rock or a tree.  Traditionally, new hunters were taught not to do this by their more experienced tribesmen.  For me this game would be waaayyy more immersive reading a book on basic flintknapping, hiking to and discovering obsidian outcroppings and raising my skill from level 1-5.  It would add an entirely new and immersive aspect to the game, at least two new skill sets (sourcing obsidian from outcroppings and flintknapping) and new places on the maps to discover.  Who has ever forged an arrowhead in real life anyway?  Find some flat steel, bend it back and forth until it breaks off, and you have a sharp angle, rub it on a large flat stone until you get a sharp edge and two notches to bind it to the shaft.  Forge??  With these skills we could make knives and spears too.  I'd way rather take down a bear or moose with a spear than a gun!  More skill, more risk, more reward.

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2 hours ago, galadhlinn said:

I know this thread is old, but I couldn't help but lol Boston123.  I think he may have spent way too much time naked in the snow with hypothermia, dehydration and starvation and aurora syndrome . . . or something!

Having spent four years as a Native American education teacher early in my teaching career, I can tell you we had fourth grade native (and non-native) students doing just fine making decent arrowheads and knife blades out of obsidian  by day two that they locally sourced themselves near Mt. Shasta CA. Sure to become a master flintknapper takes years, and only a few become the top talented artists in the field . . . like every other skill in the world.  But most can do a decent job with a decent guide and a little bit of practice.  I would like to see where the info is sourced that flint arrowheads usually break on the first shot.  The only time I've ever seen an arrowhead break was when it hit a rock or a tree.  Traditionally, new hunters were taught not to do this by their more experienced tribesmen.  For me this game would be waaayyy more immersive reading a book on basic flintknapping, hiking to and discovering obsidian outcroppings and raising my skill from level 1-5.  It would add an entirely new and immersive aspect to the game, at least two new skill sets (sourcing obsidian from outcroppings and flintknapping) and new places on the maps to discover.  Who has ever forged an arrowhead in real life anyway?  Find some flat steel, bend it back and forth until it breaks off, and you have a sharp angle, rub it on a large flat stone until you get a sharp edge and two notches to bind it to the shaft.  Forge??  With these skills we could make knives and spears too.  I'd way rather take down a bear or moose with a spear than a gun!  More skill, more risk, more reward.

I'd like to see flint knapping added; but I'd also like to see a way to craft a small forge from a tin can added so that forging of specifically arrowheads could be done in any trailer location (since it is the trailers in the game that have propane tanks, which could be the fuel to heat a tin-can forge).  An insulating material for the tin-can forge would also have to be added to the loot tables.  I'd also like to see the making of arrowheads, knives, and hatchets as their own separate skill rather than having the forging of arrowheads contribute to the archery skill.  If anything, the archery and rifle skills should be combined (particularly since there is no rifle available in interloper).

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While this all makes sense in a real world scenario, for the game it doesn't really fit as they're already balanced quite nicely. Arrowheads are already not hard to find, every playthrough I've managed to find a decent number (at least in ML) of arrows and broken arrows without the need for a forge.

They're also not very hard to make if you know where to find a forge and herein stems the key factor: arrowheads don't degrade. No matter how many times you use them, provided you can locate them afterwards, you can re-use arrows with the only real limiting factor the number of shafts you have. There's really no point to add stone arrowheads to the game as they don't fit in with the game.

Even if they were, the only way I can see them being implemented and maintaining game balance is being single-use arrows that require a tedious amount of time to craft with a high chance of failure. Something like 4-5 hours per arrowhead with a 50% chance to ruin it from the start.

In short, I think the game is perfectly balanced as is. As cool as flint knapping is, it doesn't have a place in TLD.

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22 hours ago, Willy Pete said:

While this all makes sense in a real world scenario, for the game it doesn't really fit as they're already balanced quite nicely. Arrowheads are already not hard to find, every playthrough I've managed to find a decent number (at least in ML) of arrows and broken arrows without the need for a forge.

They're also not very hard to make if you know where to find a forge and herein stems the key factor: arrowheads don't degrade. No matter how many times you use them, provided you can locate them afterwards, you can re-use arrows with the only real limiting factor the number of shafts you have. There's really no point to add stone arrowheads to the game as they don't fit in with the game.

Even if they were, the only way I can see them being implemented and maintaining game balance is being single-use arrows that require a tedious amount of time to craft with a high chance of failure. Something like 4-5 hours per arrowhead with a 50% chance to ruin it from the start.

In short, I think the game is perfectly balanced as is. As cool as flint knapping is, it doesn't have a place in TLD.

Why I'd like to see it added is to give the player more portable crafting options so that there is more to do while sitting in a cave during a blizzard than reading a book or mending clothing... or just passing the time playing black-screen solitaire.  I'd also like to see some ability to progress the crafting of the skin clothing options along while away from a workbench for the same reason and see no reason why once the player has started a set of rabbitskin mittens, for example, they couldn't just continue to progress the sewing of them while away from a workbench.  Similarly, why can't we whittle arrowshafts while sitting by a campfire?

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