Books on Archery and Sewing


JAFO

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Given that all the other skills we can improve in-game have books and magazines to help the player's character learn, why are there none for archery and mending clothes?

Please Hinterland, fix this ASAP...

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To be honest, while I obviously don't disagree with adding more skill books in general, they would only be a band aid in the case of the Sewing/Mending skill, and further changes are (IMHO) required to that skill specifically.

For anyone who is unaware, it takes a combined total of 350 skill points to raise Mending from lvl 1 to lvl 5. This means 350 clothing repairs.

For reference, almost every other skill requires around half or even less then half of that to get to lvl 5. 

The most comparable skill is Cooking, which also requires a total of 350 skill points. But the problems are that

A: Cooking 5 is far far far far more useful then Mending 5, so having Cooking be 'grindy' doesn't feel bad because at least it's rewarding.

B: Without any badges, if you only eat meat and don't abuse starvation (ie don't exploit), you will eat about 3-4kg of meat a day on Interloper (3 for Bear, closer to 4-4.5 for Wolf, even more for Rabbit). So this means simply to stay alive, you will probably average at least 3-4 cooking actions per day past the early game (where you can live off Cattails). That doesn't even include making tea/low value rabbit meat or small fish which would all give you even more skill per day. Obviously, you do not repair your clothes 3-4 times a day, or anywhere near that (if you did, you would run out of cloth absurdly fast for anything but crafted clothing, and even for crafted clothing, obviously killing 3-4 animals a day would be unsustainable).

Which means Mending both feels terrible to level (and frustrating because you randomly fail 4-5 times a row to repair your stupid socks and for some reason I guess you toss the cloth in the fire after you fail instead of reusing it?), and is insanely slow to level. And like I mentioned, the 'reward' for level 5 Mending is basically 'no more random fails on repairs', which isn't really worth all the trouble (the other benefits are all really minor; sewing kit durability doesn't matter because fishing tackle is basically limitless anyways and you would run out of cloth long before you ran out of scrap in the current state of the game even if you played thousands of days).

Books wouldn't help much, because you would probably only find 4-5 books in the entire world for Mending, and they would likely only give 10 skill points each, like Cooking Books. Meaning they would only be a drop in the bucket anyways.

So to be honest the core problem is more that Mending is just a really badly tuned skill.

Edit for a bit more clarity: My point with Mending is that it's simultaneously by far the most difficult skill to max, skill books or no skill books, and also at the same time the least rewarding lvl 5 skill in the entire game (you get 95% success rates by lvl 3 which is most of the reason to even level this skill). The only other skill even close to being this weak is the Rifle skill (which basically doesn't give anything important at lvl 5), and even that is far more useful overall.

 

As for Archery, well TBH lvl 5 archery needs to lose the 'can shoot while crouched' (because it's completely broken) before skill books are added for it IMHO. And while I'm on the topic of 'OP lvl 5 bonuses', Cooking 5 should probably only make you immune to Food Poisoning from 50%+ food, not from food at any condition level, so that Antibiotics don't become completely useless (well other then using them as poor man's antiseptic vs infections). And also for reasons of 'why can I eat almost completely rotten meat without any risk?'.

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I agree with @JAFO regarding skills books for all skills, as well as with @Troxism regarding the incredibly difficulty of achieving mending lvl 5!

In addition, I'd like to put a plug in for a couple new skills.  Specifically, I have always been confused why cleaning a rifle, repairing lanterns or sharpening tools seem to have a separate mechanism for improving your skill.  Why can't we have a "Crafting" and/or "Repairing" skill that improves as we make more things or repair the things we have...?  I know it would require a fair amount of thought to make sure tuning is appropriate and what the benefits of improving could be.  I'm open to community suggestions regarding what the perks could be. Some that come to my mind might be quicker crafting and less damage to your tools (e.g. sewing kit, fishing hook, knife, tools, etc.). Just a thought I have wanted to plant in the heads of Hinterland if it's not there already.

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7 hours ago, WildGPS said:

In addition, I'd like to put a plug in for a couple new skills.  Specifically, I have always been confused why cleaning a rifle, repairing lanterns or sharpening tools seem to have a separate mechanism for improving your skill.  Why can't we have a "Crafting" and/or "Repairing" skill that improves as we make more things or repair the things we have...?

 

I agree. A "maintenance" skill could easily replace cleaning, repairing and sharpening.

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Agreeing with everything here. I would love a better mending skill. Perhaps reduce the success chances for fishing hooks so you're more reliant on sewing kits early on, and balance out the skill gains to allow faster levelling. Then it would advance more like the other skills where non-renewable versions are more convenient/beneficial overall, but run out as your skills offset the penalties from crafted/renewable versions. 

As a perk beyond increased success chances, what about the ability to sew in additional features to clothing? Perhaps reinforcing cloth based pants/torso items with leather? This could either be to add additional protection for wolf struggles, or to increase durability. 

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11 hours ago, LucidFugue said:

As a perk beyond increased success chances, what about the ability to sew in additional features to clothing? Perhaps reinforcing cloth based pants/torso items with leather? This could either be to add additional protection for wolf struggles, or to increase durability. 

I like this a lot!

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