Flint as in, the rock


Leif189

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I'm not too familiar with the geology of Canada but I am from the state of Maine, which is pretty close. Flint itself is not an exceptionally rare rock and can be utilized in survival situation numerous ways, namely, as a fire starter when struck against steel, or a bladed object. In a survival situation, especially in a game, I like to group resources into two categories, finite resources, and infinite resources. Currently fire starting items are a finite resource in the game. I've noticed in the long term that yes I do have several hundred matches, and a few fire strikers, but eventually when I do run out, I will not be able to make a fire. No fire means no water and no way to cook meat.

Secondly, a sizable piece of flint can be made into an ax head or knife blade. Combine that with a fir log, and cured gut, and bam, makeshift hatchet or knife. Crude but effective.

Thirdly, it could also be shaped into arrow heads. Maybe a different trajectory than arrows you can make out of the metal arrowheads in the game.

1 piece of flint produces 1 hatchet head, or 2 knife blades, or 3 arrow heads. The rock itself has durability that degrades everytime you use it coupled with a hatchet or knife as a fire starter.

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+1 I like this idea. How rare would this item be to find? Maybe make it difficult to find or harvest so it's not too easy. Or make it REALLY fast to degrade/one-time use, as an emergency item that you can find until you craft something better (and you've completely run out of matches/other ways to make fire).

Can you currently create a firestriker? Because if not, maybe you could incorporate crafting several pieces of flint into a "super-flint" that lasts for longer.

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Part of my reasoning behind this was the magnifying lense being the only infinite fire starting source. So when you run out of matches/fire strikers. You'll only be able to use the magny lense. The trade off with the magny lenses infinite use, is you can only use it outside on a clear day. Which certainly adds an interesting challenge and a large dose of realism.

My idea for the flint was that you could find a piece randomly generated in multiple mines and or caves. So maybe a piece spawns in these caves, but if you start a new game, it might and probably will not be in the same place. It would respawn like coal (at a slower rate) so that it maintains its viability as a crafting item as well. In reality it's a fairly common rock.

And you can not craft a fire striker. It's a random find, wears away every use, non repairable item.

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  • 1 year later...

UPDATED

TIL, that i have reinvent a wheel. The "tinderbox" is already present in the game files as "Flint and Steel".

 

I would suggest to expand the idea and introduce a new fire starting device  - the Tinderbox.

1. The first prerequisite for the tinderbox crafting  is a Flint as mineral. As it was said above, the flint can be spawned in mines in caves like it is now true with coal.

2 The second ingredient is a Charcloth - basically a fire starter to ignite an existing in game tinder. Can be crafted with the help of a fire out of Cloth or Reishi mushroom.

3. The third ingredient is a Fire steel (fire striker) - can be crafted at a Furnace out of Scrap metal with the help of a Heavy hammer.

4. The forth and the last ingredient is a toolbox  - Simple tools or Quality tools at any condition as we need only the box, not the instruments. (This can be an optional ingredient since i don't know whether the game is ready for crafting 4-ingridient items.)

The Tinderbox is crafted by hands (or on the Workbench) with no additional tools required. Items used in repair are Charcloth and Flint.

It's weight and degradation with every use are up to developers to decide. As for the main question by the Mel Guille: " How are you imagining [this]  would change the experience of the game? Would lighting fires become easier? "  the answer is ambiguous.

There are two types of fire starters in the game. One is mag lens - infinite and lightweight but can be used within very narrow conditions. The other fire starters are finite. If the game in it's summit tends to make the protagonist self-sustained then we need at least one replenishable sun-independent fire starter.

So pros are:

- craftable

- renewable

- works inside confined spaces and at nights

Cons are:

- heavyweight

- requires some prior work before crafting

- relies upon some finite ingredients (cloth, mushrooms)

- quite low fire starting chance (depends on experience)

- always requires tinder (at least do in real life)

 

The use of and old style flint and steel:

 

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Definitely should have already been added long ago. There should be some flint rocks occasionally by river beads. Probably about the rarity of birch bark. Should be able to use them to fire start and for primitive stone crafting of a sharp flint knife edge with a wrapped cloth or leather handle, flint arrowheads, flint hatchet. Stone tools for less frustrating Interloper, that degrade faster than metal.

I feel many of the players of this game have far better vision and creative ideas than the developers of this game. I mean the overall idea is great. The art, the sounds, the style of play....I love it!

The players are over here with these rational and obvious requests and ideas, but the community guy is like "We have a vision and direction for this game....lets go change the amount of breath coming out of the players mouth so they can't see!"

"Screw flint rocks that survivalists can pick up off the ground....lets add a fire bow instead so they can wait another 4 days to cure a maple sapling they can't cut down because there's no flint hatchet that could be crafted, or hacksaw lying around... and four days for cured guts to make a stupid fire bow."

I think a fire bow might be a nice fun add LATER, AFTER you add flint and stone tool crafting. Not BEFORE....but that's just me and a bunch of your players....

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All of those ideas have been proposed in the past, repeatedly(as they are kinda obvious), especially flint and various options associated with it. But so far...

On 6/27/2017 at 8:19 AM, JoE Smash said:

but the community guy is like "We have a vision and direction for this game....lets go change the amount of breath coming out of the players mouth so they can't see!"

...yeah, pretty much this.

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