Wooden Spear / Wolf stare down or "Buck back" action


Foxtrot

Recommended Posts

Today on 10/29/14 I started a fairly epic play through. Long story short I'm here to record my first impressions.

Wolves, for me, had a big impact and the lowered frequency of medical supplies specifically antiseptic did as well.. Flares have been vital to survival, I really do hate using them because I fear being stuck in an area which is under regular patrol. I've been lucky enough to find some in buildings i had to use flares to travel to too begin with so far.

I really think a great thing would be the ability to craft a primitive spear subject to all the condition (player fatigue / night time v day time) and durability concerns already present in the game.

Another idea along the same lines would be the ability to appear intimidating enough to a wolf so that it A. gives you distance or B. thinks twice about attacking you and leaves all together. Perhaps waving a flare or above mentioned spear and yelling along with some kind of jabbing taunt motion could make some wolves think twice. I don't think this would hurt the tension a player feels about wolf attacks already present in the game.

Great work so far guys Keep it up!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I wouldn't mind the ability to craft spears. For that matter, why not make weapons out of bone and stone as well? It's the kind of stuff I'm sure people would do. Heck, grab a broom stick out of a house and duct tape a knife to the end, options are limitless for the potential weapons that can be crafted. Just make them wear faster then other weapons depending on how they're made.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 5 months later...

A spear was one of the first things I thought of when I started playing. (Along with duct tape!)

A spear is a knife, some gut, and a piece of fir firewood for the shaft. (Or a new item like a broom -- shaft for spears, bristles for kindling.) Another item to craft at a work bench.

A spear would make a decent weapon that should take down a rabbit, or injure a deer. (Assuming you hit them, of course.) There should be a chance, however, that an injured fleeing deer will take the spear with it. (This gives players another choice to make, whether to harvest knives for scrap metal or save them to replace their spear.) The spear might also have a chance to break into its original pieces on a miss. (Pick up the knife and shaft, find new gut.)

A spear is also good for fishing. There might be a chance, however, that the spear will come apart and the knife will be lost in the water.

Spears and wolves. I am desperate for more ways to fend off wolves. I would like to be able to arm the spear and jab at the wolf before it attacks, with a chance to injure it before it jumps on the character and/or to make it run away. Maybe the spear just keeps the wolf from jumping the character, forcing the character to move someplace the wolf can't follow, or keeping the character occupied until the wolf gets bored and leaves.

A successful throw at a wolf should have a small chance to bring it down, but also a chance that the wolf will run away dragging the spear.

It occurs to me that it might be difficult to animate animals running off with spears sticking out of them, so maybe the shaft would be left on the ground so the running animal animation would not need any alteration.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In a real-life survival situation, a solid spear (either with a point made from a knife-blade, or from fire hardened wood) would be literally the first thing I make. However, you should never throw your spear at an animal: you are likely to miss, and even if you do hit, you are unlikely to injure the animal in any real (read: lethal) fashion. "Survival" spears are really only balanced for thrusting, and a solid thrust even with a wooden-pointed spear will kill pretty much anything on the North American continent, bears included, so long as it is aimed for the "important bits"

Hunting rabbits with a spear is a waste of valuable time and energy, and you are unlikely to stab a deer just using a spear alone. The spear is the killing tool, you also need a pinning tool to allow you to get up close enough to the animal to kill it.

This "pinning tool" can be heavy underbrush, that you chase a deer into, a snare that traps the leg of a deer or wolf, or (what I prefer, and is an AMAZING weapon for survival) a set of bolas thrown to warp around an animals legs. Regardless, once the animal is incapable of movement, you close in and stab it in the torso/chest, AKA where the lungs and heart are. Preferably, multiple times to ensure a quick, merciful death.

"Fishing" spears and "hunting" spears are almost completely different things

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Didn't want to start a new thread on an old topic. Besides, I have projects at work I've been hacking away at longer than this thread was dormant.

I appreciate that spears in the real world might work differently than I suggested, but I lean toward gameplay rather than realism. I'm not really interested in immobilizing and then repeatedly stabbing an animal in a game.

I would expect hitting a rabbit with a spear to be nearly impossible, but it would be nice to have third way to resource a rabbit. The idea that the deer would run away with the spear goes directly to the idea that you wouldn't actually kill the deer with one throw, but it might be wounded enough that it might die later -- which is my experience with the rifle.

A hunting knife on a stick might not be the best way to fish, but it is a second way to fish, and I included the very real possibility that you would lose the knife -- I've had up to three knives at once, so that seems like a reasonable resource decision (especially if you are desperate for calories). Maybe in a future release and/or region they could include thin ice areas (in ponds and streams?) where we can see the fish and try spearing them that way.

If there are better way to incorporate spears into the game, then by all means suggest them. I'm less interested in my ideas than I am in good ideas, but the conversation has to start somewhere.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

there's more recent threads on spears.

hunting fish though ice with a spear is very unlikely. It's done in very specific circumstances, but the set up in the game is not it. You wouldn't even be able to see down the hole (the ice fishing shack is too bright), let alone see a fish and spear it (even given the already very small chance that one would come past the hole).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My apparently incorrect choice of thread aside...

I concede the fishing hole is not a place to use a spear. What about the shallow-water-thin-ice idea? I don't know if it is realistic, and it would have to be programmed from scratch, but it would be another way to fish and a potentially fun game element.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.