Harvest wood?

Hi,

been a while I have played this game, so decided to play it again and look how much it has improved.

It has, yay....but something strikes me as odd.

I have harvest a zillion tinder plugs now, yet I have to harvest 1 piece of wood yet.

I have a hatchet.

I tried harvesting near trees, near broken trees, near a train full of dead trees, yet I fail to find wood for some strange reason.

I am probably missing something obvious?

In the forage menu, there are tabs near the top to select what you want to forage for

In the forage menu, there are tabs near the top to select what you want to forage for

wow.. seriously... wow...

I never ever laid my eyes on those "tabs" for some reason.

I hope it's a Proof of concept in UX, because it's not obvious those are tabs imho.

still thanks for pointing out the obvious

I have watched some first impressions on the game; also some let's plays, but i enjoyed the first impressions videos more, as the games' charm thrives best for people who are playing for the first time. I have found one particular thing pretty interesting:

The big majority could not for the live of them figure out, that there were MULTIPLE tabs in that forage menu, and just kept foraging for tinder a couple of times, and then gave up on foraging and just kept looking for wood. Maybe it is, because this is a slight inconsistency with the other menus in the UI? (There are drop-down menus for all the other interactions, but tabs for the foraging menu for some reason... It's a kinda inconstistent design decision, i must admit...) Or maybe the tabs should not be translucent, but... i don't know... pink?? I found this quiet interesting thou'. :F

Yeah, being new, it is not immediately obvious that the tabs exist or exactly what they mean. I occasionally harvest tinder by accident when clicking too quickly.

My suggestion would be to make a page following the harvest button with only these three options on it (buttons) and then you choose how much. Also, it also took me a few games to realize that "soft wood" meant cedar, which helped the process of fire making significantly!

You don't want to dumb down the game, as exploring and figuring out the game mechanics is part of the fun. However, the UI/controls probably shouldn't be a big part of that, i.e. should be intuitive as possible.

I made the same mistake. The tabs aren't easily visible for some reason.

One tip--don't use the axe for harvesting once you get a base set up. You can spend a little more time and use your hands for the fir. This saves the axe as a backup for the knife or for precious scrap.

My suggestion would be to make a page following the harvest button with only these three options on it (buttons) and then you choose how much. Also, it also took me a few games to realize that "soft wood" meant cedar, which helped the process of fire making significantly!

You don't want to dumb down the game, as exploring and figuring out the game mechanics is part of the fun. However, the UI/controls probably shouldn't be a big part of that, i.e. should be intuitive as possible.

Yes, there is a topic on this already in the playtest feedback forums: viewtopic.php?f=57&t=3297

As for the softwood: It is best to use cedar to start the fire for increased success rate, and then toss in hardwood for increased burn time with same harvesting time. Log burns very long too, but is incredibly heavy, so its a bad idea to carry it around. Also use accelerants and wood matches over board matches early on, to get your success rate for firestarting up as early as possible.