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Foraging improvements


Zork

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I am not saying foraging is weak. It's actually quite useful. Handicapped in some respects and overpowered in others. Here is what I would change:

 

1. Finding LOGS while foraging is ridiculous. You could spot a log at 20 yards without trying. You also never, ever want to just automatically pick up logs when you're out in a possibly dangerous situation. And on top of that it is not really needed. Sticks/twigs fulfill the need for tinder and crafting wood well enough. Please consider removing logs from the foraging loot tables.

 

2. The amount of tiredness you get from foraging is way, way over the top. Make it 1/4 of what it is now - if tiredness is appropriate here at all. I would rather see exertion used instead. Make it a very exerting activity and it will remain dangerous to do in unsafe terrain. It's silly that foraging for an hour or two makes your character so tired that he can immediately go back to bed for a full night's rest. Foraging involves a lot of looking around, crouching, crawling maybe. NOT very taxing on the body. Not like felling trees. Actually, I take that back. Make foraging not use a lot of tiredness OR exertion. Make it just slow, i.e. see point #3.

 

3. If 2. is too big of a buff, it's always possible to reduce overall loot to accommodate.

 

4. Please separate worms, crickets, grasshoppers and cockroaches properly into "Fish Bait" and frogs, eggs etc. into "Animals". Right now you can have Fish Bait turned off but still find plenty of insects and worms.

Edited by Zork
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Big yes to number 2, and tie the extremity of exertion to Fitness level. In real life, someone who can't do much physical activity would actually struggle pretty hard to shlep through rugged terrain, and find useful materials in the middle of trees and shrubs. Unfit characters should probably gain one level of exertion every 10 minutes. Out of Shape every 30. Normal survivors could gain one every hour. This, to me, is most realistic. A person in average shape could easily roam around in the woods picking berries and catching frogs for several hours before they would really be exhausted. But devs probably want to gameify it for balance a little, so we'll cap it at 4 hours until Excessive Exertion for base characters. This would also mean that getting a lot of foraging done would be pretty hard until you level up your fitness, since Fit survivors would probably get tired and run out of daylight before becoming exerted. This would nerf a lot of the OP aspects of foraging too.

 

On a side note, I think actually having the PC move around the foraging zone randomly while the action is in effect would add to the immersion and make foraging a little more dangerous. This would definitely synergize with the exertion effects as well. You might just walk around a tree and boom a zed pops up while you can barely walk.

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That's a good idea, having the PC move around. That would make it more dangerous for sure, especially the noise.

 

I also had the thought that at high levels, the changes for desirable materials could be changed a bit to make up for removal of logs.

Like.. more branches, less twigs. More chipped stones, less stones. That's what a seasoned forager would want to look for, so I imagine he would be more successful at finding these.

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Yeah that would be great, but maybe we could get a Rimworld-style dropdown bar that lets you manually filter which items you want instead of the basic checklist we have now. So you could specifically look for only chipped stones, or look for everything but logs. This would make more sense, because right now it seems like you just go out on a nice stroll and randomly pick up whatever you find. Foraging should feel like scavenging, where you specifically look for the items you need at that moment.

 

The menu could have basic foraging items known and you would have to discover the item or reach a certain level of foraging to be able to manually select to look for it or not. This would open up the option for magazines or TV shows with rare foraging loot that the survivor can learn how to search for. Maybe we could give Farmers starting knowledge of these things just to make that profession a little more useful in SP.

 

Hopefully we get some new foraging items with hunting in b42. All of these things would work well with the idea of an update to the wilderness areas. Making them both more survivable and more dangerous, and foraging is a big part of that!

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A quick and dirty little modification that might be really helpful is a 'loot to ground' option. Instead of putting it on your inventory or straight in your bag, just 'stack it on the dirt' so you can pick up the specific stuff you want.

Heck. Having a 'place on ground' or 'place in container' for crafting would also be great. The game defaults to dumping heavy crap in the player inventory too often considering this damages the player's health.

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