Dye and Foraging

[LSconstance]

I dye fiber with plants and natural sources as a hobby, as well as foraging and hiking, and i have a couple things that might make foraging more realistic.

i am lowkey rambling here, so im sorry if its all over the place

1. more dyestuff that is more realistic. 

very happy that we have woad, im a big fan of that because in a lot of games like this, they either dont have a way to make a nice blue or its something that makes no sense.. having something like goldenrod for a bright yellow, acorns and walnuts for a black or dark brown. we can also use the stuff we already have in the came more realistically, like carrots making a yellow/orange dye, or pomegranates making a brown dye (yes the skin of pomegranate makes a nice tan). also, lapis lazuli makes more of a pigment than a dye. i would also love to see paint making and lake pigments at some point, but that might just be me because i make them irl lol. 

i feel like being able to make and dye yarn would also be interesting, maybe being able to harvest wool off of rabbits or bighorns in the later half of the game and being able to spin it into yarn. it might be a nice substitute for linen, or it could be a way to make some stronger late game warm clothing. 

 

2. flowers and foraging

so many flowers are edible. being able to eat some of the flowers i think would add a lot of realism to the game. maybe not be able to farm them, but be able to find them in the wild. things like Lilacs, Violets, chicory or dandelions. staying with the idea of flowers, i think we would also benefit from more types of flowers, like asters, coneflowers, swamp roses and so on. things to add some more realistic color. 

for more foraging i think we would also benefit from more berries and tubers. im not usually a tuber forager, so i cant speak much on that but friends of mine have fed themselves for entire winters on native tubers alone. beans too, like groundnuts and mouse beans. for berries, brambles would be great. maybe the player could be injured for standing in them for too long, or you walk slower through them or something, and depending on which kind of bramble they are they could eitehr grow up or down. like dewberries grow along the ground, so they could grow out like pumpkins, while black raspberries like to grow up walls and trees. speaking of pumpkins, i would love to see more squash!

i noticed something that irked me a little bit, but its not actually an issue, just something i thought i would mention. some mushrooms only grow on or around coniferous or deciduous trees, and when a mushroom like chicken of the woods grows on a pine tree for example, they have a high chance of absorbing toxins from inside the tree sap. no i dont know exactly how that works, but ive always been told to avoid COTW off of coniferous. 

back into fruit, a way to dry fruit would be nice. maybe late game, because you cant just dry fruit in the sun or it will rot. i would also like to see something done with jam. i like the idea of using honey to make jam, it helps level it out more, but we could use apples on their own use apples as a form of pectin instead of honey. if you do dry fruit it could save for longer, and might not saturate as much as if it was raw. 

 

all of this could easily add way too much foodstuffs to the game, so that could be more balanced by how foragbles are spread across the world, and when they fruit. most brambles only fruit in the late summer or fall, and most edible flowers only bloom in the spring.