plan to make sticks from firewood?

[ChilliDogDave]

i'v been loving the game so far but one thing that really baffles me is the inability to use a knife to carve sticks from firewood (or at least i cant figure it out if you can) its something i would do in reality, you cant really rely on random woodland sticks to be both sturdy and straight as an arrow, so you would carve your own, possibly unbalanced but much more realistic

[Echo Weaver]

4 minutes ago, ChilliDogDave said:

i'v been loving the game so far but one thing that really baffles me is the inability to use a knife to carve sticks from firewood (or at least i cant figure it out if you can) its something i would do in reality, you cant really rely on random woodland sticks to be both sturdy and straight as an arrow, so you would carve your own, possibly unbalanced but much more realistic

There are a bunch of mods that add this recipe. I use: https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/2920

Other recipes provide different output or use different tools to satisfy a variety of opinions on game balance.

[Thorfinn]

36 minutes ago, ChilliDogDave said:

in reality, you cant really rely on random woodland sticks to be both sturdy and straight as an arrow,

Exactly. Why do you think the default drop rate from trees is so low? Out of all the branches on a tree, as few as 0 and maybe as many as 3 are usable for handles or shafts. The real question is why are so few suitable for kindling?

Welcome to the forums, @ChilliDogDave!

[LadyWYT]

For just the vanilla game, you can use shears on leaves to get a greater yield of sticks and tree seeds before you cut the tree down. Shears are also great for clearing brushland in order to keep things from sneaking up on you as easily.

[Kyzer]

I'm bumping this (assuming this forum does that) because as someone who does most of the pit kilning on a small group server, sticks are not common enough. There either needs to be an alternative to sticks for pit kiln burning added or the ability to craft burning sticks specifically craft-able from firewood or planks to use instead. People in real life use small hatchets on firewood all the time to make kindling for wood furnaces.

On 12/11/2024 at 5:32 PM, LadyWYT said:

For just the vanilla game, you can use shears on leaves to get a greater yield of sticks and tree seeds before you cut the tree down. Shears are also great for clearing brushland in order to keep things from sneaking up on you as easily.

It becomes less of an issue once you have shears, but those aren't a good use of your copper since you just made an anvil. You also have to worry about getting mauled by a grizzly bear which for some reason decides to fly dozens of blocks just to beat your ass -- which will be especially not fun if you are on the edge of sprinting distance from spawn and haven't gotten a temporal gear to set your new spawn point yet.

On 12/11/2024 at 3:19 PM, Thorfinn said:

Exactly. Why do you think the default drop rate from trees is so low? Out of all the branches on a tree, as few as 0 and maybe as many as 3 are usable for handles or shafts. The real question is why are so few suitable for kindling?

Welcome to the forums, @ChilliDogDave!

The solution here isn't keeping sticks ridiculously hard to get in good numbers until you can get shears -- it's to make fletching require some more effort. It's either that or add the previously mentioned burning sticks.

[Thorfinn]

Welcome to the forums, @Kyzer!

22 minutes ago, Kyzer said:

he solution here isn't keeping sticks ridiculously hard to get

Oh, no, you are not going to drag me into a discussion about whether it's "ridiculously hard" to collect enough sticks. Not this soon.  

[EDIT]

BTW, there are several mods that do that, and at least a couple that  give you all the drops from lumberjacking as if you had used the shears first. Talk your group into adding either or both.

Edited January 3 by Thorfinn

[Kyzer]

3 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Welcome to the forums, @Kyzer!

Oh, no, you are not going to drag me into a discussion about whether it's "ridiculously hard" to collect enough sticks.  

[EDIT]

BTW, there are several mods that do that, and at least a couple that  give you all the drops from lumberjacking as if you had used the shears first. Talk your group into adding either or both.

You took what I said out of context and intentionally ignored “until you can get shears.”

Mods shouldn’t be the solution to every problem either. The game takes itself quite seriously and tries to be realistic, adding a material made of firewood to replace sticks for the purposes of lighting kilns, fires or whatever else shouldn’t be considered a big ask.

[LadyWYT]

49 minutes ago, Kyzer said:

I'm bumping this (assuming this forum does that) because as someone who does most of the pit kilning on a small group server, sticks are not common enough. There either needs to be an alternative to sticks for pit kiln burning added or the ability to craft burning sticks specifically craft-able from firewood or planks to use instead. People in real life use small hatchets on firewood all the time to make kindling for wood furnaces.

Fair enough, but I think a mod to make sticks easier to get would be a better choice for a large multiplayer setting, in order to avoid singleplayer/smaller multiplayer servers from becoming unbalanced.

In regards to pit kilns though, 1.20 adds a better option for mass production of pottery and related products, in the form of the beehive kiln. It takes a fair amount of resources to construct, but you can fire a lot more stuff at once with a lot less effort once you've got the structure built. Beehive kilns also do not require dry grass or sticks for fuel--all you need is firewood, peat, or some kind of coal to fuel them. Additionally, you can get different colors of certain pottery items depending on how you adjust the kiln before firing, whereas a pit kiln has a limited range of colors it can produce.

[Thorfinn]

57 minutes ago, Kyzer said:

You took what I said out of context and intentionally ignored “until you can get shears.”

Sorry. I didn't take it out of context. I was making a joke. You weren't here, but as recently as yesterday, people were mad at me for having the opinion that one day's travel isn't all that far.

I've had a similar discussion about sticks, BTW. About how important it is in early game to use the layer of sticks so that you don't end up with 9 full stacks of sticks in inventory. Yes, it's a pain to have to break them as opposed to decrafting them like hay, but it beats the heck out of running out of sticks.

But going to disagree about adding it to the base game. That was a design choice, and, while I don't want to head off into the weeds again, at least so soon, a choice that was not too bad in terms of game balance. For example, any ratio of planks to sticks in excess of unity is going to mess up the recipe for ladders, though I wouldn't expect one relatively new to the game to know that. The same is true for firewood to sticks -- anything greater than 2:3 is going to be a problem. I'd advise one use those mods until you, too, realize that sticks are not as badly balanced as you once thought.

What might be a better answer is changing the pit kiln to only require 4 kindling. I'm guessing there was a reason 8 was selected, but I haven't given it much thought.

Whatever one finds annoying about the game at any moment, with a little more playtime, you will probably see there's a reason for the choice made. I'm hard pressed to think of more than a handful of things that I've not come to that conclusion. (Mushroom harvest speed, I'm looking at you.)

Edited January 3 by Thorfinn