Carrying carcasses

[Tom Cantine]

Picture a successful hunter, returning with a deer slung over her shoulder or a pair of rabbits dangling from a cord, or a fisherman with a basket of fish. They return home, and set about skinning cleaning and butchering their prize.

In game, you can't do this: you have to process your kill wherever it falls, which is okay most of the time, but sometimes you kinda want to leave the area promptly. And it gets a little silly when it comes to fish. Why can't I catch the dead fish before it sinks out of sight, and bring it to the beach to clean?

I get that the larger carcasses, say medium or bigger, shouldn't be able to just stack in your inventory, but there's already a mechanism for carrying live animals and populated skeps: they take up a backpack slot. SO here's my suggestion:

HUGE sized carcasses (like bears) can be carried, but they take up all four backpack slots. So if you're going bear hunting and don't plan to skin your kill on site, travel light.

LARGE sized carcases like bighorns take up three of the four backpack slots, so you can only carry one at a time but still have some inventory space.

MEDIUM carcasses like wolves and boars take up two.

SMALL carcasses like rabbits and foxes can be carried in inventory normally like other items, but don't stack.

Small fish (currently the only ones in the game, those little white salmon) stack like normal items.

All carcasses are perishable.

Edited to add: Just occurred to me that this'd be useful on multiplayer servers, where it'd be preferable to have the carcass butchered by a player in the Hunter class, as they get a bonus harvesting animals. Promotes a little more division of labour and cooperation.

Edited March 29, 2025 by Tom Cantine

[Hookachooga]

Really good suggestion! I love this idea mainly for your edit comment about hauling carcasses back to base for a Hunter to carve for the extra drops. It always pains me when I hunt an animal and have to carve it because the hunter in our group is miles away and I know I am getting less than I could be!

Though I do think that medium carcasses taking up two backpack slot would be a bit much. I would say:

small - inventory

Medium - 1 backpack slot

Large - 2 backpack slots

Huge - 3 backpack slots

[Dilan Rona]

The Butchering mod would be perfect then, combine with the RMeat mod for more realistic meat drops.