Tapping Trees to produce different kinds of materials

[Cooked_Artichoke]

One pain point for me was the search for resin in the game, when it should be that all pine trees are generally capable producing resin.

Thus my suggestion is to allow us to make tree taps, the real name of the tool being a spile, that allows us to drain pine and maple trees of both sap and resin. Doing so will eventually kill the tree however and require it be replanted and mature before you can attempt to tap it again, and the size of the tree would determine how many times it could be tapped without dying. And of course while the sap would produce quickly (over the course of an hour ingame or so), the resin needs to seep out of the tree and crystalize on the bark which could take a 2-3 days ingame. natural resin should still occur (maybe a smidge less common now that there is a tool) but allows us to produce resin more consistently without having to baby sit random pines and can be locked behind needing an anvil to produce a spile from a rod and chisel +hammer. A hammer would also be needed to drive the spile into the tree itself, since it can't be put in by hand alone. A bucket would be needed to collect the sap as well as it drains from the tree.

Pine Sap also is a natural disinfectant so it would be another renewable medical source but it should have spoilage where it hardens and has to be reheated like pitch glue. It could be put squarely between horsetail poultices and sulfur honey bandages as a median medicinal (you can probably just do half point of healing if needed).

Also maple syrup would be on the table as something to be refined from maple sap in a cooking pot. It could act like a honey substitute in certain dishes, like porridge.

(maple trees don't produce resin btw)

Edited April 10, 2025 by Cooked_Artichoke

[gooberflow]

I like the idea of the tree being tappable, and Pine Sap being a in between of horsetail and sulfur-honey. It could be that instead of the tree dying, it could run out, and need to wait until the next year to harvest more? Like in the winter the tree would not produce sap.

[Thorfinn]

Expanded Foods adds the spile. I have no idea what all saps it covers, but I know maple is one of them. If pine is not one of them, that would likely be an easy addition.

[Owktree]

IIRC, spile in Expanded Foods can tap pine (resin), birch (sap), maple (sap) at the very least.  The latter two flow seasonally; e.g. the spile only produces sap for three months of the year.  For example maple sap only flows from Jan-Mar of the year and produces about 3 liters of sap per tree.  Said sap can then be processed into syrup and used in various cooking recipes or consumed directly.

I haven't been using the spiles for resin collection since resin needs dropped precipitously once the main mechanical devices were constructed.

[Cooked_Artichoke]

On 4/10/2025 at 4:57 PM, Thorfinn said:

Expanded Foods adds the spile. I have no idea what all saps it covers, but I know maple is one of them. If pine is not one of them, that would likely be an easy addition.

 

On 4/11/2025 at 7:50 AM, Owktree said:

IIRC, spile in Expanded Foods can tap pine (resin), birch (sap), maple (sap) at the very least.  The latter two flow seasonally; e.g. the spile only produces sap for three months of the year.  For example maple sap only flows from Jan-Mar of the year and produces about 3 liters of sap per tree.  Said sap can then be processed into syrup and used in various cooking recipes or consumed directly.

I haven't been using the spiles for resin collection since resin needs dropped precipitously once the main mechanical devices were constructed.

I have yet to play with any mods and am on a wilderness survival world, so my posts are simply me making suggestion for thematic additions to the game without mods

 

[Thorfinn]

We get that, @Cooked_Artichoke. We're just saying that if you really want that in your game, you can have it now, without waiting.

There are several other resin mods, BTW. I just recommended the one I knew of that most closely fits your suggestion. One allows you to use any knife to score any log section of a pine and turn it into a leaking resin log. Several mods make finding resin easier. Of those, the one I like most from a game balance standpoint is Salty's Bark Beetle.

FWW, the amount of resin various armor and machinery needs is pretty closely aligned to how hard it is to collect. Resin in earlier versions was much more common, and was deliberately toned down somewhere around 1.15 or 1.16. The game was intentionally re-balanced to where it is. It's kind of like the quern, now gated behind an anvil.

No, I don't use any such mods, though I did back when I had difficulty finding resin. Resin is plenty easy to find after a little practice. If I start in a granite gravel pine forest, for example, and cant find my way out of it, my first day will often end with up to around 3/4 stack of copper and at least a stack or resin. Yes, on almost default Wilderness Survival settings.

Edited April 14, 2025 by Thorfinn