How would sharpening tools be balanced well?

[MagpieOAO]

It's a much requested feature, possibly even on the list but consider how the game itself works;

You have the ability to knap stones to grab series of expendable tools literally off the ground which is an encouragement to progress in tech to where your tools aren't falling apart so quickly and you spend less time crafting them, more time using them and searching for the materials to continue making better tools to enjoy even more access and time.

Basically

betters tools > less clutter and less time sunk into crafting them, aside from the initial investment. 

I think at its simplest, tool fixing/sharpening would need to become the new resource/clutter sink that replaces or at least supplements the crafting of disposable tools. Given if repairs are more painful than replacement, people will opt to replace and the repair system becomes pointless. I think real world examples can give us a few ways to explore repairs that have a similar depth as the rest of the game;

The central tool on a homestead is a grindstone. It's been said that the quality of a farm can be determined by the quality of their grindstone, given it's the key tool used to sharpen all other tools for use. Dull tools make hard work. 

A grindstone consists of a single dense stone chiseled into a wheel shape with a pin it can spin on and very importantly a water trough that keeps the wheel wet. I expect this helps with heat of the blade and reduce friction. Stones can be powered by a hand crank, by a foot pedal or con temporarily by electricity so a water or wind based motor would also be able to turn it for you resulting in a lot less effort required and higher precision. 

Obviously you can't carry this with you, but most would carry whetstones which operate on the same principles to keep their edges sharp while they worked.

These are examples of scythe whetstones made to slide along the edge of the blade after dipping in water or oil. But there are many shapes and forms of whetstones for different kinds of work. Coarse stones for more abused blades and finer stones to sharpen them further. Even leather strips for an extremely fine blade. 

 

-----------How does this translate to gameplay?-------------

If we go with the somewhat-realistic design of VS, I'd add "condition" along with the HP of a tool.

Every time you hone a blade, you're removing more material to form another edge. You ARE slowly destroying the tool. But a metal tool can also be re-forged with new metal to restore it for less metal than an entirely new tool. Stone doesn't have that advantage. 

The better the tools you have to hone a blade, the better it functions and the less material you're taking off if you're using good materials and taking a lot of time. 

Some gameplay examples;

You have a bronze shovel, you've used it 20 times and its gone from "perfect" condition to "good". Because of this it does slightly less damage to soil. You take out a fine wetstone made from marble and spend a minute or so sharpening it. This slightly reduces HP but restores condition to "perfect". 

You pull out a flint knife that's dull but has good HP. Because it's dull, it's barely better than using your hands. You pull out a coarse flint whetstone and sharpen it for a few seconds, taking the HP down a lot but restoring it to 'Good' which is still faster than knapping a new blade, though you will have to at some point because this one can't be honed in a similar way again.

You have a sword at low HP. You heat up a quarter-bar of ore and work that onto just the edge of the blade, restoring its HP. Then proceed to sharpen it with a grindstone, a fine whetstone and a leather strip. This takes a fraction of a minute between each tool but the end result is the sword is back to perfect HP with Perfect condition.

You have an iron axe and a bronze axe. Though they both do roughly similar amounts of damage to the objects they harvest, their HP is different and the bronze loses condition faster than the iron, simulating it getting duller quicker. Overall, less time will be spent honing the iron axe than the bronze one.

 

----------What does this add to gameplay?-----------

Rather than every tool being disposable and needing to carry multiple, it'll become more possible to become attached to a tool with instead repair materials and tools that are expendable rather than the tool itself. More materials and better materials not only create better tools but better tools to maintain tools. 

Ideally at some point we could even make customized tools, like the various colors and materials available to shields and with engraving on them. 

If well designed, the system balances out new tools and maintaining tools in such a way that maintenance is easier, cheaper, more readily available but relying on similar materials and progression as not to remove the incentives for progressing.

Edited July 3, 2025 by MagpieOAO

[QueerCoded]

If a tool has a condition that lowers with use and restoring it costs durability, doesn't that effectively just mean the tool will overall have lower durability that it does currently? I understand the logic behind repair lowering durability, but from a gameplay perspective I'm not sure it makes sense to have two different metrics for a tool that are directly tied to each other like that.

[Rudometkin]

17 hours ago, MagpieOAO said:

Every time you hone a blade, you're removing more material to form another edge. You ARE slowly destroying the tool. But a metal tool can also be re-forged with new metal to restore it for less metal than an entirely new tool. Stone doesn't have that advantage. 

This sounds like a great system!

 

17 hours ago, MagpieOAO said:

You have a bronze shovel, you've used it 20 times and its gone from "perfect" condition to "good". Because of this it does slightly less damage to soil. You take out a fine wetstone made from marble and spend a minute or so sharpening it. This slightly reduces HP but restores condition to "perfect". 

Yes, but only if the whetstone is crafted with a temporal gear. I don't want the game to be too easy.

(That was a joke!! It's a play on me always talking about making the game harder! It was just a joke!! )

[Rudometkin]

45 minutes ago, QueerCoded said:

If a tool has a condition that lowers with use and restoring it costs durability, doesn't that effectively just mean the tool will overall have lower durability that it does currently? I understand the logic behind repair lowering durability, but from a gameplay perspective I'm not sure it makes sense to have two different metrics for a tool that are directly tied to each other like that.

I believe in Magpie's proposed system, there is a total rework on the way durability works.

That is, the 'condition' of the tool runs down the more you use the tool, and it becomes less effective the lower the condition is. Using the tool does not necessarily burn down it's life. The true durability is now HP. HP only burns down when you sharpen it to raise the condition back up.

Now I didn't notice Magpie mention what happens when condition runs down to the lowest level and you still use the tool. There are two solid mechanics that could work:

1. The tool reaches the condition 'useless' and sinply becomes useless, until it is repaired.

2. The tool starts losing HP every time you use it, since you are still continuing to use it in its most vulnerable state. Why are you still using it? Go repair it already!

[Omega Haxors]

I thought the same thing. Try it for yourself and tell me what you think.
https://mods.vintagestory.at/whetstone

If you think the implementation is crap and that you can do better: do it. Modding this game really isn't hard. Steal my code and make changes, then upload it as a fork. If you wanna do something a little more advanced there's a ton of people who've been running the circus for long enough that it's probably easy for them. They can lend a hand.

Edited July 4, 2025 by Omega Haxors

[MagpieOAO]

8 hours ago, QueerCoded said:

If a tool has a condition that lowers with use and restoring it costs durability, doesn't that effectively just mean the tool will overall have lower durability that it does currently? I understand the logic behind repair lowering durability, but from a gameplay perspective I'm not sure it makes sense to have two different metrics for a tool that are directly tied to each other like that.

I'm not necessarily suggesting a system but rather poking around the idea of how such a system might work or what it would need to work. As you point out, something that reduces functional durability is a straight nerf. To my knowledge they do want to have a repair system but as we can see it's difficult to imagine how one would work well and be fun.

Rudo does lay out a good idea of how it could work though, gear has an HP and a condition, HP is only reduced when being repaired or continuing to use it at the lowest condition. At perfect condition the tools have highest effectiveness, let's say maybe current effectiveness +.5 at good condition they're where they're at now and at poor condition they're at -.3 

A tool can still be used at poor condition, for example you might need to continue using a pick, axe or sword while condition is low and if it's a steel tool, it'll still be way more effective than your hands, but now you're going to be putting damage on it. Maybe at the same rate you break things. 

 

But if you keep a blade in 'good' condition and use an oiled stone, you can really preserve its HP and effectiveness for a long time with some regular maintenance. Eventually you'll need to re-forge it (repair it) but it won't break on you this way.

Alternatively if it's a throw-away tool, whack on a new edge with a coarse grindstone after abusing the crap out of it and you'll burn through the tool but it'll do good work while it lasts.

[Dilan Rona]

Honing and sharpening mechanics in vanilla would be great. But till then, there is the Toolsmith mod that can do that.

[Thorfinn]

3 hours ago, MagpieOAO said:

Rudo does lay out a good idea of how it could work though, gear has an HP and a condition, HP is only reduced when being repaired or continuing to use it at the lowest condition.

Apart from being able to still use it when "broken", that's how Smithing Plus works. You get only so many repairs before there's just nothing left to repair.

[LadyWYT]

My general thoughts on the matter is sharpening could give weapons a bit more attack value, and tools a slightly faster work speed, but only for as long as you keep them sharp. Only metal weapons/tools can be sharpened, and they'll only stay sharp for a certain number of hits. Softer metals like copper will need to be sharpened more frequently(perhaps every 50 uses), while sturdier metals like iron and steel stay sharper much longer(300-425 for iron, 500-1000 for steel). I don't think sacrificing any durability to sharpen them is necessary, as the time spent keeping them sharp is enough, especially with lower quality metals(which also serves to help push the player to pursue high quality materials like steel, instead of settling for iron out of convenience).

As for what happens if a player doesn't keep their stuff sharp? Nothing--the weapons and tools function the same as they do now. However, without a sharp weapon, it might take an extra hit or two to kill a monster, and jobs completed with unsharpened tools will take longer to complete.

In regards to repairing tools and weapons...I'm not against it(and we do already have a system for it in place via NPC). I'm also not strongly in favor of adding it either, given that tools and weapons that are frequently used will eventually break. In terms of gameplay, how quickly a tool or weapon breaks is part of what helps push players to pursue better materials, instead of sticking to materials like copper and bronze because they're convenient.