Better way to gain knowledge

[Certified_Goober]

I understand the handbook is unbelievably essential when starting out, but I personally wish their was a better way to gain knowledge of stuff. Say you start out with the basic knowledge of the beginning, but somehow (still not sure exactly how) can find ways to do more advanced things like smithing

Say you've been living a fair life, finally got some metal tools, but then you find something called a "mossy book", and it gives you lore of like, a homesteader in your world, and said homesteaded talked about a windmill he just made, and then BAM! , you now know how to make a windmill.

I understand if it's not exactly the best, but I just feel like there should be some other way than just a full blown wiki inside the game.

[MageTrash]

Maybe there's plans to integrate more abandoned structures to allude to progression milestones, or maybe various traders/NPCs can hint towards forms of progression.

[Certified_Goober]

10 hours ago, MageTrash said:

 maybe various traders/NPCs can hint towards forms of progression.

Honestly yes that would be phenomenal. Like the survival goods trader, which for me I feel is outclassed immediately by every other trader, could provide useful information or whatnot

[Wahazar]

By the way, handbook is overwhelming with its huge contents, also misleading with, for example, tools variants (oh no, I need meteoric iron knife to make club).

With some "knowledge milestones", it would be reasonable to have handbook showing only subset of items end recipes (+setting to bypass such feature), for example only tier 1 tools (and items possible to produce with tier 1 tools) if clay was not found, tier 2 tools is anvil mold was not created, etc.

[Krougal]

There's a mod that helps organize the handbook better, although it, like a lot of mods isn't working for 1.21 yet.

You can generally mouse over and scroll through the acceptable tools or materials, but yes, it could be better.

 

As for ops, no, just no. I absolutely hate forced or hard-gated progression.

It's just so gamey.

Sure in theory, there is nothing to stop you making steel on day 1...just the lack of...oh...I dunno...everything!

 

[Certified_Goober]

On 8/1/2025 at 5:05 PM, Krougal said:

 

As for ops, no, just no. I absolutely hate forced or hard-gated progression.

 

Valid. And that would be fairly forced now that I think about it. Maybe it just needs organized better. Like Ingots and hammers be under a "smithing" section

Maybe my idea would be decent for the Homo Sapiens mode, but other than that, now that you mentioned it, it doesn't entirely fit into the game.