Quiver

[Michael Wojnar]

Having a quiver available (even if just for archer class) so that arrows don't crowd a spot in your inventory would be amazing.

[Blythe]

16 hours ago, Michael Wojnar said:

Having a quiver available (even if just for archer class) so that arrows don't crowd a spot in your inventory would be amazing.

It'd be awesome if you could also stack more arrows in the quiver. I would imagine It'd take up a basket/backpack spot, but to separate it from the other inventory slots as a singular slot and stack 2 normal stacks of arrows into it would be nice.

[MKMoose]

8 hours ago, Blythe said:

I would imagine It'd take up a basket/backpack spot, but to separate it from the other inventory slots as a singular slot and stack 2 normal stacks of arrows into it would be nice.

Having it take up a bag slot and give so little seems rather underwhelming to me. I'm thinking have a "hunting bag/pouch/satchel with quiver" or something of the sort, attached on a single belt or shoulder strap, or just "hunting gear belt". It would work very similarly to a mining bag and justify a much larger number of slots than just a quiver by itself, which would have to be implemented in a different way to avoid killing it with opportunity cost. Would be able to store all the conventional hunting loot like meats, hides, fat, feathers and whatnot as well as arrows and potentially knives and even bows. It also does have historical backing.

Something like a "farmer's basket" could work in a similar fashion for seeds and crops, or "gatherer's/herbalist's pouch" for berries and mushrooms, and herbs if they ever add them (Tyron said he wanted to).

[Facethief]

There is actually a seemingly WIP quiver in game! It’s only available in creative, but it functions similarly to what @Blythe says, although it simply uses a regular bag slot.

I’d suggest you try it out and write down here what you think should change. One thing I think might work is having it accept things like sticks and reeds as well as arrows, as those would logically also fit and make it less of a one-trick pony.

[Thorfinn]

19 hours ago, Blythe said:

It'd be awesome if you could also stack more arrows in the quiver. I would imagine It'd take up a basket/backpack spot, but to separate it from the other inventory slots as a singular slot and stack 2 normal stacks of arrows into it would be nice.

And, unfortunately, way OP. You can't come close to having the same firepower with spears that you do with just a single stack of arrows. There is just not enough inventory space. Maybe that's OK. Maybe the spear should be made obsolete by arrows, yet there's a reason the military still does bayonet training.

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, Thorfinn said:

And, unfortunately, way OP. You can't come close to having the same firepower with spears that you do with just a single stack of arrows. There is just not enough inventory space. Maybe that's OK. Maybe the spear should be made obsolete by arrows, yet there's a reason the military still does bayonet training.

The spear has higher damage per shot, but it gets outclassed by bows later in the game simply due to practical range and inventory space. Bows can shoot farther, and players can stack 64 shots per inventory slot instead of just one. I daresay this is also the main reason that spears are limited to bronze tier as the maximum quality; if they were iron or better, then they'd be outclassing bows and possibly even falxs, which isn't really ideal.

[Echo Weaver]

13 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

The spear has higher damage per shot, but it gets outclassed by bows later in the game simply due to practical range and inventory space. Bows can shoot farther, and players can stack 64 shots per inventory slot instead of just one. I daresay this is also the main reason that spears are limited to bronze tier as the maximum quality; if they were iron or better, then they'd be outclassing bows and possibly even falxs, which isn't really ideal.

I generally use bows for range because of the stacking issue. It bugs me to no end that they are not craftable beyond bronze in vanilla due to the range damage. I just want a weapon with the extra melee strike distance.

[Forks]

24 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

The spear has higher damage per shot, but it gets outclassed by bows later in the game simply due to practical range and inventory space. Bows can shoot farther, and players can stack 64 shots per inventory slot instead of just one. I daresay this is also the main reason that spears are limited to bronze tier as the maximum quality; if they were iron or better, then they'd be outclassing bows and possibly even falxs, which isn't really ideal.

 

10 minutes ago, Echo Weaver said:

I generally use bows for range because of the stacking issue. It bugs me to no end that they are not craftable beyond bronze in vanilla due to the range damage. I just want a weapon with the extra melee strike distance.

TL;DR
Add Iron Spears with same damage as bronze spears, but Iron level durability. Done.

This is something that endlessly frustrates me, the Ornate Silver and Gold spears already exist so more damage isn't the problem.
Is it just that they can be mass produced? If so fine, keep the damage the same as the bronze spears, but increase the durability!
I really hate decisions that are too heavily influenced by game balance, spears are strong because they were strong historically.
Not to mention now they are balanced because they lack the falx's auto looting.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

Maybe just a polearm that can be used like a spear but not thrown?

[LadyWYT]

39 minutes ago, Echo Weaver said:

I generally use bows for range because of the stacking issue. It bugs me to no end that they are not craftable beyond bronze in vanilla due to the range damage. I just want a weapon with the extra melee strike distance.

 

24 minutes ago, Forks said:

 

TL;DR
Add Iron Spears with same damage as bronze spears, but Iron level durability. Done.

This is something that endlessly frustrates me, the Ornate Silver and Gold spears already exist so more damage isn't the problem.
Is it just that they can be mass produced? If so fine, keep the damage the same as the bronze spears, but increase the durability!
I really hate decisions that are too heavily influenced by game balance, spears are strong because they were strong historically.
Not to mention now they are balanced because they lack the falx's auto looting.

What I'd actually do in this case, is not add iron+ spears, but pikes instead. That way, the player has a late game weapon option with a lot of reach(and potentially a minimum effective range), but will still need to use a bow for damage at longer ranges.

[Thorfinn]

Those are all good ideas, particularly the pole arm. I doubt I'd throw steel spears anyway. It's not uncommon for me to simply lose around 10% of my spears, and more than that of arrows, because combat is never a static thing. It's always run and gun. Flint and even copper, whatevs, but even bronze is hard enough to come by that I don't want to spend most of my playtime looking for a stupid spear.

N.B. Wilderness has no surface tin. It's pretty much only found while caving, since Wilderness also lacks node search. I often end up buying my two bronze picks, and quite often the alloy for the anvil comes from either the commodity trader or cracked vessels. And once I'm in iron, I don't even take notice of bismuth or zinc or tin.

[MKMoose]

15 minutes ago, Forks said:

Add Iron Spears with same damage as bronze spears, but Iron level durability. Done.

If I recall correctly, Tyron recently said in an interview that they would be adding iron spears, but he had personally made sure that it would also come with a rebalance to other spears. Presumably that means making the others slightly weaker, though that's only my speculation. I don't think he mentioned steel spears, so I wouldn't necessarily expect those.

 

1 minute ago, LadyWYT said:

What I'd actually do in this case, is not add iron+ spears, but pikes instead. That way, the player has a late game weapon option with a lot of reach(and potentially a minimum effective range), but will still need to use a bow for damage at longer ranges.

Pikes could be a bit odd because they were designed for formation fighting as far as I remember, and were generally two-handed and very unwieldy in close combat due to their sheer length, I think somewhere around 5 m typically. Regardless of that, though, I love the idea of introducing any more advanced polearms at higher metal tiers, as this would allow for much more flexible balancing as well as better weapon variety without requiring a bunch of extra dev time for completely new and unique weapon designs.

 

2 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

22 hours ago, Blythe said:

It'd be awesome if you could also stack more arrows in the quiver. I would imagine It'd take up a basket/backpack spot, but to separate it from the other inventory slots as a singular slot and stack 2 normal stacks of arrows into it would be nice.

And, unfortunately, way OP. You can't come close to having the same firepower with spears that you do with just a single stack of arrows.

How is this any more OP that just putting arrows in your 6-slot leather backpack? Or maybe I'm just forgetting or misunderstanding something? Sure, it could tip the balance further towards the bow, but if a quiver is implemented as a bag, then it has the opportunity cost of 6 generic inventory slots (less in early game, two more if you get chromite), which can be used to hold that number of stacks of arrows just as well as other items. Even if a quiver allows to carry enough arrows to make it sometimes better than a backpack, the loss of versatility seems to me like a fine enough balancing factor.

[Thorfinn]

I maybe misunderstood. I thought that was two separate ideas. One replacing a backpack slot, the other as something you equip on your paper doll to get extra slots.

[MKMoose]

25 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

One replacing a backpack slot, the other as something you equip on your paper doll to get extra slots.

Well, both could be pretty reasonable and would have their own caveats.

Backpack slot quiver would have to be unreasonably massive to be viable by itself, so if anything I think it could make sense to combine it with a hunting bag or something of the sort to make a container that can hold all hunting loot on top of arrows, and potentially also knives and bows.

A quiver as a distinct piece of equipment could be much cooler, but may introduce some unnecessary complexity and may require simultaneous introduction of other items in the same slot to create some sort of opportunity cost, as otherwise there might be no reason not to carry a quiver at all times.

[Steel General]

I'm liking the idea of using this to nerf archery

You can carry arrows in your inventory as normal, but hotbar slots will only hold one arrow. You have a quiver in a doll slot that holds eight arrows, refillable manually from the inventory. To initiate archery, put the bow in the offhand - with the 'swap hands' button and an empty offhand, this will automatically draw an arrow from the quiver to place in the hotbar slot the bow was in. Every time the bow is fired, another arrow is pulled from the quiver to the active hotbar slot.

So, with preparation and opportunity cost an archer can be ready to fire up to eighteen arrows without worrying about logistics; if surprised, eight arrows are available for immediate use. Getting more arrows from a stack in the luggage should take longer (but really it's just two key-presses and two mouse-clicks - easily manageable from a position that made long-term archery a reasonable tactic). If the archer wants to carry extra quivers one could expect them to swap with a right-click from the hotbar just like all the other doll slots, so there is room to multiply ready-shooting capacity in exchange for inventory space.

But yes, we need other appropriate hip-pouches to compete for that doll slot. Maybe a bandage dispenser - swap the bottle of aqua vitae to the offhand and the hotbar slot gets a fresh bandage from the hip-pouch, automatically wetted from the bottle. Maybe a pouch full of candles from which to automatically refill a lantern as its candle burns out (those need nerfing too, right - at least the carried ones).