Nut tree rework

[Whilim]

Let's fix walnut trees! Because as it is,, you have to rip all the leaves off in the hopes of getting a single nut. So instead, let's do this:

Like fruit trees, nut trees flower each year, spawn nuts, and can be harvested. Individual seeds are reflavored as a handful, to make up for their smaller size and to take into consideration that not every seed is going to be fertile. Unlike fruit trees, you plant them from seed. For balance, and to bring them in line with rl trees, new nut trees take multiple years of growth for their first crop.

While we're at it, let's make acorns edible! Like in real life, you have to leach the tannins out before they're edible. Unlike in real life, let's make this something you can do in a barrel. Maybe make them a source for weak and strong tannin for tanning, while we're at it. Grind the acorns, age them in a barrel for a couple of days, and receive acorn flour (or maybe go straight to dough?) and weak tannin.

Once we have this framework, it'd be simple to add more tree nut. Hazelnuts, almonds, cashews (with bonus cashew fruit!), etc.

[Never Jhonsen]

+1 on this

as someone who's lived with Oak, Maple, Pine, and Walnut trees, all 4 should be dropping WAYY more seeds than they currently are.

I clean parking lots for a living. One of them has some Oak trees. And here in the northern hemisphere is that time where they drop all their seeds (and leaves). The parking spots are filled with acorns. I do my job of cleaning up hundreds of them, and the next day there's hundreds more right in the same spot

When I was single digits old, I lived in a place with some maples. And every fall me and my friends would grab handfuls of maple seeds, climb to the top of the slide, and throw them as far as we can. Thankfully, this game has gotten the maple seed physics correct; in game they do flutter down so gracefully.

And when I was a teenager living somewhere else, there were always plenty of pine cones in the area to surprise throw at my friends (I never said I was a good kid  )

Anyways, tree seed drop is very much unbalanced, and I'd like it to be a bit more realistic. Also, adding nuts to cooked meals sounds awesome  Would that be a fruit nutrient? 

[DakotaGrey]

I think it would be cool to have nut producing trees grow nuts similar to the fruit trees. I'm not sure how they would go about it as you don't typically harvest them directly from the tree.  Maybe the walnut tree could have a season where it randomly drops walnuts, and you have to pick them up? I'm not a programmer so go easy on me, but there could be walnuts on the ground (similar to picking up sticks and stones off the ground) that you have to hunt for. Growing up, we had a walnut tree that dropped hundreds of them. We had to pull the hulls off of them to get to the shell.  Grandma would take the hulls and soak them in water to make dye for her reed baskets. The dye was pretty. The dye ranged from a pale yellowish green to a medium dusty green depending on how strong the solution was. Putting walnut hulls in barrels to make dye is fairly realistic. 

[Never Jhonsen]

6 hours ago, DakotaGrey said:

Grandma would take the hulls and soak them in water to make dye for her reed baskets. The dye was pretty. The dye ranged from a pale yellowish green to a medium dusty green depending on how strong the solution was. Putting walnut hulls in barrels to make dye is fairly realistic. 

That could be another way to get green dye  Currently we have two options for green dye: Dry Grass and Lilly of the Valley.

Granted. Dry grass is heavily abundant in almost all areas.

[Alonso7]

I love these little ideas, but seeing ambition of the developers for the next updates, I don't think they will refine these details just yet. 

[Chester Weston III]

Are you using shears? Full grown walnut should give atleast 20 if your sloppy

Edited February 3 by Chester Weston III

[LexicalAnomaly]

I would have nut trees grow immature nuts that then drop and form piles on the ground when they're ripe. The ground nuts would go bad over time unless they're harvested by a player. They'd all need some kind of processing before being eaten. Walnuts could be either washed in bulk in a barrel (a short soak, like 6 in game hours or something, which would also make green dye) or cleaned one at a time in water (for pre-copper age) and then need some time to cure in dry storage before you can eat them. Acorns could either be placed in flowing water in a reed chest for a long time (for pre-copper age) and then eaten, or ground into raw acorn flour and soaked in a barrel for some time to make acorn dough and light tannin water. Pine trees could have green pine cones on their upper branches that could be harvested early (instead of waiting for them to fall, which would give you a plant-able cone to grow a new tree) that could then be cut with a knife to extract the pine nuts. This would make pine nuts an immediate source of food at the start of the game, but they'd be a bit difficult and dangerous to acquire since you'd need to scale the trees.

On 10/24/2025 at 4:29 AM, Never Jhonsen said:

Would that be a fruit nutrient? 

Walnuts are already protein. Pine nuts could be protein as well. Realistically acorns should be grain they're mostly complex carbs, which is why you can make flour and dough out of them. I'd like if you could use walnuts as a cooking ingredient, even just as a topping for porridge.

 

[Facethief]

As a certified walnut hater and pecan fan, I cannot condone this imbalance of power.

…on the other hand, it would be extra clutter to have two incredibly similar trees in the game, especially if the main difference is climate availability.

I do, however, like the idea of cashew trees that produce fruit with the nuts, as that would be a fun spin on things.

[LadyWYT]

36 minutes ago, Facethief said:

As a certified walnut hater and pecan fan, I cannot condone this imbalance of power.

…on the other hand, it would be extra clutter to have two incredibly similar trees in the game, especially if the main difference is climate availability.

I think it would be fine. Walnuts have husks which can be used to make dyes and stains. They also make rather good projectile weapons when still in their husks. Can't really say the same for pecans.

[Facethief]

36 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

I think it would be fine. Walnuts have husks which can be used to make dyes and stains. They also make rather good projectile weapons when still in their husks. Can't really say the same for pecans.

From experience, neither of those are true, but whatever.