Stone aged pick?

[DeanF]

Kind of an off-the-wall idea:

Picks did exist in the stone age, but they were usually made of antler, and were used more like a crowbar than like a swung pick.  We could certainly have these.  Antler isn't exactly easy to find, so it would not be overpowered.  I would propose that they work excruciatingly slowly, and perhaps only on the soft sedimentary rocks.  Shale, sandstone, chalk, claystone.  Maybe conglomerate or limestone.  The goal definitely would not be to make them actually practical- it's more just for the sake of completeness.  And at some point someone will find a fringe use for one sometime, and they will think that it is awesome that these were included.

This is all sort of a follow-on to my discussion about wooden shovels:

 

[Rainbow Fresh]

Having a much more limited stone age tier of pickaxe could be an interesting idea, even though I personally don't see any immediate use. However if you are saying it requires antler - as in, the stuff grown bucks drop when hunted? - that kinda negates the path of progression. Hunting fast game like deer is basically tied to having access to bows and arrows of decent quality. Lest you play as Hunter class or with disabled class-only recipes, getting a bow takes a while; depending on luck and priorities, longer than it takes to get your first copper pickaxe. So by the time you may even get the "stone age" pickaxe you already made it obsolete.

[LadyWYT]

14 hours ago, DeanF said:

Picks did exist in the stone age, but they were usually made of antler, and were used more like a crowbar than like a swung pick.  We could certainly have these.  Antler isn't exactly easy to find, so it would not be overpowered.  I would propose that they work excruciatingly slowly, and perhaps only on the soft sedimentary rocks.  Shale, sandstone, chalk, claystone.  Maybe conglomerate or limestone.  The goal definitely would not be to make them actually practical- it's more just for the sake of completeness.  And at some point someone will find a fringe use for one sometime, and they will think that it is awesome that these were included.

I'm not sure that it's very useful in this fashion aside from just collecting rocks for cobblestone, walls, and paths. Maybe halite if one is really lucky, but doing anything useful with halite still requires a barrel. Would probably be useful for players doing pure stone age playthroughs, but little else.

7 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

However if you are saying it requires antler - as in, the stuff grown bucks drop when hunted? - that kinda negates the path of progression. Hunting fast game like deer is basically tied to having access to bows and arrows of decent quality.

This is a really good point, though I wouldn't say that the issue is with hunting deer as that's easily done with stone spears. Rather, the issue is that deer only provide antlers during the fall and winter, and even then it's not really until late winter that the antlers are big enough to feasibly make much of a tool from. By this time, players should have managed to figure out copper casting and made themselves some basic copper tools, so an antler pick is really only useful as decoration or in extremely niche circumstances.

[Steel General]

26 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

This is a really good point, though I wouldn't say that the issue is with hunting deer as that's easily done with stone spears. Rather, the issue is that deer only provide antlers during the fall and winter, and even then it's not really until late winter that the antlers are big enough to feasibly make much of a tool from.

Personally, I think we should strive for the 'has antler' milestone before we can do complicated knapping - that until we get one and assemble a knapping kit (antler, hammerstone, small rawhide, at least) we are limited to very crude stonework that cannot make a usable axe, much less nice points. No charcoal, no doors, no stone spears, until antler.

I see no harm, and much good, from slowing the progression and making accumulation of resources difficult until we cleverly kill a deer with poor tools or wait until the antlers shed. It is nevertheless possible to skip ahead with urn loot, and that's fine too - as with pickaxes.

Making progress is fun, and milestones are its measure - adding more near the beginning is at least as joyful as adding more near the end. (Note the difference between milestones and obstacles: milestones can be achieved in many ways and rewards for the achievement grow over time, whereas obstacles are only achievable by grinding the work in the way provided, and once achieved are irrelevant.)

[LadyWYT]

2 hours ago, Steel General said:

Personally, I think we should strive for the 'has antler' milestone before we can do complicated knapping - that until we get one and assemble a knapping kit (antler, hammerstone, small rawhide, at least) we are limited to very crude stonework that cannot make a usable axe, much less nice points. No charcoal, no doors, no stone spears, until antler.

I see no harm, and much good, from slowing the progression and making accumulation of resources difficult until we cleverly kill a deer with poor tools or wait until the antlers shed. It is nevertheless possible to skip ahead with urn loot, and that's fine too - as with pickaxes.

Making progress is fun, and milestones are its measure - adding more near the beginning is at least as joyful as adding more near the end. (Note the difference between milestones and obstacles: milestones can be achieved in many ways and rewards for the achievement grow over time, whereas obstacles are only achievable by grinding the work in the way provided, and once achieved are irrelevant.)

I mean, that's fine for those who want a very slow-paced game, but personally I don't want to be forced to stay in the stone age for an entire year. I would also point out that if you really want to say "no stone spears or axes until you get an antler" then antlers are going to have be findable by the player at any time of year, or the early game is otherwise going to need a massive rework to allow the player to do something other than just struggle to survive since it's not really possible to do much of anything without basic tools. Cracked vessel loot also isn't going to be an option at all for Homo Sapiens players, but even if antlers can drop occasionally from cracked vessels or be found in the wild, I doubt most players will be very happy about needing to rely on that much RNG to make any kind of decent early progress.

If you really want to slow down progression, it's typically better to do it by giving the player more options to pick from at certain tech levels. Currently, players don't spend a lot of time in the stone age because a lot of activities are gated behind metalworking. I don't consider that a bad thing, since the stone age is just a stepping stone in the progression tree and not a tier the player is meant to spend a prolonged time in, but if the player had a few more options to distract themselves with they'd be more inclined to take things a little more slowly depending on what priorities they set for themselves.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

47 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

I mean, that's fine for those who want a very slow-paced game, but personally I don't want to be forced to stay in the stone age for an entire year. I would also point out that if you really want to say "no stone spears or axes until you get an antler" then antlers are going to have be findable by the player at any time of year, or the early game is otherwise going to need a massive rework to allow the player to do something other than just struggle to survive since it's not really possible to do much of anything without basic tools. Cracked vessel loot also isn't going to be an option at all for Homo Sapiens players, but even if antlers can drop occasionally from cracked vessels or be found in the wild, I doubt most players will be very happy about needing to rely on that much RNG to make any kind of decent early progress.

Step 1: kill deer for antlers
Step 2: use antlers to dig for stone
Step 3: use stone to craft spears/axes
Step 4: use spears to hunt for deer

repeat as needed until you realize it's a catch 22 and will never be resolved without a lucky break

Without axes, you have no firewood so you are limited to whatever raw ingredients you can find on the ground. Perfect, I guess for the vegan player, but a LOT of stuff is locked by killing your first animal including larger inventory and warm clothing for the winter.

no offense to the person you're replying to, but from what I'm reading this idea is better suited for a mod to increase the early game difficulty or for players who want a more traditional vegan survival route. If it were part of the base game, I would probably create a mod to revert it.

Edited yesterday at 06:52 PM by Teh Pizza Lady

[DeanF]

16 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

Having a much more limited stone age tier of pickaxe could be an interesting idea, even though I personally don't see any immediate use. However if you are saying it requires antler - as in, the stuff grown bucks drop when hunted? - that kinda negates the path of progression. Hunting fast game like deer is basically tied to having access to bows and arrows of decent quality. Lest you play as Hunter class or with disabled class-only recipes, getting a bow takes a while; depending on luck and priorities, longer than it takes to get your first copper pickaxe. So by the time you may even get the "stone age" pickaxe you already made it obsolete.

So what I'm hearing is that antler sheds need to be in the game?

[LadyWYT]

2 hours ago, DeanF said:

So what I'm hearing is that antler sheds need to be in the game?

They already are in the game. You can find shed antlers around the late winter/early spring time frame.

[ifoz]

11 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

I'm not sure that it's very useful in this fashion aside from just collecting rocks for cobblestone, walls, and paths. Maybe halite if one is really lucky, but doing anything useful with halite still requires a barrel. Would probably be useful for players doing pure stone age playthroughs, but little else.

Honestly, a really slow stone-age pickaxe would be nice peace of mind for early caving. I like to rush caves very early on to try my luck, but if you forget to pack enough blocks, you're in a bit of a tricky situation. You can either hope there are enough loose stones and boulders around the cave to make enough drystone fences to pillar out, or starve to death since there is no way to claw your way up onto a 2-tall ledge.
It's a fringe use sure, but it'd still be useful in the kinds of situations where a player is semi-softlocked due to being trapped by blocks of rock. 

Edited 18 hours ago by ifoz

[ifoz]

8 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

If you really want to slow down progression, it's typically better to do it by giving the player more options to pick from at certain tech levels. Currently, players don't spend a lot of time in the stone age because a lot of activities are gated behind metalworking. I don't consider that a bad thing, since the stone age is just a stepping stone in the progression tree and not a tier the player is meant to spend a prolonged time in, but if the player had a few more options to distract themselves with they'd be more inclined to take things a little more slowly depending on what priorities they set for themselves.

Honestly, I think a good way to expand early progression would be with scrap tools. We have scrap weapons, but it could be interesting if scrap was its own miniature "age". Not one required for progression, but just something players could do as an alternative to early stone/copper, especially if their local copper spawns weren't kind to them.
Scrap doesn't just have to be the specific metal scraps item either - it could be expanded to a few different items in ruins. Potsherds and glass shards for making knives and arrowheads, some form of scrap lamellar armour, and maybe some other things as well.
Potentially also tie it into clutter - breaking ceramic clutter without glue would give potsherds, while breaking glass clutter without glue would give glass shards.

Ruin hunting is a fun activity, and the player cobbling together crude tools from the remnants of the past is very fitting with VS' themes.

Edited 18 hours ago by ifoz

[Steel General]

21 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

I don't want to be forced to stay in the stone age for an entire year.

I don't think it's a problem to have to wait for the deer to grow antlers - it's not like there's nothing to do. That's not a year, just a couple seasons. Also, while a player can choose to go the easy route and just wait for antlers on the ground, it's really not so hard to set up a trap and run the deer into it.

That said, I have no problem with having occasional antlers on the ground from day one - preferably in areas where deer spawn, though.

21 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

even if antlers can drop occasionally from cracked vessels or be found in the wild, I doubt most players will be very happy about needing to rely on that much RNG to make any kind of decent early progress.

I wasn't suggesting that antlers would drop from urns, though they could sure be a foraging urn drop. Rather, all the drops urns already have are fine ways to skip that part of the progression - they are already ways to skip parts of the progression.

The flaw in the thinking is in "decent early progress" - your standard is set by what has already been, but you should consider it with fresh perspective: new players have no notion of what the early game should be, so the real measure is whether or not it brings them joy. If we took the copper age out and trivialized the bronze age so a player could just get right into iron, that would be less joy, but only those who have known what we have now would know that it's less joy - to the new player it's just the game, and the iron age is a joy. If we had started thus and someone suggested ballooning the bronze age and even requiring a brief copper age, that might seem like it ruins the "decent early progress", but we would quickly find joy in the new milestones.

21 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

the stone age is just a stepping stone in the progression tree

The whole game is stepping stones, with no finish line. Take joy in the steps. (Someday we'll have a finish line, and achieving the final step will be a pile of extra joy, but that doesn't mean the other steps are just obstacles, grinds, and chores.)

20 hours ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

repeat as needed until you realize it's a catch 22 and will never be resolved without a lucky break

Spears aren't the only way to kill a deer, but we should have wooden javelins, just like australopithecus used to make.

20 hours ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

Without axes, you have no firewood so you are limited to whatever raw ingredients you can find on the ground.

I did indeed forget that firewood is required for a firepit. This is a flaw and should be remedied - peat, a pile of sticks, the base of a healthy tree, and many more options should be fine ways to start a firepit. As proof that this is not intended design, I point out that after making the firepit the firewood can be immediately removed and replaced with peat, a pile of sticks, a bunch more grass, etc. There is definitely no reason for cooking to be gated behind axes.

I'm sure I can think of other things are only gated behind knapping because the game starts with knapping, and other, still-more-primitive alternatives to knapping with which the game could begin instead (that are not just stupid grindy chores).

[Teh Pizza Lady]

12 minutes ago, Steel General said:

I did indeed forget that firewood is required for a firepit. This is a flaw and should be remedied - peat, a pile of sticks, the base of a healthy tree, and many more options should be fine ways to start a firepit. As proof that this is not intended design, I point out that after making the firepit the firewood can be immediately removed and replaced with peat, a pile of sticks, a bunch more grass, etc. There is definitely no reason for cooking to be gated behind axes.

I can agree with most of these, but you still need a knife to get the dry grass to use as tinder so you still need knapping to make a fire. Go make an axe and chop wood.

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, Steel General said:

The flaw in the thinking is in "decent early progress" - your standard is set by what has already been, but you should consider it with fresh perspective: new players have no notion of what the early game should be

I don't think this is a fair statement at all. New players absolutely have notions about what the early game should be--it's why they commonly post various suggestions or otherwise comment on how the early game could be better/what they found really frustrating. Like stone tools breaking too fast or not being able to find clay, or starving to death because they couldn't find enough food, etc. In some cases they want more of a grind, but more often than not the feedback tends to trend toward things should be a little easier/less time-consuming rather than more grindy.

 

1 hour ago, Steel General said:

I don't think it's a problem to have to wait for the deer to grow antlers - it's not like there's nothing to do. That's not a year, just a couple seasons. Also, while a player can choose to go the easy route and just wait for antlers on the ground, it's really not so hard to set up a trap and run the deer into it.

That said, I have no problem with having occasional antlers on the ground from day one - preferably in areas where deer spawn, though.

And a "couple of seasons" is still around 72+ days by default, or about 57.6 real life hours if the player never sleeps in the game, if I did my math right. I really doubt most players will want to spend 60+ hours just trying to progress beyond the most basic tech tier in the game, same as they probably won't be keen on relying on RNG antler finds to skip ahead. Likewise, adult deer are fast, tanky, and do decent damage, so there's a good chance the player could die in the process of trying to kill one unless they rely on trapping the deer in a hole or something(which not every player finds fun).

 

1 hour ago, Steel General said:

I wasn't suggesting that antlers would drop from urns, though they could sure be a foraging urn drop. Rather, all the drops urns already have are fine ways to skip that part of the progression - they are already ways to skip parts of the progression.

Sure, but drops like copper/bronze weapons and tools are quite rare, and more of a "nice to have" when they drop, rather than something players chase for progression. Lock the player to spending most of a year trying to leave the stone age though, and they'll absolutely start chasing those vessels.

 

1 hour ago, Steel General said:

Spears aren't the only way to kill a deer, but we should have wooden javelins, just like australopithecus used to make.

And how, exactly, are you going to make a wooden javelin if you have nothing to sharpen it with? If an antler is required for the player to do any kind of knapping, then I don't see how the player acquires a wooden spear outside of somehow taking a stick and rubbing it against a stone surface for a long time. That doesn't sound like engaging gameplay at all, especially when it's not unrealistic to smack a couple hard rocks together to knap out a simple stone tool.

I would say panning for spearheads is an option, but many players already don't like panning, and you still need a knife and axe to create a pan anyway, so that's still locked behind antler acquisition.

1 hour ago, Steel General said:

If we took the copper age out and trivialized the bronze age so a player could just get right into iron, that would be less joy, but only those who have known what we have now would know that it's less joy - to the new player it's just the game, and the iron age is a joy. If we had started thus and someone suggested ballooning the bronze age and even requiring a brief copper age, that might seem like it ruins the "decent early progress", but we would quickly find joy in the new milestones.

1 hour ago, Steel General said:

The whole game is stepping stones, with no finish line. Take joy in the steps. (Someday we'll have a finish line, and achieving the final step will be a pile of extra joy, but that doesn't mean the other steps are just obstacles, grinds, and chores.)

Sure, but what you're proposing is not something I find to be something that sounds at all fun, nor do I see it being a popular design decision for most players. I don't mind spending more time in the early stages of the game necessarily(in fact this is already the case in 1.22), but I want it to be my choice to do that, and not because the game decided I wasn't allowed to progress for basically an entire year because I didn't have a specific item that only appears via RNG find or months later after starting the game. What you've proposed absolutely sounds like a grind/chore, and not the fun kind. I think it would work as a mod, because some players enjoy really grindy games or otherwise just want to play caveman, but if it became the standard for vanilla I would probably be modding it out immediately or otherwise just looking for a different game to play.

Edit: I suppose to summarize, the main question that needs answering is if the player is expected to spend most of a year locked at stone tools or less, how are they supposed to survive temporal storms, harsh weather, and negative health effects like diseases/broken bones without frequently dying, and what else is there for them to actually do without any real tools other than run around and struggle to find food?

Edited 3 hours ago by LadyWYT