Wood carving as a crafting method

[HAG-646]

Hello everyone,
In the line of the "Removing the crafting grid completely" in the frequently suggested i wanted to propose wood carving as a crafting method.
It would be very similar to (additive) clay forming, but in a subtractive manner exclusively (so no mistakes allowed).
I was thinking of 3 possible compatible tools to do the job: the knife (or maybe an hypothetical carving knife)= 1 voxel, the axe = 1*3*5 voxel but with a small cooldown, the saw = 1*16*16 voxels.
 

Spoiler

 

Keeping true to their size in a pile, by carving a log you can have:

24 Boards

16 Firewoods (there is indeed 16 actual logs in that pile)

25 Sticks (technically the model is 1.5 voxel wide but
25 sticks is already plenty and they're used as tools handle)

1 Debarked Log

 

The planks are twice as productive and the firewood 4x as productive but i believe its a fair balance for the fact that it take much longer to make.

Additionally i think it would be interesting if it was not a "recipe" based craft but instead the game would recognize the shape of what you're carving and validate the output item once its correctly done. 

Thanks for reading my suggestion ^^ !

[Bruno Willis]

Welcome to the forums!

3 minutes ago, HAG-646 said:

Additionally i think it would be interesting if it was not a "recipe" based craft but instead the game would recognize the shape of what you're carving and validate the output item once its correctly done. 

I don't think there's anything wrong with using recipes to decide what you're making first, like clay forming, but I'd like it if you could ruin a few boards with a miss-click and still get most of the boards at the end anyway, that sort of thing.

5 minutes ago, HAG-646 said:

I was thinking of 3 possible compatible tools to do the job: the knife (or maybe an hypothetical carving knife)= 1 voxel, the axe = 1*3*5 voxel but with a small cooldown, the saw = 1*16*16 voxels.

This bit is really exciting. It'd be interesting if these tools could be toggled between recipy mode and chistling mode (in the way that the pro pick  can toggle between states), so that the knife, axe and saw could chisel wooden blocks for aesthetics instead of recipe crafting. It'd be pretty handy to be able to carve beautiful wooden detailing pre-copper with your axe and knife, but still be restricted from any stones. 

[HAG-646]

Just now, Bruno Willis said:

Welcome to the forums!

Thanks!

Honestly i didn't even think of the artistic implication but its actually a great idea to deepen further the stone age phase !

[Bruno Willis]

Yeah, and it'd make wood feel softer and easier to work with than stone. It'd encourage you to build a carpenter's workshop with your axes, saw, knives and chisel. You'd go there to process wood into planks and such, and also to do some of your wood carving for aesthetics. Anything that encourages dedicated realistically useful builds is good in my book.

[Heegrim]

Yeah, we have so many crafting grid recipes now that are just a knife/saw and log/sticks together in different orientations. They are perfect candidates for a system like this. 
 

I do like the idea of being able to mess it up. I think you should be able to break the wrong voxels while knapping too and ruin what you are making. As long as there is a good tutorial for new players so they don’t get frustrated when they can’t make their first stone tool. 
 

Also, I am super excited for woodworking to get an update with the sawmill. I think you should have to manually saw a log into boards by hand (similar voxel minigame where the saw can remove a whole row at a time, maybe?). I want to make a waterwheel-powered sawmill so badly. 

[Lampookie]

I think being able to wittle wood away to make utensils would be neat, even just carving for decorative blocks.

[cellar_whales]

On 5/26/2026 at 12:51 PM, Heegrim said:

I do like the idea of being able to mess it up. I think you should be able to break the wrong voxels while knapping too and ruin what you are making. As long as there is a good tutorial for new players so they don’t get frustrated when they can’t make their first stone tool. 

I think this should have a toggle for being able to mess it up, too. But also I really, really like this-- being able to craft things imperfectly and still get results feels deeply wilderness-survival-esque to me.

[VANTABlack2000]

This sounds really interesting. 

As for @cellar_whalespoint. Maybe you could make it where you get the item you are trying to make, but with durability loss or something like that, so it isn't worry free, but not as punishing if that makes sense.

[Sunny_Sometimes]

If a mechanic like this gets implemented--which I would like to see--I think systems for wood properties and tool sharpness could do a lot to flesh it out. Open-grain woods like oak could split easily (intentionally and unintentionally), and not always in perfectly straight lines. So you might split a log into a slightly larger piece than you need and then clean it up with a draw knife or plane. Dull and rough tools could create tear-out as small divots/protrusions relative to the voxels intended to be cut. The ability of higher-tech tools to hold a good edge would be a big advantage to them. A chisel with a hammer or wooden mallet would be used for cutting/splitting out smaller chunks, digging holes, etc. (a stone chisel should realistically be a thing, in this case). A hand drill would be a complex tool to forge but allow for much more rapid and precise hole-drilling. A knife could chip away at edges for whittling, etc. Large, mechanical-power saws could cut boards cleanly and in bulk (and be very painful to step on).

Crafting recipes for things like chairs, sieves, fence posts, cabinets, etc. could then require a certain shape of wood to be cut with the grain running in the right direction, instead of generic boards (which would still have their place, and a lot of smaller shapes could be cut from boards). Those shapes might have error tolerances, depending on the recipe (a sieve does not need its joints to be as perfect as a water wheel's). "Crude" and "rough" objects could have particularly lax requirements. The recycling of materials could even have a place in a system like that, such as making an axe handle out of an old table leg.

This might ultimately culminate in a rethinking of "logs" as an item altogether, where trees would fall whole and then you'd chop them into a size you could carry or have dragged by a horse. A lot of other mechanics would need to develop and align to reach that point though, I reckon, so definitely not a near-term prospect lol. Getting into wood greenness/age would probably be a step too far, though, especially for multiplayer.

Overall, I'd really like for more-extravagant woodworking to not be mechanically gatekept behind high-tier tools, for the most part, just a prohibitively tedious or unrealistic goal with crude tools. I'd find it far more immersive to avoid certain construction techniques because the limitations of my current tools make it a pain in the backside and keep ruining the piece before I can finish it than because of some invisible wall the game put up. Things like stronger nails, stronger wood types, etc. being necessary for certain tasks are the clear exceptions to this philosophy (I'd expect to be cutting a lot of mortises and tenons, regardless).

[Steen45]

I think if this is implemented, they should also add a mechanised saw, to (semi-)automate the production of planks, beams and the like.

[InkArchivist]

I was just coming here to suggest a similar idea.

On 5/25/2026 at 5:37 PM, HAG-646 said:

It would be very similar to (additive) clay forming, but in a subtractive manner exclusively (so no mistakes allowed).

Additionally i think it would be interesting if it was not a "recipe" based craft but instead the game would recognize the shape of what you're carving and validate the output item once its correctly done. 

I found these two lines particularly interesting because I had a similar idea for how this could work. My thought with this would be that more advanced tools unlock more advanced recipes (still needing the saw to make planks, for example), but I was also thinking about the knapping system for this. Knapping is already a system for which you have to break away the parts you don't want, so a similar functionality could be used for wood. You chip off the voxels you don't want, and that forms the shape of the crafted item. That would also allow making things like the pan or the club to be a good way to pass the time early game, similar to making the clay items.

I like how part of it involved more firewood, and the ability to create sticks. This would be especially useful because those can be two very difficult resources to manage at times. I feel like this could be balanced by having you need to use the saw or something to get those increased recipes, that way the recipes are a reward for reaching the copper age. Early game logging, to avoid excess time, could be like real life firewood chopping where you wing the axed down on a chunk of wood to cut it in half, then quarters.