OreEnthusiast

I thought of the same thing as well but because there doesn't seem to be the framework for selective hitboxes I assumed it'd be pointless to suggest as that'd be a mountain of work to implement. Status effects just seem easier to implement from a coding standpoint, however if possible I do think your idea is better.

I really don't like this mechanic. Everything else I can get behind, but this one mechanic just feels like it unnecessarily punishes the QOL of having an offhand. I'd have downloaded a mod to solve the problem however there are few available and I'm worried about the longevity of their usability. I'm also worried about some possible instability, like the one that rewrites the hunger every half second.

I started the game recently and have been enjoying it quite a lot. I love the visuals, the gameplay, the crafting, the mods, the multiplayer, everything. Almost nothing I particularly dislike. One of the very few things I have found a problem with though is Hunting. The animals are incredibly janky to kill as they're extremely tanky relative to your damage output in the early to mid game. Prey animals lead you on overly long and tedious chases through terrain and LOS breakers as you chip away at them piece by piece, and Predator animals are so dangerous that you're incentivized to cheese their AI via water, holes, or getting somewhere unreachable. Over my few dozen hours playing thus far one of the things I've wished for the most is some kind of mechanic that adds interactivity to the hunt to circumvent the need for those aforementioned problems. Obviously not everyone sees them as problems, but I came to dislike them. While doing a lot of hunting for my multiplayer sessions with friends I came up with a spitball idea to theoretically solve this problem: A Wound Mechanic. Every animal gets a secondary health like bar that emulates wounds, and all bladed weapons get a secondary "wound" damage stat that applies exclusively to it. Upon being wounded all animals begin bleed leaving trails behind them (purely visual), and are slowed down. The amount of blood left behind and the strength of the slow both increase the more damage is dealt to the wound bar. Upon reaching a certain threshold the animal will then be inflicted with a fatal wound where the wound bar will begin to drain until it reaches zero, at which point the animal will die. Additional damage can be applied to secure the kill quicker but they can also be left to bleed out on their own. Excessive damage can also theoretically bypass everything entirely and just kill the animal outright. If desired, additional effects can be added at this point to make it even more interactive. Deer could get 1 last fast sprint off before dying, and Bears could become enraged making them aggressive and dangerous in their last moments. The idea is to make the gameplay more interactive and a bit more immersive.