Bushcrafting Suggestions

Because there are too many crafting/profession skills for each to have its own forum.
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Lexx416
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Bushcrafting Suggestions

Post by Lexx416 »

Wanted to make a thread for suggestions for Bushcraft! If you have any, feel free to put them down below. Gonna start off with a couple that I've been thinking on for a couple of days.


*Heat Treating*
Heat treating lithics is a way to change the properties of certain knappable lithics, to improve the ease at which a piece can be knapped, as well as to improve the edge on cutting or piercing tools. Heat treating creates a more brittle stone which is smoother and glossier, and tends to fracture conchoidally more easily. This also creates a more brittle tool, with a lowered durability. Heat-treated stone would result in a very poor hammer surface.

The process to heat treat can either be done by firing it in a kiln, provided the kiln is entirely full of lithics, or by digging a shallow pit in sand, burying your lithics (spaced out so that they're all surrounded by sand) in sand up to 6 inches deep, and then building a campfire over it, and allowing it to burn down. Real Life "cooking time" is several days, requiring you to build fires multipe times, but that seems unnecessary for a game. Having a cook time of a bell would probably suffice.

Heat treating would be only available with a specific Knapping ability, or with sufficiently high skill (whichever Rias thinks is better?).


*More lithics*
It'd be nice to have different varieties of lithics to knap, with varying difficulties. Either a difficult material can't be knapped at all with insufficient bushcraft (or even a specialized ability, returing a message of "You aren't sure you can work with this rock"), or pieces produced with lithics outside of your skill range are always the lowest quality possible, and have a lower durability. I'm also going to tag which lithics are/should be heat treated. Heat treating can also change the color of rocks, but I couldn't find an easy source of these changes, and it doesn't seem to be a totally uniform phenomenon.
  • Agate (fairly easy, heat treatable)
  • Basalt (Difficult to knap)
  • Chalcedony, including: carnelian, bloodstone, and sardonyx (medium difficulty, heat treatable)
  • Chert (easy to knap, heat treatable)
  • Flint (easy to knap, heat treatable)
  • Jasper (medium, heat treatable)
  • Obsidian (easy to knap)
  • Onyx (difficult)
  • Opal (difficult)
  • Quartz (easy)
  • Agatized/Silicified Coral (must be heat-treated to knap)

*Tools For Knapping*

Being able to use a bone or antler as a knapping tool would be great. The durability on bones/antlers should be pretty low, however.




*Skinning/Butchering*
Being able to harvest fat from animals, to be used for making lamp oil. I'm still researching the process to actually MAKE oil, so I'll elaborate on that when I've figured out the best means for Cogg.
"You hear the Woses, the Wild Men of the Woods... Remnants of an older time they be, living few and secretly, wild and wary as beasts."
alila
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Re: Bushcrafting Suggestions

Post by alila »

Maybe this would be better for somewhere else, but crushing some berries or plants to make basic paints or dyes? It seems more herbalism-y than woodscraft/survival-y, but if the idea seems okay anyway it could be sorted into the right place?
Making bandages or tourniquets out of thornleaf or natural fibers? Of course applying them would be more a medicine skill based activity.
Traps as a specialized bushcraft woodscraft ability or skill?
Could bushcraft give knowledge on different activities at different amounts? Maybe at 25 you could recall flint and know it can be found near rivers, and so forth?
Knowledge of what plants and herbs are poisonous or medicinal? Not when combined, but a general knowledge of what to touch and what not to touch while foraging out in the wild
Unless you would rather drop some of this under lore because it seems lore-relevant.
Thank you,
-Alila
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Lexx416
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Re: Bushcrafting Suggestions

Post by Lexx416 »

alila wrote: Tue Apr 09, 2019 3:45 pm Maybe this would be better for somewhere else, but crushing some berries or plants to make basic paints or dyes? It seems more herbalism-y than woodscraft/survival-y, but if the idea seems okay anyway it could be sorted into the right place?
Making bandages or tourniquets out of thornleaf or natural fibers? Of course applying them would be more a medicine skill based activity.
Traps as a specialized bushcraft woodscraft ability or skill?
Could bushcraft give knowledge on different activities at different amounts? Maybe at 25 you could recall flint and know it can be found near rivers, and so forth?
Knowledge of what plants and herbs are poisonous or medicinal? Not when combined, but a general knowledge of what to touch and what not to touch while foraging out in the wild
Unless you would rather drop some of this under lore because it seems lore-relevant.
Thank you,
-Alila
I think these are good suggestions! Just because someone's a survivalist, doesn't mean they don't enjoy aesthetics. So producing paints and dyes seems reasonably, just keep it pretty niche and limited. I especially thing it'd be cool to get more use out of the Recall command, it's one of my favorites.

Also! Some of your ideas are already planned. :) viewtopic.php?f=6&t=62
"You hear the Woses, the Wild Men of the Woods... Remnants of an older time they be, living few and secretly, wild and wary as beasts."
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Rias
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Re: Bushcrafting Suggestions

Post by Rias »

Lots of good ideas on here. Traps (snares and the like) are definitely planned as part of Bushcraft, and something I've wanted to work on for a long time.
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Lexx416
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Re: Bushcrafting Suggestions

Post by Lexx416 »

Could we get a sickle added to the tools that can be made through flint knapping, please? Flint edged sickles have been around since the neolithic era, and there seem to be two varieties that I can find. The first uses a curved piece of wood, with a larger piece of flint knapped with little saw-like teeth. The second variety takes a curved antler or horn, and seems to carve out a small trench in the inward curve, then lines it with several small knapped blades that have similar saw like teeth. I'd generally prefer the latter, as it would lend a use to antlers!

I've seen a picture of a curved knapped lithic, wherein the lithic itself was knapped into a curved shape, but I think only found one picture of that, and it seems like it would be very difficult to do consistently.
"You hear the Woses, the Wild Men of the Woods... Remnants of an older time they be, living few and secretly, wild and wary as beasts."
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Rias
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Re: Bushcrafting Suggestions

Post by Rias »

[#ANNOUNCEMENTS] Changelog-Crafting: The "lithic sawteeth" bushcraft recipe is now available.
[#ANNOUNCEMENTS] Changelog-Crafting: Lithic sawteeth can now be attached to antlers to make a sawtooth sickle, which can be used for harvesting applicable crops or forage similar to a scythe.
Enjoy!
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Rias
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Re: Bushcrafting Suggestions

Post by Rias »

P.S. It proudly shows off the materials you used. Yay. So use those exotic antlers or lithics to impress your friends.

Code: Select all

l sickle
You take a closer look at a deer-antler flint sawtooth sickle ...
A primitive sickle made from knapped flint sawteeth attached along the inner curve of an antler.
It is comprised of the following components:
   some deer antlers
   a handful of flint sawteeth
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Lexx416
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Re: Bushcrafting Suggestions

Post by Lexx416 »

Rushlights

A rushlight is a quick, cheap way to make light sources using natural resources that would be readily available to most anyone with some basic understanding of bushcraft; rangers, country-folk, woodcutters, and other such woodscrafty peoples.

Step 1: Collect Rushes
*Rushes are flowering evergreen plants that grow commonly on infertile soil in a wide variety of moist environs.
*Very young rushes are not good for rushlights, as they lack an internal pith.
Step 2: Dry Rushes
*Traditionally, one would dry the rushes for a period; probably something like 15 minutes or so would be appropriate for game time?
*Strip the outer core to reveal the inner pith.
*I've found sources that site either one of these steps as coming first.
Step 3: Melt Fat
*Melt some kind of rendered fat or grease or tallow in a vessel such as a plate or shallow bowl.
*Fat type does not matter, except in that it can influence how the rushlight smells.
Step 4: Soak rush pith in fat
*Does not require much fat per rushlight
*1-2 tablespoons of fat per rushlight
*Must soak the rush pith until the fat/grease/tallow hardens
Step 5: Allow the fat to dry
*Probably something like 15 minutes soaking in fat should be appropriate?



This is a bit of a stripped down process, but this seems like a fun way to make little proto-candles for anyone that wants to be a bit woodscrafty/country-folkish/etc. This is something that was used by impoverished country folks for centuries, in place of more expensive beeswax candles. A rushlight of 15 inches or so purportedly can be burned for upwards of half an hour. So they burn faster than a normal candle, but they're cheaper, and actually burn a bit brighter as well.
"You hear the Woses, the Wild Men of the Woods... Remnants of an older time they be, living few and secretly, wild and wary as beasts."
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Lexx416
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Re: Bushcrafting Suggestions

Post by Lexx416 »

It'd be nice if a sufficient Bushcrafting skill allowed you to ID plants by their names, when it isn't immediately recognizable. A good example of this being 'thornleaf', which isn't directly called Thornleaf in the survey info, or whatever the Mossy Rock you can see outside of PD is.
"You hear the Woses, the Wild Men of the Woods... Remnants of an older time they be, living few and secretly, wild and wary as beasts."
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Rias
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Re: Bushcrafting Suggestions

Post by Rias »

Good idear. To-doed!
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