Bark stuff, birch-bark stuff

[Sami]

Many updates to peeling bark from trees, and utilizing birch-bark as well, are on their way.
Most fundamental addition of all the bark related stuff is to allow harvesting birch-bark and feature it as raw material which can be used in many different crafts.
Takes a while before we get into adding crafts, but bark harvesting changes and additions have been made already, and they can be summarized roughly as follows:

Birch-bark is peeled in long strips, which are wound to a ball for storage. (These kind of balls of birch-bark are called Sommelo  in finnish.)
Harvesting birch-bark in strips is slower compared to (already existing) ways of removing bark in sheets, but as a strip it's ready for weaving.
Moreover, time of the year now matters in harvesting any bark. It's best to be done in early summer, and gets more difficult (and eventually impossible) out of the proper period.
The bark yield (from a single tree) is also not constant but depends on the season and character's timbercraft skill.
And the biggest catch of this all that with adding birch-bark strips we'll be also adding unit of lenght to appropriate game items - that will eventually cover all the cords and ropes as well. So the requirements for birch-bark crafts are going to be eg. "16 feet of birch-bark strip" rather than some weight measure of bark. Many new possibilities open. But it's a hassle at first now to make conversions and routines understand the lenght. But that's my hassle, you just stay tuned...

These are future additions, not yet functional in current version 3.52.

[ModernNorseman]

Holy moly, that's actually quite big .. but now I bring the 1.000.000 dollar question - how do you stand about making cords from the birch-bark? Will that be an official thing in the game? It does seem rather unrealistic not being able to hang up meat unless it's from cloth or fur, but at the same time I guess it brings some discussion about how much easier it will be to survive a winter.

[Sami]

Holy moly, that's actually quite big .. but now I bring the 1.000.000 dollar question - how do you stand about making cords from the birch-bark? Will that be an official thing in the game? It does seem rather unrealistic not being able to hang up meat unless it's from cloth or fur, but at the same time I guess it brings some discussion about how much easier it will be to survive a winter.

It actually crossed my mind to add vanilla birch-bark ropes along with these additions, so very probably we'll be seeing that. Actually there are so many plants that you could fashion makeshift cords quite easily - their properties and durability varies a lot though, but that's more challenging to model in the game in enjoyable fashion.

Also, cords not getting destroyed in the cooking processes is also on my personal to-do list, but we'll see how the priorities and difficulties will meet...

[koteko]

You are on a roll pretty cool stuff, looking forward to play.

[Silenia]

Also, cords not getting destroyed in the cooking processes is also on my personal to-do list, but we'll see how the priorities and difficulties will meet...

Perhaps they could accumulate wear and tear much like nets do? (Well, clothes/armor/weapons do too, I guess, but the mechanism of fishing nets where it's strongly tied to the object being used rather than being hit seems the closer analogy to me) Would be a good balance between "this dried meat? Oh, it's a mix of deer and cord, my dear. Yes, I always add in my cords. It adds a little something to the texture, wouldn't you agree?" and "Sure, this cord has repeatedly been hung outside in the snow and frost with weight attached for weeks at a time, but it's still as fresh as the day I made it", I think. 

[Prae]

Also, cords not getting destroyed in the cooking processes is also on my personal to-do list, but we'll see how the priorities and difficulties will meet...

Perhaps they could accumulate wear and tear much like nets do? (Well, clothes/armor/weapons do too, I guess, but the mechanism of fishing nets where it's strongly tied to the object being used rather than being hit seems the closer analogy to me) Would be a good balance between "this dried meat? Oh, it's a mix of deer and cord, my dear. Yes, I always add in my cords. It adds a little something to the texture, wouldn't you agree?" and "Sure, this cord has repeatedly been hung outside in the snow and frost with weight attached for weeks at a time, but it's still as fresh as the day I made it", I think. 

This makes sense to me, I'd love to see something like that. As well as some incorporation of the ironworking and that sort of thing, because I can almost never find the proper type of axe when I start without one and can't do lumber work.

[PALU]

@Prae: Introduction of iron working would probably do nothing to help you getting a starting axe, as you'd probably need a fair bit of infrastructure in place (probably requiring an axe to make) to prepare the stage for iron working, so it would probably be a mid/late game activity, not a starting game one.

[Tom H]

I really don't see a problem with the loss of cords during the smoking/drying process. Yes, they are a regrettable loss in the early game, but, with the coming additions of new bark harvesting and uses, and after a character has even moderate success at hunting/trapping/trading, the game, at present, provides more cord material than will ever be needed for the limited practices requiring it.

[Silenia]

I really don't see a problem with the loss of cords during the smoking/drying process. Yes, they are a regrettable loss in the early game, but, with the coming additions of new bark harvesting and uses, and after a character has even moderate success at hunting/trapping/trading, the game, at present, provides more cord material than will ever be needed for the limited practices requiring it.

It's not really a problem as far as availability of rope/cord material goes, true. In so far as it is an issue (and a fairly minor one, in my opinion), it's one of immersion/realism.

[Bärentill]

Awesome!