1 arrow = 15 feet cord

[Nicolina04]

I went to create 1 arrow, and was asked for 1 foot of cord. I offered the recipe my 15 feet of cord, and it used all 15 feet. Is this intended behaviour? Do i have to split up the cord first?

It's proving quite frustrating as I'm finding it impossible to get anything worth trading (I don't have an axe to cut down trees, and all attempts at staves etc. are rough) so I'm relying on active fishing to survive and have spent the last ten ingame days trying to find something for the 'kill' task, and set up nearly fifteen traps across six different locations but caught no birds.

[Tinker]

Whilst it would seem obvious that when making anything involving tying equipment that you would cut 1 from the 15 and leaves yourself with 14 it does not work that way and you do need to cut the cord to length first.

I understand your frustration, I am similarly frustrated at times. I use BAC mod to save my sanity, and with a stone axe I can fell trees but not make boards. With your traps, have you baited them? I quite often place a trap on a fruit bush a few days before it is ripe. My current new character had to wait 3 weeks before catching anything in a trap, then three at once and two more the next day, everying does seem to take a long time.

[PALU]

Partially overlapping with Tinker's post that appeared while I wrote this one:

It is intended behavior (but it's not particularly liked): you have to manually cut the cord first to get a piece that's only of the desired length.

You need decent tools and decent skills to be able to make decent staves, and new characters typically won't be able to meet those prerequisites.
My characters take quite some time before they trade, with the first trade often being meat from a larger kill (you can't eat that much before it spoils, and you can't smoke it without a sauna). Later on I trade hides for tools to gradually build up a set of tools, with a knife of any kind except stone being the first one, an axe of any kind except stone being the second one, followed by whatever missing tools I can find, with a particular emphasis on a broad knife (very important for hide working). After that the trading emphasis is on getting better quality tools (again, a masterwork broad knife is on the top of the list, but they also require quite a few hides).

Traps need bait to be reasonably effective, and 15 traps isn't that many. However, you're not really in a hurry to perform the game course tasks: just live the life normally and most of them will be met naturally as part of that. However, getting some food is fairly important, so it's a bit frustrating not to be able to catch anything.

Some times of the year see less bird activity than others, so you can go without any catch for quite some time if you're unlucky. Squirrels are good in that they're easy to catch once you've spotted one, and although they provide very little meat, their furs do have some value (you'll still need a fair number of them to be able to buy any tools).

[Nicolina04]

Hmmm. That's really confusing, especially since making ropes uses partial hides. Sounds like a very strange design choice. Is there a mod that changes that, making it consistent with the rest of the game, by any chance? Or something that will warn me when I try?

Yeah, I'm finding that if the RNG gods don't love you enough to give you an axe, you're quite stuck. I can't catch a larger kill because I can't dig a pit trap without a shovel (tried with the wooden one and was told it'd take too long), or create a stone axe or use any traps involving cords (because I lost my fifteen feet to a single rough arrow). I'm not sure what I can bait birds with, as i'm in summer and so it is not berry season yet.

I've upped my trap count to ~30 traps across eight locations, but still have only caught one bird in the last two months. I'm placing traps along waterways and/or amongst berries (but obviously the berries aren't ripe yet). I've run into one elk, and promptly lost her in a forest. I've still not run into any squirrels!

[Erkka]

Is there a mod that changes that, making it consistent with the rest of the game, by any chance?

I think the next version release will change that.

[Nicolina04]

Ah! So it wasn't a design choice so much as something that just hadn't been gotten around to. Okay, cool. Thanks!

[Tinker]

If you are looking for a mod to increase your quality of life, and perhaps restore some sanity, then I would suggest looking at BAC, it adds lots of extra things to do and can itself add confusion at times. It includes several ways to make ropes, cords and string, using birch fibre, it even allows you to collect iron ore and make your own tools, but it will probably take years to make anything useful.

You should be able to dig a pit with a wooden shovel, provided your skill is high enough and you are not encumbered or tired. It is always a good idea to try again another day, check if your relevant skill has increased then make sure you have rested and dropped anything heavy before attempting it again.

Baiting traps can get complicated, some things are attracted to berries, some to vegetables and some to fish or meat, the wiki suggests trying with different things to learn what animals are attracted to which bait.

[PALU]

It can be worth mentioning that you CAN make cord out of bark, and bark is harvested in spring-early summer (and this is a new functionality, so I'm not completely sure it's available in the free version, which lags after the paid one by one version).

As Tinker mentioned, you can dig pits with a wooden shovel, but it's a borderline possible activity, which means that if you get a bad roll the time it would take is too long (and I think the skill used is the Common one, which is fixed). Always reducing encumbrance as much as possible when performing tasks is definitely a good advice.

The cord implementation was a design choice that didn't turn out as well as I assume it looked like on paper, which is why Sami listened to the suggestions and is changing it.

I typically make my early (bait less) light lever traps in rows between trees like a kind of trap fence, although that's a rather gamey use (in reality traps are much smaller than a tile, and animals would probably only accidentally get caught in snares rather than deadfall traps). However placing traps in choke points is a normal strategy.
If you don't have berries for bait, using fat from a bird you DID manage to catch, and use bark to tan the bird's skin instead of the fat provides you with some bait (note that the same release that introduced bark for cord also restricted the tanning bark harvesting season: before that you could harvest bark at any time of the year).

[kullervo]

Birch bark rope has been available since version 3.60 and also withes from saplings.
Though, withes are only applicable on some "crude" tasks like making fences.

I also don't think birch bark rope can be used as a replacement of cord in all cases.
Haven't played for a while, so can't remember for sure.

[Privateer]

Is there a mod that changes that, making it consistent with the rest of the game, by any chance?

I think the next version release will change that.

 You can replace the footage with weight to address this prior to the game fix.

1 ft. cord = .03 lb

So the arrow recipe:

Code: [Select]

.Arrow. [effort:1] [phys:hands,one-armed]  *CARPENTRY*        /30/    [patch:5]
{Branch}      [remove] [patchwise] [noquality]
{Knife}
{Feather} (3) [remove] [patchwise] [noquality]
{Cord} =1=    [remove] [patchwise]
{Rock}        [remove] [patchwise] [noquality]
Replace: {Cord} =1=    [remove] [patchwise]
With this: {Cord} #.03#    [remove] [patchwise]

and it will (after cord selection) auto consume the proper amount.