Farming - Trowel is impossible to find?

[Traslo]

Hey, is anyone else having serious difficulties in trying to find trowels for farming? In 5 games and roughly 8 hours of zomboid searching on the steam release in the last few days, I have not come across a single trowel. There's plenty of skill books and seed packets but the trowel seems to be hiding from me.

[cyberspy]

Check a warehouse.

[Gonzo Max]

Crates, shelves and cupboards. The warehouses are good, as are sheds and garages. They are pretty rare though it seems.

[Traslo]

Yeah I checked a few warehouses, farmers markets, sheds, but so far no luck. Perhaps it's just unlucky loot spread in my case, but I'm up at the farm with a well in the north-west and it has nothing around there either

[MuscularBeaver]

Only place I found them in my world was at McCoy Logging, in the two warehouses on the right hand side of the complex.

[Traslo]

I tried McCoy logging as well :P
Frankly being in the northwest now means I'm never returning there, I'm just waiting until 6 months in when they hordes come get me. But I'll never last long without a trowel, so I may have to take the 2-day trip back

[TheWarlock]

http://steamcommunity.com/app/108600/discussions/0/648811852597093328/

This question is asked quite often, most common answer is what I have posted in the linked thread

[gekkobear]

Places you can find a trowel (aka "handshovel") from some file digging

SPOILER: this is reading game files to get this... so spoilery spoilers of spoiling follow... if you're a hardcore purist, skip this.

1) Grocery building, counter - small chance
2) Generic crate anywhere - small chance
3) Grocers building, small crate - small chance

...

And that's it. Nowhere else (kitchen counters, shed metal shelves, etc.) will have a trowel according to the current game files. And NONE of those are a good chance. You need a lot of numbers to make up for tiny odds; which is why warehouse, etc. is the optimal choice here.

Any mods/devs reading this... maybe rebalance as there is NO farming without a trowel; making it too rare (which it kind of is looking at the file) sort of impacts gameplay.

I like axes (since you can attack trees with anything) and shovels (you can get by with a trowel) and shotguns being more rare and a moment to cheer when you finally get one... but a required item for a basic crafting skill needs to be reconsidered.

Like saws (which were rare, but now are reasonably common in garage/sheds next to houses) or hammers (which are also more common in sheds/garages by homes).

[Wolfeman]

Played the demo thru 5 times now. Made it to the store across from Twiggy 3 times and I've found trowels in there twice including two of them once.