Why we can't repair bow ?

[solon[fr]]

A bow can last a long time, if one regularly changes the rope.

[mlg2591]

I agree always wondered that also.

[JiffyPopKids]

Better question is, why does everything break so easily? I've made homemade bows and arrows (Of course not out of guts) and they've lasted a few years without cracking or spliting completly like the ones in-game do. Realisticly, shooting an arrow 10 or 15 times wouldn't snap it in half. I've made homemade arrows like the ones we have in-game (Well, it had a glass arrowhead and ducttape fletching but it still worked great!) and they've lasted a year or more now. Of course I don't shoot them as much as our survivor in-game, but I've shot them each way more than 50 times without anything cracking or spliting.

Also, out survivor should not be making a bow out of maple. Maple is not nearly the best we have availible. Any of the local trees that are in the area would be a good choice. cedar, spruce, etc. These woods are not hardwood, (Which would be the best choice) but they would be better than maple. More power, stretchier, and wouldn't crack like the ones in-game.

Also, why does our character cut the saplings like three feet long? Looking at the saplings while they're curing, it looks like they're only 3 or less feet long? That's very small and I can tell you right now a bow that length and width would not kill a bear.

[Liduska77]

Cos its easy to remake another one. And another. And another.

[Nogen]

Because game balance.

There no more question beyond that.

[Heinz]

Also, why does our character cut the saplings like three feet long? Looking at the saplings while they're curing, it looks like they're only 3 or less feet long? That's very small and I can tell you right now a bow that length and width would not kill a bear. [/quote]
Its a game, not RL. Too much over analyzing.

[Agrorix]

Because the char sucks at everything, he's just a random poor guy trapped in a terrible situation and doing is best, which is not much really, to survive.

Also game balance indeed.

[Liduska77]

Originally posted by Toutatrix:

Because the char sucks at everything, he's just a random poor guy trapped in a terrible situation and doing is best, which is not much really, to survive.

The backstory is that Will had been living in isolation for years, through his own choice, and staying with his parents in the middle of nowhere. He is very much used to the isolation (cabin fever out of place but there for balance), he should, unless he has been very very lazy, be familiar with some outdoor activities, such as starting a fire or cooking outside over a fire. To name but a couple of things. He would carry a knife with him at all times and be familiar with reading the weather.

These, and some other things that he would be famliar with due to his lifestyle are all things he seems to have never even thought about before.

I was always confused with the back story and how they presented the male character to us.

The answer, as above, is balance. For a better gaming experience.

[Agrorix]

Originally posted by Liduska77:

Originally posted by Toutatrix:

Because the char sucks at everything, he's just a random poor guy trapped in a terrible situation and doing is best, which is not much really, to survive.

The backstory is that Will had been living in isolation for years, through his own choice, and staying with his parents in the middle of nowhere. He is very much used to the isolation (cabin fever out of place but there for balance), he should, unless he has been very very lazy, be familiar with some outdoor activities, such as starting a fire or cooking outside over a fire. To name but a couple of things. He would carry a knife with him at all times and be familiar with reading the weather.

These, and some other things that he would be famliar with due to his lifestyle are all things he seems to have never even thought about before.

I was always confused with the back story and how they presented the male character to us.

The answer, as above, is balance. For a better gaming experience.

I quite did not go far in the story mode but what I remember is a rather depressed guy drinking too much to forgot his ex while running a small flying company or mere being a pilot.

Pilots usually aren't the most handymen people, they're rather intellectuals, especially depressed ones.

[Liduska77]

Originally posted by Toutatrix:

Originally posted by Liduska77:

The backstory is that Will had been living in isolation for years, through his own choice, and staying with his parents in the middle of nowhere. He is very much used to the isolation (cabin fever out of place but there for balance), he should, unless he has been very very lazy, be familiar with some outdoor activities, such as starting a fire or cooking outside over a fire. To name but a couple of things. He would carry a knife with him at all times and be familiar with reading the weather.

These, and some other things that he would be famliar with due to his lifestyle are all things he seems to have never even thought about before.

I was always confused with the back story and how they presented the male character to us.

The answer, as above, is balance. For a better gaming experience.

I quite did not go far in the story mode but what I remember is a rather depressed guy drinking too much to forgot his ex while running a small flying company or mere being a pilot.

Pilots usually aren't the most handymen people, they're rather intellectuals, especially depressed ones.

At one point he was involved in criminal activities, smuggling, to get some cash in for the business. Shows the attitude
'needs must' but didn't carry this attitude in other parts of his life? Not for me. Not believable.

Commercial pilots may not be handymen, but Will in his situation would def need to be a bit of a simpleton not to pick up any outdoor knowledge at all.

[JiffyPopKids]

Originally posted by Atsuko Kagari:

S/He's a pilot not a survivalist s/he likely spends their free time living in a civilised society. Convenience is why you are able to craft everything right out of the gate. if the Devs wanted to you'd have to learn how to make everything like Mackenzie.

Taking wood from Cedar or Fir might make a better bow long term. But the wood the player finds is from Dead Trees they never actually chop down wood from growing trees.

doing so could take several hours just to chop the tree down and would likely be exhausting by yourself. Assume you do cut the tree down you now either have to spend more time chopping the tree into smaller bits or find a decent enough looking branch and cut that off. and hope the branch will make a good bow.

assuming you take a branch you now have to spend several hours cutting it down to shape. While a bow from a Sapling might be smaller than one you'd craft from a full sized tree branch it's already taking a lot less time to make it.

before you argue "but couldn't the survivor just cut a branch off a tree that's already alive? why does he even need to cut the tree down to begin with."

Simple. The harsh artic weather has stripped the trees of most of their low down branches meaning the only ones left are up high. Best case scenario the player could use Climbing rope to act as a harness to climb the tree. But this would be exhausting too. You'd have to have the strength not only to climb the tree but then to hold yourself in place long enough to chop a branch down with your axe.

All this energy wasted and then you have a chance the branch you chopped down might be useless.

Further more it takes a lot longer for Wood to dry from a full sized tree. Branch compared to sapling in a race for who gets driest faster the sapling is gonna win because a sapling is a lot newer and fresher than a branch is. A full sized tree alone could take a year to dry out and be made into useful wood. So it's a "notta" on making a bow from Tree Logs.

On top of all this Saplings are very flexible. Even if maple isn't *The* best soft wood around it's sapling form is flexible enough to bend into a bow shape. Birch can be used to make bows. it's often done in the past but most people typically use it to make arrows because it can be easily formed into straight lengths by bending it in your hands.

Also i think the Devs liked playing Runescape too much which is why we use maple bows in TLD XD

Good solid points here but,

Why can't we just use one of the limbs fallen off a tree that we chop into firewood? If you got one that just spawned (Fell off the tree) it should be perfect shape to make a bow out of.

You would not need to take hours to make a bow. It does NOT take hours. I've made a hedge (The toughest wood we have where I live) bow with just a hatchet and pocket knife in less than 3 hours. It's ridiculous thinking that it takes our survivor 5 hours to craft a 4 foot long peice of wood into a bow. Also looking at this, it doesn't look much over 4 inches thick whicl also makes it easier to carve faster. Saying that it would take hours to make is bullcrap since you could do it in less than 1 and a half game hours. The toughest part of making a bow really, is attaching the string and getting it balanced.

Also, there are small trees in this world. There's the ones at the PV orchard, (I assume they're apple, peach, or pear. These are also decent woods to make bows out of too) that orchard in FM, a couple shortish trees near the landing gear in TWM, and there's really short trees sprinkled about in every region which look perfect size to make a bow out of if they're straight enough.

Also, If we did have more bow recipies it would likely be a later game thing. In almost all of those paragraphs, you said it takes alot of time or energy to do these things (Which it doesn't IRL, but whatever floats your goat!) which we have alot of late game. I'm just about at the point in my current run where I'm living peacefully at the PV farmstead with a moose and 2 bears on my porch waiting for a reason to keep exploring. If there was a feature like more types of bows, I would 100% take the time and energy out of my boring day to go upgrade my bow. As it is, the bow we have in-game would be very weak IRL (yaknow, we made it out of a weak wood and guts for a string.) and wouldn't probably last long.

[Apple_geek101]

Originally posted by JiffyPopKids:

Better question is, why does everything break so easily? I've made homemade bows and arrows (Of course not out of guts) and they've lasted a few years without cracking or spliting completly like the ones in-game do. Realisticly, shooting an arrow 10 or 15 times wouldn't snap it in half. I've made homemade arrows like the ones we have in-game (Well, it had a glass arrowhead and ducttape fletching but it still worked great!) and they've lasted a year or more now. Of course I don't shoot them as much as our survivor in-game, but I've shot them each way more than 50 times without anything cracking or spliting.

Also, out survivor should not be making a bow out of maple. Maple is not nearly the best we have availible. Any of the local trees that are in the area would be a good choice. cedar, spruce, etc. These woods are not hardwood, (Which would be the best choice) but they would be better than maple. More power, stretchier, and wouldn't crack like the ones in-game.

Also, why does our character cut the saplings like three feet long? Looking at the saplings while they're curing, it looks like they're only 3 or less feet long? That's very small and I can tell you right now a bow that length and width would not kill a bear.

There was a conversation thread that I read a while kind of dealing with the same topic and the devs poked their head in to explain the reasons for the degradation of the bow. Basically, there are two parts to it. One, it is a homemade bow. It is not designed to last forever. Two is the humidity. In such a cold climate, there is virtually no humitdity. Because of this, all moisture in the bow is sucked out into the air. Therefor, the bow will quickly dry out, losing its elasticity and eventually breaking.

[JiffyPopKids]

Originally posted by Apple_geek101:

Originally posted by JiffyPopKids:

Better question is, why does everything break so easily? I've made homemade bows and arrows (Of course not out of guts) and they've lasted a few years without cracking or spliting completly like the ones in-game do. Realisticly, shooting an arrow 10 or 15 times wouldn't snap it in half. I've made homemade arrows like the ones we have in-game (Well, it had a glass arrowhead and ducttape fletching but it still worked great!) and they've lasted a year or more now. Of course I don't shoot them as much as our survivor in-game, but I've shot them each way more than 50 times without anything cracking or spliting.

Also, out survivor should not be making a bow out of maple. Maple is not nearly the best we have availible. Any of the local trees that are in the area would be a good choice. cedar, spruce, etc. These woods are not hardwood, (Which would be the best choice) but they would be better than maple. More power, stretchier, and wouldn't crack like the ones in-game.

Also, why does our character cut the saplings like three feet long? Looking at the saplings while they're curing, it looks like they're only 3 or less feet long? That's very small and I can tell you right now a bow that length and width would not kill a bear.

There was a conversation thread that I read a while kind of dealing with the same topic and the devs poked their head in to explain the reasons for the degradation of the bow. Basically, there are two parts to it. One, it is a homemade bow. It is not designed to last forever. Two is the humidity. In such a cold climate, there is virtually no humitdity. Because of this, all moisture in the bow is sucked out into the air. Therefor, the bow will quickly dry out, losing its elasticity and eventually breaking.

Ohh that is a good point. The amount of moisture and the tempature does take affect. IRL if it's cold enough, a bow would snap before you could pull it back halfway.

[JiffyPopKids]

Originally posted by AgentKay:

The description for the cured maple sapling says it's used for crafting and repair, this lead me to believe you could repair the bow, but I guess not? I spent the longest time thinking I was missing something. What exactly does the cured maple sapling repair if not the bow?

It repairs nothing. That is kind of odd isn't it? There's only one thing you can do with the saplings and that is craft bows/arrows. Weird!

[pbmax]

Originally posted by AgentKay:

The description for the cured maple sapling says it's used for crafting and repair, this lead me to believe you could repair the bow, but I guess not? I spent the longest time thinking I was missing something. What exactly does the cured maple sapling repair if not the bow?

I had the same thought. Little things