Hey, I basically created an account just to post this suggestion.
Above the purge meter in your inventory, add an equipment slot for a pick, hatchet, cleaver, skinning knife and sickle (only tools I’ve come across so far, hope I didn’t miss any). Add a default checkbox by each one.
You drop the relevant item you want to use into each one. In-game, you press “E” to use the resource (mineral deposit / corpse / tree, etc.) and based on what resource you interacted with, you automatically start harvesting it with the appropriate tool. When you don’t have a tool in that slot, the game defaults to the default tool.
You have to spend a lot of time gathering resources, which already more than ticks the survival time investment box. No need to make it a further pain with swapping between tools and swapping items in and out of your quickbar.
Love the game so far though! Just a bit rough around the edges.
But I can’t help but wonder if it’d be a pain in targeting. As it is now you don’t have to be wildly accurate with targeting a tool to what you are after. You just aim in the general direction and use the tool so it hits.
I think on PC this would be far easier to do, because you could have the cursor and easily control it, but the console would have a far more difficult time. It’s already something of a pain, from what I remember of playing, in targeting certain things that are on the small side.
Alternate tool usage would also need to be highlighted more so that people don’t miss the mechanics, as the automatica approach would make it less likely to discover.
It seems there’s more to consider here than what I did when I made the post.
I don’t think this will work because they’ve coded the game so you can harvest most items with multiple tools with varying results.
There is also the pickaxe and the religious harvesting tools …
Especially with corpses of animals - what tool you use determines the type and ratio of resources you gather.
Axe, pick and pickaxe for example can all gather from trees, stone nodes, vines, iron ore etc. A sickle on spider corpse yields gossamer, a cleaver yields nothing or meat+ichor, can use axe, pick or pickaxe for ichor, not sure what skinning knife on spiders now gives.
Also the game won’t be able to determine what you are wanting to harvest if you aren’t target locked into that item. And if there are multiple types of items in your view or being gathered then I dong think the game can detect that … Eg harvesting a dead npc/animal amongst plants or rocks and you destroy part of them when you harvest the corpse as an unintentional action.
I do recognise now that this would provide a challenge. Either tools need to be limited to specific nodes and have us get everything that way or we do the same that we can do in Mordhau; for example, turn the pickaxe to the other side to use the pick instead.
Instead of harvesting a resource automatically when you use it, you can aim at it and hold down use to bring up a radial menu of the tools you’ve placed in those inventory tool slots. Then, when you select a tool, it equips it as if you’ve chosen it from your quickbar and you harvest the same way you normally would.
If you code the radial menu script to dynamically scan your inventory for available tools, you don’t even have to bother with the inventory tool slots, but I figured its more of an immersive survival approach to go the slots route.
That’s 5 less items to switch in and out of your quickbar, an enormous quality of life improvement, a better gameplay flow and a lot less time wasted.
It seems like a whole lot of work for a relatively small QoL feature to be honest. Most of the time I don’t even have all types of tool on me (wasted weight), only a pick + whatever tool I need for the task I’m doing (if any).
That’s a good idea as well. However, I think the best method for us would be such that allows us to deal with all sorts of menus and inventory screens less instead. Game is already inventory heavy to a fault which means that the time spent on micromanaging items eats away from roleplay action amongst others.
I’d be happy to hear more ideas from you that might perhaps lessen this specific burden.
I like the theory behind the idea, but I’m not confident about auto-select or context-sensitive targetting. That’s even more AI for the devs to struggle with.
My suggestions are a bit simpler.
Method 1:
Have one or more Quick-Slots that can contain multiple items. When you press that quick-slot, the last-used tool is equipped, but if you double-tap it cycles to the next tool. A single-tap sheathes the tool.
Method 2:
Have one or more Quick-Slots that can contain multiple items. When you press that quick-slot, the last-used tool is equipped, but if you long-press that slot, you can use the mouse wheel to cycle thru the other tools. Pressing that quick-slot again sheathes the tool.
Don’t be sad, your suggestion attracted attention and discussion, that’s more than can be said for most suggestions (many of mine included). Naturally people will want to weigh in on any suggestion and suggest how they think a feature like that could be better implemented.
If you are considering time spent, the most efficient way to do so is to pick ONE resource you are going to harvest, spec deep in ENC so you could run while over encumbered and SURV so you could gather faster. Put on ENC armor (and bearers pack if you have one), drop all weapons except one, take some food and water and tool for the job.
This way you dont have to worry about switching, because you will only need 4 slots. And because you have 50 ENC you will be able to gather and carry an insane amount or resources. For example, around 14k ironstone per run.
P.S. Even if you don’t have points to spec into Full farm spec it is still way more effective to gather ONE resource at a time. If you need stone - leave a pickaxe and drop all the other tools.
