Originally Posted by
SinsI
I mostly disagree with the listed items that can be improved, as well as the tools.
How, exactly, are you supposed to improve a weapon with a wooden part? At most, you can replace the handle - which should only give minor bonuses.
Replace the handle of an axe with one longer by ~20% and you get a further reach. That translates into more damage (higher swinging arc, greater leverage).
Replace poor quality wood that soaked monsters' blood and thus got heavy, with a new sturdy handle, impregnated against organic liquids, made of lighter, more durable wood. That translates to better handling and lower weight - hence chance to hit is improved. There's a great deal of user feedback in the backstory of adom features that goes even more in-depth to explain certain surprising or illogical modes of behavior. Just look at the ridiculous ideas people have about how monsters are able to see through invisibility. The same method I used moments ago to justify how perfectly logical this RFE is, when you really think about it.
Originally Posted by
SinsI
Same thing with wooden shield - repair (return to normal if it was, say [+1, +1]) is OK, but it has inherent limitation on the usefulness. Metal is something that you can reforge, but with wood - you can only create something new, or completely replace broken parts.
You can adjust shape to better deflect blows, increasing DV. Woodcraft knowledge entails that you also understand how wood can be joined together, using wedges and natural tree resin. You add reinforcements to shields, increasing their PV.
Originally Posted by
SinsI
The only items that should be able to receive substantial improvement are the arrows (completely replacing the wooden part with a new one that has improved balance) - and using carving knives, not axes or hatchets.
Actually, that's the least logical thing to do of all, in the context of woodcraft discussion.
The arrows' shafts are of secondary importance, since wood has a fairly consistent, homogeneous structure and spread of mass, when you consider such a small piece of it as that used to construct an arrow shaft.
The thing that really matters is how you install the arrowhead and how you manage the geometry of fletchings.
Adding modifiers to missiles for some micro-gains in balance, which would be of zero relevance for the gameplay, is a very poor idea, with the already messed up way of stacking missiles at the moment.
Instead of having 20 stacks of 2-5 arrows each, you could use woodcraft to have 30 stacks of 1-3 arrows instead. Good job.
Originally Posted by
SinsI
It would be even more logical if it was possible to only repair ammo this way - so that it doesn't disappear after firing it, but becomes damaged and unusable.
That's the least logical of all your suggestions.
Have you ever used a bow in real life? I have.
Do you know what happens to every 1 wooden arrow in 10, when it embeds into a dense target, such as a professional archery range mat? It literally shatters, due to internal stresses.
That's a catastrophic failure, after which no amount of skill will allow you to recover the arrow and use it again, other than to pick your teeth with the shards.
The other arrows are reusable but with each subsequent hit, they too absorb more and more blunt concussive damage and micro-fractures are formed, that eventually lead to them shattering as well.
Plus, I wasn't using the cheapest wood, it was specifically selected to be devoid of weak points suck as knots.
I started using aluminum arrows and they are much more durable, but this just shows that adom's destruction rate of projectiles is actually reasonable from the realistic point of view.
Aside from a classic, composite bow, I also have a compound one which is vastly more powerful. At ten meters, the sheer impact can bend even the aluminum tube from which arrows are made.
Finally there's this: woodcraft could be the way to go when you want to unify the various disparate missiles in inventory, so they stack.
That way two things are achieved:
a) woodcraft becomes useful
b) a method is devised to easily manage multiple missiles with different modifiers, that would not otherwise stack