Item Balancing In 3.14

Cords
I get them (trading) for one simple cut of meat, but to make them myself is quite expensive, because I have to use fur or existing cloth. That means they are either too cheap for trading or too complicated to craft - strong crafting to trading imbalance.

Torches
Have way tooooooo much value. I think they are probably the last "real" trading exploit. Before I knew of the torch value thingie, I used fox traps, they can't be produced in bulk and I really think about "should I make another fox trap or try hunting, raiding, etc. instead" but are good enough for playing on the "safe side".

Store Item Quantities
Well, every item in stock seems in a quantity range from 1 to 3, it doesn't matter if it's a squirrel cut, a reindeer cut, an iron vembraces, an arrow, cords, spear, etc. This is quite "unrealistic" (a food store has less food available, what I carry around!?) and annoying, because I can't buy cords, arrows or food in "proper" quantities.

btw. raided my first camp (warfare task) today 10 enemies down and + 100 arrows for me.

Cords only seem outlandishly difficult when you are starting out. In reality you are wearing a few dozen and a decent big animal kill is another dozen right there. An Nj is probably worth 20+.

yeah, they seem, but still I think they are imbalanced with their value (1 cut?!?). They should be more expensive and maybe should be crafted faster.
They are the opposite of torches (easy to make and good value).

At first I was also "ahh damn cords are too hard to get" and happy that they were that cheap, but now I think they are definitely too cheap.

I love the fact that arrows are now expensive so you can't go around buying hundreds of arrows from everyone you meet, and actually have to keep track of where they land.

As for getting cords from Njerpez, I've always been a little weird about, "Okay, I'm now going to smoke this meat using that dude's socks... Ew, especially since I've been clearly wearing same socks all year... Thread from Rainscloth is now a nice, sanitary way to prepare meat : )

Though, having to clean clothing would actually be great.

did I mentioned that I have a problem with the price of arrows? I think it is a good price (I only played 3.14), although annoying in the beginning. But the quantity in store clearly is "wrong", especially if I can choose between 2 arrows or 3 long mail hauberks in one store that is just weird & wrong.

Arrows are only found rarely and in small quantities in the generic "store" with the mitten sign. In a true archery shop (bow sign) they are in big bunches. Those shops are a bit rarer but you can find them in the midlands cultures.

Other NPCs are still too willing to trade off their personal arrows imho. The price is much better but I think it would be better if they would only trade half of what they had or all all if you also traded all their bows away. It just seems really odd to me that I can roll out of a village having bought every arrow from every hunter in the place.

It also raises some questions about how NPCs value goods. Right now arrows are worth so much, they might become "currency". In the long run NPCs will need to have discriminatory taste in goods - the kid just won't sell you a dog for a quiver of arrows he can't use.

archery stores!? Never seen those in Drikki territory. Nevertheless, I still find it very odd that the item quantity is usually in the range of 1-3 no matter if it is a beaver cut or piece of mail armour. Arrows may now be an exception - or maybe only the Drikki shops have these strange numbers. Especially food stores are totally "understocked".

yes, the trading behavior of NPCs is also quite strange, but I have less problems with that, I mean it is just a weirdo and not a brick-and-mortar (or a log-and-splint) store. Also they seem to keep hanging on their traded goods... there are guys offering me 3 torches, 5 torches, 2 torches and a knife... I traded them the torches in Summer and now it is October... I know I made those great torches, but they really seem to hang on on them

I assume - maybe wrongly - that the store aspect can be fixed quite easily. From outside it looks like that the store gets a new set of goods every now and then, where it selects randomly from a list several goods and then a random number (range 1 to 3) of it. Check the item type, if it is a certain category, just increase/decrease the range done. Whereas NPCs valuing goods differently hmm, well could be done with a multiplier for the value for each item type and npc type, but that definitely needs more testing and finetuning. But I don't know the code and mechanics behind it, maybe the stores are stocked with quite a complex system.

Yes, the price balancing has to be improved!

Torches are much too valueable. But people who exploit this dont want to take the challenge of the surviving anyway. So I dont care so much about torches.

But handcrafting cloth is really annoying.
A 2.8 lbs fur footwear is worth 100,
a 1 lbs fur cap is worth 10
and
a 14 lbs fur cloak is worth 30.

So if you do footwear out of a 14 lbs fur you gain a worth of 500.
Out of the same fur you generate only a value of 140 if you do fur caps or only 30 if you made one single cloak.

I would like to have prices for cloth that is related to its weight. So crafting different kind of cloth wont penalize the player anymore. Now crafting a cap is just a waist of fur. If the price is balanced players would also do caps and hoods to have "little money" so they dont have to pay to much when trading.

About arrows.
Arrows are quiet easy to craft in the real world. All you need is a branch, a fire, some feathers, little amonth of simple cord and maybee half an hour time. Just the arrowhead made of flint takes some more time.
But in the game you need for every arrow one hard-to-get cord. So most players just trade arrows instead of crafting them. They take it from NPCs that cant shoot their bow anymore after traded their arrows. Cause they only trade all of their arrows or none. This is unrealistic in my eyes. Dozens of hunters in the UnReal World with a bow but no arrows after some hours playing.

+1 (especially the price for the fur cloak - due to its size it also a cord-generator; the side-effect of that is that surviving in Unreal World is mainly due to the fact that the player knows a few imbalances or for the first time finds them without even noticing that they are nearly or real exploits).

except for the torches, it is quite a "challenge" not to craft them and it makes also sense to craft something in order to survive, especially from the character perspective! (also in the beginning it is not that obvious what a huge exploit they are, cause you don't have anything else to trade for...) But in the beginning you can't craft fox traps properly or any other stuff... so well, I went for torches, but I got a wealthy torchmaker got equipment and then survived and improved without torches. Better would be, I got enough torches to get stuff to be a hunter or fox-trap-maker.
There should be definitely an option to survive as a "1st-tier" craftman (torches), "2nd-tier" craftman (fox traps), "3rd-tier" craftman (clothes, bows, skis,etc.).
Thus, I care for torches, but they should be LESS valuable!

well you have to remember the game is made so that you can play the way you like,

for instance I do not use oath of iron or trade with wooden bowls because I think it makes the game "to easy"

with that being said I would imagine the value being set some place in the raws, could just make a mod for it.

Going back to store inventories...I've always thought it was funny when the "general goods" type stores (the ones with the mitten symbol) would sell logs or berries or even sand mushrooms. While I wouldn't mind seeing stores that specialize in selling useful herbs, seeing 3 cranberries or a log always seemed a bit silly to me.

I would also like to see the price of iron weapons and tools be increased...iron was a rare commodity that had to be dug up by hand and then laboriously processed by a skilled smith in order to be useful, so I'd think that an iron weapon would cost much more than just the meat from a single animal, since the hunter selling the axe could more easily hunt for that meat himself. The downside of increasing the price is that it makes starting off even more challenging in that you'd have to kill several animals or a Njerpez warrior in order to have enough to trade for an axe.

This could be offset by giving a better chance of getting the necessary tools at the beginning (because realistically, would people just set off into the wilderness armed with just a knife?) and perhaps offering a "Survival Mode" scenario for people who are more interested in seeing how far they can get without these tools. Or people who want to do hardcore survival could just toss their tools and weapons at some point and just make up a rationale for having lost them.

I know this has been discussed before, and may even be in the planning for a future version, but I'd love to see different cultures valuing items differently. Or even have it so some people simply won't sell an item because they need it, just as not all woodsmen will agree to go on an adventure with you. Cultures could be more willing to trade away their weapons/tools depending both on how readily available the good is and on what you're trading. So reindeer herders won't be interested in selling their only axe for reindeer meat, but a Driik woodsman might trade his for furs, for example.