Imbalanced selection of crafting recipies

Remade a new toon yet again and chose

Weaponcraft
Scavenging
Hunting
Axes

And found my weaponcraft only containing four recipies for different shovels, all requiring me to scavenged a shovel head, a spade, which isnt done in a second.... not even in a few days. Now, I feel this is most improper and think if I should be limited to shovel, at least one or two should be more crude ones, required metal sheet or plates instead of a scavenged spade. This allowing me to produce shovels, give me something to trade using my chosen craft and learn new different recipies within my chosen field of crafting.

Now, to be fair, dont know if this is a unique combo giving me a bad set of recipies or if others have experienced the same difficulties. My startout point though was one I would not like to experience in Prelude.

Same should apply to tools, there should be a much cruder level of tools prior to the level we start at and a lot more varied recipe start up so people dont wind up gimped nearly completely if they cannot produce tools to make other tools. I realize this is not a single player game but it should be possible to advance in some manner without having to trade your soul for tools one mandatorily needs to make more tools.

I rolled 3 or 4 toons in order to have a "good" starting pack of recipes (toolcraft)... It needs some tuning.

I rolled a Toolcrafter with Scavenging, Fishing to get the Scavengers Rod, Armed Combat, and Axes to get an axe. I lucked out and got the Bin and Pouch recipes in Basketry. However, since I didn't have a blade with these choices I looked at my Weaponcrafting recipes - Clubs and Shovels. After awhile I scavenged a hand saw blade and made a saw for myself. Now I can harvest tree's and make myself some Handles. I scavenged 2 Spades; I crafted a few Spiked Clubs to get my skill up. Needless to say both Spades were lost due to crafting failures.
Without a blade I cannot harvest from kills or start fires. Since Axe's are SHARP and Metal I'd suggest they be able to start a fire when used with Flint. There is a Toolcrafter recipe called Skinners Knife - make this the Tool YOU MUST HAVE for Creature Harvesting.

If you are in a tribe this isn't hard to get things like this or someone to make a item for you. For a solo player things should be harder. Have you tried to barter with a tribe near by see if one has or can make the tool you need? I don't think so. If solo man can do it all with out any work why have tribes what is the benifit of them? Why have barter system? It isn't supose to be easy if you solo and why it is easyer if you in a tribe. My tribe we all lack saw's as well not everyone in the tribe has saw we have 29 people in our tribe and we always borrowing the saw from one another. In time we all will have a saw but we are not complaining. there might be other tribes or solo players who have saw's and more than they can throw a stick at. I would suggest trying to get to know some people and barter or borrow a saw for 1hr or so then returning it to that person to establish friendly contacts.

example while you search for and the ability to make saw for your self stock up on mats you'll need. So when you get a stock of trees short and long at your camp you can find someone who can lend you a saw for a bit and you can then spend the time crafting those pieces up all at one time then being able to continue your building.

This single issue is a very, VERY big problem for me, I started as a toolmaker, but found most items needed wooden handles, thusly a saw and wood crafting, I spent 2 days trying to get a saw, neither crafting hermits nor my tribe could help. As it relies on finding through sheer luck a saw blade, it stalls everything else you wish to do.

This level of progress bottleneck is a very frustrating way to teach someone inter-dependence, there are many better ways. WURM does not have random recipes, random scavenged finds, and all crafting provides what you need as you go, yet almost all players are in villages, there are many reasons to rely on others, as well as general preference. The level of frustration I felt and may feel in the future (given how many items rely on rare finds or combinations) this early on far out ways any, ANY possible benefit.

Now that the tribe is bigger, and we have more gatherers and crafters this problem occurs less often, but to be hit by such a roadblock at such a crucial time, when you haven’t yet settled into the game is bound to cause people to quit, or leave bad feelings for a while.

A sandbox should be about freedom, the hermit option should appear at least viable at first, though very challenging later on. This issue strikes me and other as either bad planning or an unfairly steep difficulty curve, I can handle the lack of tutorials, npcs, the full loot pvp, item decay etc, even serious challenges right from the start, but not days worth of total inaction.

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Originally Posted by gerrig72

Remade a new toon yet again and chose

Weaponcraft
Scavenging
Hunting
Axes

And found my weaponcraft only containing four recipies for different shovels, all requiring me to scavenged a shovel head, a spade, which isnt done in a second.... not even in a few days. Now, I feel this is most improper and think if I should be limited to shovel, at least one or two should be more crude ones, required metal sheet or plates instead of a scavenged spade. This allowing me to produce shovels, give me something to trade using my chosen craft and learn new different recipies within my chosen field of crafting.

Now, to be fair, dont know if this is a unique combo giving me a bad set of recipies or if others have experienced the same difficulties. My startout point though was one I would not like to experience in Prelude.

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Besides, you can make a shovel blade from a piece of sheet metal for chrissakes. Lord knows there's plenty of metal in this world lol