Don't really have any gripes with the game so far, except that Sinew is INCREDIBLY rare. I've only found enough sinew to make maybe 3 bowstrings through my entire play.. and I'm about lv. 18 right now. I was planning on starting a ranger soon, but I'm worried that I won't be able to boost my bows, or craft new bows because I'll be constantly scrounging for Sinew.

I was hoping the archer lady would sell it, or at the very least, sell bowstrings.. but she only sells shafts and arrow heads and the like. I'd mod it in myself, but when I try to edit NPC's in the editor, it tells me I don't have developer rights.

Loving the game, this is literally my only gripe after ~100hrs, and it's (presumably) an easy fix.

Also to note: Strong sinew can't craft bowstrings, for whatever odd reason.

Yep, you have to start hoarding them early, and hit every merchant that sells ingredients everytime you level up. Once strong sinew starts showing up though, you're screwed

I've only gotten enough sinew for 1 upgrade, and I'm already at a point where I'm getting Strong.

I really hate how everything, including craft mats, is RNG and finite. I can only upgrade 1 bow now, and it sucks.

I've commented on it elsewhere, but the rarity on a lot of the crafting ingredients is definitely very wonky. It's just a result of a drop system that's so heavily reliant on RNG. I'm a hoarder by nature, so I've managed to mitigate it a great deal in my games, but it can definitely be a problem for some folks.

It's worth noting that the merchant inventories reset each time you go up a level, so make sure to go back and visit them to harvest any additional crafting mats or consumable items (potions, arrows) you want to stock up on.

You can find a sinew at certain merchants. Just visit them from time to time and you get your sinew...

Except it's coded to stop appearing in stores after level 9

I agree with this, it seems problematic. Strong sinew needs to be made useful or replaced with plain sinew. Crafting bows is very hard. A fletcher should have lots of sinew in stock, realistically.

Should be a crafting result (in addition to leather strips) from animal hides.

I found wooden branches million times more rare though. Logs are fine, branches are fine but "wooden branches"...I only found a couple in around 100+ hours played.

log + axe = 2 branches

Wrong kind of branch. I wanted to make crossbow upgrade using the wooden branch and steel bar but normal branch does not work. It is possible the recipe I saw is wrong but I recall finding wooden branch couple times since started playing so I think recipe is right.

Did not work for me even though I had crafting level 6 on the character tried to make it on, tried using normal branches with steel bars but nothing happened.

Heh, maybe that's why there's very few of them

Actually it's probably cause you need to use an iron bar (not large), not a steel bar

I will try that, the recipe list on this forum says steel bar so maybe that information is wrong I guess.



I will try an iron bar and find out later.

Which merchants stock it? I haven't seen any so far.

The magical supplies merchant in the market in Cyseal has some sinew sometimes.

The elks in hiberheim drop some sinew with a pretty decent chance so be sure to kill everyone of them.

Nope. I found normal Sinew at merchants even at level 18. Try the goblin merchant in Silverglen whom you probably first met on your way to the Immaculate trials (hope you haven't killed him).

TBH I've just said fuck it regarding skill books, gold and crafting materials. The systems are just too poorly balanced and you never know what you might need, so using forum.cheatengine.org/viewtopic.php?t=574269&sid=910a5ca3019a66ac292813666a362f40 i just spawn a million gold right off the bat and hoard everything I can.

Or spawn more of an item if I need it. I don't like cheating but with a lack of alternatives/respawns this just seems to be the only way. If you have one sinew you can use this to multiply it.

The only way for what? Cheating is cheating and sucks balls. I haven't even reloaded once in this game in more than 60 hours because it thought my loot was "bad". You don't need good loot. And you honestly don't NEED sinew if you can't find it. A bowstring makes a bow maybe 5% better. That's it. You can live without, be assured. I even often forgot to improve my armour, swords and stuff for hours...

oops

The bowstring actually adds a 23%-24% boost in bow damage (at level 18).

Level 5 blacksmith + crafting at level 18 yields a 92-183 damage bow. Adding a bowstring boosts it to 114-228. It also boosts elemental and tenebrium damage on the weapon.

So hardly a 5% boost

I guess they just forgot to add "strong sinew" to the crafting recipies. Two strong sinews should become a better bowstring.


I never cared that much about numbers anyway, I have to admit. Game is easy enough at level 15 onwards (on normal) to not really be dependent on whether your bow makes 180 or 220 damage.


Edit:

Oops? Did you find one yourself? :P

yep after reloading a ton, which really shows how screwed up the RNG is (had to buy mine from the Silverglen guy with a really feminine voice, Mikhail)

and yeah, I'm not arguing that the game is hard (because it isn't), but when they do up the difficulty I hope they don't forget about things like this

It's not that simple for players. If a player invests character development points into crafting then I think they're going to be understandably frustrated if a lack of materials prevents them from using crafting in a meaningful way. Particularly because the fault lies not with them, but with RNG itemization.

When you say something akin to "who cares about crafting?", you might as well be saying "who cares about limited character development points wasted on crafting?", and I can guarantee you the players who wasted those points do care very much.

Well, it's a "big" exaggerated to compare a whole mechanic (with dozens of recipies)and a single recipie...

It's a bit like to make a mountain out of a dust speck. Of course I can understand people who don't find enough sinew but would like to make their bows better, no question. I also wrote that I think that strong sinew should be an ingredient for crafting as well. But overall, it's really a "small" issue imo...

I think its guite "unbalanced" with the improvements of the bows. I mean if you find a sword you go to the wetstone and improve it and you are happy. Even if you would need some iron bars or so you could go to a furnace and salvage a weapon for the material. Why cant we at least just salvage bows like the other weapons?

Agreed, the same salvage mechanics should apply to all weapons.