Saplings should become trees

[brummbar7]

Random thought I felt like posting:  I've always thought it odd that there are perpetual saplings that never get any bigger, they just stay saplings forever, once in awhile molested by players. 

 

I think saplings should simply be one stage in the life of actual trees.  How it might work: you plant the tree, and it's a sapling, but harvested.  So it takes a day or two to spring upright.  At that point you can harvest the twig.  If it goes for another day or two without being harvested, it moves on to being a tree, goes through the regular tree life cycle, and eventually becomes a sapling again etc. 

 

This would make the world more dynamic and have the effect of making twigs slightly harder to come by and farm, since they would not always be saplings 100% of the time.  Might compel people to visit the desert sometimes to get a more consistent source of twigs in tumbleweeds.  Presumably the sapling stage would no longer wither during summer, unless Klei wants to be REALLY evil, because if that were the case the forests would all be withered saplings by the end of summer!  There's also the question of if the map icon would change, showing a tree when it's a tree, but sapling when it's a sapling.  Otherwise if it's always a tree icon, it might make emergency finding of torch supplies difficult.

 

I think it would only require a little bit of new art, as the existing sapling art could work pretty easily for deciduous trees, and the pine sapling would need some new art for the harvested state, and to animate it perking up. 

 

There's my random idea of the day.

[DwerBomb]

Ehm, no, please. Sapling are fine as they are, trees are fine as they are.

[orian34]

but perhaps if you can get twigs of the last cycle of the tree...

[XirmiX]

I was thinking somethjng like this before too. The problem with this is that without saplings you can't get twigs and without thwm you can't progress in the game at all. You wouldn't even survive yoyr first day on default if you had no saplings to get. Example:

You need to chop a tree to get saplings. You need an axe to chop one down. You need flint and twigs themselves to build an axe. Circle of no progress

[brummbar7]

I was thinking somethjng like this before too. The problem with this is that without saplings you can't get twigs and without thwm you can't progress in the game at all. You wouldn't even survive yoyr first day on default if you had no saplings to get. Example:

You need to chop a tree to get saplings. You need an axe to chop one down. You need flint and twigs themselves to build an axe. Circle of no progress

But in it's youngest stage the tree would BE a sapling.  So all you would have to do is find a tree in that stage, and harvest it as per normal to get the twig (no axe required).  I think trees currently have, what, 4 stages?  So it would be 5 if one was the sapling phase.  So statistically 20% of trees at any given time should be saplings, since they just constantly cycle through the stages.  You could also have trees drop a twig if you cut them down at their highest level.

 

I guess to me twigs feel like the vegetable resource I always have way more than I need.  I never have enough grass or logs for long.  But twigs, plenty.  I think flint is the only thing I have in even greater excess.  But then, I don't build as many drying racks as most people I think. 

[Mobbstar]

Rename "Sapling" to "sparse Bush"

 

Problem solved

except that sparse bush sounds ugly

 

P.S.: I always wind up not chopping trees because I run my fire pit on natural by-products.

[orian34]

y'now, i think we should find twigs in forest(like flint in flatland) and we should be able to harvest the dead cycle of the pines(to get twigs like 3) and remove saplings