Wait, you say, wood is literally everywhere with those trees; what do you mean it’s not common?
While all resources are available in their raw form to some degree, a significant portion comes from recycling. Wood however, does not come freely from recycling, its only sources being flares and fireworks (and arrows I suppose). Even rarer materials like titanium and aluminum are readily available from recycled weapons.
Post-crafting rework, the price of most crafts went up significantly, but this was somewhat mitigated by the fact that returns from recycling were proportionally increased. Wood did not benefit as much as the others. Between base building, crafting, and now companion armor; wood is becoming more and more troublesome to stock.
To compare to another material in its tier: steel. Steel is readily dropped in its raw form from most machines and is a common byproduct of recycling found in ammo, weapons, and components.
There definitely needs to be an easier way to stockpile wood; considering most homes already appear to have a supply of firewood.
I am not sure why so much wood is needed for armor. None of the runners I shoot, seems to have a metal plate that comes off. Why is it needed for our runner armor?
Just running around hunting machines and collecting the few saplings I stumble on, I collect more uranium from Reapers and destroying fnix bases in the same amount of time. There are logs stacked in piles in a lot of places. I know we are but mere teenagers but somehow we can rewire a machine to be a companion, but can’t figure out how to turn thousands of trees, cut and trimmed into logs, into just wood? I am not one to want everything in a game to be realistic, but this is just wrong. Not to mention the map is full of trees!
Edit: Maybe we need to find the AX to better process trees to wood.
I changed my way to play a bit the last few days.
In the past I just destroyed fnix bases, took .50 cal and 7.62 ammo, med kits and rockets from the destroyed machines.
Now I take all the steel, too and I’m going fine with that.
But wood indeed is a problem now.
In the past there was much wood in boxes, too. I don’t know if it changed with introducing the saplings or later, as I didn’t need much wood. I don’t build many bases.
But with another (quite important) crafting receipt wood has become more important now, so additional sources of wood are needed again.
Maybe instead of adding it to the loot pool again there could be some more and greater piles of wood at some locations, like fuel always is at gas stations for example.
Or wood could be a ressource we get by destroying fnix bases, too. (if it isn’t already, didn’t notice it yet).