The Long Dark

You should be able to select what tool you use (cutting saplings, digging burdock, cutting fishing holes) if there are multiple choices, like you do with matches lighting a torch. I almost never want to use my axe or knife when my hacksaw or crowbar is available.

later edit: looks like they added tool selection when cutting holes in the ice, hooray!

Here's one: Cooking has too many recipes right now. There shouldn't be six different stew recipes, there should be one stew recipe that takes (say) meat, flour, oil, and vegetables as input. The resulting calorie value, and perhaps bonus properties, should depend on what you add to it.

Acorn flour should be able to sub in for old mill flour.

I'd also say fish oil should work in lieu of cooking oil. Maybe some fish give you lantern oil, some fish give you cooking oil.

Edit: They added animal fat, which is cooking oil now. Good solution, though you now end up with a lot of useless animal fat. Unless you make a lot of pemmican...

Saw this today: buddy burners. In TLD terms, it could just be some tinder, cooking oil (or animal fat) and a can. Provides 8-10 hours of light, maybe, and a 1C warmth boost. I used to make these all the time as a kid!

https://www.rootsimple.com/2007/01/buddy-burner/

A variant uses two cans and can be a stove.

https://www.scouts.ca/resources/activity-finder/buddy-burner.html

Quality of life:

1. Merge half liter containers of oil with kerosene jug and with each other.
2. Half opened cabinet/fridge doors can be closed to gain another storage area OR the doors can be removed fully and the area treated like a shelf.
3. Reading books in smaller chunks/time is cumulative; you shouldn’t not read something because you only spent 55 minutes on it.
4. I want to be able to clean out cobwebs and papers on the floor. :( The mod for that broke after the update.
5. Holding rightclick with no item held while near a cave wall puts your hand up against the wall, creating a sound as your hand moves across the stone, meaning you have a means of finding your way out if you lose all light sources.
6. If you’ve made it to the workshop in Bleak Inlet once, you can set up a rope to bridge the gap between it and the pier. You can set it from the nearby warehouse.
7. You should remember what you last used to build a fire and set that as default.

Equipment:

1. Draggable sled: with multiple pieces of hardwood, birch and/or maple saplings, deer hide, cloth and guts, can build a pricey but useful sled. Your movement speed decreases 30%, you can’t run unless you drop it, but you can store 75+ kilos, making it useful for processing large game and moving bases. You can’t take it over train tracks but you can take it over nonbreakable ice; breakable ice means you lose it immediately.
2. Hammer the candy machines in Milton for candy.
3. Make the horns of cars startle wildlife; all deer/rabbits, and any predator that hasn’t sensed you yet. Not sure about moose.
4. From Archery 3 and up, your survival bow can include an option to add a piece of wood sticking out of the front of it; a crude sight.
5. (Possibly controversial, but I like base building) If you can make arrowheads you can make nails, and thereby build furniture. Maybe not boxes/containers, but a table could be useful.

Issues:

1. I know there are cabinets that are facing the tail of helicopters, but because my character sits facing the tail, they can’t reach them. Need to add an option to face the front, like how you can move to the back in cars.

I’ll probably think of more at some point. I don’t want to fuck with the game TOO much, because the contemplative loneliness mixed with moments of high stress are what makes it fun.