I want wool.
Wool fabric needs to exist. This can be used to craft various cosmetic clothing, trades wear, light armor, furnishings and decorations, and various other apperal and weapons. It could also be used as a craft mod. Give clothing made with the fabric a medium chance at gaining ice/cold, or nature damage mitigation. Give the craft mod a 100% chance at mitigation.
New World has the capacity to have standard (sheeps) wool; Cashmere wool, from goats; and Angola wool, from rabbits. We already have to kill these animals in copious amounts for town board missions, faction missions, and various quests, as well as for foods.
Changes to the game needed to support this, other than just the addition of the various items would impact skinning, possibly tanning (a small chance of obtaining wool from rawhide → coarse leather production), loom recipes and skill unlocks for the three types of raw materials, and the outfitting station for recipes and skills unlocks. Additional furniture items could be produced in the workshop as well.
For skinning, as there’s 3 separate animals, with the ability to produce 3 separate types of wool, these can be added at different skinning (as well as weaving, armoring and furnishing levels) Skinning knives could have a perk to increase wool production, and wool production could be added at lvl 200 skinning.
In the loom, there’s three vacant spots in the levels where wool, cashmere and angola would fit - lvl 75 for wool, 125 for cashmere, and 175 for angola.
Wool would be a t2 fabric, cashmere t3, and angola t4. T5 wool could be produced from copious amounts of wool, moderate amounts of cashmere or angola with wireweave, or woolweave (another new item, found in chests, a bobbin of wool thread, similar to silkweave, maybe only in 50+ areas)
In the outfitting station, wool, cashmere and angola would be used similarly to how different tiers of leather work. However, a new category of clothing can be added, cosmetic clothing. These produce no stats or perks of any kind, but could be crafted with a gem socket crafting mod to give gem bonuses. Trades skill clothing, where wool clothing has higher chances of various trade skill perks (except fishing, because that seems to be a thing)
Also In the outfitting station, “Winterized Leather” light armor with winter wool and layered or infused leather to produce new light armor pieces which have a higher chance of cold/nature damage mitigation could be produced. Wool/Cashmere/Angola could be used as alternates for Rugged Fur medium armor.
In the Forge, Winter Wool (t5) could be used in lieu of other cloths for Steel Plate and Steel Heavy armor to produce these pieces, these would produce “Winterized Steel Plate/Heavy” pieces with a chance of ice/cold/nature mitigation.
The workshop could produce various furnishings and decorations. Some of the decorations could be padded chairs, drapes of different colors (requiring dyes as part of the recipe), dyable pet beds, etc. Wool could also be used with Platinum and gunpowder to produce Platinum Cartridges, with x1.25 damage modifier, at lvl 175 engineering.
For Arcana, a Winterized Wool Cowl (which would go in the necklace slot) to give similar perks to necklaces, but with permanent mitigations (in low amounts) to those of arcane potions or tinctures. Being there would be 4 tiers of wool, there could be 4 tiers of cowls. These could be produced with a gem slot, and perks relevant to fire and life staves, and ice gauntlet.
The kitchen could be used to produce dyed wools, used for town board missions and pve faction missions, and possibly NPC side quests. These would be high level missions, requiring kitchen tier 4 and cooking skill 175 or even 200.
The wool gathering, refining and crafting could be done as a lvl 55 quest through Odnell Lee, perhaps as a continuation of “An Anonymous Gift”
An NPC in Edengrove could continue the quests for Arcana and Kitchen skills, and an NPC in Great Cleave or Shattered Mountain could continue the wool quest lines for armoring. These make some sense for continued story lines with future expansions as well, as there are hints of heavily snowed in areas west of Great Cleave, and these areas support questing for lvl 50+
Some of the new and changed items to support this:
Skinning knife with +% to wool collection from sheep, goats and rabbits
wool (t2) - from sheep, or crafted down from cashmere or angola
cashmere wool (t3) - from goats
angola wool (t4) - from rabbits
winter wool (t5) - crafted (x2) from 1 wool, 1 cashmere, and 1 angola
woolweave (t5) - collected from chests
cosmetic clothing - boots, pants, gloves, jacket and hat - ally dyable
Trades skills aprons - neck piece with perks for crafting and refining
Winterized armor - use wool for ice/nature mitigation
Arcana cowl - neck piece with (very low) permanent potion/tincture perks
Precious Cartridges - x1.25% damage modifier ammo, 2x silver or 1x platinum
Glittering Arrows - uses 2x silver or 1x platinum, ebony wood, winterized wool (for fletching, it’s a real thing - it’s cylindrical around the shaft, not parallel to it) - gives a x1.25% damage modifier but lower accuracy at distance (great for mid-range combat)
dyed wool (cooking mission items) - winterized wool and dyes of specific colors, used by the town for faction banners, for town upkeep missions.
Some additional quest items might need to be made for the three wool quest lines as well, and other items could be created for furnishings, decorations, crafting mods, resources, etc.