How do you cancel an action within gameplay?

[CitrinePeridot]

May I please know the procedure for cancelling an action within the gameplay. Also, how does one tell at what point would be best to do so. Any help/insights would be appreciated. Thank you.

[Mixxut]

1 hour ago, CitrinePeridot said:

May I please know the procedure for cancelling an action within the gameplay. Also, how does one tell at what point would be best to do so. Any help/insights would be appreciated. Thank you.

You can cancel an action with ESC if you're on PC

 

Very useful if you're eating food, and you don't want to eat all of it or if you're passing time during a blizzard and it suddenly stops. Also if you accindetally start harvesting something useful hitting ESC cancels that. Or if you're harvesting an animal,and suddenly blizzard rolls in you can cancel the action. But if you cancel the action all of the Researching or harvesting an animal and stuff like that will be lost. You won't get any of the goods.

 

Edit: sleep can't be cancelled.

[CitrinePeridot]

Thank you! That may just come in handy it seems. Seen a lot of posts regarding that.

[Mixxut]

1 minute ago, CitrinePeridot said:

Thank you! That may just come in handy it seems. Seen a lot of posts regarding that.

Yeah, it may save your best piece of clothing if you accidentally start harvesting your deerskin pants, ir save your life if something goes nuts while you're doing something. And it's gonna help you in your everyday life ;D

[CitrinePeridot]

IF ONLY we were to be so fortunate for R/L to have that. If only. LOL There have been many a times I wished I had such given I felt the impact looming and no way out of the dive.

[Mroz4k]

Pressing escape interrupts the action. As in, if you are in the middle of that "circle" filling up, and you can see the "time" moving. 
Some actions will be completedly cancelled if you interrupt them - for example snow shelter/campfire building, water boiling, hide harvesting from animals, etc (note that if you attempt to build a fire, you will still waste a match and tinder if you interrupt it. Also note that the time will be wasted as well.)
Some actions will be interrupted, but will still yield some results - for example melting snow (you are melting 1 liter of snow, cancel it half way, you will get 0,5l of untreated water), eating, drinking, supposedly also meat harvesting according to JAFO (havent tested this myself but I trust JAFO is correct), etc.
Some actions cannot be interrupted - for example sleeping.
Some actions can be interrupted with no penalties to them (except for time wasted) - for example "waiting" - you can chose to wait for 5 hours, and cancel it right after and only waste like 20 minutes of the day. 

Cant think of much more examples, also dont want to ruin the learning experience for you entirely by telling you everything about everything. Guess you will have to do some testing

What I can reccomend to do is this: Always keep an eye on your condition, weather conditions, your equipment condition (mostly pieces of clothing that are already over half-way frozen, or are about to be ruined), your immidiate surroundings and all the other dangers like predators, etc - before attempting to do something that will be lenghty. What really helps is that you dont rush, but instead take things easy, think a while before doing something... many people end up thinking they need to rush to do something, and end up making a series of bad decisions that will either hurt them a lot or end up killing them. Taking a time and think for a bit about your decisions can end up saving you a lot more time in the end.

[CitrinePeridot]

Ok. Thank you, and, yes, I do appreciate your consideration in that I am not trying to have a complete manual level knowledge of all things. I'm mainly trying to figure out just the basics in controls, adjustments, etc. I appreciate that. 

[Mroz4k]

36 minutes ago, Mixxut said:

But if you cancel the action all of the Researching or harvesting an animal and stuff like that will be lost. You won't get any of the goods.

This is not true. At least it was not true before Wintermute. If you research, and then cancel it, you will see a part of your book already finished. In terms of research specifically, it saves for every half of an hour of research you already made - so if you are for example if you chose to research a whole book with 5 hours of research on it, and you get interrupted at around 60% finished by your thirst, or by you, canceling it, you will already have 2,5 hours of your book researched.

As far as harvesting animals go - what you say is truth about hides, or guts. Interrupting that will yield no result. But according to JAFO, interrupting action while harvesting meat will still give you some amount of meat despite canceling it. I havent tested that myself but I trust JAFO is correct.

[Mixxut]

43 minutes ago, Mroz4k said:

Pressing escape interrupts the action. As in, if you are in the middle of that "circle" filling up, and you can see the "time" moving. 
Some actions will be completedly cancelled if you interrupt them - for example snow shelter/campfire building, water boiling, hide harvesting from animals, etc (note that if you attempt to build a fire, you will still waste a match and tinder if you interrupt it. Also note that the time will be wasted as well.)
Some actions will be interrupted, but will still yield some results - for example melting snow (you are melting 1 liter of snow, cancel it half way, you will get 0,5l of untreated water), eating, drinking, supposedly also meat harvesting according to JAFO (havent tested this myself but I trust JAFO is correct), etc.
Some actions cannot be interrupted - for example sleeping.
Some actions can be interrupted with no penalties to them (except for time wasted) - for example "waiting" - you can chose to wait for 5 hours, and cancel it right after and only waste like 20 minutes of the day. 

Cant think of much more examples, also dont want to ruin the learning experience for you entirely by telling you everything about everything. Guess you will have to do some testing

What I can reccomend to do is this: Always keep an eye on your condition, weather conditions, your equipment condition (mostly pieces of clothing that are already over half-way frozen, or are about to be ruined), your immidiate surroundings and all the other dangers like predators, etc - before attempting to do something that will be lenghty. What really helps is that you dont rush, but instead take things easy, think a while before doing something... many people end up thinking they need to rush to do something, and end up making a series of bad decisions that will either hurt them a lot or end up killing them. Taking a time and think for a bit about your decisions can end up saving you a lot more time in the end.

Im glad somebody took the time to write this. 

 

38 minutes ago, Mroz4k said:

This is not true. At least it was not true before Wintermute. If you research, and then cancel it, you will see a part of your book already finished. In terms of research specifically, it saves for every half of an hour of research you already made - so if you are for example if you chose to research a whole book with 5 hours of research on it, and you get interrupted at around 60% finished by your thirst, or by you, canceling it, you will already have 2,5 hours of your book researched.

As far as harvesting animals go - what you say is truth about hides, or guts. Interrupting that will yield no result. But according to JAFO, interrupting action while harvesting meat will still give you some amount of meat despite canceling it. I havent tested that myself but I trust JAFO is correct.

I once started to read a book but then the game cancelled it because I did not have enough calories to continue and no progress was made. Yeah im not sure about the meat. I'm sure that player like JAFO has more knowledge than me, who has only 100 hours experiense with the game. 

[Mroz4k]

26 minutes ago, Mixxut said:

I once started to read a book but then the game cancelled it because I did not have enough calories to continue and no progress was made.

Its probably because you didnt read enough of it to get to the point where you read at least half of a hour of the book. But you just made me realize there is one important thing to consider I completedly forgot about.

Something that does matter in this case is how long the "full action" is supposed to take. The example Mixxut mentioned made me remember - if you for example choose to do a research for an hour, but the game interrupts you at 20% of the progress made, that means you only spent 20 minutes of "researching" in total (which is less then 30 minutes and for that reason, there will be no progress made on the book). But, if this was a 10 hour long book, and you chose to research for 10 hours, then the time would speed up really fast, and if you got interrupted at around 20%, it would mean that you spent researching 20% of the 10 hours total - that is 2 hours. If this happened, it would mean you had 2 hours of research finished on your book. 

This can be used exceptionally well when "waiting" for a bad weather to pass. Rather then choosing to wait for bad weather to pass by "waiting" in hour long intervals, because you can cancel waiting, it is better to "wait" for 10 hours, and keep a close eye on the weather changes as you are waiting - the moment the blizzard ends, you hit escape, and you can go. This will allow you to save real-life time while waiting in-game for better weather. Because there is a significant difference in time acceleration when you choose to wait for 1 hour, or for 10 hours - waiting for 10 hours means the ingame time advances 10 times faster.

[Mixxut]

32 minutes ago, Mroz4k said:

Its probably because you didnt read enough of it to get to the point where you read at least half of a hour of the book. But you just made me realize there is one important thing to consider I completedly forgot about.

Something that does matter in this case is how long the "full action" is supposed to take. The example Mixxut mentioned made me remember - if you for example choose to do a research for an hour, but the game interrupts you at 20% of the progress made, that means you only spent 20 minutes of "researching" in total (which is less then 30 minutes and for that reason, there will be no progress made on the book). But, if this was a 10 hour long book, and you chose to research for 10 hours, then the time would speed up really fast, and if you got interrupted at around 20%, it would mean that you spent researching 20% of the 10 hours total - that is 2 hours. If this happened, it would mean you had 2 hours of research finished on your book. 

 

I was almost done with the book. It interrupted me at the last second.

[CitrinePeridot]

Huh. I never tried the waiting or passing time thing. That's interesting to say the least, and I'm glad you shared that.

[Mroz4k]

15 hours ago, Mixxut said:

I was almost done with the book. It interrupted me at the last second.

That is strange, then. Perhaps if you got interrupted by "canceling" it I could understand, but exhaustion, thirst and hunger interruption never fully cancel the progress you make on a book - if it stopped you at last second, and it was an entire book, it should say you have half of an hour worth of research neccesary to finish the book fully. This sounds like a bug. Unless this is how it newly works from Wintermute, but that doesnt sound like a good idea.

[Mixxut]

2 hours ago, Mroz4k said:

That is strange, then. Perhaps if you got interrupted by "canceling" it I could understand, but exhaustion, thirst and hunger interruption never fully cancel the progress you make on a book - if it stopped you at last second, and it was an entire book, it should say you have half of an hour worth of research neccesary to finish the book fully. This sounds like a bug. Unless this is how it newly works from Wintermute, but that doesnt sound like a good idea.

Every wasted food item in interloper makes me want to cry. R.I.P chocolate bar 2017-2017

[CitrinePeridot]

9 minutes ago, Mixxut said:

Every wasted food item in interloper makes me want to cry. R.I.P chocolate bar 2017-2017

LOL Ah, yes. That chocolate bar. I for one love granola bars, but I feel ya.