Cinderella Challenge

[BareSkin]

I have to apologize, for whatever reason the entry for day 34 didn't make it to the forums (I redacted it, maybe forgot to post it?), and I've deleted the entry in my Journal, so you'll get only the left screenshots with main ideas:

Brought back the pelts in the Mine, and read a good advice from a Backer

Went for hunting rabbits, but there's no more. Found some fuel, and a cloth I didn't see yet. The fourth.

That's Harris dryer, the fuel situation is fine. 2 blizzards today showed me I overestimated the fuel risk on this mission, blizzard gives lots of branches. I'm thinking about spicing things up with forbidding indoor sleeping. I hate this 9% porkandbeans I can't turn into a second can

The blizzards forced me in Harris for most of the day

[BareSkin]

BareSkin32- D35 [Cinderella ]

- I transfer to Harris in a nasty dangerous fog, tear down my shirt lap-dancer-style to get my 5^th cloth, it was degrading quite fast anyway and had no dollars in it (not even Canadian ones). I still have sweater to avoid titsbite anyway.

Situation after the striptease

-The placement of the Shelter is still a pain in the ***, and I have to go back unsuccessful before freezing

While warming up I tidy the place up a bit

- I choose to set the Shelter up after noon, near the mine entrance, cause I’ll have to use the workbench. Junction is more central and better for fuel harvesting, but also it’s more wolfy

Of course it's actually for free, I'm starved (biggest flaw in TLD if you ask me)

- OMG the Bareskin Bedroll can be used inside the shelter? It’s a real sauna @FL+13… I don’t miss my shirt.

- Now that I’m living in a shelter my lifestyle has to completely change: I transfer some calories near the shelter cause I need avoid exhaustion tomorrow morning when crafting snares

- I eat 200+ calories and sleep 3h in my shelter

- It’s aurora sounds when I wake up! Tonight I’ll loot the Mine again for new coal. I’ll bring the 2 first guts and let them cure near the workbench for tomorrow morning snares.

- I could sleep more, but I don’t want to be outside in an aurora, I fear I’ll get chased as soon as I pick a piece of meat

- Once in the mine I passtime until the lights show me the way. I grab the lantern, metals, gut and reclaimed

- No new coal, so I brake the crates near the workbench. I passtime, refraining myself from using the BB since it's now forbidden to use it.

[BareSkin]

BareSkin32- D36 [Cinderella ]

- I passtime until noon waiting for the guts to be turned into snares. Starved and exhausted, 50% health, but good news: it’s sleeping time

- I place my snares, eat 600 calories, and go for a 9h sleep in FL+6 shelter bonus, from 51% back to 100%

BareSkin32- D37 [Cinderella ]

- I’m low on water: there’ll be a need for a fire this morning.

- Sleep 3 more hours to top up my Rest bar that suddenly became important.

- At 4AM, it’s still FL+1 in the Shelter (without bedroll)

- I do some maintenance on the Shelter (2 sticks) cause I don’t have more cloth. It was around 85%, I decide I’ll keep it above 80%

- It’s now FL0+ in Shelty, since my clothing bonus is +5, it means outside is -20°, time for my 2-sticks firewood

- both snares did trigger, but already 1 is ruined. I take only the meat (indoors) and start my fire. I have to use fir firewood, since I had only 17 sticks in here, and used them all on the Shelter. That’s only 95% chance but it works: 2h+ fire going on

- I transfer to Harris, get barked at, run into the basement for 3 cured guts + 3 others nearly cured (93+), I decide I’ll wait them to cure and transfer back in the afternoon to the shelter recentralizing all my loot (except 10 sticks and the smellies in the backpack outside cause of the wolf) in the Mine

- I brake 4 branches on my way, in a nice FL-5 evening. One rabbit is snared, but if I process it now I lose precious sleeping time. I replace the snare and leave the carcass there, I don’t want smellies on me while in the shelter

- I eat 560 calories (1 cooked rabbit) and go for an 8h sleep.

[tulkawen]

On 2/23/2019 at 10:48 PM, BareSkin said:

Did you just invent the concept of boobsbite, like the assbite?

It seems you did.

I forgot about the running shoes and work gloves as well which are leather. You're good to stay 30 days then. You can craft bunny mittens and have extra warmth and extra leather too.

On 2/23/2019 at 10:48 PM, BareSkin said:

even if my best weapon is still "avoidance at all cost" policy

My favourite tactic. Although, I swear sometimes these wolves purposefully hide in the rosehips bushes and also put snow atop of themselves for better cover. They appear literally out of the ground.

Crowbar is also extra two metal pieces.

I love your residence screenshot. It's most picturesque with aurora shining. Dangerous and romantic and nature fullfilled at the same time.

Congrats on finding a maple leaf crown. A nice rabbit hat atop will make a very formidable clothing set. Cinderella's ears are safe!

Pfff Only inexperienced firestarter noob needs junk like 20million dollars stuffed into a shirt. Though to be fair I almost died during my second game looking for tinder in the middle of the night because I was parched and had none.

Also, it's funny but Cinderella isn't a complete fashion disaster, her stuff sort of matches in colour.

Bleh, those beans and sardines too look fishy to say the least. I've eaten some pretty bad junk on voyager, but I def wouldn't eat the beans. Sardines maybe due to resource shortage, but then I'd eat the sardines asap after brewing mushrooms so they don't get any worse.

 

Edited February 25, 2019 by tulkawen

[BareSkin]

18 hours ago, tulkawen said:

My favourite tactic. Although, I swear sometimes these wolves purposefully hide in the rosehips bushes and also put snow atop of themselves for better cover. They appear literally out of the ground.

I play with an ear-covering headset, it helps a lot, as a wolf is nearly always making footsteps noises. I also carefully check the ground for footprints.

18 hours ago, tulkawen said:

lso, it's funny but Cinderella isn't a complete fashion disaster, her stuff sort of matches in colour.

She's also too skinny, as most models but for other reasons

[BareSkin]

BareSkin32- D38 [Cinderella ]

- FL-2 when I wake up around 4AM, sleep 1 more hour for more Rest

- 5 AM, even the cloth bedroll + shelter combination won’t keep me in positive FL, I exit, grab the frozen rabbit (don’t care, harvest 5), and to the mine for a full day of crafting even though there’s no light at the workbench...

- All deer hides are cured but I have only 6 guts and my priority are snares. I spend Lamp oil to get to the bench, craft 4 snares, make 2 tackles, craft a rabbit hat. I find 2 respawned coal

Cured guts are gold

- I want to repair the work boots, but it needs 1 cloth I don’t have anymore

- New snared rabbit, I leave it here and place my 4 additional snares

- I go for starved sleeping to beat the starvation Rest penalty, since I don’t need more health

- Around midnight, I repair my work gloves in the moonlight for mending training (I’ll craft mitts). 2 tries, 1 fail

BareSkin32- D39 [Cinderella ]

- Aurora night! I take the frozen rabbit and go straight to the bench with 2 more cured guts

- 2 more snares, grab 4 new rabbits (1 ruined snare), it’s 6AM and very cold so I let the free running bunny alive for now, but with 3 scent bar in aurora, the poor guy pays the nearby wolf anger

- I process them inside until noon, there will be a lot of cooking involved tomorrow morning!

I will need friends soon

- For now it’s sleeping time, don’t care about the snow storm, it’s not a blizzard and I’m nicely sheltered in my home

- I’m barked at on my way, and run into the blue pickup, FL-6, I can wait in there. Actually I enter past noon, the temperature immediately rises to FL+1 so I sleep in the car

- Shelter at 76%, 3 sticks to repair, I’m lucky it didn’t ask for cloth. I must be more careful if I don’t want to lose the cargo pants to soon

[Czhilli]

@BareSkin I’ve only just caught up on this. Awesome start. Didn’t think you would manage to get both good clothing and a snow shelter. 

Glad you found the deer carcass at the arch.

[BareSkin]

BareSkin32- D40 [Cinderella ]

- After this morning fire, I’m swimming in rabbit meat. I didn’t even have to touch the civilized food/drinks. 6 matches left. If I play dehydration I might, maybe, see the end with only 12 matches? There’ll be some maths to do.

- I rush in the shelter to beat the rest-penalty from starvation as much as I can (3h), and find 2 more rabbits (1 snare ruined)

- Since I have nothing to do in this weather, I end up discovering a bug: Rest as a Resource is non-functional when you have a Rest penalty. I guess the game is checking whether or not you are at 100% of this need to wake you up, and since you can’t go there…

-Code is Law, so I happily use this bug to reduce water consumption, which is my main concern if I want to survive 20 more days on 6 matches only

BareSkin32- D41 [Cinderella ]

- Actually, the rest penalty is so useful I should take care about not removing it. Marmot Challenge!

I'm never going out of my shelter

- After repairing Shelty, I did literally nothing except sleeping. 1.48L water left at dusk when a blizzard forces me out of the Shelter (FL-5). Had I kept the Bareskin Bedroll, I could have stayed, but I decided not to use it and left it in the mine locker.

- At dusk, since AT is now at -31 under blizzard and my campfire place is shielded, I for once decide to spend a match not in a morning, to benefit for the full cold bonus (mornings are only -25ish on Voyageuse)

- I only spend sticks, which I usually forbid myself to do, but I don’t want to lose 3h of fire when the winds decided to turn

- Calculations predict that for each stick I get 1*7.5*+50%=11.25 min nominal fire time, that become 22.5 real minutes thanks to cold bonus. Thanks to cooking bonus each 0.5L cycle takes 37.5*-30%=26.25minutes, so each 2 sticks is roughly 1L water (actually 0.86)

-That’s the first time I hope for a blizzard not to end… I babysit this fire until blizzard ends at midnight (AT back to -17) , then keep feeding it since fuel is more abundant than matches in my own sub-challenge

- That was only 1h of blizzard Not sure my match has been well spent.

- Back in the shelter with 4.98L water (+3.5L) (all rabbit cooked of course). 5 Matches left.

BareSkin32- D42 [Cinderella ]

- Marmot challenge, as the morning is not particularly cold.

- I try not to get Thirst bar too high, in case I decide to eat rabbit soon

- Health 27%  in the evening, I’ll have to eat tomorrow, and health before going for fuel hunting.

BareSkin32- D42 [Cinderella ]

- Aurora sounds when I sleep, but when I wake up around midnight it’s already over, health 16% so I’ll have to eat around noon last chance since I’ll be around 4%

- At 4AM, I unfortunately can’t stay in the shelter despite being ready for healing (water+food nearby), it’s too cold for the embedded cloth bedroll (FL-3)

- Health 10% around 7AM

- Back in the mine I harvest guts from the snared rabbits waiting for the outside temperatures to be bearable in the shelter,

- I run back the Shelty, I can now hear my heartbeat, 9%.

- Eat, sleep, and start a new life with 79% health

[tulkawen]

9 hours ago, BareSkin said:

Since I have nothing to do in this weather, I end up discovering a bug: Rest as a Resource is non-functional when you have a Rest penalty. I guess the game is checking whether or not you are at 100% of this need to wake you up, and since you can’t go there…

 I don't understand, what is rest as resource?

[stratvox]

2 minutes ago, tulkawen said:

 I don't understand, what is rest as resource?

You have to be tired to sleep and recover condition. You can set yourself to sleep for 12 hours, but if your fatigue bar is only halfway down you'll sleep six instead... and if you're all in wakey wakey mode (i.e. full fatigue bar) and your condition is terrible you won't be able to sleep to recover your condition more quickly until you become tired.

[tulkawen]

3 hours ago, stratvox said:

You have to be tired to sleep and recover condition. You can set yourself to sleep for 12 hours, but if your fatigue bar is only halfway down you'll sleep six instead... and if you're all in wakey wakey mode (i.e. full fatigue bar) and your condition is terrible you won't be able to sleep to recover your condition more quickly until you become tired.

Oh I knew about the sleep thingy. But why are you calling it a 'resource'? This statement doesn't make sense. Is this simply a special name/terminology for sleep heal?

Resource is when you go mushrooms picking and find mushrooms. These are resources.

Edited February 27, 2019 by tulkawen

[BareSkin]

8 minutes ago, tulkawen said:

Oh I knew about the sleep thingy. But why are you calling it a 'resource'? This statement doesn't make sense. Is this simply a special name/terminology for sleep heal?

"Rest as a Resource" is the actual name this function is given in the Custom Settings. This is a resource, since if you don't have it, you can't heal. That's exactly why on interloper, where you often need the heal badly, you end up running stupidly around the place you'll be sleeping. The more exhausted you are, the longer you can sleep, the more heal you get. Once you have calories, basically exhaustion=healing.

I think it's been put in place to avoid people hibernating. If you ask me and go read the introductory post about my Sleepwalking mode, it's a huge flaw in design that act as cover up for a broken sleep-healing system. Now, in addition of me thinking it's a flaw, I also actually know it's bugged thanks to Cinderella (else I would never have known)

[BareSkin]

BareSkin32- D43 [Cinderella ]

- This day is actually started in the evening (snowshelter= sleeping during day), I harvest rabbits until maybe 10PM, then run to the shelter, passtime until the Rest penalty is back (doesn’t happen)

BareSkin32- D44 [Cinderella ]

- Daylight gives me Rest penalty, which I of course exploit, Code is law.

- Only 1.17L water left, let’s hope there’s a good blizzard soon

- Back in the mine with 2 more rabbits, I make a coal run (literally running, fatigue isn’t a concern) with storm lantern, in the whole mine back to where I’ve been cheated on: 21 coals.

DesoPoint exits. I see Prince tried to force the door I locked with no success.I reinforce my lock and spit on the floor.

- Craft the Mitts for 8h. 5H awake is 2/3 of thirst bar, means Voyageur awake consumption is 2L/day. THe rule of hibernation=-30% must also apply, since on Voyageur you can actually sleep 12h without dehydration

- Craft 2 tackles and begin the deer pants

- I hide 2 snared rabbits in the pickup before marmotting in my shelter, in hopes of a morning blizzard

BareSkin32- D45 [Cinderella ]

- At midnight I hear a free rabbit running and pray for it not to attract a wolf. I’ll kill it as soon as I can, just to make it silent.

- 5AM, AT-24, not that cold but I can’t wait for watermaking

- I notice I cook rabbit just for fun, I’m stacking meat for more than months compared to my actual Voyage-loper lifestyle. Need to stay starved to keep the hibernating bug

- After a +5L water mid-morning, I go continue the deer pants

[tulkawen]

@BareSkin Oh I see, so, when you say 'sleep is resource' you are referring to the process of healing when you sleep. If the players are good at hunting food/have lots of calories then if they get hurt they can do some activity to quickly make themselves tired and sleep off the injury.

I still think of it as a function or a game mechanic. Wouldn't have named it 'resource' in my head.

13 minutes ago, BareSkin said:

Now, in addition of me thinking it's a flaw, I also actually know it's bugged thanks to Cinderella (else I would never have known)

I'm not sure I understand though, what would be a bug then?

Edited February 27, 2019 by tulkawen

[tulkawen]

27 minutes ago, BareSkin said:

I think it's been put in place to avoid people hibernating.

What is hibernation? Some kind of boring game tactic people do to live many days?

[stratvox]

52 minutes ago, tulkawen said:

What is hibernation? Some kind of boring game tactic people do to live many days?

Yes, that is exactly what it is. In the earlier stages of the game's development there was a leaderboard for how long people had survived for, and people exploited the rest/heal mechanic to survive for very long periods on very little food. It's actually exploitable now, but more difficult and time limited due to the fatigue/starvation issue that @BareSkin mentions. When you are low on food, you want to tire yourself out, and then feed yourself just enough to make it through the night (480, 600, or 720 calories depending on skill level, based on thirst consumption; on Voyageur with a full thirst bar you can sleep for 12 hours without losing condition due to thirst, ten hours on Stalker, and eight hours on Interloper). Then you starve yourself over the course of the day; doing so results in condition loss of 1%/hour. If you're awake for sixteen hours, you can make up for far more than that loss by eating right before sleeping. In these fora, it's referred to as the 'starvation mechanic', and esp. in the early game can be a real life-saver until you get yourself established.

The Well Fed buff was introduced as a way of disincentivizing the use of this mechanic by offering a condition and inventory capacity buff if you avoid starvation (i.e. empty stomach) for 72 hours in a row.

[tulkawen]

@stratvox Oh I see. Thank you for explaining.

I think you're talking about a repeatable routine each day that takes the player to min allowed health before full heal. But, I'm also finding similarities.

Isn't that how players play in general or rather do something similar because in a survival game you are trying to preserve your resources and that goes with the role playing of sucking it up in places such as not always eating? I didn't know about this tactic, but during the game I have figured out that the best use I get out of calories is by sleeping when I'm fed. So, while I'm awake I don't aim to have my stomach full all the time, but it is a big goal during the day to collect enough food to have enough for dinner to get max benefit. Of course if I get attacked or do something that hurts my health a lot then I don't want to take the beating for additional factor and eat, but otherwise I just run around with an empty stomach while looking for dinner. Those calories burn horrendously fast too if I'm sprinting. This is especially a big deal on Loper. My aim is atrocious and I can't hit rabbit with rocks, so, I'm always pressed for food and always running bush to bush and house to house freezing my butt off. Having food for dinner remains priority over eating awake. Though, on Loper I end up eating a lot more anyway since I'm always taking cold damage. I don't believe on Loper though it's only 1% per hour anymore. We don't see the health bar anymore, but the way it slides down especially if I'm doing some activity like breaking crates it really goes down a lot.

[stratvox]

The starvation mechanic, although nerfed, is still useful and widely used. I've used it myself, when necessary. However, in general, for roleplay reasons, I've generally tried to keep my guy in food when I play, because in the real world trying to use the starvation mechanic would greatly hasten your death in a long term wilderness survival scenario.

[tulkawen]

Hmm... Providing our survivors weren't chewed on by anything recently, there are four sources from which they may take damage; two of those are thirst and cold are brutal that have to be acted on urgently. I find having the other two giving smaller penalties and a long grace period where you are aware of the issue but you can act long term to fix it without tripping over yourself balances stress in the game.

I never do any numbers calculations though in any game or perform any experiments. It's always intuitive for me. Just trying to stack my sack to have something for dinner without becoming a snack myself daily. You still need to eat during the day because you need to read books or there are other reasons to eat something daytime as well. On Loper if you want to skin a deer even if you're warm by the fire when you're doing it your health takes more than 1% boot if you're hungry during 1h, so you have to eat too. But if my health is like 90% and I'm walking to some destination then I'd rather have my survivor sucking it up. I do try to preserve food though at the expense of health to have enough food for an emergency. Some players also aren't that great at hunting for their dinner so it's hard for them to be fed all the time too. I like mushrooms, they don't run from you.

I have kind of constructed a few rules of surviving in The Long Dark

Basic Survivor Rules

1. If it moves, run from it.

2. If it doesn't move, eat it.

Advanced Survivor Rule

3. If it moves, make it not move and refer to rule #2.

My philosophy to go by, especially the first two points.

[tulkawen]

13 hours ago, BareSkin said:

DesoPoint exits. I see Prince tried to force the door I locked with no success.I reinforce my lock and spit on the floor.

lol

[BareSkin]

19 hours ago, tulkawen said:

I'm not sure I understand though, what would be a bug then?

Because you're not supposed to be able to rest once you're fully rested. With this penalty on Rest bar, even if I should technically not be able to rest again, but since it's bugged, I can sleep 24h per day, provided I drink every 12h. The only limit is life bar, which is -24% everyday from starvation. Basically since my limiting resource is water, the bug allows me to consume less water (when sleeping) that what I would with the "passtime" function.

[tulkawen]

41 minutes ago, BareSkin said:

Because you're not supposed to be able to rest once you're fully rested. With this penalty on Rest bar, even if I should technically not be able to rest again, but since it's bugged, I can sleep 24h per day, provided I drink every 12h. The only limit is life bar, which is -24% everyday from starvation. Basically since my limiting resource is water, the bug allows me to consume less water (when sleeping) that what I would with the "passtime" function.

I just keep getting more confused about what you are saying. How can you sleep if your rest bar is full and you're fully rested?

My character can't sleep if she's not fatigued. What are you talking about?

Edited February 27, 2019 by tulkawen

[BareSkin]

On 2/26/2019 at 8:35 AM, BareSkin said:

 

See this red penalty I have on my Rest/Fatigue bar? (half of it is red, it's the maximum): I could sleep the 4/5h that it allows me, then sleep again 6h without being blocked to what should be a full rest bar (but I still have only 6h worth of Fatigue to spend), and THEN AGAIN, sleep all I want because the bar will actually never be full. That's a "bug" we could say, since it actually totally defeats the mere reason why "Rest as a Resource" (="You woke up fully rested" - "You're not tired enough to sleep") has been added to the game, i.e. to prevent people sleeping all they want.

But still, the first sin was to have an exponential sleeping heal curve. The reason was good - encourage people sleeping long stretches- but the implementation has led us to nasty consequences. Namely the reason why I usually now play sleepwalker mode instead of the regular Interloper.

[tulkawen]

41 minutes ago, BareSkin said:

See this red penalty I have on my Rest/Fatigue bar? (half of it is red, it's the maximum): I could sleep the 4/5h that it allows me, then sleep again 6h without being blocked to what should be a full rest bar

So, this red fatigue line appeared because you weren't eating/drinking? Or it just randomly pops up out of the blue because it's bug?

 

43 minutes ago, BareSkin said:

and THEN AGAIN, sleep all I want because the bar will actually never be full

Now, you've lost me again. You said you can sleep 4h, this will remove  the red bar. After red bar is removed you can sleep like with normal fatigue to the full rest. This still means you've slept 10h. How does this make sleeping endless? Or are you saying that even after you sleep 6 more hours the game will say that you are still tired and let you sleep more?

[BareSkin]

Lol, no . The penalty on Rest bar appears when you starve for too long, it has actually nothing to do with being exhausted or not. The red penalty bar on fatigue is removed when you eat. It's not a bug, it's a mechanic that's in place to punish you for starving.

Let's go through it again, maybe in a simpler way:

- Starvation is punished by having only half of your normal rest bar available (thus being usually overweighted)

- Hibernating is prevented by "Rest as a resource" mechanic, that forbids you to sleep one you're fully rested

- Since starvation punishment is actually preventing you to have a full Rest bar, you're never "fully rested", so "rest as a resource" mechanism doesn't trigger.

As a result, you can sleep all you want= hibernating (while sleeping your needs deplete slower than when awake). The only trick is to never eat too much despite needing the heal, in order not to lose the Rest penalty.

Where is the bug then? The game should say "you woke up fully rested", when the white part of your Rest meets the red one (the penalty). But because it is coded to trigger when rest is at 100%, it never happens and if you have 2L of water, you can sleep 24h in a row without a problem. (except you get -24% health from being starved)

I hope you get it now . If you don't, just consider yourself blessed and enjoy Voyageur the way you do now!

Edited February 27, 2019 by BareSkin