Snowballs in Hell


Drifter Man

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20 hours ago, Drifter Man said:

I'm going to sacrifice one piece of cloth to produce bandages. Who knows...

1 hour ago, Drifter Man said:

Medical: 12 pills of antibiotics, 1 stim, 6 cups of rosehip tea, 39 rosehip buds, 26 reishi mushrooms
...
Material: 5 cloth (+2 cloth in clothes awaiting scrapping)

 

I suggest you get that bandage done pronto. If you need one, you probably won't have the time to craft it whilst bleeding out. Especially if you've smacked the wolf with a hammer.. the smell of your blood will draw it back again as soon as it's over its fright.

 

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7 minutes ago, JAFO said:

I suggest you get that bandage done pronto. If you need one, you probably won't have the time to craft it whilst bleeding out. Especially if you've smacked the wolf with a hammer.. the smell of your blood will draw it back again as soon as it's over its fright.

Yep... actually I forgot to include it in the list. I turned one cloth into two bandages and also produced one OMB dressing. I'll make a second dressing as soon as I get the material.

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8 hours ago, Hotzn said:

Looks like Snowball 47 could go the distance... :)

I'm pinning my hopes on No. 47, as I had been on each Snowball. The good thing is that I learn with every attempt. With luck, I can avoid the mistakes made by past Snowballs.

Only one Snowball so far has died of "old age" - by running out of matches. Snowball 29 survived on 36 matches for 26 days. That was before I even started trying to get to the Summit.

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Snowball 47 / Day 19

Although he still has a long way to match the 30-day record of Snowball 41, No. 47 has already accomplished one thing: he has explored all significant locations and looted/collected all items except those in places that are too remote or too dangerous. There will be no more exploration, just sustained survival.

Snowball 47 is also the first one to subsist on fishing. The first fishing line snapped almost instantly, but the second one has got me over 8000 Cal of fish and is still holding. The heavy hammer loses about 2% each time I use it to clear a fully frozen fishing hole. I think that fishing could replace the more dangerous dances with wolves over deer kills on the lake, but I should keep in mind that the fish in the lake also get depleted.

I've learned that the fishing hut does not protect me fully against wind. Unfortunately, I only realized it after standing there next to the stove in a blizzard and cooking for a while. This put another dent in my clothing. From now on, I'll strip naked right after I start the fire.

I finished the deerskin pants in the morning of Day 19 and left Mountaineer's Hut to collect sticks. I noticed the weather was favorable (light fog) and decided to reach the Cave on Engines to get some coal as well. I still have about 10 pieces that I keep for later when temperatures get lower, but I'd like to add to this reserve. I was going to reach the upper Engine by rope, using the shortcut to Mountaineer's Hut, but a local wolf intervened by decimating local rabbit population in the middle of my way, making the passage hazardous. I explored a nearby cave - nothing found there. Then, while trying to slip around the dining wolf, I suffered the formidable double sprain. Since I'm sort of running out of painkillers (6 doses of tea left, then nothing), I gave up and returned to base. Coal will wait for another day. I managed to get a third sprain that day while collecting some more sticks.

I went to bed, crippled. Only then I realized I didn't have any rosehip tea with me in the backpack - I spent it all before and forgot to restock from the first aid kit. Status next morning: 87% condition, 18 days and 15 hours survived.

  • Firestarting: 47 matches, firestriker at 48%, 1 bottle of accelerant, 0.49 L fish oil
  • Medical: 12 pills of antibiotics, 2 bandages, 2 OMB wrappings, 1 stim, 4 cups of rosehip tea, 70 rosehip buds, 30 reishi mushrooms.
  • Clothes: Sweatshirt (65%), thin wool sweater (74%), 2 ski jackets (19%, 14%), jeans (20%), 2 pairs of wool socks (96%, 24%), cotton toque (41%), wool toque (97%), thermal underwear (13%), trail boots (81%), rabbitskin mitts (94%), deerskin pants (100%). Bonus is at +10°C / +6°C.
  • Food: About 10,000 Cal in meat (mostly fish), 3 boxes of crackers, 64 cattail stalks, 10 herbal tea and 5 coffee.
  • Tools: Flare pistol with 7 flare shells, hacksaw (30%), heavy hammer (71%), sewing kit (3%), quality tools, 1 flare, 1 fishing tackle
  • Material: 8 cloth, 7 leather, 1 cured rabbit pelt, 4 gut (3 cured, 1 curing), 2 scrap metal, 4 fishing hooks, 1 fir firewood.
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Snowball 47 / Day 28

Nearly 27 days in, Snowball 47 is doing exceptionally well. In fact, he could probably sit on his hands for a few days without serious consequences.

Fish supply has thinned out a bit but still provides more than enough calories. That second fishing tackle is still with me - it just keeps giving and giving. Even then, I have two more in reserve and could quickly make six additional ones. It's fishing that has decisively tipped the scales in Snowball's favor, so that hell cannot make him melt anymore. As long as matches last and wolves permit, that is.

I took another deer on the lake, for good measure, and processed it completely for nearly 9 kg venison, hide (a spare for repairing the pants) and two guts. Sticks do not respawn as often as I expected and as I'm used to, but I know where to look and how to conserve them: recycling excess fire into torches and then back into sticks may perhaps be tedious, but it has become Snowball's key strategy. I have enough fuel to burn a fire for 50 hours (without the duration bonus). I'm mostly worried about my complacency: a wolf that veers off its normal patrol zone is all that is needed to kill me.

Carcass harvesting, firestarting and cooking are all at Level 3, fishing at Level 2.

  • Firestarting: 47 matches, firestriker (32%), 0.57 L fish oil
  • Medical: 12 pills of antibiotics, 2 bandages, 2 OMB wrappings, 1 stim, 6 cups of rosehip tea, 20 rosehip buds, 29 reishi mushrooms.
  • Clothes: Sweatshirt (88%), thin wool sweater (70%), 2 ski jackets (14%, 10%), jeans (11%), 2 pairs of wool socks (79%, 16%), cotton toque (61%), wool toque (88%), trail boots (100%), rabbitskin mitts (90%), deerskin pants (98%). Bonus is at +9°C / +6°C.
  • Food: 14 kg fish, 8.8 kg venison, 3 boxes of crackers, 62 cattail stalks, 9 herbal tea and 5 coffee.
  • Fuel: 144 sticks, 10 reclaimed wood, 6 cedar, 15 coal
  • Tools: Flare pistol with 6 flare shells, hacksaw (28%), heavy hammer (67%), sewing kit (3%), quality tools, 1 flare, 3 fishing tackle
  • Material: 5 cloth, 6 leather, 1 deer hide (curing), 2 cured rabbit pelts, 5 gut (3 cured, 2 curing), 2 scrap metal, 4 fishing hooks, 1 fir firewood
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13 hours ago, Drifter Man said:

Sticks do not respawn as often as I expected and as I'm used to

This may be due to recent weather conditions.. I've noticed that sticks tend to be more plentiful after strong winds and/or blizzards. As if the high winds were causing sticks to break off of the trees.

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1 hour ago, JAFO said:

This may be due to recent weather conditions.. I've noticed that sticks tend to be more plentiful after strong winds and/or blizzards. As if the high winds were causing sticks to break off of the trees.

When I played in Voyageur ("1000 days") and in Interloper (earlier Snowballs up to No. 34), I observed that sticks respawned in all places regularly in about 3-day intervals. If I didn't pick them, the old ones would disappear and new ones would be in their place - I could tell that when they repositioned.

Now it seems that they only respawn in numbers in certain places while some other places just don't get new sticks, or only few ones (like one or two), and the intervals are less regular. Blizzards are frequent so I can't tell if there's a connection.

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I've been thinking about clothes again. I made a mistake when I recently repaired the sweatshirt, wasting two extra pieces of cloth on it due to failed repairs. I should have consulted my spreadsheets, which show clearly that the sweatshirt does not utilize cloth very well (numbers are in deg C-days per cloth spent on repairs, the higher the better):

  • wool toque ... 27.4
  • wool ear wrap ... 13.7
  • thin wool sweater ... 7.1
  • thermal underwear ... 8.0
  • plaid shirt ... 3.8
  • wool socks ... 3.7
  • cotton toque ... 3.6
  • hoodie ... 3.8
  • jeans ... 2.8
  • ski jacket ... 2.0
  • down vest ... 1.9
  • sweatshirt ... 1.9

I will keep just the thin wool sweater, the two toques (cotton + wool), one pair of wool socks, the furs (mitts + pants) and the trail boots. In addition, I noticed that the deerskin pants decay very slowly, less than 3% in 10 days. It will take a long time before they need repair. So if I could get another deer hide, I could make a pair deerskin boots with fishing tackle. The trail boots are good and I have lots of leather to repair them, but deerskin boots would boost my temperature bonus by another 1.5°C. I'm thinking of a ravaged deer carcass I spotted in the hills behind the Mountaineer's Hut. The carcass is guarded by the wolf that killed Snowball 42. Wish me luck :)

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Snowball 47 / Day 34

The recovery operation took place on Day 30 and encountered only minor hassle. With an eye on the wolf patrolling around, I approached the carcass in light fog, which allowed me to start a safe fire. Then I extracted some meat with the hacksaw and cooked it while waiting for the carcass to thaw. Afterwards I took the hide with my hands. Light fog turned into heavy fog and I didn't want to go home in it with the wolf nearby, so I extracted the guts as well and dropped them on the ground. The wolf still didn't notice anything.

I was getting worried that the fog would last until nightfall and panicked a bit. After the wolf passed around, I took just the cooked meat and the hide and ran in the opposite direction towards home. But I don't know this place well and soon I got lost. At least I managed to return to the fire in time to revive it from embers. Soon afterwards the wolf approached and got scared by the fire. This time I picked everything and took of towards Crystal Lake, on the way I was familiar with. I dropped the guts just after the hill and headed home. The fog lifted before sunset and I recovered the guts from there still on the same evening.

Otherwise there is little to report. I stay a lot in the Mountaineer's Hut without need for fire, but I spend some days in the fishing hut to avoid cabin fever. So far it has worked. Firewood keeps piling up and food is still plentiful. I don't have much to do.

  • Firestarting: 47 matches, firestriker (24%), 0.77 L fish oil
  • Medical: 12 pills of antibiotics, 2 bandages, 2 OMB wrappings, 1 stim, 7 cups of rosehip tea, 19 rosehip buds, 21 reishi mushrooms.
  • Clothes: Sweatshirt (78%), thin wool sweater (66%), ski jackets (11%), wool socks (72%), cotton toque (86%), wool toque (81%), trail boots (98%), rabbitskin mitts (87%), deerskin pants (97%). Bonus is at +9°C / +6°C.
  • Food: 9.4 kg fish, 9.7 kg venison, 3 boxes of crackers, 57 cattail stalks, 9 herbal tea and 5 coffee.
  • Fuel: 229 sticks, 10 reclaimed wood, 6 cedar, 14 coal
  • Tools: Flare pistol with 6 flare shells, hacksaw (28%), heavy hammer (66%), sewing kit (3%), quality tools, 1 flare, 5 fishing tackle
  • Material: 7 cloth, 6 leather, 2 deer hides (1+1 curing), 2 cured rabbit pelts, 7 gut (5+2 curing), 2 scrap metal, 1 fir firewood
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Fantastic run @Drifter Man!  Most impressive! :)

How about a little brainstorming on taking this thing to the next level?

I see you are already at level 3 for cooking.  If I were Snowball 47, I might start focusing on getting up to level 5 cooking, because then you could kill and safely eat a bear.  And if you could then kill a second bear, you would be able to craft a bearskin bedroll (or coat).

The flare gun is the easiest means of killing a bear.  Just let it get close and as it stands up before charging, fire into the center of it's body.  As long as the flare gun shell sticks to it, the bear will run around until it bleeds out.

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3 minutes ago, Timber Wolf said:

Fantastic run @Drifter Man!  Most impressive! :)

How about a little brainstorming on taking this thing to the next level?

I see you are already at level 3 for cooking.  If I were Snowball 47, I might start focusing on getting up to level 5 cooking, because then you could kill and safely eat a bear.  And if you could then kill a second bear, you would be able to craft a bearskin bedroll (or coat).

The flare gun is the easiest means of killing a bear.  Just let it get close and as it stands up before charging, fire into the center of it's body.  As long as the flare gun shell sticks to it, the bear will run around until it bleeds out.

Thanks! I'm kind of speedrunning the project and am just about to hit 40 days survived. Unless I have another accident, things look pretty good.

I could kill a bear with the flare pistol (one of the Snowballs did it if I recall correctly), but it is quite dangerous. There are two bears within reach of the Mountaineer's Hut and both are in wolf territories. The meat would be difficult to harvest and haul out of there. Currently my food situation does not warrant such an adventure, even if I was at Level 5 cooking.

Bearskin stuff, unfortunately, requires knife or hatchet to craft, just like wolfskin coat.

Instead I managed (well not by skill, just by plain luck) to get a wolf kill a deer only a few meters off the Mountaineer's Hut :) Another hide and two guts are curing on the floor, and on many days I'm no longer starving because food spoilage becomes an issue. Deerskin boots are done.

Mountaineer's Hotel it is now :D

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4 minutes ago, Drifter Man said:

Bearskin stuff, unfortunately, requires knife or hatchet to craft, just like wolfskin coat.

Shoot!  Sometimes I forget how few options you actually have! :(
 

6 minutes ago, Drifter Man said:

Instead I managed (well not by skill, just by plain luck) to get a wolf kill a deer only a few meters off the Mountaineer's Hut :) Another hide and two guts are curing on the floor, and on many days I'm no longer starving because food spoilage becomes an issue. Deerskin boots are done.

Wow!  Nice work.  Keep on rolling Snowball 47! :)

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Snowball 47 / Day 51

50 days survived - an important milestone. But I'm getting nervous, things don't seem as easy as they did just a few days ago. The main reason is firewood. The sticks just aren't respawning anymore. Day after day, I come to the familiar places, only to see useless tree limbs there. Even extending my runs (paid for with condition and fire made on the way) does not help keeping the supply up. I return tired, freezing and with a just few pieces of wood in my hands. I wouldn't need a lot of sticks if it weren't for that cabin fever. And even with cabin fever, I don't need a lot. Still, what I'm finding isn't enough.

The firestriker gave up ghost a few days ago (lasted until 6% condition, thanks for that). I'm training for firestarting level 4 to get more fire from the sticks I find. I'm eating meat at less than 75%, risking food poisoning. And last time I was fishing, I caught two pieces in six hours. Hmm...

  • Firestarting: 44 matches, 0.69 L fish oil
  • Medical: 12 pills of antibiotics, 2 bandages, 2 OMB wrappings, 1 stim, 7 cups of rosehip tea, 19 rosehip buds, 13 reishi mushrooms.
  • Clothes: Sweatshirt (51%), thin wool sweater (97%), wool socks (54%), cotton toque (85%), wool toque (61%), deerskin boots* (99%), trail boots (92%), rabbitskin mitts (80%), deerskin pants (93%). Bonus is at +9°C / +7°C.
  • Food: 23 kg fish, 3 kg venison, 1 kg rabbit, 3 boxes of crackers, 55 cattail stalks, 9 herbal tea and 5 coffee.
  • Fuel: 158 sticks, 10 reclaimed wood, 5 cedar, 13 coal
  • Tools: Flare pistol with 4 flare shells, hacksaw (27%), heavy hammer (62%), sewing kit (3%), quality tools, 1 flare, 3 fishing tackle
  • Material: 7 cloth, 6 leather, 1 deer hide, 4 rabbit pelts, 7 gut (6+1 curing), 2 scrap metal, 1 fir firewood

* I wear deerskin boots in the Mountaineer's Hut, especially when sleeping. Outside, where the temperature bonus doesn't really matter, I keep the trail boots on.

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Now, some observations.

Cabin fever. I think I can't get rid of cabin fever risk when I enter the Mountaineer's Hut from time to time, even just to check on the fireplace. The risk seems to only decrease when I'm constantly outside. Maybe the game evaluates each hour if I entered a shelter and if I did, it will not reduce cabin fever risk. I wonder if it works the other way round as well (so that you could cheat cabin fever by stepping outside for a moment every now and then).

World decay. By checking the temperature bonus of the Mountaineer's Hut, I confirm that outside temperatures decrease by 20°C by Day 50 on Interloper. Mountaineer's Hut bonus is 30°C on Day 50.

Fire duration. Fire duration bonus increases up to about -30°C or -32°C air temperature. At lower temperatures it is capped at 2 (i.e. fire burns 2x more slowly than indicated by the fire UI). Second, it uses the player's location air temperature as input. When I started the fire in the fireplace and stepped outside into -38°C to warm up by the other side of the wall, the fire received the maximum duration bonus of 2. Good way to fight cabin fever when you aren't in the mood for fishing! Just don't go inside to check on the fire...

TLD_fire.png

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Grats on day 50!  Wow!

Cabin Fever compares the time spent indoors vs. outdoors over the previous six days.  So if you spend long hours indoors in a crafting marathon, for example, you'll be fighting that big spike in indoor time for several days.  I often break up crafting over a few days to avoid this.  I find spending about 1/3 of my total hours outdoors completely avoids the risk -- and that's probably too much since I'm too lazy to actually test. :D

Thanks for the clarification on how the fire duration bonus works, too!  It's a new tool, now that I understand it.

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Day 50!  Totally awesome!  :D

 

13 hours ago, Drifter Man said:

The main reason is firewood. The sticks just aren't respawning anymore. Day after day, I come to the familiar places, only to see useless tree limbs there. Even extending my runs (paid for with condition and fire made on the way) does not help keeping the supply up.

This is an interesting development.  I have always assumed the sticks would respawn at the same rate throughout a game.  :|

Great job with the fire duration tests!  That is very useful information. :)

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2 hours ago, Timber Wolf said:

Day 50!  Totally awesome!  :D

 

This is an interesting development.  I have always assumed the sticks would respawn at the same rate throughout a game.  :|

Great job with the fire duration tests!  That is very useful information. :)

Voyager is apparently MUCH more lenient with the stick department....in CH, about day 100. Many sticks still....

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2 hours ago, Timber Wolf said:

Day 50!  Totally awesome!  :D

 

This is an interesting development.  I have always assumed the sticks would respawn at the same rate throughout a game.  :|

Great job with the fire duration tests!  That is very useful information. :)

It was mentioned by Hinterland when the world decay system was introduced that firewood becomes more scarce, so I'm not so surprised. Assuming that Day 50 is the day on which Interloper world decay stops, I started taking notes of how many sticks I found, where and on what day. Hopefully I can turn it into a system so that I don't have to run to all places every day like I'm running now. I want to go only to those places that have sticks on that day. Over the first 5 days since 50, I've averaged 25 sticks per day, which is quite good.

Also, I've rethought coal. Normally when I start a fire in the fishing hut, it's like -40°C outside and I'm freezing, so I can't afford to wait 30 minutes to add coal. So I put in a lot of sticks to get temperatures to positive and afterwards I don't really need the coal because I just sit in the hut and don't care if it's felt 5°C or 25°C. I decided to start putting some coal on my fires just to convert it to sticks at the end of the day. I could make about 5 sticks of each coal this way. I'll only keep a few pieces for longer trips when I really want to warm up fast.

My third idea is not practical but I will share it anyway: Let's say I'm at firestarting level 5 (only 4 actually, but I plan to get there). If I put 60 sticks into the fire, I get 702 minutes if nominal fire duration. Assuming that I can pull out a torch and drop it (or extinguish and holster) in 5 seconds IRL (= 1 minute in-game), I can then produce about 64 sticks in 60 minutes. So I've generated 4 sticks in an hour :) It's not practical because you would have to find two more hours to process all these torches back into sticks. Maybe I'll give it a try once though, just for fun.

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13 hours ago, Ruruwawa said:

Grats on day 50!  Wow!

Cabin Fever compares the time spent indoors vs. outdoors over the previous six days.  So if you spend long hours indoors in a crafting marathon, for example, you'll be fighting that big spike in indoor time for several days.  I often break up crafting over a few days to avoid this.  I find spending about 1/3 of my total hours outdoors completely avoids the risk -- and that's probably too much since I'm too lazy to actually test. :D

Thanks for the clarification on how the fire duration bonus works, too!  It's a new tool, now that I understand it.

Yes, I think even less than 1/3 is enough, maybe 1/4 or even 1/5. For me the problem is that anytime I go outside for a longer period of time, I must have fire - I spend a match. But inside the Mountaineer's Hut, I could sit out most days without fire. Cabin fever forces me out for more time that I can usefully spend there, so a Snowball constantly lives on the edge of insanity :) I try to be in the Mountaineer's Hut as long as possible, then go out and make as long a fire as possible to get rid of cabin fever.

15 hours ago, Drifter Man said:

I think I can't get rid of cabin fever risk when I enter the Mountaineer's Hut from time to time, even just to check on the fireplace.

This is probably wrong. You're probably right that going in or out for a short time does not matter.

15 hours ago, Drifter Man said:

When I started the fire in the fireplace and stepped outside into -38°C to warm up by the other side of the wall, the fire received the maximum duration bonus of 2. Good way to fight cabin fever when you aren't in the mood for fishing! Just don't go inside to check on the fire...

The part about duration bonus is correct but not the part about cabin fever. I've just found out that staying glued to the outside wall of Mountaineer's Hut does not reduce cabin fever risk. The risk just stays constant and you'll never get rid of cabin fever this way. I have no choice but to go to the fishing hut and spend a full day there, or to make an extended trip to collect sticks from some distant areas.

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7 minutes ago, Drifter Man said:

It was mentioned by Hinterland when the world decay system was introduced that firewood becomes more scarce, so I'm not so surprised. Assuming that Day 50 is the day on which Interloper world decay stops, I started taking notes of how many sticks I found, where and on what day. Hopefully I can turn it into a system so that I don't have to run to all places every day like I'm running now. I want to go only to those places that have sticks on that day. Over the first 5 days since 50, I've averaged 25 sticks per day, which is quite good.

Also, I've rethought coal. Normally when I start a fire in the fishing hut, it's like -40°C outside and I'm freezing, so I can't afford to wait 30 minutes to add coal. So I put in a lot of sticks to get temperatures to positive and afterwards I don't really need the coal because I just sit in the hut and don't care if it's felt 5°C or 25°C. I decided to start putting some coal on my fires just to convert it to sticks at the end of the day. I could make about 5 sticks of each coal this way. I'll only keep a few pieces for longer trips when I really want to warm up fast.

My third idea is not practical but I will share it anyway: Let's say I'm at firestarting level 5 (only 4 actually, but I plan to get there). If I put 60 sticks into the fire, I get 702 minutes if nominal fire duration. Assuming that I can pull out a torch and drop it (or extinguish and holster) in 5 seconds IRL (= 1 minute in-game), I can then produce about 64 sticks in 60 minutes. So I've generated 4 sticks in an hour :) It's not practical because you would have to find two more hours to process all these torches back into sticks. Maybe I'll give it a try once though, just for fun.

Wow, lol....so you found a loophole...

So due to the bonus fire duration, you may be able to acrue slightly more sticks than added i.e. a net stick gain?!

That would be interesting....

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2 minutes ago, Thrasador said:

Wow, lol....so you found a loophole...

So due to the bonus fire duration, you may be able to acrue slightly more sticks than added i.e. a net stick gain?!

That would be interesting....

I don't think it's a practical loophole, just a theoretical possibility. Collecting sticks the usual way is much more preferable.

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