Snowballs in Hell

[Timber Wolf]

2 minutes ago, Ruruwawa said:

Me too.  This (and especially @Drifter Man 's always great commentary) has been the main appeal of this thread.  So I ditched my pantless interloper and rolled a fresh stalker game in TWM.

You've got to give it a try with the Old Bear!  That spices it up without the mercilessness of Interloper.

[Ruruwawa]

2 minutes ago, Timber Wolf said:

You've got to give it a try with the Old Bear!  That spices it up without the mercilessness of Interloper.

You know, I might.  I've learned a ton of subtle details about TWM from this thread.

[mystifeid]

1 hour ago, mystifeid said:

I've noticed three possible spawn locations for this item : one in DP, one in ML and one in the tail section. However, I have only ever found one per game.

This could be different now (or perhaps it always was) - second attempt and I find it in the tail section.

[Jolan]

3 hours ago, Drifter Man said:

It seems to me that the rate at which the shelter falls apart is about 10% per day, whether it is used or not. Above certain condition (I think 80%) all you need is 1-2 sticks, but then you begin to need cloth.

In my non-interloper game I've taken to mending it immediately upon exit and then trying to swing by at least every day.  Once I start needing cloth to repair, I break it down.  It wastes cloth, but then I'm not in interloper or confined to one map.  

[mystifeid]

Everything was going pretty well until I walked up to the rope down to Eric's Falls and started looking at the wolf below. I have a mouse profile with an auto-walk macro on one of the buttons. Unfortunately the wolf took my attention and I forgot the macro was still on. So I walked straight off the edge of the cliff, lol.

This sort of thing is quite fun except for one drawback - the number of spawns required to end up in TWM with a hacksaw. I've grown to hate quitting and respawning.

I did check out the obvious place for a long term snow shelter but I'm still scratching my head about what other place would be as good.

[Drifter Man]

12 hours ago, Timber Wolf said:

On the ground right next to the cargo container.

Next time I pass, I must take a closer look.

12 hours ago, mystifeid said:

I've noticed three possible spawn locations for this item : one in DP, one in ML and one in the tail section. However, I have only ever found one per game.

In my only longer non-TWM interloper game, I found one next to a corpse on the far side of Jackrabbit Island.

[mystifeid]

3 minutes ago, Drifter Man said:

In my only longer non-TWM interloper game, I found one next to a corpse on the far side of Jackrabbit Island.

Good to know!

The other places I've found them are the hunters blind on Unnamed Pond and in a crate in No.5 Mine.

[Troxism]

Something that you should probably be aware of (if you aren't already):

The temperature drop over time does not apply to the inside of the Mountaineer's Cabin. This means on Day 50+, going inside the Cabin is actually +30C feels like instead of +10C like it is on days 1-5. So it's a total of +35C feels like when sleeping there on the high end of the temperature drop. This is the same for the backs of caves btw. Snow Shelters DO NOT benefit from this; they always give +15C regardless. Note that this increases linearly from day 5 to 50, so on day 30 for example you would experience about +20C feels like from going into the cabin.

So depending on exactly what kind of special spot you have in mind for the snow shelter, it might still be better to stay in the cabin on days 30+. But maybe I'm not being creative enough with the types of spots I'm assuming you plan to use (I can think of a few spots off the top of my head that would increase the temp bonus/give immunity to windchill to the snowshelter so you could make fires easily, or provide a nearby area to warm up, but to be fair I haven't thought about such a topic much so it's quite possible I'm forgetting something else.)

Edit: To be fair one huge problem with the Cabin even with this would be the fact that it's almost impossible to get the 'outdoor fire' duration bonus in it which is a lot of firewood wasted if you aren't utilising it (this is why you always make a fire just on the outdoor part of the cave btw and sit in the indoor part yourself while you cook ect). I haven't been able to consistently cause it but I never tried super hard to reproduce it so maybe there is some consistent way to make it work.

I do have at least one possible way to ease the fire duration/constantly gathering sticks' problem for this challenge but idk if that method is actually possible to pull off consistently; I am mostly extrapolating the situation from my always playing MHM days which had a similar 'run around gather sticks/chop a limb, come back to fire warm up because you can't actually go indoors' type gameplay.

[Drifter Man]

35 minutes ago, Troxism said:

The temperature drop over time does not apply to the inside of the Mountaineer's Cabin.

This is interesting indeed and no, I didn't know about it, and it's probably the most important piece of information I could get at this point. You are right: I just checked in my game, I have -9°C inside and -25°C outside air temperature on Day 21. That's +16°C bonus, compared to +10°C bonus that I thought the Hut had based on my checking once at the start of the game (not including +5°C from the beds)

I initially didn't want to divulge the specific place I had in mind in the shelter to allow some people find it for themselves, but now that everyone has found out, it's the three-way open cave close to the spawn point above the Echo Ravine. There is +8°C bonus given by the location, +15°C from the shelter, +3°C from sleeping in the shelter, for a total of +26°C. Mountaineer's Hut (including bed) has +15°C on Day 1, +21°C on Day 21. If this goes on with the same rate, the Hut will beat the shelter before Day 40.

I suppose it's unintended behavior, something the developers have overlooked, and I'm a bit disappointed since living in the shelter would be utterly cool  Nevertheless, thanks for this critical information.

It also indicates that outside air temperature decreases by about 1°C per 3-4 days on Interloper.

[Troxism]

Yeah I was thinking the three way cave would be the one really obvious spot (I just wasn't sure if there was some way better spot I was forgetting), but there are some other 'snow caves' you can place it in in various spots in TWM.

As for it being 'intended', well actually I'm pretty sure it is. The backs of caves/the cabin are actually supposed to be 'shelters' and if they also were affected by the temperature drop you would basically be unable to live in them; even with the Bearskin Bedroll and top notch Interloper clothing it would be very hard to sleep in the Cabin without a fire on day 50+ during anything but the warmest hours of the day. It would also make PV a really awful map overall for Interloper (you would basically be forced to loot it all before day 50) esp if you were actually trying to explore and get saplings ect. And TWM would basically be off limits unless you really wanted to have 'feels like' -20C or below constantly no matter what clothing you had on except in the two interior transition caves.

[Drifter Man]

Snowball 34 / Day 21

I am close to the end of Stage 3, or at least as I imagined it to precede Stage 4 (living in the snow shelter with occasional visits to the Hut to replace broken snares). I have eight snares, two fishing lines and tomorrow I could start working on rabbitskin mittens. However, the info from @Troxism changes the game quite a bit. It seems that building a shelter at the 3-Way Cave is not such a good idea after all.

Two problems on which I need advice:

- Cabin fever. I'm constantly battling cabin fever. I can only get rid of it by staying outside, but I can't stay outside without lighting a fire and spending a match. What exactly happens when cabin fever breaks out? It says you can't rest indoors for 24 hours. Can I stay indoors for those 24 hours (and then it resets and I can rest)? How long before it hits again? Does it have other effects such as condition loss or fatigue?

- Rabbits: The snares don't work very well. I've been placing them for 8 days (in increasing numbers) and only got 5 rabbits. That's not enough to feed me. I still have about 40-50 cattails (I even returned to Eric's Falls to collect those that grow there), but I need a sustainable source. Are the above numbers normal yield from a single rabbit zone on Interloper?

Additional note: Waterfall Cave and the cave under the Fallen Tree Bridge searched, no loot found (except some firewood). It looks like no mag lens to me, but I don't think it would be much help in my situation. Forest Cave and the two Echo Peaks are the last locations I haven't searched.

[Drifter Man]

24 minutes ago, Troxism said:

As for it being 'intended', well actually I'm pretty sure it is. The backs of caves/the cabin are actually supposed to be 'shelters' and if they also were affected by the temperature drop you would basically be unable to live in them; even with the Bearskin Bedroll and top notch Interloper clothing it would be very hard to sleep in the Cabin without a fire on day 50+ during anything but the warmest hours of the day. It would also make PV a really awful map overall for Interloper (you would basically be forced to loot it all before day 50) esp if you were actually trying to explore and get saplings ect.

It does make sense. I don't have the experience with other maps on interloper but I can imagine it was intended as you say. My assumption was that the interloper world is meant to become uninhabitable as time progresses.

[Troxism]

Once you get cabin fever you cannot rest/pass time indoors until you spend 24 hours outdoors. Doesn't have to be consecutive. It doesn't have any other effects. You can just stand around indoors if you want, but then it will never go away.

Cabin fever is based on being indoors too long out of the last 6 days (144 hours). The exact amount of days might vary but the general idea is the same (it might not exactly be 6 days but around that range). Basically if you have spent more then a certain % of those hours indoors (This % MIGHT, I'm not sure, be based on difficulty level) you get cabin fever. The best way to clear cabin fever/prevent it completely is to do boiling/cooking outdoors. This btw is where a snow shelter would come in handy for you regardless as it would let you sleep outside next to a fire during those sessions. Or you could just make a fire in the fishing hut, but it would be awkward to transfer it back to the cabin and get it warm enough there as well. Ofc the advantage of outdoor fires like in the Fishing Hut/outdoor parts of caves like I mentioned is the improved fuel efficiency as the fire lasts longer too.

However I'm not sure how much this helps as I realise you have the problem of 'I actually don't have anything to do next to a fire because I don't live long enough to need to go on boiling marathons constantly with a mag lens like standard interloper'. Like I said, this challenge is very much like Mega Hard Mode almost in every way.

Rabbits: Different zones have different yields. AFAIK it has nothing to do with difficulty (I got absurd amounts in the Ravine on Interloper and your experience here on TWM is about average for me on both Stalker and Interloper, but it depends on the exact rabbit run you are using AFAIK and I don't know the abundance of all of them as there are a lot of different ones (maybe try the one on the beach?).

Finally: I never actually checked this, but you should check if the three-way cave is counted as 'indoors' and also doesn't drop temperature. I doubt it (since afaik you can't cure there so it's not 'indoors') but worth double checking if you get a chance.

[Troxism]

5 minutes ago, Drifter Man said:

It does make sense. I don't have the experience with other maps on interloper but I can imagine it was intended as you say. My assumption was that the interloper world is meant to become uninhabitable as time progresses.

If that is the case then the devs have done a poor job of that; it's quite possible to live 5000 days on Interloper (probably longer but that was just a rough estimate using some resource usage rates in 'late game' Interloper with conservative play) if you had the patience to bother. Even with extra restrictions. It's kind of why I wish you started with a Bedroll on Interloper; although it would make it easier (which would suck), it would enable you to play Mega Hard Mode on Interloper which would be pretty fun.

[Drifter Man]

9 minutes ago, Troxism said:

Once you get cabin fever you cannot rest/pass time indoors until you spend 24 hours outdoors. Doesn't have to be consecutive. It doesn't have any other effects. You can just stand around indoors if you want, but then it will never go away.

I got cabin fever once (just before dying for other reasons, so I didn't see it end) and I remember the 24-hour no-rest countdown decreased while I waited indoors. I assume that if I let it roll to zero, cabin fever would immediately break out again. Bad news for me - since I essentially cannot be outside without burning a fire, cabin fever for me equals 24 hours of fire. A massive drain on firewood, although doable from time to time. The 50 or so liters of water I would produce in a single such session would last me for the rest of the game, probably. I could also do some fishing, although I'm not happy to spend gut this way.

I need fire for two purposes: 1) to warm up in the late night/early morning if it is cold, or sometimes when blizzard breaks out unexpectedly. 2) to stay warm while working on carcasses. Cooking and water only take little time. Basically, whenever I step out of the hut to do anything, I need fire very soon, or I need to return to the Hut for warmth.

Thanks for the info on rabbits. I will spread out my snares. As for the 3-Way Cave, I unfortunately don't plan to make a trip there anytime soon.

[Troxism]

It's possible I am wrong about it not counting down indoors (or maybe it was patched at some point and I'm remembering an old version), but even if so it still means no sleep for 24 hours which is a problem. I'm not sure if it would 'reset' if you waited it out indoors; my gut tells me you would be safe after the 24 hours and it would give you a fresh slate but I couldn't tell you for sure as I've never tried that. Honestly I've actually gotten cabin fever like... twice since it was added. Generally the best way to deal with cabin fever is to not get it to begin with (because getting it at an awkward time can be bad). From my experience spending at least 30-35% of your time outdoors is sufficient to never develop risk, but it might be possible to spend less then that; I've never really tried to push the limits with it as it's not something I ever run into in normal gameplay.

I also mentioned a way to stretch your sticks: Basically higher level firestarting = more fire duration at levels 2, 4 and 5 (10/25/50% respectively). It takes 20 fires to get to lvl 2, 30 to get from 2 to 3, 50 to get from 3 to 4 and 100 to get from 4 to 5. Obviously you don't have that many matches, but what you can do is: start a fire (preferably outdoors in a wind sheltered area like in the outdoor part of a cave or a fishing hut), add a bunch of firewood to it, then take brands from it and spam light single stick fires with it via a bunch of sticks you have on you. You can get 1 fire per stick this way, and this is a method you can use to get Firestarting 5 before day 10 on 'standard' Interloper quite easily. 

Obviously the problem is you need to both feed the fire you are taking sticks out of (so that you can stay warm enough while you are doing this), and also spend sticks making these 'training fires' (you can cycle 3-4 and keep relighting them as they go out depending on skill btw, so you don't need to clutter the whole area with a million fires). But it's a way to spend surplus sticks NOW to both reduce your chance of failing to start fires (ie wasting matches for no reason) and to make every stick count for more later. And it would couple well with clearing cabin fever outdoors, as this also takes a lot of time (fires start very slow). 

Now obviously it's not likely you can get that many spare sticks in your situation very easily. But it's an idea to consider at least if it might be feasable, because getting lvl 5 firestarting would mean a lot more flexibility to not have to gather so many sticks, and you could MAYBE even get a perma fire going outdoors (between 50% duration and the outdoors duration bonus it MIGHT barely be possible even in your situation) and live past your matches. At worst you could use the windfall from having higher level firestarting early on to gather up a surplus of sticks until you run out of matches and then slowly expend it during the 'permafire' phase after you run out of matches to live another 5-10 extra days past where you would die.

Another problem is this is super tedious and boring as it takes a lot of 'IRL time'. I recommend doing it in a totally safe place like a cave and just turning off game sound and watching something on another monitor.

[Timber Wolf]

More useful snow shelter locations:

Cave near the rope to the Summit.  Same warmth situation as the 3-way Cave.

 

Start a fire inside and enjoy part of its warmth from here (along with wind protection from hut).

 

Start a protected fire outside and enjoy part of its warmth from here (along with wind protection from hut).

 

[Ohbal]

1 hour ago, Drifter Man said:

- Rabbits: The snares don't work very well. I've been placing them for 8 days (in increasing numbers) and only got 5 rabbits. That's not enough to feed me. I still have about 40-50 cattails (I even returned to Eric's Falls to collect those that grow there), but I need a sustainable source. Are the above numbers normal yield from a single rabbit zone on Interloper?

 

53 minutes ago, Drifter Man said:

[...]probably. I could also do some fishing, although I'm not happy to spend gut this way.

Yo, I'm merely an observer as I rarely step out of Voyager but here is my view. Snares are not working so well, but they are working and producing guts. Use those guts to get fish. As you level it up you'll get rid of cabin fever, you'll have both food AND when cooked, oil, that you can use as accelerant to extend the life of your matches. 

[Timber Wolf]

I just had a start with no hammer, magnifying glass or hacksaw - but along with the usual 12 wood matches in the hut, there was also 20 cardboard matches in the crate next to the workbench.  Ever have that start before?

[Pillock]

1 hour ago, Drifter Man said:

I got cabin fever once (just before dying for other reasons, so I didn't see it end) and I remember the 24-hour no-rest countdown decreased while I waited indoors. I assume that if I let it roll to zero, cabin fever would immediately break out again. Bad news for me - since I essentially cannot be outside without burning a fire, cabin fever for me equals 24 hours of fire. A massive drain on firewood, although doable from time to time. The 50 or so liters of water I would produce in a single such session would last me for the rest of the game, probably. I could also do some fishing, although I'm not happy to spend gut this way.

I need fire for two purposes: 1) to warm up in the late night/early morning if it is cold, or sometimes when blizzard breaks out unexpectedly. 2) to stay warm while working on carcasses. Cooking and water only take little time. Basically, whenever I step out of the hut to do anything, I need fire very soon, or I need to return to the Hut for warmth.

Thanks for the info on rabbits. I will spread out my snares. As for the 3-Way Cave, I unfortunately don't plan to make a trip there anytime soon.

Sorry if I'm missing something obvious, but surely you can use Engine Cave to warm up in without a fire, as long as you have enough food and water and wakefulness (for want of a better word) to last you while you pass the time? Is there anywhere you can catch rabbits nearby? You can then sleep in a shelter when needed (I suppose for this you'd need the shelter to be at the top end, as there's nothing much useful to be done at the bottom and you can't pass through the cave without using fire anyway).

Have you tried harvesting carcasses in small batches, warming up somewhere inside in between? That might not be feasible where you (and they) are, come to think of it.

And fishing: fishing is good. Not only is it good calories, but the oil allows you to make torches, which allow you to guarantee 1-match firestarting every time (one torch will last at least 6 failures, probably more). I guess you need the hammer to fish (unless icesmasherbars spawn anywhere ever in TWM?), but if you can get the fishing hole open, using a low-condition set of tackle to catch a few fish seems to me like much better last use of it than ruining on a clothing repair. I don't think tackle-condition counts for anything when fishing, but I could be wrong. In any case, if you do decide to fish, it is probably best left until after you have your new boots and panties, so you can maximize warmth and minimise fire useage inside the hut.

Good luck with number 34!

[Ruruwawa]

30 minutes ago, Pillock said:

Have you tried harvesting carcasses in small batches, warming up somewhere inside in between? That might not be feasible where you (and they) are, come to think of it.

I had this fantasy of setting up a shelter in the 3-way cave at the very edge of the warmth bonus, with a rabbit trap in the doorway of my shelter.  No clue whether you can set up a shelter there, or whether the rabbits will set off a trap in that spot... but just imagine how awesome that would be.

 

30 minutes ago, Pillock said:

And fishing: fishing is good.

It's honestly hard to imagine thriving in Interloper without fishing.  Yep, it uses a fire so a magnifier is very helpful.  And it uses scrap metal and there isn't much of that in TWM.  But everywhere else -- it's easy calories with no condition loss.   You might need to build a fire, but the weather can't blow it out.  Plus fish cooks twice as fast to skill up your cooking faster.  And I never get cabin fever because the fish hut counts as outdoors.

I use the low condition tackle trick too.  On my long voyageur run I've been using the same 5% tackle for more than an in-game month now, lol.  Fishing 5 + cooking 5 + firestarting 5 I catch 12-16 fish (12k+ calories) per 8 hour 'cast', and cook them over a few sticks.  It's great.

[mystifeid]

7 hours ago, Troxism said:

Finally: I never actually checked this, but you should check if the three-way cave is counted as 'indoors' and also doesn't drop temperature. I doubt it (since afaik you can't cure there so it's not 'indoors') but worth double checking if you get a chance.

Had a look at a day 200 save and the air temp bonus was still 8C.

[Drifter Man]

11 hours ago, Troxism said:

Now obviously it's not likely you can get that many spare sticks in your situation very easily. But it's an idea to consider at least if it might be feasable, because getting lvl 5 firestarting would mean a lot more flexibility to not have to gather so many sticks, and you could MAYBE even get a perma fire going outdoors (between 50% duration and the outdoors duration bonus it MIGHT barely be possible even in your situation) and live past your matches.

Actually I'm able to collect quite a lot of firewood at this point. And the outdoor fire duration bonus is substantial (I didn't know about it at all, although I had the "feeling" that fires somehow last longer outside). I've just been to the fishing hut to ward off cabin fever, stoked the fire to last for about 9 hours and it lasted at least 15 in the end! I wanted it to end in the morning but it lasted into the afternoon. Next time I'll check how many sticks are really needed to run fire for 24 hours. If increasing my firestarting skill (using your trick) allows me to reduce my need to 60 sticks per day, I'm confident I can keep permanent fire.

10 hours ago, Timber Wolf said:

More useful snow shelter locations:

I especially like the last one - not the shelter, but the fire. I could sleep safely in the Hut if I could run my envisaged perma-fire there, I might even store my clothes in the hatch to reduce wear. I could go outside anytime to get rid of cabin fever risk, and it is closer to stick spawn locations than the fishing hut. Also, I wouldn't risk being eaten by wolves when I need to seek out my fire at night or in fog. Is the fire reliably protected from all directions there?

10 hours ago, Ohbal said:

Yo, I'm merely an observer as I rarely step out of Voyager but here is my view. Snares are not working so well, but they are working and producing guts. Use those guts to get fish. As you level it up you'll get rid of cabin fever, you'll have both food AND when cooked, oil, that you can use as accelerant to extend the life of your matches.

Exactly my thinking now. Get guts from rabbits, get calories from fish. I have a few pieces of scrap metal that can be turned into hooks. No other use for them anyway.

[Drifter Man]

10 hours ago, Timber Wolf said:

I just had a start with no hammer, magnifying glass or hacksaw - but along with the usual 12 wood matches in the hut, there was also 20 cardboard matches in the crate next to the workbench.  Ever have that start before?

Nope, never happened to me... in 30 attempts.

[Drifter Man]

10 hours ago, Pillock said:

Sorry if I'm missing something obvious, but surely you can use Engine Cave to warm up in without a fire, as long as you have enough food and water and wakefulness (for want of a better word) to last you while you pass the time? Is there anywhere you can catch rabbits nearby? You can then sleep in a shelter when needed (I suppose for this you'd need the shelter to be at the top end, as there's nothing much useful to be done at the bottom and you can't pass through the cave without using fire anyway).

This was the very initial idea for placing the shelter. You can use the Engine Cave to warm up, but it's a slow going, and it gives you cabin fever - I checked a while ago. And there is just one rabbit run nearby, who knows how many rabbits it can yield. And the shelter performs much worse than the Hut temperature-wise in the long run - especially if placed outside one of the outdoor locations with temperature bonus like the 3-Way Cave. So no, I don't plan to do this. The shelter was a key idea in getting to the summit, though.

10 hours ago, Pillock said:

Have you tried harvesting carcasses in small batches, warming up somewhere inside in between? That might not be feasible where you (and they) are, come to think of it.

I did, in warm afternoons you can do that with the hacksaw. I scored a deer+wolf combo with my flare pistol in a place on which I couldn't build a fire. I processed the deer for 3 days, got all the meat and one gut. Then the weather got worse and before I could come back, the carcass decayed. The wolf died elsewhere and I got its meat and guts with the help of fire.