Interloper run II (v388)


Hotzn

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So I found my doom on my first Interloper run. After surviving for 9 days, I ended up in TWM, desperately looking for cattails on the lake in the middle of the night and at 5% condition... and met a hungry wolf. For those interested, the story is found here.

I started a second run and I'm currently on day 36. Might as well report a little how I'm going about. So...

Day 36:

Returning from a trip to the coast, I am warming up again in my cabin on Jackrabbit Island. 4 hours of daylight remain, I've starved down to 80% but have some rabbit meat lined up outside in the snow, next to the veranda, so I'll regain some health overnight. 5 snares are set up behind the cabin (I put them there to be able to harvest any rabbits caught in them while being shielded from the wind). I have the impression that they mostly catch rabbits in the morning, so I expect to have some more rabbit tomorrow. On the kitchen floor I have 27 litres of clean drinking water und countless sticks. So no problem when it comes to feeding fires or myself. Matches: 25 in my backpack and another 12 stored away in the oven. That's not too much, and I should try to use the magnifying lens as often as I can. I have a hammer and a hacksaw, also a box of quality tools to repair them.

Clothes: I've crafted the deerskin pants, which are still at 98%, and the rabbitskin mitts, which are at 94%. 12 cured guts, 1 cured leather and some cured rabbit skins are stored in the cupboard in the bedroom. I can repair the mittens, but will need more deerskin to repair the pants one day. My current clothing gives me a +10°C temperature bonus and an additional +6°C windproof bonus:

Clothing.png

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So, what am I still lacking? Let's see...

- a decent toque (might be found scavenging new locations)

- more clothing items (see above)

- the storm lantern (see above)

- a bedroll (see above; alternatively I would have to hunt bears etc., which is a long way off considering I don't even have a bow yet)

- a knife (would need to travel to DP or FM, gathering coal and scrap metal on the way)

- a bow (must search for Maple saplings, which might be found in CH)

Hmmm... considering all of the above, I am thinking about a trip to DP, as that would allow me to combine everything. However... hmmm... I might be unable to carry all the loot back here. I must also think about how to procure food in DP. Hmmm... I should take along some provisions and maybe some snares. There is also a stretch of the way to DP that likely does not provide any shelter - between Misantrope's and the Crumbled Highway. Maybe I should construct a snow shelter somewhere between those two. This could also give me some new insight, as I've never made a snow shelter before. OK, so this is the plan:

- Bring some provisions and materials to Misantrope's to make that another potential temporary base.

- Construct a snow shelter further along the way to DP.

- Travel to DP and make the knife.

- Loot DP.

- Return to Jackrabbit's via the same route.

Ha!

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Day 37:

In the morning, a blizzard is blowing. I hang around the cabin, wondering what to do. Clicking on one of the benches, it says I need a hatchet to break it down. Is that true? No, it's a lie. I find out I can break it down with the hammer (which I do to pass the time). So when clicking on it, the proper text should read, "Requires another tool to break down".

I also notice an old, old bug has returned (or has never been fixed): When I place my snares on the floor inside the cabin, they appear standing upright (looking as if they have been triggered). Interestingly, one of them appears correctly as lying flat on the floor. No idea why that is...

Snares.png

The blizzard subsides with 8 hours of daylight remaining. Checking my 5 snares, I see that 4 of them have caught rabbits. I spend the day harvesting the carcasses for 4.8 kg of meat (I only harvest pieces with either a full 1.0 kg or at least 0.4 kg) and slipping back inside, resting in the bed to warm up again, all the time hoping for some sunlight to light a fire (without using up a match) and cook all that rabbit. Unfortunately, the day passes without the sun coming through. That leaves me with quite some pieces of raw rabbit lying in the snow behind the cabin and a lot of time spent inside. Hope I don't contract cabin fever. This gives me an idea: cabin fever could be calculated in a way that only time spent inside is counted during which the player is completely warmed up. Maybe it even IS like that (I don't know). It's not a necessary thing though, until now I never even had a risk of cabin fever showing up.

So I go to bed when darkness falls, hoping to find more rabbits in my now 6 snares behind the house tomorrow and hopefully get some sun...

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Day 38:

Another blizzard in the morning (I dismantle the second bench with the hammer), which dies down when 8 hours of the day remain. Do I see a pattern here? Check the snares: 2 more rabbits caught. The weather during the day is grey, windy and nasty, and in the end I use a match to relight my campfire behind the cabin, cooking all that rabbit meat and using the warmth of the fire to harvest 7 guts altogether from all those rabbit carcasses. I guess that was worth it, and I return inside late in the night for some well-deserved sleep.

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Day 39:

Waking up with 12 hours of daylight left, I feel it is time to carry some stuff over to Misantrope's - food, water, the hammer and my snares at least. Peeking outside, it's a bit too cold for my taste to start the journey. When 8 daylight hours remain, temperatures have gone up, it's a felt -19°C now and that seems allright. However, I am heavily loaded with 34 kg of stuff when I set out. I've hardly left when a nasty wind picks up, and I am forced to slip into the fishing hut between Jackrabbit and Misantrope's and light a fire in the stove. Have to put all the sticks I carry into it to be able to warm up. Now meanwhile, what to do? I have searched this hut already, but strangely I seem to have forgotten the small cupboard. Strange, strange... there is a new toque in it, with the Canadian Maple leaf. It's good warmth value for weight, so I'll take that, thank you. I also catch a trout before moving on. Arriving at Misantrope's, I am already quite tired and very slow. This is dangerous, but luckily there are no wolves around, and I make it safely into the cabin.

I have been here before, so the place is already looted, but I break down some curtains while warming up. Then I descend back towards where Jackrabbit's is and place my 6 snares down there where rabbits jump around, 3 on the edge of Misantrope's and 3 on the tiny island beyond. Let's see it they catch something. However, they are very exposed, and I will need a lot of sticks (or other firewood) to harvest them. Collecting some sticks around the cabin, I then slip back in and destroy a chair with my hammer to get more firewood and cloth. Then I'm tired and darkness falls. Off to bed.

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Day 40:

After a wonderful 11-hour sleep, I wake up with 13 hours of daylight remaining. Today I want to learn something about the snow shelter. So I grab all my 11 cloth and 9 sticks to slip outside... and learn that 15 sticks and 5 cloth are required. Oh well... might as well collect some sticks and explore the island a bit... brrr, it's cold... I barely manage to get a couple of sticks together before being forced back inside to warm up. And then a blizzard starts which almost lasts the whole day. I break down several pieces of furniture with the hammer to pass the time, this time maximising the outcome of firewood, not cloth. When the blizzard dies down, only 3 hours of daylight remain. My snares on Misantrope's have caught nothing, by the way. I start a fire shielded from the wind on the veranda and learn that each piece of reclaimed wood gives the fire a +3°C. Interesting.

Feeding the fire endless amounts of reclaimed wood, I make more than 20 litres of drinking water through the night. This is dropped inside the cabin for future runs. Then it's off to bed...

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Day 41:

Sleeping through fog and the greater part of the day, I wake up with some 5 daylight hours left. Peeking outside, I am barked up by a wolf. Feeling cocky I let it approach. There is this little fence around the house, am I safe in front of the door? Apparently not, since the wolf suddenly growls and jumps forward. I click on the door and manage to get inside. The screen blinks red just before the loading screen appears, so the wolf seems to have gotten me a bit. When I am inside the cabin, something weird happens: On the right hand side of the screen it is indicated that I have suffered a sprained ankle, but when trying to access the medical section from the radial menu, the cross is not displayed as orange and I can't access it. So no sprain after all. Hmmm... is this a bug? Checking my clothes, I may have suffered some damage. Or has my clothing condition gone down due to usage and bad weather? Not sure.

I break down some more furniture to allow the wolf to wander away in the meantime, but a blizzard starts and I have to spend the rest of the day inside mending clothes and such.

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Day 42:

In the early morning, I check all my 6 snares. The 3 placed on the edge of Misantrope's still have nothing, so I remove them, presuming the rabbits don't go there. On the tiny island, all three snares have caught something, but it's too cold to harvest the carcasses. Back inside the cabin to warm up and repair some clothing. And place some snares on the table...

305620_20170108004336_1.png

Think, Hotzn... is Misantrope's a possible base at this stage in the game? Hard to say without thoroughly exploring the side of the island which is pointing away from Jackrabbit's. If rabbits can only be caught on the tiny island and there are not enough sticks to be gained, this could end up being difficult. I would need a fire each time I collect the rabbits, and the tiny island seems quite exposed to wind. Also, wolves might cut me off from returning to the cabin on the main island after harvesting my rabbits. And wolves might cut me off when returning from exploring the other side of Misantrope's. Hmmm...

Currently, I have 4 kg of cooked rabbit left and a cooked trout with some 600 calories. That's 3 nights of being fully fed, or 5 nights of being not so fully fed. Now how could the journey to DP look like? I would set out with enough material to build a snow shelter. And firewood. And snares. And the hammer. Warm clothes. Food. Water. This could get heavy. How much warmth does the snow shelter provide anyway? Would be good to know (please don't tell me, I want to find out by myself). Maybe I should just take the material for the snow shelter, cover some distance, build it and come back to Misantrope's. Yes, better do a little scouting before the actual expedition...

Despite an icy wind (a felt -43°C), I manage to explore the far side of the island a bit, raising the amount of sticks I own to 33. The island does actually provide a fair amount of them. Then the weather turns nasty, with lots of wind and snow. Not sure what to do under these conditions. Luckily while contemplating the conditions in front of the door, I discover another 1 kg of cooked rabbit on the veranda. Must have dropped that there at some point. So I have 6 nights in reserve. Some more exploration around the cabin (and continuous warming up in the bed inside) reveals more places where sticks can be found. So this island does provide a similar amount of sticks as Jackrabbit's after all. And I discover that Misantrope's is actually called Misanthropes, and I shall henceforth spell it correctly.

When the wind has died down and the snowing stops, it becomes foggy and there is not much left of the day. I dislike travelling the distance in foggy conditions, so I want to invest some of my now many sticks (53) into a fire on the tiny island and harvest the rabbit caught there. It works (3 kg of meat, 3 guts and 1 skin, I do not need the rest), and I also set up all my 6 snares anew on that spot. Returning to the cabin in the dark is a thrill, as I have had quite some wolf experience on Misanthrope's in past runs. This time, however, I make it safely back to bed, well fed and with 3 guts and a rabbit skin now curing in the cabin as well.

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Day 43:

With 13 hours of daylight left, I peek outside - it's calm, but foggy, a felt -26°C. Too cold to travel, and I presume I have collected all the sticks nearby for now. I take some of the reclaimed wood from breaking down the furniture and descend to the tiny island - my 6 snares caught 3 rabbits. Lighting a fire, I collect and cook another 3.4 kg of rabbit meat and 3 guts. I then cook a couple of litres of water and leave them on the tiny island, collect the snares, take a brand and return to the cabin on Misanthrope's. I relight my burnt-out campfire on the veranda there, using the brand and thus saving a match.

On a sidenote, I noticed that when lighting fires the tinder plugs are now optional. I presume this is due to my fire skill having advanced. Also, it now takes less time to harvest the rabbits than when I started this run. Presumably this can be explained with my harvesting skill becoming better. This is what my skills currently look like:

Skills run II.png

I'll give this run a pause for tonight, as it has become a little late. To finish things off, let me report that I still dislike the burnt-out brands littering the landscape (or the inside of a building). I end up trying to place them in containers now before they burn out. Weirdly enough, they seem to keep burning inside those. Here is a picture of two brands burning inside a drawer in the bedroom of the cabin on Misanthrope's - one has just been put there, the other is from last night and should have burnt out long ago:

strange brands.png

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2 hours ago, Hotzn said:

I still dislike the burnt-out brands littering the landscape (or the inside of a building)

Use your brand to light a fire on an burnt out campfire,  or a stove,  using the brand as fuel.  This way it is gone forever. 

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5 hours ago, romerabr said:

Use your brand to light a fire on an burnt out campfire,  or a stove,  using the brand as fuel.  This way it is gone forever. 

Are you sure about this? Looking at the last screenshot above, I think I had used one of the two brands just a minute before to relight the campfire on the veranda...

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Day 49:

A little bit of fast-forward - at some point I set out towards Crumbled Highway. It was cold, I had to stop twice on the way to make a fire and warm up again.

Finally entering Crumbled Highway, I made the snow shelter right after the loading screen, in the grassy area before you duck under the boulder to actually reach the burnt houses (and, possibly, wolves). I chose this area, because I wanted to be out of the way of wildlife (so as not to wake up confronted with a wolf or bear), and partly because it seemed protected from the wind. So I can make a fire next to the snow shelter and sleep without the fire being blown out. Not sure if my location was well chosen or not. Anyway, I soon realized that the snow shelter only gives a +15°C temperature bonus (and when I saw that, I suddenly remembered that I knew it before from somewhere). Unfortunately, that was not sufficient to keep me warm, and I didn't have enough firewood with me to keep me going through the night.

So I was forced to press on, already quite tired. Going through the mine, I collected 17 pieces of coal, but had to drop them at the exit again, because things were getting too heavy to carry. Went down to the road to reach the lighthouse, the weather was getting stormy, and then I imagined I heard a bark. Old reflexes made me light my only flare. I tried to find another way to the lighthouse, but my girl held the flare right in her face, and it was hard to see. Somehow I finally made it to the lighthouse, freezing und utterly exhausted. Phew.

The next day, I crossed the second mine, gathering more coal, exited on the other side near Hibernia, looted that (and cut down some metal shelves) and slept on one of the mattresses over night. From there I went to the Riken. The forge, finally. Made a makeshift knife and hatchet and 4 arrowheads, then returned to the lighthouse and from there back to my snow shelter. So the trip brought me the makeshift knife and hatchet. I also found a stim, a firestriker at 42% and a Maple sapling. Unfortunately, no bedroll. And I didn't have the nerve to stay in DP for longer, although I might have tried. I had 4 snares with me, they could have been a basis to get things going. But somehow I feel drawn back to my sweet home on Jackrabbit Island...

So here I am, standing next to my snow shelter at the entrance to Crumbled Highway and tending to the fire, asking myself whether the night will bring some unpleasant surprise or not...

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It is impressive how much you can get done in such a short time. How do you manage you sleep and condition?

I keep my fingers crossed! Crumbling Highway is the place I wouldn't dare to cross on Interloper, let alone sleep in. I remember meeting 5 wolves there on Voyageur, at once. The only way to get through without a fight was to shoot them all. Sweet dreams :)

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On 14.1.2017 at 7:19 PM, Drifter Man said:

It is impressive how much you can get done in such a short time. How do you manage you sleep and condition?

I keep my fingers crossed! Crumbling Highway is the place I wouldn't dare to cross on Interloper, let alone sleep in. I remember meeting 5 wolves there on Voyageur, at once. The only way to get through without a fight was to shoot them all. Sweet dreams :)

No special management of sleep - I just get up in the morning and sleep at night, usually 9 hours of sleep in one go. Took some cooked rabbit with me from CH and found a little bit to eat in DP - a tin of sardines in the lighthouse, two cans of Pinnacle peaches in the safe in Hibernia, salty crackers on a corpse in the Riken. The food allowed me to regain condition overnight which I had lost from starving during the day, so my condition was always 100% or close to that in the morning. I didn't freeze much, since the trips between warm shelters in DP are short. The only problem which came up was a high risk of cabin fever (58%) after the forging process. In this context I discovered that the risk of cabin fever does not increase while you sleep indoors. Only if you spend the time otherwise.

I was wary of wolves in Crumbling Highway, but only saw a single one in the distance on my way back. I don't think I will return to DP in this run, so no wolf worries in Crumbling Highway again for me so soon.

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7 hours ago, Hotzn said:

I was wary of wolves in Crumbling Highway, but only saw a single one in the distance on my way back. I don't think I will return to DP in this run, so no wolf worries in Crumbling Highway again for me so soon.

The highest number of wolves I ever encountered in Crumbling Highway on Interloper was three at once, but in 90% of my games it's only either one or two. I don't think more than three is even possible on Interloper.^^

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14 hours ago, Hotzn said:

No special management of sleep

Thanks - I imagined you must suffer massive condition loss from freezing on such a voyage. I should get out of TWM once in a while.

How does cabin fewer work, then? I thought that cabin fever risk increases all the time if you are indoors and that you can only reduce it outdoors.

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I'm not sure how cabin fever works exactly, since I haven't experimented with it. I just saw that sleeping indoors does not raise the risk. I presume that resting does, but didn't test. Until I reached the forge, I never had a risk of cabin fever coming up in this run. I presume this is because I had spent little time indoors - usually just sleeping or warming up and then returning outside to gather sticks or some such. Using the forge, however, takes a lot of time - you have to heat up the thing to 150°C, so then you want to make good use of the fuel you invested. I made a makeshift hatchet (took 5 hours I believe), a makeshift knife (3 hours) and 4 arrowheads (4 hours), all in one session. Then I saw that I had a risk of cabin fever, already quite high. I shook that off by spending one night in the snow shelter.

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Day 64:

Fast forward again, I'm on day 64 now. Made my way back from the snow shelter to Misanthrope's, where I paused to restock on rabbit meat with my snares. Set them up on the tiny island next to Misantrope's again where I had them before. The next day I had caught some, but on returning to the cabin I was surprised by a wolf right at the cabin. Maybe I attracted it from somewhere with the fresh guts I was carrying to the cabin (the meat was all cooked on the spot). I tried to run around the house and thought my chances should be good, but alas - the wolf is apparently very quick and catches me. Maybe the guts drove it crazy. A knife fight ensues, and I manage to drive the fiend away. The grass where the fight took place is stained with blood (i like it), and the wolf runs off, bleeding and yelping. I slip into the cabin to heal and go looking for the wolf over the next two days. Nothing.

My food is running low, another snare breaks and I only have two left. I jave to move and make new snares. So over a couple of days, I move back and forth between Jackrabbits, the Fishing Village, Log Sort and Coastal Townsite, collecting sticks and making fires on the way to warm up again. I manage to make a couple more snares, a bow and two arrows.

Day 64 finally sees me back on Jackrabbit Island, farming rabbits like a madman.

305620_20170122215052_1.png

I do feel a bit sorry for them, but I need their calories.

So what's next when I'm stocked up again? I still lack better clothes, the storm lantern and a bedroll to really get rolling. Clothes might be looted somewhere, but I should start to think about hunting deer, wolves and bears to get more skins. The storm lantern could be anywhere. It's not really a must anyway. A bedroll might be found in ML. I should make my way over there, I think. Want to explore Forlorn Muskeg at some point. And the entrance is in ML...

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Other things I noticed:

There seems to be a regular temperature change 5 hours into the day. When I leave a shelter in CH with 9 hours of daylight left, it will be considerably colder than with 8 hours left. It's possible that there are other "temperature borders", but the one I mentioned seems most obvious. It feels a little gamey - sure it must be easy to place some algorithm over it to disguise this and make the weather a little less predictable?

Remembering past stalker runs (when Interloper didn't exist), I have the impression that there was more wildlife interaction then. Is this a fact? Maybe the animals' patrol routes were changed in a way to make them less overlapping? This would of course make wolves run into deer and rabbits less often, and as a consequence there would be less opportunities to be "served" a carcass by lucky chance. On the other hand, wildlife interaction also made the game less predictable - there was always a risk one could meet a wolf in an unsuspected location, because that wolf might have chased there after something. In Interloper, I actually have the feeling this does hardly happen. I actually feel more secure from wolves then in former Stalker runs.

Now I am criticizing this and that, but overall I have to say that the game has improved immensely compared to earlier versions. The weather is much more consistent, for example. The loot is spread around very nicely (on Interloper at least), there is no ideal spot to live permanently, one has to move around quite a bit. The new clothing system is a great improvement. I also like how the different fuels for fire blend in - how a piece of coal becomes a valuable resource, because it adds such a great temperature bonus to a fire. Etc.

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You would have thought the rabbits might get the message that going to eat grass on the bank under the window of the cabin perhaps isn't such a good idea afterall? When they see the many frozen, disemboweled corpses of their friends and family piled high on top of each other across the hillside, is there no instinctive reaction in them that says: "DANGER!"?

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59 minutes ago, Pillock said:

You would have thought the rabbits might get the message that going to eat grass on the bank under the window of the cabin perhaps isn't such a good idea afterall? When they see the many frozen, disemboweled corpses of their friends and family piled high on top of each other across the hillside, is there no instinctive reaction in them that says: "DANGER!"?

And that wolves and bears would get the message that nice snacks are to be had there on a regular basis...

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  • 2 weeks later...

Day 71:

Still based on Jackrabbit Island, I have hunted my first wolf. It was at the Fishing Camp, and the wolf spawned on the jetty behind the cabins when I left one of them. To be precise, on the furthermost part of the jetty, and it was unable to leave that part. So... easy hunting. I also realized the arrow will just fire wildly from the bow if I keep aiming for too long. Good feature, that. Ate a piece of wolf meat though I know parasites are dangerous on Interloper, but didn't get parasites (risk was 1%). Then back at Jackrabbit's I tried to herd my first deer into a wolf. However, the wolf disappears - probably despawns while I get on the other side of the deer. So the deer and me are hanging out where the wolf was patroling before. Irritating. Then I decide to shoot the deer with my bow. A shot fromt the distance misses and spooks it, but what is this - the deer bounces off a boulder and then runs straight at me and, of course, into the next arrow I let loose. Strange behaviour, but I get my first full deer carcass with plenty of extra meat and another deer hide.

While I cook the deer, my cooking skill advances to level 4, and I realize the meat I cook has now more calories. Nice.

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