Quartering sanity check

[Wasteland Watcher]

I'm a big fan of harvesting meat, pelt, and guts at the kill site. Now with quartering implemented I compared how long it takes for doing it to a deer and I feel it's too much work (it takes too much time and then I have to drag everything around & do more work inside).

I can only see quartering being useful for bears with their tons of meat and guts.
Does this make sense?

[continuity]

I see it being useful if its getting late and you want to get back before dark, or if there is a storm and you don't want to stand out in it for an hour+ doing a full harvest.  but yeah, its not your default option.

[nicko]

24 minutes ago, continuity said:

I see it being useful if its getting late and you want to get back before dark, or if there is a storm and you don't want to stand out in it for an hour+ doing a full harvest.  but yeah, its not your default option.

i agree, quicker way to harvest and run back to a shelter, sounds good to me.  i think its the quicker option to harvest so it becomes the default option, which i agree to.

[Drifter Man]

Well I couldn't resist and reinstalled TLD to check the new features

And I feel that the quartering mechanic is just a placeholder for something a little more elaborate to come later. The problem is that quartering also produces pelt and guts, so if quartering times are considerably reduced, players will abuse quartering to get pelt and gut more quickly. Current times (with knife, skill level 0):

• Wolf - 50 minutes to get pelt and 2 guts, 60 minutes for quartering
• Deer - 50 minutes for hide and 2 guts, 90 minutes for quartering
• Bear - 130 minutes for hide and 10 guts, 120 minutes for quartering - so quartering already is the fastest way to skin and gut a bear!

Note though that if you harvest pelt and guts first, the quartering times do not change! Still 60/90/120.

For quartering to be a way to reduce exposure, it should take about half of the time normally needed to harvest only meat from the carcass, and the player should ruin the pelt and guts in the process. Or only get half of the guts and no pelt or something...

[JAFO]

I agree that the current quartering system is out of whack, and needs balancing.

[cannajan]

Agreed, I dont see any advantage to quartering as it is

[Ruruwawa]

16 hours ago, Drifter Man said:

Well I couldn't resist and reinstalled TLD to check the new features

welcome back!

On 6/12/2017 at 9:59 PM, Wasteland Watcher said:

I can only see quartering being useful for bears with their tons of meat and guts.

yep.

[Wasteland Watcher]

In conclusion, it needs to be stated that if the amount of time it takes to perform quartering right now is the same as it would be in real life, then I say leave the time it takes to perform it as is. 

 Of course it may make sense to shorten the amount of time for Pilgrim difficulty, and make the times longer (can't see why though) for Stalker and Interloper difficulties. 

[JAFO]

2 hours ago, Wasteland Watcher said:

In conclusion, it needs to be stated that if the amount of time it takes to perform quartering right now is the same as it would be in real life, then I say leave the time it takes to perform it as is.

The problem is the inconsistencies in times.. as @Drifter Man's tests demonstrate, the differences aren't logical.

[Drifter Man]

On 2017-6-15 at 3:56 AM, Ruruwawa said:

welcome back!

Thanks! I'm just looking around  And I like the update, including the idea of quartering, it just needs a few tweaks in my opinion.

[Jolan]

I mostly use quartering on Stalker and Interloper when I need the meat and the other bits.  And I use it during times I can't afford the condition loss I'd take to do the whole caboodle.  Reducing the task to just a little bit more than what I'd spend to grab the skin and guts is a great addition.  Also, I use it when I know the weather is going to change and I can't afford the condition loss to be harvesting for 2 hours with one of those in a blizzard. 

I'm also cool with the time - basically, its the time you'd take to harvest the skin and guts plus 10 minutes to chunk the rest of it up into sizes you can carry.  So that works for me.  

Maybe if they wanted to tweek it and give a 3rd option for those who don't care about the pelts and guts of just chunking the meat up and having that take a really short amount of time? 

[Ruruwawa]

On 6/16/2017 at 5:51 AM, Jolan said:

Maybe if they wanted to tweek it and give a 3rd option for those who don't care about the pelts and guts of just chunking the meat up and having that take a really short amount of time? 

Or maybe make the time, and getting the guts & hide, dependent on your Carcass Harvesting ("CH") skill?  There's already a bug floating around about CH not affecting the quartering time.  I think it should, even if it's a smaller % than normal harvesting.

For guts and hide:

• CH levels 1 & 2: no guts or hide, just meat bags
• CH level 3, you get 1/2 the guts in addition to the meat bags
• CH level 4, you get all the guts in addition to the meat bags
• CH level 5, you get all the guts + the hide in addition to the meat bags

[Jolan]

@Ruruwawa I would be cool with that if they left the orginal quartering option there.  I'm finding it a useful strategy in stalker. I don't bother with it on the voyager game.

 

 

[sarudak]

IMO quartering should be better but require some levels in carcass harvesting to use.

[Ruruwawa]

9 hours ago, Jolan said:

@Ruruwawa I would be cool with that if they left the orginal quartering option there.  I'm finding it a useful strategy in stalker. I don't bother with it on the voyager game.

I didn't mean to imply that you couldn't quarter until CH3.  Just that it would be "unimproved" before that.

 

8 hours ago, sarudak said:

IMO quartering should be better but require some levels in carcass harvesting to use.

I dunno.  It's hard for new players to figure out why a new feature just switched on out of the blue, particularly since it might be many days between leveling CH and noticing the quartering option.  I'd prefer it just got better with practice, like all the other skills.

[Miniwizard]

On 6/14/2017 at 1:57 AM, Drifter Man said:

Well I couldn't resist and reinstalled TLD to check the new features

And I feel that the quartering mechanic is just a placeholder for something a little more elaborate to come later. The problem is that quartering also produces pelt and guts, so if quartering times are considerably reduced, players will abuse quartering to get pelt and gut more quickly. Current times (with knife, skill level 0):

• Wolf - 50 minutes to get pelt and 2 guts, 60 minutes for quartering
• Deer - 50 minutes for hide and 2 guts, 90 minutes for quartering
• Bear - 130 minutes for hide and 10 guts, 120 minutes for quartering - so quartering already is the fastest way to skin and gut a bear!

Note though that if you harvest pelt and guts first, the quartering times do not change! Still 60/90/120.

For quartering to be a way to reduce exposure, it should take about half of the time normally needed to harvest only meat from the carcass, and the player should ruin the pelt and guts in the process. Or only get half of the guts and no pelt or something...

Personally I haven't bothered much with quartering yet.

However.. looking at your time values (thanks for them btw) does this change dramatically if dealing with a 100% frozen carcass rather than a fresh one?

[Drifter Man]

9 hours ago, Miniwizard said:

However.. looking at your time values (thanks for them btw) does this change dramatically if dealing with a 100% frozen carcass rather than a fresh one?

The time is identical (or at least the game reports identical time values) for carcasses 0-50% frozen. Carcasses above 50% frozen could not be quartered.

[Miniwizard]

Ah, wasn't aware you couldn't quarter frozen carcasses - never noticed, But makes it seem even less useful.

[JAFO]

22 hours ago, Drifter Man said:

Carcasses above 50% frozen could not be quartered.

What? Even if you use a hacksaw or hatchet?

[Drifter Man]

2 hours ago, JAFO said:

What? Even if you use a hacksaw or hatchet?

That's right.

[JAFO]

2 hours ago, Drifter Man said:

That's right.

I think that's worth reporting as a bug.

[Drifter Man]

1 hour ago, JAFO said:

I think that's worth reporting as a bug.

It's definitely intentional - I get a message "cannot quarter carcass more than 50% frozen", or something along this line.

[Wasteland Watcher]

9 minutes ago, Drifter Man said:

It's definitely intentional - I get a message "cannot quarter carcass more than 50% frozen", or something along this line.

Probably a placeholder for the time being. I guess (hope) Hinterland will flesh it out after the release of Story Mode

[JAFO]

2 hours ago, Drifter Man said:

It's definitely intentional - I get a message "cannot quarter carcass more than 50% frozen", or something along this line.

Intentional yes.. but if you've selected the hatchet or hacksaw, the frozen-ness should be irrelevant.

[Ohbal]

I won't say it shouldn't be possible, but I don't think it should be irrelevant. Hatchet or hacksaw degradation and task time should be probably higher.