Are you a Ranger or Bandit? or something else?

[Samsonguy920]

Over 50 hours into the game, and I've been noticing subconscious habits of mine that I am not even forcing myself to do.  Self-made rules, as it were.

I don't let any animal I kill go to waste, which includes wolves that I have either shot or defeated in a fight.  Bears don't count, because they never lose a fight. They just decide they've played with their toy enough for the time being.

Just today I was walking down a road with my rifle out, and wondering if I could shoot from the hip or if I had to aim. But I didn't want to shoot and waste a bullet as well as announce my position to the entire region.  I encountered a wolf and opted to aim before firing a warning shot to scare him off as opposed to trying to shoot from the hip and possibly end up getting the wolf in my face.

I've even limited how much I just leave laying around, reducing my footprint as the saying goes.  It gives me warm fuzzy feelings that my camping, arms, and mountaineering training that I haven't actually employed in years comes to life in TLD.

 

Anyway, it leads me to wonder, and I am not judging you here as it is just a game, how does your character perform in the Canadian Wasteland?  

Do you reduce your footprint in the world, wasting as little as you can?

Or do you go out helter skelter, shooting anything you can, throwing rocks at bunnies for kicks, dancing naked outside the Camp Office, and so many more reckless things you can pull off while managing to survive in the world?

 

Are you a ranger?  Or are you a bandit?  or maybe something in-between or completely different?

[Carbon]

 Being that it's a game, I have no problems taking out wolves if they get between me and where I'm going. Being that they are quite easy to dispatch - much easier than going around them - I remove them from my survival equation. One of my primary goals when I start a game is to get to cooking level 5 so I can live off wolves, only taking bunnies, bear and deer for clothing repair. I don't waste anything and don't kill them for fun, but I am quick to take them out when the situation arises.

 In RL however, I don't even kill insects.

[JAFO]

2 hours ago, Samsonguy920 said:

I don't let any animal I kill go to waste, which includes wolves that I have either shot or defeated in a fight.  Bears don't count, because they never lose a fight.

So what do you do with bears you've shot? 

(And to answer your question, I try to never waste a kill, and also to tread lightly upon the Earth.)

[wren]

Ranger here.  

I try to feel respect for the wildlife and the environment, both the vicious, and the benign.  I try to be observant and thoughtful, and I think I get an increased sense of both joy and challenge from this way of playing.  I feel a sense of relationship with the environment and the characters I share it with.  I've learned to observe, listen, and tread carefully, avoiding wolves, and being thankful when i kill animals for food and/or self-preservation.  I usually leave a little behind, knowing that they will be quietly consumed by other creatures or the earth itself in time.  I don't pick all of the plants, (I was taught that this was important in my childhood).  Sure, those remaining rosehips won't drop and grow into new plants, but I always leave some behind never-the-less. I love to travel around and see the splashes of colour, bits of life here and there. I enjoy interloper in part because there's so much less "clutter" around; I appreciate the scarcity of human-made items.  I travel light and I travel lots, appreciating the diversity and beauty of the lansdscape.

It makes me happy to play this way, even if it makes survival a little more difficult at times.  

Great question, thanks for posing it 

[Samsonguy920]

18 hours ago, JAFO said:

So what do you do with bears you've shot? 

(And to answer your question, I try to never waste a kill, and also to tread lightly upon the Earth.)

I have actually not killed a bear, yet.  The one that likes to hang around Pleasant Valley Farmhouse is starting to test my patience.

I also have yet to get attacked by one, too.  But that is bound to catch up with me soon enough.

[JAFO]

8 minutes ago, Samsonguy920 said:

I also have yet to get attacked by one, too.  But that is bound to catch up with me soon enough.

Very probably the first time you try to kill one, in fact. Unless you plan carefully. 

Good luck with it!

[Thrasador]

2 hours ago, Samsonguy920 said:

I have actually not killed a bear, yet.  The one that likes to hang around Pleasant Valley Farmhouse is starting to test my patience.

I also have yet to get attacked by one, too.  But that is bound to catch up with me soon enough.

I haven't killed one yet either, but the one you mentioned is probably one of the best ones to TRY to farm because you can run back into the house, or onto the porch where he cannot get you.

Watching Geltaz hunt bears will help I think.

If you get two definite head shots, it usually kills the bear. I think it very rarely takes three. If you shoot it even once though and then run into the house, it WILL eventually bleed to death in a couple few game hours. Then you can go find it and harvest it. Don't harvest it all at once, and make sure you make a fire first....so you don't freeze to death harvesting it.

Sorry if you knew the last bit already, I was just trying to cover everything in case you didn't know....A full bear takes several hours to fully harvest, and a blizzard can start any hour without warning....so most people do it in chunks checking the weather. Also there is a lot of meat...it may take a few trips, so it dying near the farmhouse is pretty handy...

[Thrasador]

Not to double post but, UPDATE I killed my first bear!!!

And it was a terrible experience, lol...

It wasn't terrible because I was injured, I lucked out and didn't get injured. Well, lucked out....cheated....whatever.

So I am in Coastal Highway and I was heading over to the waterfront cottages to loot them. On the way over I see the bear that lives in the cave on the edge of Misanthrope Island. I had been there before and didn't notice the bear, I thought he hadn't spawned in this playthrough....but he must have been off on a trip somewhere.

Anyway I see him and he's walking to the waterfront cottages with me. On top of that there's a wolf that keeps running up to the bear....then gets scared....then runs away...and then comes back over and over. He is also running between the bear and where I am going.

I decided I needed to remove the wolf from the equation, so I aggro him and back off and drop bait. For some reason the bait doesn't work and I end up in a fight. I stab the wolf and get away with minimal damage (9%), no torn clothes, and no bleeding wound.

I track the wolf to a rock near the cottage I was heading to, and I light a fire and harvest him. I collect the goodies and cook the meat and head to the closest cottage.

Right before I get there my scent aggros another wolf that I hear, but can't see yet. I make a break for the house, can't find the door, but get on a porch and narrowly avoid him. I get in, drop all the stink, loot the house and go to bed because it's night now anyways.

I wake up with the plan to take out the other wolf and see what I can do about the bear. I take out the second wolf without much trouble, light a fire, cook the meat and drop all that off in the house.

It's still a little earlier than mid-day, I see Mr. Bear out on the lake not very far from the cottage I'm at. I use the fact that I can quit the game and start back inside the house in the event things with the bear go sideways.

I start practicing trying to hit the bear from fairly far away while standing on a big rock outside the house overlooking the lake. On about my 8th attempt I manage to ark an arrow into him. I'm not sure where I got him in the end, but I saw blood. He goes running off twords the log sort. Great....

Eventually he stops running and starts walking back in the general direction of where I am. I start collecting sticks and breaking up branches with my hands. I do this for about two hours in game and he's STILL walking. I take out a big fir branch with my axe. Still walking. I take out a cedar. He drops.

It's kinda late now, but I'm not exhausted yet. Had I known then what I know now, I would have gone to bed for a few hours instead of going to harvest him.

Luckily he died about 20 feet from an ice fishing shack. I harvest his hide and all the guts (10 of em) after lighting a fire. Now I'm exhausted and it's night time. I harvest 10 kilos of meat and cook it. Now night is half over already and I'm way past exhausted. I stash the meat I cooked in the ice fishing hut and take the hide and guts back to the house hoping all the wolves by the cottage are definitely dead....they are...

I sleep for about 6 hours because I want to get back out there and harvest the other 20 kilos of bear meat. I still have 30 sticks and 3 cedar logs.

I start harvesting and realize the meat is already down to 49 condition and mouldy...Great. I quarter the rest of him. I go to the ice fishing hut and harvest the 6 bags of meat that have 4.5 kilos each or so. I cook it all. It's all mostly at 98-99 condition. Now it's night again and I'm exhausted again.

Moral to the story....harvesting a bear is a huge pain in the keester, if you plan on getting all of it....

So make sure you are well rested, it will be an all day affair....

[Scyzara]

I'm something else: A mad bearslayer.

I try to avoid killing wolves alltogether whenever possible, but I DO kill every single bear I come across as soon as I have a bow.

There's no real reason for this behavior except that I find the bearskin bedroll (and a set of two bear coats both in my favorite cave and fishing hut) incredibly useful on Interloper. Oh, and bears are a bit more challenging to hunt than wolves, of course. Always feels like a tiny adventure to visit the possible spawn locations in search of bears, think about how and from where to shoot them and to retrieve the corpses eventually.

I also don't bother to take all the meat, it's way more than I need anyway. I usually harvest just a few kg and move on to the next possible bear spawn location. (Shall the crows and wolves also have their fair share, hehe.) And if there are no bears to be found, I either live on fishing, stone-kill rabbits or have wolves kill deer for me.

 

[Ahatch]

I guess I would be a ranger   I play very cautiously. I'll take anything including bear if I'm hungry but I need to have a safe spot to shoot from before I will even try. If there is a safer route to a location I will use it everytime and I avoid multiwolf hangouts like the plague. I hate wasting resources so if I shoot something I must harvest everything. I die slowly usually which can be painful.

[Barretts Privateer]

I think I would classify myself as a ranger. I try not to take more than I need, and, upon gaining a kill, will harvest it for everything I need.

That said, 'I only take what I need' means that...I downed the bear near the Coastal Townsite today with a well placed spine shot, and fully harvested it. I've been eating well, but my trips outside to avoid cabin fever have left four wolves dead...while I skinned and gutted them all, I only harvested the meat off two, prior to claiming the bear. Now, I no longer need meat, and those two other wolves are laying out there with full racks of meat...I feel uneasy about that.

As for deer, I've held off making my pants until the food situation starts getting low again. I did scavenge the hide of of a dead one on the ice, but nothing more.

[Ms Nutcracker]

On 7/17/2017 at 5:18 AM, Ahatch said:

I guess I would be a ranger   I play very cautiously. I'll take anything including bear if I'm hungry but I need to have a safe spot to shoot from before I will even try. If there is a safer route to a location I will use it everytime and I avoid multiwolf hangouts like the plague. I hate wasting resources so if I shoot something I must harvest everything. I die slowly usually which can be painful.

The bears are really hard to kill with a gun on stalker. They got to be shot several times before they die and you can't really shoot them out in the open or they will make a run to kill you.  And where do you and everyone else store your meat?  Which place is the best? 

 

[Mel Guille]

I prefer the designation "Rogue Scholar" -- reads every book, hoards all the loot and avoids direct confrontation but is scrappy when backed into a corner.

[Thrasador]

11 hours ago, Ciliate Organism said:

The bears are really hard to kill with a gun on stalker. They got to be shot several times before they die and you can't really shoot them out in the open or they will make a run to kill you.  And where do you and everyone else store your meat?  Which place is the best? 

 

Anyplace outside is best for storing meat. Drawers and cabinets in fishing huts, trunks of cars, containers on the ground outside, dead guys (gross but possible). Apparently you can just drop meat on the ground outside wherever you want, I just found that out after asking the forum. Make sure you are not currently the target of a bear or a wolf first though, or the meat might be treated as a bait drop and eaten. This can even be accomplished with wolves close by.... by entering a structure, crouching, then exiting the structure while crouching, and then dropping the meat. I saw Geltaz do that at the CH gas station with 4 wolves right outside. Apparently they don't notice meat you drop as long as they are not trying to kill you. This could be fixed at some point in the future.....but not yet.

I try really hard not to waste anything I kill. So far I think I have only not harvested about two wolves, it was a long time ago in Forlorn Muskeg. I was actually trying to leave the map for Mystery Lake already, and it was really foggy and I got jumped a couple times on my way out. My desire to just get the heck out of there was greater than my desire to find injured wolves in the fog, harvest more things that smell, and getting jumped by even more wolves in the fog. So I abandoned two wolf kills. I haven't abandoned anything else in the run since.

[JAFO]

23 hours ago, Ciliate Organism said:

The bears are really hard to kill with a gun on stalker. They got to be shot several times before they die

Bears only need to be shot once. But, depending on where your bullet hits, they may take quite a few hours to bleed out and die. One bullet and lots of patience is all you need.

[Samsonguy920]

13 hours ago, Mel Guille said:

I prefer the designation "Rogue Scholar" -- reads every book, hoards all the loot and avoids direct confrontation but is scrappy when backed into a corner.

Kinda like that girl we see trying to use a laptop in the Wintermute trailer, maybe? (I will state here I doubt that is Astrid, as you can see the girl with the laptop wearing a lipring, something you don't see Astrid having when she is in the plane. But I digress...)

[Samsonguy920]

33 minutes ago, JAFO said:

Bears only need to be shot once. But, depending on where your bullet hits, they may take quite a few hours to bleed out and die. One bullet and lots of patience is all you need.

The exception being the Old Bear in the Hunted Challenge.  But you shouldn't take the behaviour of animals in the Challenges to be the same as those in Sandbox or Story Mode.  Each come with their own surprises.

[Piers Arkan]

I mean in my first playthrough and this newest one for the first few days I was a dunce with a gun.

 

Day 28 to now has been a kind of arctic Matt Damon in The Martian, using my 8 fishing hooks to sustain myself on ice fishing.

 

In an ideal world though, I am Temuchin of Canadia, using whatever I can find to bring forward the things best in life: Quickscoping the charging wolf, feasting upon the fish, and hearing the lamentations of the rabbit meeting the rock. 

[Thrasador]

9 minutes ago, Piers Arkan said:

I mean in my first playthrough and this newest one for the first few days I was a dunce with a gun.

 

Day 28 to now has been a kind of arctic Matt Damon in The Martian, using my 8 fishing hooks to sustain myself on ice fishing.

 

In an ideal world though, I am Temuchin of Canadia, using whatever I can find to bring forward the things best in life: Quickscoping the charging wolf, feasting upon the fish, and hearing the lamentations of the rabbit meeting the rock. 

Conan, what is best in life?

"Quickscoping the charging wolf. Feasting upon its flesh. Hearing the lamentations of the rabbit after striking it with a rock and snapping it's neck."

Rofl....that is what came to mind as I read your final statements....

 

[Piers Arkan]

I thought about just posting a screencap from that, figured it would convey it as well. 

 

On the other hand, I consider myself a total avenger of not only all the other humans, but also my previous playthroughs.

 

No longer shall I suffer that fluffy bastard in the dam.