The death of a Stalker

[coryduran]

I was 25 days into a pretty pristine stalker run. I had been in Mystery Lake for the entirety, carefully searching and looting, collecting all the plants and food I could find. I had a good stock pile of supplies, 15 pounds of packaged food and at least another 20 pounds of meat. I was sitting on about 50-60 cat tail stalks, life was good. I had finally found the preppers cache around day 20 or so, and with that I knew the map was completely scavenged. I began moving my supplies over to the dam because I was getting ready to transition over to the coastal highway. What would it be like? I found myself wondering about the changes to the transition zones that was promised in our patch notes. Would there be more danger? Perhaps shelter in the transition? I had no idea. As I walked towards the dam with my last batch of supplies before being able to make the move, I stumbled upon what I view as the gold mine, a wolf just in the final moments of chasing down a deer. Right in front of me! Now I'm really wanting to get that silent stalker achievement finally, I've been sitting on my rifle and ammo this whole game, and I'm pretty good at fighting a wolf so I charge it. My whole strategy is just to kill this wolf right now during the struggle, not letting it run off and having to deal with tracking it. My coat is getting worn out as well so it'd be nice to make a new wolf skin coat.

Fight with wolf face doesn't go as planned, I mess up my attacks and it runs off, bleeding. I get done with about 63% condition so I bandage up and start tracking. I think to myself "That was my last bandage, that's stupid of me to only have one right now" as I make my way through the trees and hills tracking this blood. I stumble into a clearing with a hunting stand and I follow the blood until the trail ends. I see a wolf about 30 yards away eating away at a deer! I think to myself "Hot damn this one wolf just gave me two sweet succulent deer, I'm going to have 40+ lbs of meat from all this!" as I run towards this wolf to finish it off.

Sadly, when the fight starts, I realize the wolf has full health... this is not the wolf I was looking for. We struggle and I get the wolf off with about 10% health remaining, bleeding out with no bandages. I began to try and find my way to the damn, to shelter to survive, but ultimately I succumb while climbing a hill towards the dam with my last batch of supplies.

[Ryan CM]

intense!

[Hotzn]

Good story! Couldn't you make another bandage by harvesting cloth on the spot?

[coryduran]

I had no cloth on me at the time. The last batch of supplies was just two rifles, ammo, and a couple snares. I mean I could have tried to harvest a piece of clothing that I was wearing, but I don't think I would have survived long enough to pull a move like that off. What's more frustrating is that I had like 8 bandages in the dam, I just didn't think to resupply my in-pack bandages before starting the supply run.

[DenverDad]

It always amazes me how this game consistently finds new ways to kill me. Every time I die it is something I hadn't foreseen or predicted based on previous game play.