Meat Cache


SteveP

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If you increase the amount of meat taken from deer and reduce their population, hunting for food becomes more realistic. Frozen meat should keep for several months in an outdoor cache. It raises the possibility of bears or wolves or mice raiding the cache or the possibility of mold or spoilage if temperature rises. Rocks should be used on top of the cache to prevent bear raiding. What other possibilities does this suggest to you?

It would go well with an ice gill net fishing program, perhaps preparing for several days for a big fishing expedition to catch 20 to 50 fish at once and preserve them.

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I like this idea. i find it surprising we cant even drop the meat outside and let it freeze. Alternatively how about harvesting Ice which can be used to chill containers/boxes or fridge/freezers to help preserve meat.

I love that idea! It's what they did 60 years ago on our farm; cut ice from the lake and pile sawdust and stuff onto it in an ice cabin and they could keep things cold long into the summer. That would be so cool. ;) I wish we could innovate stuff like this in the game. Let me at the code!! :idea: :geek: :!:

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We have asked about it before. I would love to turn the fridge back into an icebox. Or the ability to hang a field dressed deer up in a tree (away from predators), only to take it down when I needed it. Or let me take one of the small houses/fishing shack, open a window on the second floor and turn the building into a ice house/meat shed. This line of reasoning goes straight into the players requests for a smoker.

At our hunting camp in Arkansas, we let field dressed deer and hogs age for two weeks in a cold room before they are skinned, processed and then frozen. We shave the hogs before hanging (don't want hair in the meat TYVM) but the end result is the same. Just like aging beef. The quality of the meat only improves, it does not degrade.

The players processed meat should not "rot" away, cooked or not, as long as it is frozen. It seems the devs way of keeping the players moving is to not let the calorie bombs (like multiple wolves or the bears) meat say viable for seasons.

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It used to be that outside containers, like a frozen body... hold the meat better, but then after one of the updates hinterland made all containers the same, and as far as i know they are not going back to it.

But it would be nice, because now when i kill a bear, i take 16-18kg of meat at most, because with my playstyle i do not need more.

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With the rifle (or even the bow) one can quickly amass a large amount of meat however often it is just too difficult to locate the rifle. With a gill net, one could get larger harvests of food that could utilize a cache. The current size and productivity of the catches (at least near fishing camp in current game state) one cannot keep ahead of the calorie game with fishing alone. The wear and tear on clothing is just shredding my clothes because the need to keep on bringing more stockpiles of wood for fishing and the near starvation are forcing me out in bad weather. It's a spiral to eventual starvation or freezing with poor clothes. Fortunately, enough cloth is around so you can move to the next place to find new curtains to repair clothes. ARRRRGH!

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With the rifle (or even the bow) one can quickly amass a large amount of meat however often it is just too difficult to locate the rifle. With a gill net, one could get larger harvests of food that could utilize a cache. The current size and productivity of the catches (at least near fishing camp in current game state) one cannot keep ahead of the calorie game with fishing alone. The wear and tear on clothing is just shredding my clothes because the need to keep on bringing more stockpiles of wood for fishing and the near starvation are forcing me out in bad weather. It's a spiral to eventual starvation or freezing with poor clothes. Fortunately, enough cloth is around so you can move to the next place to find new curtains to repair clothes. ARRRRGH!

I found the net return of "fishing to survive" thin when we could forage from inside fishing shack. I really don't see the use for it now... not unless you plan on fishing for days. Even then the wear and tear on clothing as the hut does not protect against the wind (at least a quarter of the time) puts you at a disadvantage.

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Yes I agree, until recently, fishing barely covers the calorie costs in Voyageur level. I recently had some very productive fishing on CH in the closest hut on the left looking out at the lake. Some big Coho and several fish caught. Other times, very poor fishing. I hope they bump up fish bite and size to make it worth the effort. Only way to survive reasonably without wolf battles, which are hard to find the dead wolves at times. I thought I knew where they were heading but now they take off from the respawn area after the first two are killed. -sigh-

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Before the update where harvesting wood was easy I spent five days and nights doing nothing but fishing and never had enough to take back for storage. The weight/calorie ratio is really poor. I finally gave up and went hunting, but I got the badge for sleeping outside, and the one for a big fish on that outing.

The fish weigh so much that a gill net would have to be slowly, painfully dragged back to shelter or they'd have to be relayed there. I don't see how it would work, and how it wouldn't make the food too easy to come by in the first place.

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Before the update where harvesting wood was easy I spent five days and nights doing nothing but fishing and never had enough to take back for storage. The weight/calorie ratio is really poor. I finally gave up and went hunting, but I got the badge for sleeping outside, and the one for a big fish on that outing.

The fish weigh so much that a gill net would have to be slowly, painfully dragged back to shelter or they'd have to be relayed there. I don't see how it would work, and how it wouldn't make the food too easy to come by in the first place.

Well if you only carry what is necessary, you can get quite a bit. Fishing was tuned to just keep you barely alive and when you ran out of lures, that was it. It was limited by availability of metal and guts to make line. Now there seems to be more line scattered here and there and the fishing returns are slightly better but not enough for more than a half days travel or so. Those really big salmon last pretty good and only take 15 minutes to fry even for 5 kg fish.

I'm also hoping for a sledge and gillnet gear which could return enough to last for days at a time. But maybe they'll make fishing more productive; when I was a kid we could pull 50 pounds of white fish and perch our of a lake for smoking or later, my dad got a gill net with friends.

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  • 1 year later...
On 8/7/2015 at 4:13 AM, random calliope said:

The fish weigh so much that a gill net would have to be slowly, painfully dragged back to shelter or they'd have to be relayed there. I don't see how it would work, and how it wouldn't make the food too easy to come by in the first place.

If the game were rebalanced, you could have much longer storms which prevented hunting and fishing and kept you penned up indoors. That would require a stock pile of food. Certainly on the challenge Whiteout, as winter sets in and things get terrible, the idea of a food cache would be handy. If you added nets to the game (they are lying there all over the place after all!) then we could certainly anticipate longer periods to survive while trapped.

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Actually you can get a LOT of fish by building up a supply of wood and fishing tackle and a bed roll in a fishing hut. Stock pile! Then fish for 4 hrs at a time. The more you fish, the more your fishing skill level increases and you will loose less lines to breakage and harvest more fish. You can easily amass 20-40 fish 2-3 Kg fish in a 3-4 day fishing trip. Far too many to carry. Store them in the hut; they don't seem to loose condition when cooked. Use raw fish for baiting bears or wolves. Never carry raw fish on your person, it's a magnet for the predators, unless you plan to hunt them. Then its a very good idea. ;-)

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I really like the idea of revamping the food system, it's one of the only old systems left in the game, and needs some work along with the hunting systems. So it makes sense that they should be updated together! With quartering coming in the next update, it would make sense that the update after added some sort of freezing food catch that stopped the condition loss of food.

Of course, possible drawbacks would be constant maintenance to the food catch,  and the danger of wolves and bears breaking into it. It might also need repairs after storms, and could cost wood to build

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While I like the idea, too much improvement to quality of life issues changes the game considerably. It goes from being a "How long can you survive" to "How long do you choose to survive"

 

I am starting to understand that some people just enjoy the day to day play experience of living in a remote atmosphere and could go on for almost ever if the game allowed. I also think it's only good business to give these players what they want if it can be done in a reasonable way.

 

Perhaps there is a way you could toggle "assisted living" tools on or off at the start of a game so that a few items like a compass, spear, icebox, etc. could be added without altering the play experience of those who have no intention of outliving what is currently available. My longest game was 201 days, that was only to get the achievement. Then I promptly fed the wolves and started a new game. 

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