1000 Days in the Dam: An exercise in inventory control

[Drifter Man]

44 minutes ago, Patrick Carlson said:

Just wanted to stop by and say thanks for the always-engaging updates on your progress. It's really turning into quite the artifact. Thanks for sharing your journey with us. 

I'm having good time with it. As the game evolves, the story will hopefully evolve, too. Maybe it wouldn't be half as much fun if TLD was a static, finished product. Keep up your great work! 

[thinair]

On 6/6/2016 at 11:46 PM, Drifter Man said:

Now that parasites are not a concern?

Why do you say that? do i miss something? because i was eating only one wolf steak per 24h, meaning never more than 1% chance of intestenal parasites... and i still contracted it. Is there a trick that i don't know?

[Jolan]

while you're in DP don't forget to make some arrow heads if you need them.  knifes too, though you have to sacrifice cloth

[Drifter Man]

16 hours ago, thinair said:

Why do you say that? do i miss something? because i was eating only one wolf steak per 24h, meaning never more than 1% chance of intestenal parasites... and i still contracted it. Is there a trick that i don't know?

There's no trick - the parasite affliction has been removed from Voyageur in v.338. It remains in Stalker mode only.

[Drifter Man]

8 hours ago, Jolan said:

while you're in DP don't forget to make some arrow heads if you need them.  knifes too, though you have to sacrifice cloth

Arrowheads aren't critical anymore (I've got five and hunt a lot less these days), but I want to make each of the improvised tools for testing purposes. 1 piece of scrap metal gives me 150 kg of harvested rabbit meat when used for hacksaw repair. If this number is substantially better for the improvised knife or hatchet, it may outweigh the need to go to DP and back regularly in order to get them.

[hauteecolerider]

I'm beginning to feel that maybe I don't need to go to DP for crafting purposes anymore, myself. In the current Pilgrim play through that I started since v.332 came out, my character has collected five arrowheads from Mystery Lake and Winding River (the map behind the Dam) alone. Now that I've got the Pacifist achievement, I'm going for the Silent Hunter, but at this point my character isn't ready to start hunting. She wants to get those rabbitskin mittens before she starts hunting wolves. Thanks to you, @Drifter Man, rabbit snares is beginning to feel more and more a viable long term option, along with fishing.

And we will probably start at the Wolf Site in CH . . . 

[Drifter Man]

Day 729 (660th day in the Dam)

I changed my mind in the end, realizing that running around Desolation Point in damaged clothes, with no supplies and trying to hunt wolves is too risky a proposition. I stayed in Coastal Highway until the bear meat started to run out. I spent a few more hours fishing until my only fishing tackle broke. I returned to the Townsite (pardon, Coat Factory), taking advantage of the fact that the coats were patrolling elsewhere. There I searched one remaining house and broke apart some furniture in others in order to get cloth and firewood. Again, I had to leave the job unfinished. The Townsite is a bottomless source of material.

Misanthrope's Island served my base most of the time. It is well positioned on the way to DP, away from the wolf-infested coast. I cooked in the fishing hut nearby. I didn't like the island much. Apart from the bear, there is a wolf circling around and the profile of the island does not allow you to see around well - you can get jumped easily. Add to this those long blizzards and I'm unlikely to settle there in the long term, anytime. Is there a difference in fishing efficiency between Mystery Lake and CH - does anyone know? After all, if I'm correct, CH is seawater...

Loaded with cloth and food I want to run decay tests with, I returned to the Dam on Day 728 to repair my clothes and resupply my base with fresh meat - the one I left there was down to 80-85% condition. In a few days I will be ready to return to Desolation Point.

[Jolan]

31 minutes ago, Drifter Man said:

Day 729 (660th day in the Dam)

I changed my mind in the end, realizing that running around Desolation Point in damaged clothes, with no supplies and trying to hunt wolves is too risky a proposition. I stayed in Coastal Highway until the bear meat started to run out. I spent a few more hours fishing until my only fishing tackle broke. I returned to the Townsite (pardon, Coat Factory), taking advantage of the fact that the coats were patrolling elsewhere. There I searched one remaining house and broke apart some furniture in others in order to get cloth and firewood. Again, I had to leave the job unfinished. The Townsite is a bottomless source of material.

Misanthrope's Island served my base most of the time. It is well positioned on the way to DP, away from the wolf-infested coast. I cooked in the fishing hut nearby. I didn't like the island much. Apart from the bear, there is a wolf circling around and the profile of the island does not allow you to see around well - you can get jumped easily. Add to this those long blizzards and I'm unlikely to settle there in the long term, anytime. Is there a difference in fishing efficiency between Mystery Lake and CH - does anyone know? After all, if I'm correct, CH is seawater...

Loaded with cloth and food I want to run decay tests with, I returned to the Dam on Day 728 to repair my clothes and resupply my base with fresh meat - the one I left there was down to 80-85% condition. In a few days I will be ready to return to Desolation Point.

 you just made my evening

 

[Ruruwawa]

49 minutes ago, Drifter Man said:

Is there a difference in fishing efficiency between Mystery Lake and CH - does anyone know?

I'm haven't measured systematically but I've tried feeding myself via fishing in ML, TWM, and CH -- and CH does seem more efficient.  It's the size of the fish: you can catch salmon fairly often in CH and these can are typically 1500~ calories each.  I caught 3500 calories in 3 hours yesterday and that's not bad at all.

Since carry weight is the big downside of fishing I usually just fill up the fishing hut with fish, cook them up when the sun comes out and store the cooked ones there too.  (Same for water.)  I time my stick deliveries for when I'm hungry.  Swing by, drop off the sticks, gorge on fish and top off my water.

[Drifter Man]

22 hours ago, hauteecolerider said:

Now that I've got the Pacifist achievement, I'm going for the Silent Hunter, but at this point my character isn't ready to start hunting.

This is how I got my latest one - Natural Healer: it jumped on me totally unexpectedly on Day 406 from the bottom right corner as I was applying a lichen bandage. Another wolf was coming at me and I was thinking, hell, now is the time to worry about achievements!

I wish there was a 1000-day achievement. It would be a special thing

Good luck with silent hunting! I have neither the Pacifist nor the Silent Hunter.

[Drifter Man]

21 hours ago, Ruruwawa said:

I'm haven't measured systematically but I've tried feeding myself via fishing in ML, TWM, and CH -- and CH does seem more efficient.  It's the size of the fish: you can catch salmon fairly often in CH and these can are typically 1500~ calories each.  I caught 3500 calories in 3 hours yesterday and that's not bad at all.

Since carry weight is the big downside of fishing I usually just fill up the fishing hut with fish, cook them up when the sun comes out and store the cooked ones there too.  (Same for water.)  I time my stick deliveries for when I'm hungry.  Swing by, drop off the sticks, gorge on fish and top off my water.

That's not bad at all. Thanks for the tips - if my schedule permits, I will do some thorough tests. However, in spite of all that, fishing does not look great compared to rabbits. The main (the only non-renewable and irreplaceable) resource you need in both cases is scrap metal. I mentioned that one piece buys you 150 kg or rabbit meat, that's 67500 Cal - and maybe even more with the improvised tools. Now, even if I catch 3500 Cal in 3 hours and fish all day, I'll get 10000 Cal and probably a broken line. Then, one piece of scrap only buys me about 30000 Cal... right?

Or are broken lines less frequent than this?

[Ruruwawa]

3 hours ago, Drifter Man said:

That's not bad at all. Thanks for the tips - if my schedule permits, I will do some thorough tests. However, in spite of all that, fishing does not look great compared to rabbits. The main (the only non-renewable and irreplaceable) resource you need in both cases is scrap metal. I mentioned that one piece buys you 150 kg or rabbit meat, that's 67500 Cal - and maybe even more with the improvised tools. Now, even if I catch 3500 Cal in 3 hours and fish all day, I'll get 10000 Cal and probably a broken line. Then, one piece of scrap only buys me about 30000 Cal... right?

Or are broken lines less frequent than this?

I don't think we have enough data to make the call on line breaks yet.  I've been using the same line for about a week since the change, but that's only 8 total hours of fishing for me.  Even with my great stretch of salmon, there are also stretches with no catch, or only smaller fish.  Based my tiny 8 hr sample size, I'd say I'm average 800 calories an hour and that could still be on the lucky side.  I just don't know.  Anyway, three hooks per scrap metal and 800 kcal/hr -- I'd need my lines to last an average of 28 hours each to equal rabbits.

I just started a new stalker game on TWM with the idea of trying to feed myself with fishing there.   I'll try to track my kcal/hr + line breaks, and report back with something other than guesses for a change. 

[Jolan]

4 hours ago, Drifter Man said:

This is how I got my latest one - Natural Healer: it jumped on me totally unexpectedly on Day 406 from the bottom right corner as I was applying a lichen bandage. Another wolf was coming at me and I was thinking, hell, now is the time to worry about achievements!

I wish there was a 1000-day achievement. It would be a special thing

Good luck with silent hunting! I have neither the Pacifist nor the Silent Hunter.

Maybe you can talk them into sending you the Mystery Lake poster

 

[Ruruwawa]

My first line just broke, so here's some info on fishing vs line breaks.  Still a very long way from conclusive due to tiny sample size.

Hours fished, in 1 hour increments - 46
Whitefish - 27
Smallmouth Bass - 7
Total kcal  - 20,955

One thing I didn't think to measure: wear on the tool used to clear the ice from the hole.  I'm using a prybar; I'll measure wear for next line.

I tested in TWM, using a Pilgrim playthrough.  Hopefully that doesn't matter but my Stalker game still isn't geared and I didn't want to keep a fire going all the time to keep from freezing while I tested.  Also, I used a 100% line I'd had in my pack since I started this game on v332 -- I might have fished with it before (can't remember).  I doubt that matters, but might be worth noting. 

My catch, less what I ate while fishing. 

 

[hauteecolerider]

Pretty impressive!

[Drifter Man]

On 6/10/2016 at 1:51 AM, Jolan said:

Maybe you can talk them into sending you the Mystery Lake poster

 

Not sure what I'd do with it... but then again, I don't know what would I do with the achievement, either

[Drifter Man]

14 hours ago, Ruruwawa said:

My first line just broke, so here's some info on fishing vs line breaks.  Still a very long way from conclusive due to tiny sample size.

Hours fished, in 1 hour increments - 46
Whitefish - 27
Smallmouth Bass - 7
Total kcal  - 20,955

One thing I didn't think to measure: wear on the tool used to clear the ice from the hole.  I'm using a prybar; I'll measure wear for next line.

I tested in TWM, using a Pilgrim playthrough.  Hopefully that doesn't matter but my Stalker game still isn't geared and I didn't want to keep a fire going all the time to keep from freezing while I tested.  Also, I used a 100% line I'd had in my pack since I started this game on v332 -- I might have fished with it before (can't remember).  I doubt that matters, but might be worth noting. 

46 hours of fishing is already an indication. The numbers you posted would make fishing roughly equivalent to snaring rabbits in terms of the time and scrap metal per 1 calorie. Which makes sense - Hinterland probably doesn't want to make one way clearly superior to the other.

I think I noticed 1% loss in a prybar, it took ca 45 minutes to clear the hole. @JoaoSatan reposted here the times needed to clear the hole in ice as measured by someone in the Steam community... it was an older version, though.

Starting with a hole 100% frozen
1st place was the hatchet at ~22 minutes
2nd place was the hunting knife at ~40 minutes
3rd place was the heavy hammer at ~44 minutes
4th place was the prybar at ~45 minutes

As for line condition, I'm already building a supply of 10%-fishing tackles to find out.

[Drifter Man]

Day 743

After some housekeeping at the base (replacing old supplies of cooked meat with fresh ones, repairing clothes) I left for Desolation Point again on Day 741. The trip across Coastal Highway was safe. I spent one night at Misanthrope's homestead, left two venison steaks at the door and took water from my supply cache there.

In Crumbling Highway I initially saw no wolves, so I searched a part of it until a distant howl informed me I'm not alone on the map. I still found no green birch saplings... there were so many around when I played Pilgrim, but now there are none... As I approached Road Collapse, I spotted a wolf. While trying to avoid it I ran into another (same story again in Crumbling Highway). A lit flare scared it off so much that it got stuck at an awkward angle under a fallen tree.

I soon saw the second wolf running past me and decided to search this part of the map now when the wolves are busy running away. But before I got anywhere, a wolf approached me, barking - whether it was a third one or one of the first two, I cannot say. Therefore, I gave up the idea and headed for the mine, which I reached safely with the wolf following me at a distance. My original plan was to drop another piece of venison at the entrance, but I didn't want the wolf to eat is as a decoy, so I passed through the mine (flare still in hand) and left the venison at the other end.

The adventures of the day still weren't over. After my previous experience I avoided the bridges to the Lighthouse (wolves cannot be seen and attack you from below) and approached it across the ice, on the path that requires climbing up a steep slope at the end of the second bridge. I saw deer (= safety) and went where they were when I noticed the same two wolves patrolling this part of the map as before. Accidentally, one of the deer ran away from me and into a wolf that killed it promptly. For a second I thought, let's kill it and have a "combo", but my character was tired and there was the other wolf, so I said to myself, "another day, maybe" and gave the feasting wolf a wide berth. But the wolf still noticed me and thought, "nope, today it is" and charged me at a straight line. I fired my rifle and saw a splash of blood, but the wolf was at me next second anyway and I had to defeat it hand-to-paw. My condition dropped to 72%; clothes took a 25% hit (no other afflictions, again).

This isn't going to stop me this time. I went to the Lighthouse (taking note of the wolf limping in the distance, so I have an idea where to find it), dropped some items I didn't need, and returned to the deer to harvest it for 7.6 kg of meat, a hide, and two guts. Then I repaired my deerskin pants using the deer hide I had left behind previously, and slept until today's morning. My plan for today is to seek out and harvest the wolf carcass, cook the meat and repair my coat (I have a wolf pelt at the Lighthouse, too). Over the next days I'm going to loot and plunder the Hibernia plant.

Those wolf fights are such a drain on resources (especially clothes). How often do you fight with wolves? How do you deal with the constant need for more pelts? Or do you live in places where it is reasonably easy to avoid them? I've heard about people undressing before a fight but 1) it is clearly an exploit 2) in most cases I don't even have enough time for an expletive, much less for a strip show. Fights mostly happen when I don't see the wolf coming.

[JAFO]

Firstly, just wanted to say I discovered your thread a couple of days ago, and have now read it right through (and taken notes!). I've enjoyed the read tremendously, learned a lot, and want to congratulate and thank you on such a mammoth undertaking.

2 hours ago, Drifter Man said:

I said to myself, "another day, maybe" and gave the feasting wolf a wide berth. But the wolf still noticed me and thought, "nope, today it is" and charged me at a straight line.

I've yet to figure out the safe 'threshold' distance when it comes to wolves.. so if I think there's the slightest chance of them noticing me, I move at a crouch. That's saved my bacon more than a few times. I'm currently playing Voyageur mode, and the thing that most worries me about trying Stalker mode is the increased detection range of the predators.

2 hours ago, Drifter Man said:

How often do you fight with wolves? How do you deal with the constant need for more pelts? Or do you live in places where it is reasonably easy to avoid them? I've heard about people undressing before a fight but 1) it is clearly an exploit 2) in most cases I don't even have enough time for an expletive, much less for a strip show. Fights mostly happen when I don't see the wolf coming.

I too am interested in the answers to these questions. I'd barely repaired my wolfcoat from the last attack, when I got attacked again, near Max's Last Stand. It was towards the end of the day, I was tired and gathering sticks on the ridge, so as to get some water, when I spooked a deer. The deer encountered a wolf I hadn't known was there, and doubled back, leading the wolf towards me. Wolfy promptly decided I was an easier target, and went for me instead! Being too tired to run, he was on me in seconds. I lost 40% each off my deerskin boots, deerskin pants, wolfcoat, and my health, At least I found wolfie's body the next morning, so his hide is presently curing, pending a new round of repairs. However, most of the time when I get jumped by a wolf, I haven't even figured out what direction it's coming from before I'm hit.

[Ruruwawa]

A little more fishing information.  I crafted two new lines and both broke pretty fast: 15 hours and 16 hours respectively. Also, fewer fish caught hour by hour until I was mostly getting nothing - I think my TWM spot is currently fished out.

There are quite a few variables to tease apart here to really understand fishing, but I still doubt that pre-v338 lines are somehow better (because Occam's Razor).  So I gave the relevant patch note a closer read and noticed another clue: 

Quote

[GAMEPLAY] Reduced chance of fishing line breaking upon successfully catching a Fish.

"...upon successfully catching a fish..."  Hmmm.  What if the break rate when you fail to catch a fish is still the old, high rate?  If so, places like ML and CH look much better since you can move spots every few days.

5 hours ago, Drifter Man said:

I think I noticed 1% loss in a prybar, it took ca 45 minutes to clear the hole.

I also saw 1% wear on prybar when the hole was fully frozen, but less when it was partially frozen.  Same for hammer (which can be repaired at least).   86 kcal to clear a fully frozen hole on Voy with a hammer.  How long you can go before fish before the hole starts to refreeze seems to vary -- so far I've seen between 8 and 16 hours.  Maybe temperature is a factor?

One more variable to factor in: fishing is pretty easy on the calories and fatigue.  On voyageur it's 112 kcal/hr -- vs 228 kcal/hr for harvesting meat from a 51% frozen rabbit with a hacksaw.  (Fishing on Pilgrim is 62 kcal/hr, Stalker is 100 kcal/hr.)  Fatigue seems moderate too (about like standing around) although I haven't figure out how to measure it yet.

Anyway, I'm going to move my Pilgrim save to CH and try testing there since I'm fished out in TWM.

[nicko]

How is your latest update 3.39 working? or is it  a just a story?

[Ruruwawa]

5 hours ago, Drifter Man said:

But the wolf still noticed me and thought, "nope, today it is" and charged me at a straight line.

I don't really want to turn this into a wolf hunting thread but in this situation there are three things that help me a lot with the current wolf AI.  First is the wolf is truly charging, (running at full speed) light a flare and brandish it when the wolf is close.  It's fairly successful at scaring him away.  I often preemptively light a flare if I'm in a situation where a wolf might notice me.  Also, crouch when he's fleeing to prevent him from targeting you again. 

Better still, if you have accelerant, speed-light a fire.  Since the AI changes I've never had a wolf NOT flee from a fire.  I've cooked meals, boiled water, etc for hours at a fire right on the patrol path of two wolves, who kept fleeing when they got close.  I crouch while at the fire, too.

If the wolf is just growling and homing in on you at a walk, Drop Decoy is very good now.  It's not the magic spell of Paralyze that drop torch used to be, but it slows him enough to kill with an arrow.

[nicko]

how many days in dam to date?

[hauteecolerider]

@Drifter Man is about Day 741 or a few days past as of his most recent post. 

Not all of them are in the Dam. He has had to go out and hunt for food and supplies. 

I think the original idea of the topic, as he says at the very beginning, was to see how long he could survive using the available resources and the resource management options present in the game. He wanted to see if he could go 1000 days using the Dam as the home base.

[Drifter Man]

10 hours ago, JAFO said:

I've yet to figure out the safe 'threshold' distance when it comes to wolves.. so if I think there's the slightest chance of them noticing me, I move at a crouch. That's saved my bacon more than a few times. I'm currently playing Voyageur mode, and the thing that most worries me about trying Stalker mode is the increased detection range of the predators.

I often move in a crouch, too. But it is a double-edged sword: if visibility is limited (fog, obstacles etc.) you can run into a wolf at close range and have no time to react. It usually means an instant attack (or retreat of the wolf, if you are lucky). In this particular case, I thought I was far enough - I've definitely been closer to a wolf and wasn't detected. Maybe they have different detection range when they gorge on their prey?

Other than that - thanks and welcome! A lot of people contribute here with their observations, which has made this a general thread on "TLD science". Just keep in mind that much of the information in the older posts is already obsolete. My sandbox started in v.302 and spans several updates.