1000 Days in the Dam: An exercise in inventory control

[Berniyh]

8 hours ago, Drifter Man said:

Bears are worth looking at. A combination of bear hunting + one rabbit zone could allow a very efficient way of survival. I have two problems with bears, though. 1) they give you no clothing, you still need to hunt deer to repair your furs, 2) they are dangerous. I'm afraid that if I hunt them regularly, one day I will make a mistake, and it will be the end of me.

Hunting the bear close to the farmstead in PV isn't dangerous. You can even do it while standing inside the front part of the house.

Actually it might even be a bit too easy. Just shoot the bear once in the back and then wait …
Unless at some point to allow the bear to wreck the hole house.

In ML, things are a bit different, there aren't any bears close to shelters afaik.

[Berniyh]

7 hours ago, Jolan said:

I stopped hunting bears because they actually give you too much meat.

That was an issue some time ago, but isn't anymore.

If you store the meat outside you have plenty time to cook & eat the meat, even 30 kg of it.

Only harvesting the bear can be tedious, especially in PV, where there is a blizzard every 20 minutes or so …

[Jolan]

3 hours ago, Berniyh said:

That was an issue some time ago, but isn't anymore.

If you store the meat outside you have plenty time to cook & eat the meat, even 30 kg of it.

Only harvesting the bear can be tedious, especially in PV, where there is a blizzard every 20 minutes or so …

Its been a while, maybe I'll go back to my favorite spot on CH where the bear walks right up to the porch and you have a perfect head shot.  I haven't stored the meat outside yet, perhaps it won't give me endless food poisoning.

 

[Berniyh]

I "store" the meat in the porch of the farmstead in PV. In principle you might also just throw it somewhere in the snow.

According to @Drifter Man, it doesn't really matter if you store it inside a container or not.

Since there is a container, I store 14kg in that (can't fill it up to 15kg for some weird reason) and just throw the rest on the floor. I haven't seen a difference in decay time so far. After these approx. two weeks the meat has decayed from 100% to about 94%, so it's pretty durable. Of course salty crackers last longer, but I doubt you need to store the meat for more than 10 weeks (which would mean around 70% condition).

[JAFO]

10 hours ago, Berniyh said:

In ML, things are a bit different, there aren't any bears close to shelters afaik.

It's not too bad if the bear spawns at the Unnamed Pond site, and you're based out of the Trapper's Homestead. You can entice the bear to come after you, then dodge into the Hunter's Blind and shoot him from there (he can't reach you in the blind - although wolves can, so be careful). I try to haul all the meat back to Trapper's in just two trips, even if it means being overburdened by 5-10kg. I store it outside until I have it all back, then pull an all-nighter cooking it all, followed by dumping the meat back outside before collapsing into bed for 8 hours. As mentioned above, it does keep much better outdoors, but only once cooked. Even outside, raw bear meat deteriorates fairly quickly.

(Oh yeah, there's also a cave located very close to Trapper's where a bear will spawn occasionally. Much riskier spot to hunt him, though.)

[JAFO]

On 7/3/2016 at 7:35 AM, Docterrok said:

Right when they are about to pounce, you slice them, come back in about 4 hours and look around where you sliced them, they usually return and die.

I can confirm this works.. had it happen to me totally accidentally just a couple of hours ago. I slashed just as the wolf pounced, it yelped and ran off.. first wolf attack ever (out of 15 attacks in current game) where I've taken no damage at all. Left me rather stunned, actually.. I can see where getting the timing right would probably take some practice.

[Drifter Man]

4 hours ago, Berniyh said:

After these approx. two weeks the meat has decayed from 100% to about 94%, so it's pretty durable.

That's surprisingly slow. Cooked venison loses 0.8% per day and I remember someone mentioning 0.85% per day for bear.

3 hours ago, JAFO said:

I can confirm this works.. had it happen to me totally accidentally just a couple of hours ago. I slashed just as the wolf pounced, it yelped and ran off.. first wolf attack ever (out of 15 attacks in current game) where I've taken no damage at all. Left me rather stunned, actually.. I can see where getting the timing right would probably take some practice.

In that case, a wolf-wresting test will soon take place at the Dam  In the controlled environment close to base, I think I can afford to take a few bruises.

[JAFO]

19 minutes ago, Drifter Man said:

In that case, a wolf-wresting test will soon take place at the Dam  In the controlled environment close to base, I think I can afford to take a few bruises.

Might want to do it naked.. otherwise the cost in torn-up clothing might get expensive..

[Berniyh]

4 hours ago, Drifter Man said:

That's surprisingly slow. Cooked venison loses 0.8% per day and I remember someone mentioning 0.85% per day for bear.

I didn't count the days, so it was an estimate. Also keep in mind, that it took me two days to get all of the meat, but I didn't keep track of which meat was cooked on what day.

So 0.8-0.85%/d could be right as well. Still would mean you could store it for 50 to 60 days before it's down to 50%.

[Drifter Man]

1 hour ago, Berniyh said:

Still would mean you could store it for 50 to 60 days before it's down to 50%

For me the danger zone is 75% and below - there you can get food poisoning. I still eat the meat in this condition, because I have enough antibiotics that would have otherwise expired. What happens at 50% - does the probability of food poisoning increase?

[Berniyh]

1 hour ago, Drifter Man said:

What happens at 50% - does the probability of food poisoning increase?

Not entirely sure. Since I've lived off canned / packaged food for the first ~50 days, I think that it largely depends on the kind of food.

Salty crackers at 20% IMO seem less likely to give you food poisoning than e.g. Peaches.

Meat below 50% you should be careful with (although I once ate a cooked rabbit that had 5% and it worked out, chances etc …), I've got the impression that below that the risk increases much more than for canned food.

If I could reload, I'd investigate more deeply, but since food poisoning is quite annoying despite having more than enough antibiotics.

[Drifter Man]

1 hour ago, Berniyh said:

If I could reload, I'd investigate more deeply, but since food poisoning is quite annoying despite having more than enough antibiotics.

Right - the probability would be very difficult to quantify when you can't reload. It's not such an important issue, so don't poison yourself

[Docterrok]

I'm curious, once you reach 1000 days, are you going to kill yourself in a grand way? (In game of course! )

[Drifter Man]

1 minute ago, Docterrok said:

I'm curious, once you reach 1000 days, are you going to kill yourself in a grand way? (In game of course! )

Nope - I will go for 2000

But I've been thinking about a grand way to die, and chose a jump from the Dam onto the frozen Winding River. In case I ever feel those urges.

[Docterrok]

Love your work! Your screenshots are my wallpapers! 

[hauteecolerider]

3 minutes ago, Drifter Man said:

But I've been thinking about a grand way to die, and chose a jump from the Dam onto the frozen Winding River. In case I ever feel those urges.

For me it's that scenic trestle in the Ravine. 

[Drifter Man]

Day 828 (730th day in the Dam)

Wolves took a few days off, and so no blood was shed. I used the time to search the Winding River for the first time since the update. The cave system has been remodeled in some places and there were no sticks and no coal anymore. It seems I've lost the only practical source of coal close to Mystery Lake. However, I found a valuable book on carcass harvesting during my search. Since I'm at level 4 already (-30% on meat harvesting time, -20% on hide/gut harvesting time, able to harvest from 75% frozen carcasses), my progress is slower and the book will definitely help.

[Drifter Man]

11 minutes ago, Docterrok said:

Love your work! Your screenshots are my wallpapers! 

Wow thanks! I take them from time to time whenever I like a particular scenery, but I haven't posted any new ones recently. Maybe I should start taking the hi-res ones.

[Drifter Man]

12 minutes ago, hauteecolerider said:

For me it's that scenic trestle in the Ravine. 

Yes, but that might look like an accident

[hauteecolerider]

I don't care what others think! I just think it's a glorious place to die, surrounded by mountains and with a waterfall . . .

[Berniyh]

24 minutes ago, Drifter Man said:

Nope - I will go for 2000

But I've been thinking about a grand way to die, and chose a jump from the Dam onto the frozen Winding River. In case I ever feel those urges.

I'd rather walk up TWM and then jump from the top.

At least that way you would still have something to go for: the top of TWM

[Docterrok]

9 minutes ago, Drifter Man said:

Wow thanks! I take them from time to time whenever I like a particular scenery, but I haven't posted any new ones recently. Maybe I should start taking the hi-res ones.

This is some f*p worthy material right here! 

[Berniyh]

20 minutes ago, Drifter Man said:

Since I'm at level 4 already (-30% on meat harvesting time, -20% on hide/gut harvesting time, able to harvest from 75% frozen carcasses), my progress is slower and the book will definitely help.

Hm, interesting point. Is the amount of research progress you get from books the same at every level?

Would it therefore be wise to wait until level 4 to research them?

How many books per game can you find? Up till now I found 3 and one smaller one (on rifles). But I.ve not been to ML in a long time, so there might be more books there.

[Drifter Man]

53 minutes ago, Berniyh said:

Hm, interesting point. Is the amount of research progress you get from books the same at every level?

Would it therefore be wise to wait until level 4 to research them?

How many books per game can you find? Up till now I found 3 and one smaller one (on rifles). But I.ve not been to ML in a long time, so there might be more books there.

No, I don't think there is any advantage in waiting until a higher level. I understand that each book gives you a fixed amount of skill points once you finish it, and so does each action that counts towards a particular skill (such as cooking a piece of meat for the cooking skill). The difference is that you need a relatively smaller number of these points to get from 2 to 3 or from 3 to 4, but a large number of points to get from 4 to 5. As a result, the progress gets slower. And because I expected I would have to work my way through many carcasses to level 5, I'm glad the book will help me, but it would have made no difference overall if I had found it still at level 1.

So far I've found 2 copies of "Wilderness Kitchen", 2 copies of "Frozen Angler", 2 copies of "Frontier Shooting Guide", 1 copy of "Guns Guns Guns" and now 1 copy of "Dressing your Kill". I searched in ML, CH and the transition regions, but I didn't cover everything. There certainly are more books.

[Drifter Man]

1 hour ago, hauteecolerider said:

I don't care what others think! I just think it's a glorious place to die, surrounded by mountains and with a waterfall . . .

And no one will search your corpse saying "Hmm, this could come in handy..." over your stuff.

EDIT: Unless the devs put a rope attachment point there.

EDIT #2: Haven't they already?