1000 Days in the Dam: An exercise in inventory control

[Drifter Man]

Day 221 (198th day in the Dam)

I started the day with counting my chickens. The trip to Coastal Highway did not help much with the most critical items, but that was not its primary purpose, after all.

• Cloth equivalent (incl. bedroll and clothing): 48.21 pcs / 150 days
• Bow (incl. maple saplings): 6.82 pcs /635 days
• Arrow shaft (incl. birch saplings): 22.24 pcs / 189 days
• Knife (incl. whetstone): 4.96 pcs / 533 days
• Match: 47 pcs / 205 days
• Rifle ammunition: 6 pcs
• Arrowheads: 4 pcs
• Flare: 8 pcs
• Hatchet: 3.11 pcs
• Lantern fuel: 6.92 liters

[Drifter Man]

Day 231 (208th day in the Dam)

Two bad hunting days can change your perspectives quite a bit. On two days I had to take four shots to get the deer (two misses, a bounce, a hit; and one miss, two bounces, a hit). I lost one arrow completely - it just sort of sank into the ice under the deer and this time, nothing I tried could get it back. Down to three arrowheads now.

• Cloth equivalent (incl. bedroll and clothing): 45.03 pcs / 140 days
• Bow (incl. maple saplings): 6.62 pcs / 614 days
• Arrow shaft (incl. birch saplings): 20.20 pcs / 172 days
• Knife (incl. whetstone): 4.87 pcs / 522 days
• Match: 41 pcs / 191 days
• Rifle ammunition: 6 pcs
• Arrowheads: 3 pcs
• Flare: 8 pcs
• Hatchet: 3.11 pcs
• Lantern fuel: 6.92 liters

The arrows are quickly becoming a major concern. I effectively lost 7 extra days in these two hunts... I don't care much about bow and knife, I'm confident these will eventually outlast those 1000 days. Cloth consumption is fixed - if there aren't enough pieces in The Long Dark, there is nothing I can do about it. Matches are manageable and replaceable with the magnifying lens, much like knife can be replaced with hatchet. But how many arrows I have depends on my shooting, and there is no real alternative to them. Rifle can buy me a few dozen days, then I'll go to the wolves and beg for food.

Now, on the bright side. There’s a cave in the Ravine – it took me a few weeks of regular visits to notice it. It has a 7°C temperature bonus and can protect me against blizzards well. I put a bedroll inside (for emergencies), some water, firewood, a hatchet and a flare. I rarely need the hatchet but keep carrying it back and forth, so this saves 1.5 kg of my carrying capacity. As for the flare, I used to carry two: if I burn one on the way to the Ravine, I may need another on the way back (but actually I’ve never used one). This way I’ll carry only one and pick the other in the cave, if needed. Additional 0.25 kg saved.

[Drifter Man]

Day 235 (212th day in the Dam)

I should get going and return to the Highway before the meat there spoils. This time, I plan to stay for 3 days and cover everything up to Log Sort and Jackrabbit Island. Currently I can last up to the 348th day in the Dam. If I manage to find 50 pieces of cloth (or equivalent) and 9 birch saplings, I can stretch that to 500.

[Drifter Man]

Day 238

So far so good, but not good enough. I should be on my way home, but I am not.

I've spent three nights in Coastal Highway, busy looting and breaking things down. The only notable events were one bear encounter (well, not really; the bear did not notice me, although it passed only meters in front of my face) and one case of food poisoning by one of the venison steaks I laboriously brought over from the Dam (65%).

Cloth is everywhere, I've found over a hundred pieces by now - my only complaint is that knife degrades by 2% each time I use it to tear up a curtain. Why on Earth does it take as much a fully harvesting a deer carcass? However, I've collected only a single one birch sapling! It should be more common than maple, so how come I only found one birch compared to four maples?

There's enough food for me to last many more days without hunting. If necessary, I will bring more from the Dam, but I am not leaving until I find those nine birch saplings.

Without arrows, the cloth is about as useful to me as a scooter to a dead man*

---

*Czech idiom

[z00ey]

Drfiter Man, thanks for the xcel and good wishes at the Dam! Strong work there, it does help in understanding more mechanics of the game especially in resource management. I'll try to check out the numbers for stalker, if I get relevant results I'll get back to you here.

I'm actually playing my second to first game and I decided right away for stalker (the first one ended in a couple of hours after the second wolf got me trying to find the first shelter).

The game was really rough up to now, had quite a lot of luck with finding the crucial locations in Mystery lake but unfortunately for me they had really bad item spawns: I'm on day 32 and still no rifle, got the knife on day 3, hatchet on day 5, spent the only sewing kit until I found out that the fishing hook work as well, had no arrows until I defeated Fluffy in hand combat in the Dam on day 30... had 5 hypothermias in 16 blizzards, killed 13 wolves in 14 hand-to-hand combats, either cause they stalked me or I needed their meat or their deer... imagine the state of my clothes!!!

At one time I was sure to be dead - got ambushed by a wolf but with no meat left was obliged to go after him and finish him off in a second hand-to-hand combat, the blizzard came in, had time for only 1kg of meat harvest before I had to run to a derelict cabin to warm by a stove and wait for the blizzard to pass on. Struggled to trappers homestead later with 7% of health, after recovery managed to find the wolf and strip all!

I also made a great error in the Dam - after killing Fluffy, being quite wounded and without enough wood, I decided to rest and then get more wood prior to harvesting. Not even 24 hours after the kill, Fluffy's carcass actually disappeared (probably spoiled as it couldn't freeze)! Maybe a bug... very unlucky.

Finally I'm (more or less) fully clothed and have 2 functional arrows and my bow, so I'll use your experience in the Ravine for the meat to buy me time in order to explore some parts of Mystery lake I wasn't able to access due to wolves and a bear. Also the winding river. While doing this I'll try to get the numbers for the xcel stalker mode. Then I'll go on through the Ravine and hope for the best!

PS do you have any idea about the degradation in use of the bear skin bedroll? Is it the same as for the standard bedroll? Does repair use the cloth too or only the bear hide? Seems to me that getting the bears could maybe solve the real big problem of cloth shortage?

PPS it seems that you'll have to go to the Forge! I know it awaits me as well, cause 2 arrowheads I have now will be gone very soon.

[Drifter Man]

I'd say you are doing well, z00eymt. I probably wouldn't have survived in Voyageur without the first Pilgrim game - knowing the map is a tremendous advantage. You have started right away on Stalker and survived for over 30 days without a rifle, that's quite an achievement, in my opinion.

My Fluffy also disappeared. I returned to it after about 2 days and the carcass was gone. It was a disappointment, but my situation has never been so precarious as yours. I've never been even remotely close to dying, or being seriously worried about my immediate survival, in my current game.

I did a quick test in my old game in Pilgrim. The bearskin bedroll seems to degrade at 1/2 of the rate of the normal bedroll. You need a cured bear skin and a piece of cloth to repair it. From my perspective, killing bears as a regular survival tactic is too dangerous, although it would solve a lot of problems (it would cut my arrow consumption by a factor of about four). The main issue is how to get ca 30-40 kg of meat safely to the Dam.

[Drifter Man]

Day 242 (213th day in the Dam)

It's good to be home. Mission accomplished - I brought ten birch saplings in total, although I had to sweep the area around and beyond the Abandoned Lookout, farther than I had planned. It will take 1-2 more trips to the Highway (the cabin near the Bear Creek Campground) to bring all the spoils to base.

To my surprise, I only had two wolf encounters in those seven days, and in two other cases the wolf ran away. The parts of Coastal Highway I operated in were much less populated by wolves than Mystery Lake. The frozen bay looks safe because you mostly see the wolves from afar. There are fishing huts and deer, plus rabbits on the Jackrabbit Island. I can imagine why the island is favored as a base by many survivors.

[Drifter Man]

Day 249 (220th day in the Dam)

In the end it only took one more trip to Coastal Highway to bring home everything I wanted to bring. I used that opportunity to deliver 15 liters of water to the Highway for future use. The updated projections look like this:

• Cloth equivalent (incl. bedroll and clothing): 210.25 pcs / 653 days
• Bow (incl. maple saplings): 10.51 pcs / 976 days
• Arrow shaft (incl. birch saplings): 49.15 pcs / 418 days
• Knife (incl. whetstone): 7.24 pcs / 769 days
• Match: 86 pcs / 213 days
• Rifle ammunition: 7 pcs
• Arrowheads: 3 pcs
• Flare: 4 pcs
• Hatchet: 5.55 pcs
• Lantern fuel: 7.39 liters

Here's the list of the supply points I am leaving behind in Coastal Highway:

• Trailer #1 (at train loading area): 3000 Cal, 6.5 l of water
• Trailer #2 (the downhill road to Log sort): 3 l of water, kerosene
• Cabin (at Bear Creek Campground): 3000 Cal, 17 l of water, 5 flares, 3 torches, 1 wood matches, 1 can opener
• Cabin (at Rabbit Grove): 750 Cal
• Fishing Cabins: 4950 Cal, 3.5 l of water, 3 flares
• Log Sort: 2600 Cal, 4.25 l of water, lantern + kerosene, rifle (7 rounds)
• Trailer #3 (near mine entrance): 250 Cal
• Abandoned Lookout: 1250 Cal, 0.25 l of water
• Coastal House (Jackrabbit Island): 1300 Cal, 1 wood matches

 

I've had a row of three unpleasant cases of food poisoning recently, all from cooked venison around 60-70%. Now I only eat meat under 75% shortly before going to bed. In case I contract food poisoning again, the need to sleep it out will not interfere with my schedule anymore. The underlying issue: I have (paradoxically) too much food and let it spoil for too long. I need to fix that, too.

[Drifter Man]

Day 272 (243rd day in the Dam)

Since my return from Coastal Highway, I’ve been thinking about ways to reduce the demand for arrows (or arrow shafts). The first step was to return to 11 hours of sleep a day (takes more cloth but saves calories), but of course this wasn’t nearly enough. One way or another, I had to lower the number of deer I kill in the Ravine to achieve this goal. I revisited the idea of stealing kills form wolves (“the Hotzn way”) that I had initially rejected. I tested it in practice a few times and concluded it is not dangerous if some precautions are taken (going only after kills close to the Dam, in the patrol zone of only one wolf, to minimize the risk of multiple attacks). However, there still are two problems: 1) I’m not in control when the next venison steak comes – the wolf is. 2) The idea of living in the Dam is all about avoidance of wolves. If I decide to live off wolves’ prey, I could as well move to another place where beds are more comfortable.

The other option was to replace the missing calories with rabbit meat. Assuming 2950 Cal per day (now with 11 hours of sleep), I could hunt for 3 deer in 10 days and cover the rest with rabbits – 7900 Cal means 17.5 kg of rabbit meat, or 14 rabbits in 10 days. I established the following 10-day routine, which cuts my requirement for arrow material by 25%:

Day 1: Deer hunt + placing 6 snares in three rabbit zones in the Ravine

Day 2: Collecting sticks and snared rabbits, placing snares again.

Day 3: Collecting snared rabbits, placing snares again

Day 4: Deer Hunt, collecting snared rabbits, placing snares again

Day 5: Collecting sticks and snared rabbits, placing snares again (if necessary)

Day 6: Collecting snared rabbits (if necessary)

Day 7: Deer Hunt

Days 8-10: Reserve/buffer days, collecting sticks, cooking, repairs etc.

I would continue to place snares until I catch enough rabbits according to the calorie plan. To prevent pile-up of food, I started making notes on the balance of the calories collected and spent, and I will adjust the number of rabbits to caught in the next 10-day cycle. Same for sticks and water. I tested the 10-day routine on days 262-271 successfully, and was left with an excess of 5 rabbits that subtracted from the plan for the next cycle. As a result, I have over 500 days left now in both cloth and arrows. There is one more effect (also the consequence of my absence in the Ravine while I was looting the Highway): the second deer has returned and now I regularly meet two there. Hunting for one of two is easier than for one of one.

Although I still have a lot of matches, I got into the habit of starting fire at the doorstep with the magnifying glass whenever there's time and sunlight, and bringing it inside to the fire barrel. I did not need a single match in the last 10 days and still cooked all I needed, including water. Maybe I will let the matches rot after all… I will just keep a few as protection against wolves.

• Cloth equivalent (incl. bedroll and clothing): 202.40 pcs / 521 days
• Bow (incl. maple saplings): 10.35 pcs / 1279 days
• Arrow shaft (incl. birch saplings): 47.43 pcs / 538 days
• Knife (incl. whetstone): 7.03 pcs / 762 days
• Match: 81 pcs / 195 days
• Rifle ammunition: 7 pcs
• Arrowheads: 3 pcs
• Flare: 4 pcs
• Hatchet: 5.54 pcs
• Lantern fuel: 7.27 liters

I found another cave in the Ravine. After 200 days I’ve been calling it my home. Another useful blizzard shelter at the more remote rabbit zone, at the railway dead end. Like in the first cave, I’ve put in some firewood and coal for cooking while blizzard is raging outside (an useful task for matches!)

[Drifter Man]

Day 291 (262nd day in the Dam)

The new forums have ruined my tables, throwing my arrays into disarray. Other than that, there's not much to report.

I posioned myself with stale venison twice more and confirmed that cooked meat is not safe even at 75%. Fortunately I have a nice supply of reishi tea, so I can experiment freely, but in the future I will probably just throw all bad food away. I don't need more than 2-3 days' worth of food reserve anyway.

Also I've concluded that my less-than-perfect utilization of arrows is less a result of my poor shooting than of simple odds. Every now and then I get a "bounce" from my shot, which does not hurt the target but severely damages the arrow - about as much as a full hit. Now this happened even with what I considered well-aimed shots. Perhaps there is a fixed probability of a "bounce" on each hit and there's nothing I can do about my arrow-to-deer ratio, after all.

Hunt, pick up sticks, collect snared rabbits. Cook meat. Boil water. Repair clothes and bedroll. Replace broken arrows and snares with newly crafted ones. Check the caves in Winding River and bring some coal every 20 days. My program for the next 12 months.

[Jolan]

wait.... does this mean Fluffy doesn't respawn?

 

[bethany]

On February 27, 2016 at 7:53 AM, Drifter Man said:

Day 291 (262nd day in the Dam)

The new forums have ruined my tables, throwing my arrays into disarray. Other than that, there's not much to report.

Yes, I'm very sorry to say that one of the few things that didn't survive conversion was your tables, which are written in a language exclusive to phpbb (our old forum software). I specifically asked about your post to see if there was something we could do, but the only option is to re-format using the options provided in the new forum. 

That aside, your posts have been quite interesting and very informative. Thanks for continuing to keep us updated and for sharing your adventure. Looking forward to more.  

[Drifter Man]

On 3/1/2016 at 4:21 AM, Jolan said:

wait.... does this mean Fluffy doesn't respawn?

 

In my game, she didn't, not in 250 days... no guarantees, though

[Drifter Man]

On 3/1/2016 at 6:37 PM, Bethany Williams said:

Yes, I'm very sorry to say that one of the few things that didn't survive conversion was your tables, which are written in a language exclusive to phpbb (our old forum software). I specifically asked about your post to see if there was something we could do, but the only option is to re-format using the options provided in the new forum. 

That aside, your posts have been quite interesting and very informative. Thanks for continuing to keep us updated and for sharing your adventure. Looking forward to more.  

Thanks for caring for my tables  It does not matter that much, I'll find another way to represent the information.

[Drifter Man]

Day 317 (288th day in the Dam)

At the beginning of each 10-day cycle, I check the calories collected and expended over the past cycle and adjust a "rabbit target" - the number of rabbits I want to snare - in order I keep my food reserves at the desired level. I've already cut them by 3500 Cal and haven't had any food poisoning since, but I will reduce them by another 3500 Cal to be on the safe side.

Every day I place 2 snares in each of the three rabbit zones in the Ravine and collect snared rabbits until the target is achieved. When I am close to the target, I place snares in only one or two zones. Earlier in the game I sometimes placed more than two snares in one rabbit zone but there never were more than two rabbits next day, so I concluded that two may be the daily limit in one place. I've been tracking the number of rabbits caught (with 2 snares per zone, checked each day): 106 placed snares resulted in 67 rabbits and 11 ruined snares. The sample is too small to draw definite conclusions, but there may be something like 60% chance for the snare to catch a rabbit and 10% chance to break.

When I come to the Ravine in the morning, the rabbits are either freshly caught (the game probably evaluates the snares the moment I enter the map) or, much less often, completely frozen (presumably caught on the preceding day just after I had placed the snares). For this reason I keep one hatchet in each rabbit zone. If a "yesterday's rabbit" is found, I take the hatchet. This way I don't have to waste the knife on a frozen carcass, nor do I have to carry the hatchet around.

I dispose of meat pieces smaller than 0.05 kg since they are not worth cooking.

• Cloth equivalent (incl. bedroll and clothing): 184.84 pcs / 476 days
• Bow (incl. maple saplings): 10.00 pcs / 1247 days
• Arrow shaft (incl. birch saplings): 43.46 pcs / 493 days
• Knife (incl. whetstone): 6.54 pcs / 718 days
• Match: 74 pcs / 160 days
• Rifle ammunition: 7 pcs
• Arrowheads: 3 pcs
• Flare: 3 pcs
• Hatchet: 5.53 pcs
• Lantern fuel: 6.87 liters

[bethany]

On March 1, 2016 at 7:21 PM, Jolan said:

wait.... does this mean Fluffy doesn't respawn?

 

No, she does not. 

[Seshins]

Loving this play through. Keep checking everyday for an update!

[illanthropist]

Sorry your tables got messed up, did check with google to see if maybe there were cached copies of your posts to take screenshots for jpegs but only 1 sadly.   Gotta admire your planning, I'm sure it will pay off in dividends 500 days down the road.  Will stay tuned, keep up the good work

[Drifter Man]

11 hours ago, Seshins said:

Loving this play through. Keep checking everyday for an update!

I'm glad you are enjoying the story. After my return from CH things have pretty much settled down, there are few new discoveries and ideas to make the posts worthwhile. So I am posting less often now.

[Drifter Man]

9 hours ago, illanthropist said:

Sorry your tables got messed up, did check with google to see if maybe there were cached copies of your posts to take screenshots for jpegs but only 1 sadly.   Gotta admire your planning, I'm sure it will pay off in dividends 500 days down the road.  Will stay tuned, keep up the good work

Thanks, I didn't think about that... it's no problem, I will gradually edit the older posts and get the formatting back.

The planning allows me to see which item is most critical and look for ways to save more of it. I wouldn't want to end up with a ton of cloth but out of arrows or vice versa...

[illanthropist]

You mentioned discarding small bits of rabbit, is it not worth keeping a piece to evade wolves at low calorie loss?  

[Drifter Man]

It is worth keeping if you like using the bait... the only problem could be that the wolf will be done with a tiny scrap of meat very quickly. It won't buy much time.

My preference when dealing with wolves is torch and flare. The first reason why I don't like the bait tactic is that raw meat is a magnet for wolves in the first place. Second, I meet very few of them: the stats show about 90 wolf encounters in over 300 days, half of which happened in the first 50 or so days. A piece of raw meat would most likely spoil in my backpack before I need it.

However, I can imagine that bait is more preferable with a different playstyle. Flares are very limited, and with many wolf encounters in bad weather they would soon run out. That's where those small pieces of meat could become more useful.

[illanthropist]

10 minutes ago, Drifter Man said:

Second, I meet very few of them

Always seems to be one hovering down near the bridge blocking escape via the ravine or river in my current play though.

[Drifter Man]

1 hour ago, illanthropist said:

Always seems to be one hovering down near the bridge blocking escape via the ravine or river in my current play though.

Oh yes, I know that one quite intimately  Whenever I leave the dam, I climb up the slope on the left and have a good look around. Then I slip through to the Ravine. If it is windy, I sneak because he can be hidden behind the railway embankment and I don't want to light another flare if I can avoid it.

[illanthropist]

1 minute ago, Drifter Man said:

Oh yes, I know that one quite intimately  Whenever I leave the dam, I climb to the slope on the left and have a good look around. Then I slip through to the Ravine. If it is windy, I sneak because he can be hidden behind the railway and I don't want to light another flare if I can avoid it.

Just passed through there and there were 2!!  Luckily I spooked a deer into the path of one which set off in pursuit and the other was busy munching down on a carcass and paid no attention as I crept past with my a$$ hugging a rockface.