[v.332] Stored meat indoors decaying rather quickly since patch

[VinceCgto]

I'd definitely prefer to store it in some kind of container outside of my home (maybe a box in the snow?).

To me, it seems kind of weird to just drop your meat outside the door.

[KD7BCH]

9 hours ago, Dinhammer said:

What?  That lying SOB....

Edit:  Oh.  I see what you meant.  Max should be fine, having spent years outdoors.  Bob from the Camp Office, on the other hand, has been begging for some fresh air.  (Truth be told, so have I.  He's getting a little ripe.)

LOL  Did you find the names on the guy's wallets? Smells like DLC content to me

[Ruruwawa]

On 5/1/2016 at 5:29 PM, Dinhammer said:

I didn't have anything too elaborate in mind.  Maybe just give us a shovel so that we can dig a storage pit/cache, denoted by a little mound of disturbed earth.  Keeps the smell down and animals off.  They seem to have already embraced something similar with the Hatch at Mountaineers.  If the game world gets modified to include fixed placements of lockers near homesteads.... great.  Seems more trouble for the devs, though.

This still sounds more base-building than survival to me.   I've done a bit of living/backpacking (about 5 months in total) in Alaska 100+ km from electricity and even in summer digging down to the permafrost is a fine way to store perishable food.  The thing is, it's only a few inches down and you can toss some moss or snow on top for insulation.  I've never had to use any tool other than my hands.

[Dinhammer]

1 hour ago, Ruruwawa said:

This still sounds more base-building than survival to me.   I've done a bit of living/backpacking (about 5 months in total) in Alaska 100+ km from electricity and even in summer digging down to the permafrost is a fine way to store perishable food.  The thing is, it's only a few inches down and you can toss some moss or snow on top for insulation.  I've never had to use any tool other than my hands.

Yeah, upon further thought, I think I like others' suggestion better: just make the existing containers moveable outdoors.  The devs seem to have storage in mind as a limited commodity, and being able to dig a storage pit wherever you please might undercut that.  On the other hand, some indoor containers are not and should not be moveable (e.g., lockers,) so adding containers to the world might be necessary to make this a workable solution.

You do make a good point about no-tool storage in permafrost regions.  My own backpacking adventures have been significantly further south, so some time with a shovel or cat-holing trowel (yuck) has always been necessary for me to achieve a significant temperature benefit.  (At least the deeper you go, the less smell escapes to attract critters.)

Has it been confirmed that a shovel is already on the roadmap for primitive shelter building?  I came to the game too late to know how temporary shelters were handled before they were removed.

 

[Ruruwawa]

18 hours ago, Dinhammer said:

Yeah, upon further thought, I think I like others' suggestion better: just make the existing containers moveable outdoors.  The devs seem to have storage in mind as a limited commodity, and being able to dig a storage pit wherever you please might undercut that.  On the other hand, some indoor containers are not and should not be moveable (e.g., lockers,) so adding containers to the world might be necessary to make this a workable solution.

You do make a good point about no-tool storage in permafrost regions.  My own backpacking adventures have been significantly further south, so some time with a shovel or cat-holing trowel (yuck) has always been necessary for me to achieve a significant temperature benefit.  (At least the deeper you go, the less smell escapes to attract critters.)

Has it been confirmed that a shovel is already on the roadmap for primitive shelter building?  I came to the game too late to know how temporary shelters were handled before they were removed.

 

I don't think we've many  (if any) details about primitive shelter yet.  We'll have to see.

You do bring up an issue that would concern me a lot if this were a real life situation: odor "hygiene".  On my far north treks we regularly saw wolf, fox and grizzlies and avoided attracting them by being fanatical about controlling odors.  Also storing potentially smelly stuff (food, lotion, toothpaste) a fair distance away from camp.  But this is a game and I'm glad that particular RL chore isn't in it.  IMO it would add more drudgery than immersion.

[Pillock]

On 5/4/2016 at 6:40 PM, Dinhammer said:

Has it been confirmed that a shovel is already on the roadmap for primitive shelter building? 

Whether or not they have anything to do with shelter building is anyone's guess, but I suspect that shovels will make it in at some point...

[Hotzn]

2 hours ago, Pillock said:

Whether or not they have anything to do with shelter building is anyone's guess, but I suspect that shovels will make it in at some point...

Not necessarily. If you look at the menu of very early versions of TLD, there was a shovel symbol for building snow shelter. That was abandoned.

[Tbone555]

god, you people are psycho

storing your food on dead bodies

dead bodies that you've NAMED!? O_____o

i kid, i kid. but, my input - hinterland needs to give us some kind of preservation options if they are gonna make meat decay this fast. if you just throw venison on the ground outside your cabin in real life, wildlife is gonna come sniffing. yes, this includes wolves and bears. I'm currently taking shelter in the radio hut in PV, with 9.6 kilos of venison on the ground behind the shelter. with a bear roaming around in the surrounding wilderness, I'm not feeling very comfortable here anymore...

[hauteecolerider]

Well, yes, we name dead bodies here!

I remember cutting up Tony the Pony and Shoo Cat and let's not forget Moose the Cow and Barkley the Dog in vet school . . . 

We had some weird relationships going there in Anatomy Lab . . .

[cekivi]

1 hour ago, hauteecolerider said:

Well, yes, we name dead bodies here!

I remember cutting up Tony the Pony and Shoo Cat and let's not forget Moose the Cow and Barkley the Dog in vet school . . . 

We had some weird relationships going there in Anatomy Lab . . .

Yeah... frogs in bio class were enough for me. Embalming fluid smells terrible

[Tbone555]

no comment...

 

[elloco999]

On 1-5-2016 at 9:30 PM, cekivi said:

After reading Patrick's comment on the Steam forums I moved this to Alpha Playtest Feedback. I too think it's great that we can finally freeze meat outside. Personally, I don't think we need to be able to craft homemade containers. I don't think of the Long Dark as a crafting or base building game. Instead, I'm hoping that the beautiful new exteriors teased in the April 4th update video (the Dam was gorgeous!) will just have a locker or a similar container near most indoor locations

I don't think we need to be able to craft containers either. But I do think we should be able to move the smaller containers like metal and plastic boxes outside (and those that are already outside to a location that works better for us). I mean, if I needed to store my meat outside because it preserves better there, I would not just dump them on the ground if I could easily carry a plastic box outside and put it in there...

[cekivi]

9 hours ago, elloco999 said:

I don't think we need to be able to craft containers either. But I do think we should be able to move the smaller containers like metal and plastic boxes outside (and those that are already outside to a location that works better for us). I mean, if I needed to store my meat outside because it preserves better there, I would not just dump them on the ground if I could easily carry a plastic box outside and put it in there...

That also works

[Tbone555]

so so simple. that or give us salt, or let us cure out meat! if i were in that situation, i'd personally be curing my meat rather than freezing it

[cekivi]

While it may be possible to get salt from the ocean if I remember correctly smoking and air drying were common ways aboriginals used to cure meats before large scale salt production was possible.

[Patrick Carlson]

Thanks for all your feedback here on the changes to decay. It's really helpful! 

[tnbp]

I just joined the forums to be able to come here and post some opinions about the new decay mechanic and keeping meet outside-- but literally everything I could have thought to say has already been said here.  The only thing I haven't seen mentioned yet is that, when a wolf is chasing you, you have the option to drop a decoy from your pack that the wolf might prefer to eat instead-- but I can leave pound after pound of deer meet on my doorstep and no animals are expected to come around?  That just seems like a partially broken mechanic to me.  I'm in favor of the idea of allowing plastic and/or metal containers to be moved around the world, including outside.  Thankfully, my base is at Trapper's Homestead and I'm fortunate enough to have a backpack in the snow behind the place that I'll be using until there is a better option.

[Scyzara]

On 17.5.2016 at 8:01 PM, Patrick Carlson said:

Thanks for all your feedback here on the changes to decay. It's really helpful! 

Here are some more observations I've made during my current Stalker game. I believe at least one of them might hint towards some problems with the current deterioration mechanics (as my observations pretty much contradict the changelist descriptions how deterioration is supposed to work now):

- Global deterioration starting on day 1 only seems to affect items lying around in the world, NOT items looted from containers.

I've pulled 100% canned peaches and 99% tomato soup out of kitches cabinets in Coastal Highway on day 160. This should be completely impossible had they begun to decay on day one. Canned peaches or tomato soup I found lying around in the world on day 160 were typically between 50-0% condition which I assume to be working as intended.

(Just as a sidenote: @Drifter Man observed the same problems while looting some CH houses in a day 600 game. He pulled food at various different conditions (i.a. 100%) out of containers whereas all food lying around in the world was ruined.)

 

Apart from that issue, the following details might (theoretically) be intended, but I personally just find them a little odd.

- Soda decays unreasonably fast (at the same rate like meat) if stored outdoors, but extremely slow if stored indoors. Is this an intended mechanic?

- Contrary to its item description, condensed milk does not "last forever" at all, but decays five times faster than e.g. tomato soup. I doubt this is intended.

- Energy bars decay way faster than chocolate, candy and granola bars. Every single energy bar I found lying around in the world past day 130 (= about 15 of them) was at 0% condition whereas chocolate or granola bars were usually between 60-20%. This observation was especially striking in my food bunker where I found 5 ruined energy bars lying next to four fine chocolate bars in the same shelf.

- Boiled cups of coffee and tea don't decay at all whereas tins of coffee and packages of tea do decay.

 

That's all I recall for now, I hope it's somehow helpful feedback.

 

[TinyMouseGirl]

I just found this topic while trying to work out why meat started decaying at much faster rates once I moved from Timberwolf Mountain to Pleasant Valley. I started the game on Timberwolf and lived in the Mountaineer's Hut for about 90 days before moving down to PV, shifting my gear first to the abandoned prepper's cache at the foot of the mountain and then to the farmhouse. I thought the increased rate of decay in the bunker was odd, but I've never made a base in a bunker so it wasn't until I moved into the farmhouse that I realised that the rate of decay had increased in all indoor locations.

I guess the hatch in the Mountaineer's Hut counts as outdoor storage and that's why meat decayed so much slower there than in the abandoned bunker or PV farmhouse. That makes the Hut an even better base than I thought! This will definitely change my strategy and base criteria from now on.

[cekivi]

@TinyMouseGirl: Yes, @Scyzara has tested and confirmed that the hatch in the Mountaineer's Hut counts as outdoor storage.

[Vinceofpyrenees]

On 20/05/2016 at 11:10 PM, tnbp said:

I just joined the forums to be able to come here and post some opinions about the new decay mechanic and keeping meet outside-- but literally everything I could have thought to say has already been said here.  The only thing I haven't seen mentioned yet is that, when a wolf is chasing you, you have the option to drop a decoy from your pack that the wolf might prefer to eat instead-- but I can leave pound after pound of deer meet on my doorstep and no animals are expected to come around?  That just seems like a partially broken mechanic to me.  I'm in favor of the idea of allowing plastic and/or metal containers to be moved around the world, including outside.  Thankfully, my base is at Trapper's Homestead and I'm fortunate enough to have a backpack in the snow behind the place that I'll be using until there is a better option.

Yes I was wondering that too when I leave decayed fish meat into a corner outside of a "my" house in coastal highway. I thought wolves or bear could smell it. I was thinking to use it to hunt them. But it apparently doesn't have this effect. 

[SteveP]

1 hour ago, Vinceofpyrenees said:

Yes I was wondering that too when I leave decayed fish meat into a corner outside of a "my" house in coastal highway. I thought wolves or bear could smell it. I was thinking to use it to hunt them. But it apparently doesn't have this effect. 

I noticed that in the past too. I was wondering how they do those simulations in the game. Are they concurrent while the player is indoors?

[SteveP]

On 2016-05-16 at 4:22 PM, Tbone555 said:

so so simple. that or give us salt, or let us cure out meat! if i were in that situation, i'd personally be curing my meat rather than freezing it

Well smoking or salting would be things done in warm weather whereas during the Canadian Winter, the sub-zero temperatures make it easier to freeze it. It's not easier to cook it but it takes maybe 5 minutes to defrost a frozen piece (on the stove). If you are smart, you wrap individual pieces BEFORE freezing since a frozen haunch takes time to hack the frozen meat off. You can't easily cook two pieces of frozen meat back to back; it takes forever to get the heat in there. It would make a very interesting feature to permit you to decide how large pieces to cut your meat and hence, speed up the butchering process.

Does cooked meat decay faster now too? Especially indoors?

How is it that we can cook all this meat without the benefit of lard or oil? The lack of condiments, even salt and pepper; how primitive! Certainly no need to go short of that if you could only scavenge salt or pepper corns. I wonder what indigenous people used for seasoning while subsisting? They must have had salt!

[Vinceofpyrenees]

5 hours ago, SteveP said:

I noticed that in the past too. I was wondering how they do those simulations in the game. Are they concurrent while the player is indoors?

maybe, but they could be concurrent and able to smell our "drop food"

[Vinceofpyrenees]

"Does cooked meat decay faster now too? Especially indoors? "

 

 

What ? no I thouht it was the opposite.