About the bear bedroll

[Raf109]

Is this even worth crafting at all? Spending 2 bullets in 2 bears and waiting for them to bleed out seems rather sad. I'm not really in a critical situation to get one, I might craft the bear bedroll just to get some achievements.

[Scyzara]

I guess it depends on your playstyle and on your favorite map whether the bearskin bedroll is worth the effort.

If you sleep a lot in outdoor locations (e.g. fishing huts) or caves and usually inhabit TWM or PV, the bedroll is definitely going to be pretty useful in order not to freeze during nocturnal blizzards. If you favor sleeping mainly in indoor locations and spend most of your time in ML, DP or CH (= maps with a lot of shelter), then the bedroll is totally expendable.

[cekivi]

I concur. I've been playing for over a year and a half and I've never really felt the need to get a bearskin bedroll. The trick is to know where the indoor shelters are (so you don't need to worry about the weather) or be able to make a really large fire. While doing the Hopeless Rescue challenge I was sleeping on a ledge next to a nice large fire in the dark during a snowstorm and my character was a balmy 11C

[Wasteland Watcher]

On 5/9/2016 at 4:26 AM, Scyzara said:

I guess it depends on your playstyle and on your favorite map whether the bearskin bedroll is worth the effort.

If you sleep a lot in outdoor locations (e.g. fishing huts) or caves and usually inhabit TWM or PV, the bedroll is definitely going to be pretty useful in order not to freeze during nocturnal blizzards. If you favor sleeping mainly in indoor locations and spend most of your time in ML, DP or CH (= maps with a lot of shelter), then the bedroll is totally expendable.

 

On 5/9/2016 at 4:29 AM, cekivi said:

I concur. I've been playing for over a year and a half and I've never really felt the need to get a bearskin bedroll. The trick is to know where the indoor shelters are (so you don't need to worry about the weather) or be able to make a really large fire. While doing the Hopeless Rescue challenge I was sleeping on a ledge next to a nice large fire in the dark during a snowstorm and my character was a balmy 11C

Agree with both your assessments. It's kept me warm in fishing huts when I was lost in PV at night with no fire and exhausted but I've also spent nights in TWM next to a rock wall outdoors sleeping in the standard bedroll next to a fire and it kept me warm enough.

I think it depends whether your willing to forage enough wood prior sleeping outdoors plus willing to use a match to start a fire, or whether you'd rather not do all that and carry around the slightly heavier bearskin all the time. 

But I wonder... are bears more likely to attack you if you have one because of the smell? 

[Wasteland Watcher]

To add to my question above, after living peacefully for 62 days in Coastal Highway's Rabbit Grove I gathered 28 kg of gear (mostly food but including my fur clothes and bearskin bedroll) and went to Pleasant Valley in search of the entrance to Timberwolf Mountain (without looking at any maps). 

So I get lost and and making my way clockwise around what seems to be the edge of the map and come across a bear and a cave. Normally bears leave me be, and I leave them alone too, but this one sees me from a distance, pretty far off, and immediately charges me, mauls me, brings all my clothes to 10~20% (and DESTROYS the bearskin bedroll) and me to within 10% of death.

I thought maybe it didn't like the 'smell' of the bedroll.

I'm going to go back to that cave and kill that bear once I'm back up to 100% health!!

[Scyzara]

6 hours ago, Wasteland Watcher said:

But I wonder... are bears more likely to attack you if you have one because of the smell?

No idea, sorry. I personally never noticed a difference, but I didn't pay much attention to the topic to be honest.

I do, however, have a nice anecdote to share about a pretty scary experience I had a few (ingame-)nights ago. I went fishing in one of the mystery lake fishing huts (of course I picked one with a door for I truely love these neat doors) to stock up my food supplies a bit and decided to spend the night inside the hut as I was exhausted and the sun was about to set very soon. I wasn't expecting any problems as I had a full set of fur clothes, a cozy bearskin bedroll and a blizzard was very unlikely to occur (as another one had just ended a few hours ago).

I was aware that the mystery lake bear was roaming through the area, but - as I had never been attacked inside a fishing hut in the past - I didn't think about him at all.

So I went to sleep one hour after sunset, put the timer to 5 hours (just to be safe in case a blizzard might start and require me to light a fire) and poured some coke zero into a glass in real life while I was waiting for the time to pass.

My character, however, woke up after not even three hours and the sudden loud groaning of a nearby bear made me flinch so badly that I almost spilled my coke. I was expecting to be mauled, but the bear was just walking around the fishing shack and I could see his breath coming through the walls. After a few rl minutes (in which I didn't really dare to continue to sleep or pass time for you never know) the bear left and I sneaked out of the fishing hut into one of the lake cabins where I spent the rest of the night.^^

It was a great experience to be woken up by the bear right in the middle of the night, very immersive and scary. If I remember correctly, many people have asked for precisely such kinds of experiences in the past so I'm really happy to see them implemented eventually!

[Wasteland Watcher]

1 hour ago, Scyzara said:

No idea, sorry. I personally never noticed a difference, but I didn't pay much attention to the topic to be honest.

I do, however, have a nice anecdote to share about a pretty scary experience I had a few (ingame-)nights ago. I went fishing in one of the mystery lake fishing huts (of course I picked one with a door for I truely love these neat doors) to stock up my food supplies a bit and decided to spend the night inside the hut as I was exhausted and the sun was about to set very soon. I wasn't expecting any problems as I had a full set of fur clothes, a cozy bearskin bedroll and a blizzard was very unlikely to occur (as another one had just ended a few hours ago).

I was aware that the mystery lake bear was roaming through the area, but - as I had never been attacked inside a fishing hut in the past - I didn't think about him at all.

So I went to sleep one hour after sunset, put the timer to 5 hours (just to be safe in case a blizzard might start and require me to light a fire) and poured some coke zero into a glass in real life while I was waiting for the time to pass.

My character, however, woke up after not even three hours and the sudden loud groaning of a nearby bear made me flinch so badly that I almost spilled my coke. I was expecting to be mauled, but the bear was just walking around the fishing shack and I could see his breath coming through the walls. After a few rl minutes (in which I didn't really dare to continue to sleep or pass time for you never know) the bear left and I sneaked out of the fishing hut into one of the lake cabins where I spent the rest of the night.^^

It was a great experience to be woken up by the bear right in the middle of the night, very immersive and scary. If I remember correctly, many people have asked for precisely such kinds of experiences in the past so I'm really happy to see them implemented eventually!

Wow what an experience!!  Really cool, interesting, and terrifying all at the same time!

 I guess that's a new thing, having your outdoor sleep interrupted by animals sometimes?  It does make sense

 I'm wondering if bearskin bedrolls make bears more aggressive towards us now?

 It certainly would explain why I got attacked my first day in Pleasant Valley because I leave bears alone  

[Ruruwawa]

3 hours ago, Scyzara said:

It was a great experience to be woken up by the bear right in the middle of the night, very immersive and scary. If I remember correctly, many people have asked for precisely such kinds of experiences in the past so I'm really happy to see them implemented eventually!

I'm one of those people who've had this experience in RL, a few years back now.  Solo backpacking trip into King's Canyon in California, hot summer day, and a really crowded trail.  I got to the first night's campsite a little late, but there was still just enough room in the bear box for my small bag of bear-attracting food and toiletries.  

The bears came right into camp that night, 4 of them!  (I wasn't surprised, I'd seen several on the trail that day so the population seemed poorly managed.)  One stopped a couple meters from my tent and just made the usual loud snuffling noises.  I didn't use the tent's rain fly so I could watch him through the net window.  Pretty terrifying, and really hard to decide what to do.  I could get out of the tent to try to chase him off, but I'd step out only a meter or so from the bear.  

I had enough experience with bears that I was sure there were far more attractive tents than mine -- the father and son behind me on the trail had an enormous pack that seemed to be half full of oreos, and they'd arrived too late to use the bear box.  Sure enough, my bear decided after a few minutes that I wasn't interesting enough and migrated over to oreoland with the others.  Of course the whole camp was awake now and trying to scare off the bears.  The noise was pretty amazing.   In the end the only casualty was someone's daypack that a bear had sliced open to chow down on some granola bars.  It was like watching a dog eat from it's dish.

Great to see this kind of experience in TLD!

[Tbone555]

awesome story, Ruruwawa (nice name, too by the way )
i bet that must have been something to see. bears are my favorite animal, i think that if i were in that situation i'd be more interested than afraid haha

but, as for the topic
in my opinion the bearskin bedroll is too heavy to drag around everywhere. i've never crafted or used it. sleeping through the night without a fire does sound pretty nice, but that luxury doesnt come cheap. especially if you want to bring it along on TWM. i have enough trouble managing my inventory weight to make those climbs, without lugging that massive thing around on my back. besides, most caves in PV and TWM, where youd be using this bedroll the most, stay at a comfortable 0 c temperature, i've found. so then a small stick fire or a short nap in a standard bedroll would be enough to warm you back up again. the trick is knowing where these caves are, and being able to retreat to them when needed

[Scyzara]

2 hours ago, Ruruwawa said:

I'm one of those people who've had this experience in RL, a few years back now.  Solo backpacking trip into King's Canyon in California, hot summer day, and a really crowded trail.  I got to the first night's campsite a little late, but there was still just enough room in the bear box for my small bag of bear-attracting food and toiletries.  

The bears came right into camp that night, 4 of them!  (I wasn't surprised, I'd seen several on the trail that day so the population seemed poorly managed.)  One stopped a couple meters from my tent and just made the usual loud snuffling noises.  I didn't use the tent's rain fly so I could watch him through the net window.  Pretty terrifying, and really hard to decide what to do.  I could get out of the tent to try to chase him off, but I'd step out only a meter or so from the bear.  

I had enough experience with bears that I was sure there were far more attractive tents than mine -- the father and son behind me on the trail had an enormous pack that seemed to be half full of oreos, and they'd arrived too late to use the bear box.  Sure enough, my bear decided after a few minutes that I wasn't interesting enough and migrated over to oreoland with the others.  Of course the whole camp was awake now and trying to scare off the bears.  The noise was pretty amazing.   In the end the only casualty was someone's daypack that a bear had sliced open to chow down on some granola bars.  It was like watching a dog eat from it's dish.

Great to see this kind of experience in TLD!

Haha, I have to admit your story beats mine by far. Sounds like camping in the US is much more of an adventure than here in Germany (where the most terrifying animals you might come across at a campsite are usually gnats, bugs and spiders). 

 

[ElvisHunter]

 

8 minutes ago, Scyzara said:

Haha, I have to admit your story beats mine by far. Sounds like camping in the US is much more of an adventure than here in Germany (where the most terrifying animals you might come across at a campsite are usually gnats, bugs and spiders). 

Camping? I had a black bear out in front of my house this morning! 

[cekivi]

8 hours ago, ElvisHunter said:

 

Camping? I had a black bear out in front of my house this morning! 

Ugh, bears

Bears and cougars are two real life animals that I have zero interest in seeing in real life. When you walk around a corner and see a bear 4-5' tall at the shoulder... it's just a very unnerving experience. Fortunately, I was downwind and it didn't see me...

Still, we definitely have a lot more wildlife over here. Once when camping I had a deer keep circling my campfire. Don't know why, must have been curious

On topic, like the OP said, I'd only make a bearskin bedroll for the wrapped in furs achievement.

[Ruruwawa]

34 minutes ago, cekivi said:

On topic, like the OP said, I'd only make a bearskin bedroll for the wrapped in furs achievement.

Same.  Beyond the bother of carrying the extra weight, it's a lot of bother to keep repaired.  Now with the faster decay for sleeping bags left in the open, it's not even something you'd want to leave in a cave as an emergency backup.  Best stored indoors in a container.

2 hours ago, Scyzara said:

Sounds like camping in the US is much more of an adventure than here in Germany (where the most terrifying animals you might come across at a campsite are usually gnats, bugs and spiders). 

I've never camped in Germany, but yeah, lots of adventure camping in North America even when it's not terrifying.  There's that time in Glacer NP when the elk were in rut (try sleeping through that!).  Or the time dozens of mating skunks overran our campsite in Brice Canyon.  I tried to wrestle the dog into the car before she tore down the tent and got skunked,. I failed (we both got skunked), and so did the tent which I'd left open in my haste to get the dog out of there.  The lovely Australian family in the RV in the next campsite thanked us the next day for the entertainment, lol.  

[Rusty_Old_F250]

Ruruwawa, I just about died laughing at your skunk story, sounds like the kind of thing that would happen to me!

The last few generations of my family spent a lot of time in the outdoors, they worked as loggers, miners, surveyors and were just avid outdoorsmen, so granddad has some stories! He told me his dad encountered a black bear in the woods, the bear stood up on his hind legs, so granddad braced himself, held up his ax and yelled, "Well bear, it's either you or me, and if it's going to be me, I'm taking a chunk of you with me." Bear decided he wasn't worth he trouble and mosey'd on.

And then my Grandad was hiking in the Cascades some time ago and came across a yearling on the trail in front of him. The bear bluffed and charged a few times, but would always veer off at the last second. Grandpa held his ground, and next time the bear came back, he did the same thing to the bear, charge at him and then stop a few yards away. After going back and forth a few times the bear figured out grandpa wasn't going to run, so he sulked away. He saw the same bear later and said the bear looked like he was moping around all dejected that he couldn't bluff some old woodsman. 

The general consensus is that black bears are pretty harmless, as long as you don't run, grizzly's on the other hand... My great uncle Brixi had some stories, he lived in Wrangle, Alaska his whole life and ran a trapline till the year he died. He was in his 80's. I met him a few times when I was still pretty young, one thing I remember him saying was "we've got wolves up there that could carry you off whole, heh heh"  

Sam

[Pasquinel]

I'd like it if we could make a bearskin coat/poncho/cloak of some sort. 

[Raf109]

5 minutes ago, Pasquinel said:

I'd like it if we could make a bearskin coat/poncho/cloak of some sort. 

 

How would it be different from making the same thing but with deerskin/wolfskin or whatever?

[Pasquinel]

Just now, Raf109 said:

How would it be different from making the same thing but with deerskin/wolfskin or whatever?

For one it might be warmer though heavier I would think, aside from it being really cool... Also just another way to utilize the resource and expand the individual play style options. As it is now I don't need another bedroll and don't eat the bear meat because of parasites, yet I still find it necessary to kill a bear now and again and would like another use for the pelt. 

[Nervous Pete]

I've just finished a play session where I had a bear snuffling up to the farmstead in Pleasant Valley. Woke early, and went down to the porch for my customary sunrise viewing, and saw the bear shambling towards me very slowly, closer to the porch than the parked car was. Carefully gauged the distance to the door, took down my rifle and aimed. My previous attempt at bear hunting down at the Pleasant Valley farm out-buildings had ended in complete farce as I wasted three bullets missing the creature (and an additional one firing into the air accidentally in slapstick panic) so I wasn't particularly optimistic. Still, I squeezed the trigger, aiming a little behind and below the ear, and BAM! The bear went down.

Now I have my second bear pelt, 34 days into my current game, and I'm itching to craft a bear bedroll just to say I have. I also managed to cart away and cook 20kg of meat before it went funny. Since I have two batches of Reishi mushrooms I figure on risking a system of a day of three bear steaks with a 9% infection risk, followed by a day of rabbit meat, and alternating until it's all been eaten up. 

So in 35 days my hunting has been 2 bears, 3 deer, no wolves and a small convention of rabbits! 

Great stories, by the way! Especially Rusty's and Ruruwawa's, thank you so much for sharing!

 

[Hotzn]

Nice stories to be found here, I'll add two of my own. First one took place while camping out in a national park during the holidays, it was either Canada or the Northern part of the US, can't remember exactly as we made several trips there. Bear country. It was one of those camping grounds right in the middle of the forest, where we would park our trailer between huge trees, and there was a little building somewhere in the center with shower facilities. To save on our water in the trailer, we would go there to shower, brush our teeth and so on. In the morning that was always ok, since some people were about. But at night it was quite spooky. I was always on the fence whether or not to use the flashlight, since once you use it - many of you will know - you are practically blind for everything that you don't shine your flashlight on. And if ever you should drop your flashlight or start running, you'll run right into the next tree. So I preferred having my flashlight out, wait a little in front of our trailer for my eyes to get accustomed to the dark, and then go to the washing facilities in the dark. One night there was particularly little moonlight... I could see where the walkway was, and some trees, and the dim light from two or three trailers in the distance... it was dead quiet, no twig was moving in the air. I walked quietly along, trying to see where I was going, occasionally looking through the trees to my left and right. And then, suddenly, I was pretty sure I had just seen someone - or something - moving a couple of meters to my right, between the trees. Something big. I had also heard something. I stopped, my heart started pumping like no good from one second to the other. OK, I thought, my balls are getting ready to run before my head knows what's going on... but... what IS going on? I listened intently and tried to penetrate the darkness with my eyes. Wasn't able to see a thing, it was pitch black between the trees. Combine night and shade, you see nothing. Neither did I hear anything... or did I? Was there the faintest sound of... breathing? My hair really stood on end. After about a minute of hearing nothing, I convinced myself that there was nothing there, my mind must be playing tricks on me. I slowly - and very quietly - walked on. About ten meters on, I abruptly stopped again. There had been that movement and sound again, to my right. A shadow in the shadows. Man, my heart was racing. I braced myself and took out my flashlight. And switched it on... and shone its light right into a huge deer that was standing about 5 meters to my right, looking at me. The deer jumped up, turned and raced away through the underbrush, and I had the jump scare of my life. Afterwards, I asked myself many times how and why that encounter happened. Deer have excellent night vision, so that deer must have seen me walking there. Or maybe there was something wrong with its eyes? Well, whatever... maybe it didn't see me after all and had the same sensation ("damn, I think I just saw something moving to my left...").

The second story is from Namibia. We were camping out on a campground in some national park in the desert, can't remember where exactly. It was in 1995 anyway, I remember that. It was offseason and also off the beaten track - there was nobody on the campground apart from us (a group of ten plus guide, scattered in tents of two persons each). There was also a washing/toilet facility, you could see it from afar - as it was desert, there were no trees, just some dry bushes. And the guide had told us not to leave the tents at night, because... well, there were leopards in that part of the desert. So, as a matter or precaution, we went to the facilities in two groups of five in the evening, and then we went to bed. I woke up in the morning... and needed to have a pee badly! I looked out of the tent (sun wasn't up yet, but it was getting lighter) and over to the facility... some 70-80 meters away it was. No leopards to be seen. But then, our guide had said that you never see a leopard. It may be there, but you never see it. I needed to go out badly, so I started looking at different bushes, calculating how much time I would have to sprint back to the tents if a leopard should jump out from behind this bush or that. I grew pretty desperate. End of the story - some survivalist trick, heh. But I didn't leave the tent. Was too scared. 

[hauteecolerider]

8 hours ago, Hotzn said:

I grew pretty desperate. End of the story - some survivalist trick, heh. But I didn't leave the tent. Was too scared. 

And so you survived to tell us this tale . . .

Frankly, I enjoyed both of them! I wonder if the deer was just having fun with you. Animals will mirror other animals in play - move when one moves, stop when one stops, and so on. And when you turned on the flashlight, THAT WAS NOT PART OF THE GAME! No wonder the deer left in a huff!