Caracas quartering

[omoon66]

Ive never done it, but I don't get the point of it. Could someone explain it to me, or give me an example of when it would be useful?

[AZHockeyNut]

Need gut and hide fast you get them quick

Middle of storm can't be out long enough

Big animal quarter is short time take hide and gut and some food go back inside warm up while you harvest.

Makes sense on bear will work on moose/elk when we see them, or bigger deer. 

[TROY]

In the early stages of a playthrough, when your skill is low, it will save some time over a full butcher job.  Especially on bears. As your skill increases, and you get faster, it's not much benefit. Even a large bear takes less time to full butcher than to quarter by the time you hit skill level 5.  I don't know if that's a bug, or if they simply didn't think to reduce quartering time from skill bonuses when they added it.  Carrying all the extra weight of quarters actually makes it a very poor choice at higher skills.  But the idea is to get it somewhere out of the weather rather than spending longer at the kill site. Hopefully they'll adjust quarter times for skill bonuses soon and it will remain a good option for getting away from the kill site as quickly as possible. 

[omoon66]

So at lower skill, it takes less time to butcher? And I also saw someone say it only puts meat in bags, and leaves the gut and hide on the ground?

[TROY]

1 hour ago, omoon66 said:

So at lower skill, it takes less time to butcher? And I also saw someone say it only puts meat in bags, and leaves the gut and hide on the ground?

no, at lower  skills, its faster to quarter than to harvest all the meat and such on the spot. It puts the meat in bags, and the rest on the ground, yes. But, the bags are more than just meat. They weigh twice as much as the meat that you will get once you harvest them. This accounts for the bones and such that are still part of the "quarter" until you harvest the meat from it. But, at lower carcass harvesting skill, the quarter option gets the thing done faster on carcasses with large amounts to harvest, so you can get inside, or into some warmer location to harvest the quarters for meat. I personally only use it on bears, and only then when my harvesting skill is low. 

[omoon66]

2 hours ago, TROY said:

no, at lower  skills, its faster to quarter than to harvest all the meat and such on the spot. It puts the meat in bags, and the rest on the ground, yes. But, the bags are more than just meat. They weigh twice as much as the meat that you will get once you harvest them. This accounts for the bones and such that are still part of the "quarter" until you harvest the meat from it. But, at lower carcass harvesting skill, the quarter option gets the thing done faster on carcasses with large amounts to harvest, so you can get inside, or into some warmer location to harvest the quarters for meat. I personally only use it on bears, and only then when my harvesting skill is low. 

Ok, thanks! When they introduced that feature, I didn't know how it worked, I just never got around to asking until now. So, thanks a lot! I'll definitely keep this in mind for later (since in my current run my skill is at 4, close to 5)

[Mroz4k]

Basically, it is not much use in general.

Because once you quartered animal, you will save up just a little bit of time you would othervise spent harvesting the entire thing, but you have to, in the end, harvest the bags of meat somewhere inside anyways, so you will really just give yourself more things to do for later. 
In order to butcher an animal, you are "basically" removing its guts and hide first, then carving the meat. What makes more sense economically is to simply harvest the meat first, then leave the hide and guts behind, and return later to finish the job. The only risk in this is that a predator will come by, and eat the hide and guts - but I am not sure whether that really happens, unless it is a kill of that particular predator to begin with. 

The reason why it is not worth it to quarter is because the meat condition degrades rapidly, but hide and guts remain fine for a long time. By quartering, you are removing the hide and guts first (which is the item that doesnt spoil much) at expense of time spent, doing this, all the while your meat is losing condition fast. Now it is not even edible, it is just in meat bags, and you need to harvest it again, to get the real food - all the while the food is still spoiling at a fast rate. 
What is more, the meatbags attract predators more then the raw steaks would.

So as you can see, quartering is not at all useful as far as economy goes.

HOWEVER

Only use I know of for quartering is when you are attempting to artificially create 0,1 kg big chunks of meat. Because you are either trying to create baits, or cook those and artificially increase your cooking skill, the second is an exploit. So, say you find a wolf with 4,4 kg of food on it. You cant separate that boy into smaller chunks then 0,4kg. So, you quarter him, and you will be left with 4 bags of 1,1 kg meat - now you can already carve those up to 0,1 steaks. This is just a numbers example, not sure if this is how it worked, but in general it is how it works. Also, the bags themselves are pretty powerful bait item. A bit too powerful if you ask me.

I strongly suggest to always start by harvesting meat first, and then immidiatedly dropping it to avoid its degradation further. Then, you can either take the hide and guts, or do whatever you want with it.

[TROY]

Folks, I'd pay close attention to what @Mroz4k has to say about this.  I disagree that quartering has no advantages. There are times when you'll find a good reason to do it, however, his method of dealing with a carcass is simply genius. I've harvested a great many in my time playing this game, even died during harvesting because I wasnt careful or didnt pay attention. In all those harvests, this particular strategy never occurred to me, and it is again, simply genius.  Even at higher skill levels, that hide and those guts add alot of time to a harvest, time that predators are moving towards you, time that you are exposed to weather, time that the meat is spoiling. 

I actually read an explanation of his method that he posted in another thread, and I tested it, because what he touched on about predators coming after the carcass was my first thought. I left rabbit carcasses laying around where I know wolves hang out. They were never touched. And, to add even more reason to do this, even though the carcass degrades, the hide and guts do not. I finally picked the carcasses up when they reached 20%. in the red. And when i harvested the hides/guts, I got them at 100%.  This method is simply all advantage and no disadvantage that I can think of. 

[JAFO]

10 hours ago, Mroz4k said:

The only risk in this is that a predator will come by, and eat the hide and guts - but I am not sure whether that really happens, unless it is a kill of that particular predator to begin with.

Predators will never eat your kills.. they won't touch anything they didn't kill themselves. And they'll never return to a kill you've chased them away from.

 

10 hours ago, Mroz4k said:

So, say you find a wolf with 4,4 kg of food on it. You cant separate that boy into smaller chunks then 0,4kg.

Sorry, but this is just totally wrong. I do wish you'd take the time to test things properly before making categorical statements like this.

It's easy to get much smaller pieces, right there when you're harvesting the kill, (and regardless of the total amount of meat on the animal) if that's what you want to do.

Set the interface to harvest just 0.5kg of meat. Click the "harvest" button, and when the circle is about 25% complete, which is to say, at the 3 o'clock position, hit the Esc key. You will get a piece of meat around about the 0.15kg mark. With practice, it's easy to get even smaller pieces, around 0.1kg in size, by hitting Esc a little earlier. You can repeat this as many times as you want, even for the entire carcass if you're inclined.

 

I second what @TROY said above about @Mroz4k's "meat in batches, before hide & guts" technique.. it's pure genius.. and very much the way to go with bears especially. Here's the post: (click on the title to read the whole post)

 

[Thrasador]

7 hours ago, TROY said:

Folks, I'd pay close attention to what @Mroz4k has to say about this.  I disagree that quartering has no advantages. There are times when you'll find a good reason to do it, however, his method of dealing with a carcass is simply genius. I've harvested a great many in my time playing this game, even died during harvesting because I wasnt careful or didnt pay attention. In all those harvests, this particular strategy never occurred to me, and it is again, simply genius.  Even at higher skill levels, that hide and those guts add alot of time to a harvest, time that predators are moving towards you, time that you are exposed to weather, time that the meat is spoiling. 

I actually read an explanation of his method that he posted in another thread, and I tested it, because what he touched on about predators coming after the carcass was my first thought. I left rabbit carcasses laying around where I know wolves hang out. They were never touched. And, to add even more reason to do this, even though the carcass degrades, the hide and guts do not. I finally picked the carcasses up when they reached 20%. in the red. And when i harvested the hides/guts, I got them at 100%.  This method is simply all advantage and no disadvantage that I can think of. 

Troy, I was going to ask you if you were being facetious, because I showed his post so I could read it and it was a big bucket of hooey....but @JAFO got most of it already....

I guess I can still cover the scent bit....

So you harvest all the bear meat, and now you have like 30+ kilograms of fresh bear meat lying in the snow, or you have about 8 bags of meat and bones at about 8 kilograms a piece. Now you want to move it to your base as fast as possible. It won't attract wolves while lying on the ground, because of how the scent mechanic works. Wolves are only attracted to the scent when it is on your person....that's why they never just find and eat your carcass like Jafo just stated, and it's why they don't eat your food when you leave it outside in the snow.

So you pick up as much meat as you can carry and still maybe run a bit, I wouldn't carry more than 40 kilos total for this reason. So at best you will be carrying 15-20 kilos of fresh meat or 2-3 meat bags. Why are you even bringing up how smelly meat bags are like it's an important factor to consider. In EITHER instance you will have 3+ scent bars....aka an astronomical amount of scent that isn't even displayed by the game because it only shows three bars at most...

It would be normal to assume in either scenario of carrying 15 kilos of bear, or 3 meat bags, that every wolf in the game is traveling to your last smelled position. So get the heck out of there STAT, and hope it's safe when you get back. Hopefully you killed the animal close to a shelter....ESPECIALLY if it's a bear. Otherwise you should be prepared for wolves showing up....but at least you have bait 

The other thing you said about skinning and gutting the bear FIRST when you quarter it, isn't really accurate either.

When you quarter a bear you are putting the meat in bags and leaving the hide and guts on the ground simultaneously. So the 2-ish hours to quarter it is for the whole thing. So at worst you are letting SOME the meat spoil for an additional hour by not carving all the meat out separately and first....

The additional hour is negligible....meat rots fast on a bear, but even when I slept for six hours first because I was exhausted all the meat was still over 50 condition which is fine, because cooking meat adds 50 condition to the meat when you cook it.

So as long as you track the bear while it's bleeding out and quarter it soon after it drops you should be fine on condition either way.

The meat in the meat bags should all be 70+ condition or higher. Once in bags it rots MUCH slower than when it's on the bear. Even after a full 24 hours of being in bags it only loses 10 condition at most....It also decays at the same speed inside and outside while in bags, so you can harvest the bags inside or outside. Once harvested the fresh meat decays far slower rate outside. So throw it outside if you aern't ready to cook it yet because you want to harvest the rest of the bags first....

The other thing Jafo said about hitting escape or cancel while cutting the meat off a carcass to get small pieces is also accurate. It doesn't have to be in meat bags to do this. On the animal you can still harvest 0.5 kilos at a time and then hit escape when the circle is 20% complete. I'm not sure this is even considered an exploit. If it was they would have removed the ability to do this long ago. Bait is better wasted in small pieces, and the cooking skill tradeoff is you get more pieces to raise your skill....but it still takes the same amount of time to cook it (and cooking takes 20 minutes a go). So you are burning a lot of wood and daylight to cook all those tiny chunks to raise your skill....

[Hackfleisch]

15 hours ago, Mroz4k said:

 The only risk in this is that a predator will come by, and eat the hide and guts - but I am not sure whether that really happens, unless it is a kill of that particular predator to begin with. 
 

 

In my experience this never happens, I often harvest just the meat and leave the rest for later unless the weather looks really clear, and the guts and hide are always still there. But I often return within a day (or 2) so I don't know how long it will take for a meatless carcass to disappear.

[Mroz4k]

5 hours ago, JAFO said:

Sorry, but this is just totally wrong. I do wish you'd take the time to test things properly before making categorical statements like this.

It's easy to get much smaller pieces, right there when you're harvesting the kill, (and regardless of the total amount of meat on the animal) if that's what you want to do.

Set the interface to harvest just 0.5kg of meat. Click the "harvest" button, and when the circle is about 25% complete, which is to say, at the 3 o'clock position, hit the Esc key. You will get a piece of meat around about the 0.15kg mark. With practice, it's easy to get even smaller pieces, around 0.1kg in size, by hitting Esc a little earlier. You can repeat this as many times as you want, even for the entire carcass if you're inclined.

Well, thank you. I had no idea that is how it worked - I assumed that interrupting that action will just cancel it altogether. I never actually harvested something and canceled it, I am always very careful of what time it takes to harvest something and how it goes. So, the only time I created "tiny bits" for baits, I did so through either quartering, or only took advantage of specific carcasses, which had either x,1 kg or x,6 kg of meat on them. Because then, you can click all the way to "harvest x,6 kg of meat, and click back down to the point where its 0,1 kg. 

I didnt mean to misinform, this is simply something I have never done. I wasnt aware this is how it worked. Thanks for teaching me.

Honestly, if I had access to a PC capable of running TLD, I would have gone over and tested quartering in general before making that comment, but I dont. 

And as far as the actual "math" behind the quartering section, I stated that whether it would split in that particular amount, I am not sure. Ive used quartering to split unpleasant carcasses into bags that allowed me to harvest 0,10 kg meats before, that was the point I was trying to make.

 

5 hours ago, JAFO said:

Predators will never eat your kills.. they won't touch anything they didn't kill themselves. And they'll never return to a kill you've chased them away from.

That is what I thought as well, but wasnt sure on it. I believe the only time they will ever start "eating" carcasses is if they either killed it themselves, or you "dropped" it as a bait. I often use unharvested rabbits with hide left in them as a bait, those weight 0,3 kg as a carcass, but are very smelly and effective bait to use.

 

11 hours ago, TROY said:

I finally picked the carcasses up when they reached 20%. in the red. And when i harvested the hides/guts, I got them at 100%.

First of all, thanks for the kind words. Also, I do believe this is not something that was in the previous versions of the game. In previous versions of the game, the guts and hides spoiled when you left them inside of carcass - but not very quickly. I distinctly remember that I used to have rabbit hide and two sets of guts with 40% condition in pre-Cartographer game, because I took them from a rabbit I caught through a forgotten snare that I came across several days later. Thing was, once "taken out" of the carcass, the degradation slowed significantly, and once cured, it stopped entirely. And making items out of those hides and guts produced a 100% condition items, so that condition on those hides didnt matter in the end anyways.

52 minutes ago, Hackfleisch said:

In my experience this never happens, I often harvest just the meat and leave the rest for later unless the weather looks really clear, and the guts and hide are always still there. But I often return within a day (or 2) so I don't know how long it will take for a meatless carcass to disappear.

Fully harvested carcass dissapears quickly, in couple of ingame hours. I do believe it takes about 4-5 ingame days for an un-harvested carcass to dissapear. By then, any meat left will be ruined, but the hides and guts will still be useable.

[JAFO]

1 hour ago, Mroz4k said:

Thing was, once "taken out" of the carcass, the degradation slowed significantly, and once cured, it stopped entirely.

This is still the case.. once harvested, hide and guts will slowly deteriorate until cured.

Re testing, I'd forgotten that your computer died.. hope you'll have another one soon.

[Mroz4k]

1 hour ago, JAFO said:

This is still the case.. once harvested, hide and guts will slowly deteriorate until cured.

I know. But it used to be that the hides you harvested out of animal corpses were already degraded, now you harvest them at maximum condition (I think, at least... again wish I could be able to confirm this before saying). Pre Cartographer, you would get hides at lower conditions, and they degraded till they were cured - but at much slower rate then if they were left inside of a carcass.

1 hour ago, JAFO said:

Re testing, I'd forgotten that your computer died.. hope you'll have another one soon.

Yes, it has been bugging me that I cant run the game to test so many things, I often also mention that things may have changed in Wintermute from what I was saying because I have very limited Wintermute experience. I did just get my first paycheck, if I were to spend all of it I may be able to get a decent gaming PC. But gotta pay other things as well, first - so maybe I will build my own since its cheaper that way, or get one via down payments.

[Stormwolf1O1]

I like quartering bears when time and weather permit. The fact that you just hack off his feet and leave them on the floor makes me laugh.

[JAFO]

Just now, Stormwolf1O1 said:

The fact that you just hack off his feet and leave them on the floor makes me laugh.

There used to be heads as well.. but Hinterland concluded that probably wouldn't go down well with the various classification boards when TLD was released.

[Stormwolf1O1]

Just now, JAFO said:

There used to be heads as well.. but Hinterland concluded that probably wouldn't go down well with the various classification boards when TLD was released.

LOL. I'll have to play the old version of the game that I have just so I can see that!

[nicko]

Quartering in general, you take bulk meat cuts in bags and leave the hide /guts behind. Get those later!

[Mroz4k]

38 minutes ago, nicko said:

Quartering in general, you take bulk meat cuts in bags and leave the hide /guts behind. Get those later!

Or, you can just pick them up right after the quartering. I see no reason to leave that behind if you went through the trouble to remove them in the first place.